Category Archives: Marxism

REFUTING ‘ANTI IMPERIALIST’ MYTHS: A Review of Bill Warren’s Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism.

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This article by David McMullen was originally published in September 1993 in the journal “Red Politics”.There was also discussion of the review at the lastsuperpower site in 2006.

 

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Bill Warren’s book, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, performs a useful service by refuting much of the mythology that the left has embraced in the name of ‘anti- imperialism’. However, on the other hand, he manages to create his own brand of confusion. He does this, firstly, by blaming Lenin’s Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism for many of the left’s erroneous views.

And secondly, he is so busy extolling the historical mission of capitalism, that no effort is devoted to discussing how capitalism is an obstacle to human development and is becoming increasingly obsolete. Neverthelsee, despite these shortcomings it is the myth shattering quality of the book that predominates.

Warren begins by reminding us of the basics of a Marxist attitude to capitalism:

(a) It is an advance in all respects on earlier forms of society.

(b) It develops the productive forces and society generally, so creating the necessary material or objective conditions for future communist society. This development also generates the contradictions which lead to capitalism’s revolutionary overthrow.

The following passage from the Communist Manifesto that Warren quotes (Warren 1980, p 11) says it all.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fact-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones becomes antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind. (Marx and Engels, 1968, pp 34-5.)

This approach to capitalism is at total variance to that prevailing in the “left’, The usual practice is to bemoan the development of capitalist productive relations and productive forces, and to cherish the things that capitalism is destroying. A few examples might clarify this point.

(1) Increased economic concentration and the destruction of the petty bourgeoisie. A classic case of the left’s response is its bemoaning such things as agribusiness, supermarkets and fastfood chains.

(2) The increasing internationalisation of capital and the division of labor, which increases human intercourse on a world scale and lays the basis for a global society. This is denounced for destroying our independence and national heritage and placing us at the mercy of the multinationals.

(3) The destruction of cherished skills by new technologies (cherished, that is, by trendy left sociologists). To a Marxist, technological development is eliminating the technical division of labor which is the material basis of class society. In other words we are moving to a situation where you will have an educated and versatile workforce, on the one hand, and on the other hand, processes of production in which all types of activities can be performed equally by all members of the workforce.

(4) The erosion of traditional culture and social bonds. Traditional life tends to be romanticized, compared with soulless modern living We have lost something. On the other hand, to a Marxist the neuroses and instability of modern life are infinitely superior to the narrow mindless certainty and security of days gone by.

So given that capitalism is a social advance and creates the conditions for social revolution, how are we to view European colonial expansion into pre-capitalist societies?

Warren cites, by way of example, Marx’s recognition of the historically progressive role of Britain’s penetration of India.

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindoostan, was actuated by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfill its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about the revolution. (S. Avineri (ed.) pp 93-94.)

Not long afterwards, Marx wrote as follows:

England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia (S. Avineri (ed.) pp 132.)

On the destruction side, they broke up or seriously undermined much of the existing social fabric and pre- capitalist modes of production. On the construction side, political unity was greatly enhanced by the British sword (mainly in the hands of local recruits), telegraph and railways, and embryonic industrialization began to emerge.

It is appropriate that the anti-colonial struggles of the twentieth century have not simply been directed at expelling the foreign oppressor. Rarely was the struggle simply one of returning to the days before colonial rule. For example, the struggle for independence in India was not directed at restoring the Mogul empire and independence in Africa did not mean returning to tribal hunter gathering or slash and burn societies.

In some cases such as in China, the revolution was directed at the total destruction of the traditional conditions that predated colonialism such as the remnants of feudalism. Even where independence from colonialism was not accompanied by fundamental social revolutions, the essential aspect of decolonisation was the establishment of a modern state, and the first steps towards a modern economy.

In the case of Czarist Russia, the modern industrial sector, which spawned the proletariat in the two decades prior to 1914, was primarily the product of foreign investment. At no stage did the Bolsheviks target this foreign ownership as something to be abhorred, an interesting point in the light of the economic nationalist position adopted by most of the Australian left.

To quote Warren:

Between 1896 and 1900 a quarter of all new companies formed were foreign, and by 1900 foreign capital accounted for 28% of the total. By 1914 the proportion had risen to 33%. Foreign capital controlled 45% of Russia’s oil output, 54% of her iron output, 50% of her chemical industry, 74% of her coal output. More than half of the capital of the six leading banks of the country – themselves controlling nearly 60% of all banding capital and nearly half of all bank deposits – was foreign (Warren 1980, p 46.)

The position commonly adopted by the left is to deny that capitalism is fulfilling its historical function in the developing countries. We are told that capitalism is not developing the productive forces nor is it destroying pre-capitalist conditions. The LDCs are supposedly being underdeveloped by the world capitalist system. A major part of Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism is devoted to refuting these views. The linchpin of these views is the modern theory of imperialism, dependency and underdevelopment. Typical of the theorists in this area are Paul Baran, Andre Gunder Frank and Samir Amin.

We are told that the people of the Third World have been getting progressively worse off during the modern era (ie since the industrial revolution) and have generally experienced a socio-economic and cultural regression. Capitalism has developed, and continues to do so, in a contradictory fashion, which generates at the same time development in the centre and underdevelopment in the periphery.

The implication is that it is fruitless to expect underdeveloped countries to repeat the stages of economic growth passed through by modern developed capitalist economies whose classical capitalist development arose out of pre-capitalist and feudal society. Hence, the historical role of capitalism in these countries is finished, or at a dead end. It is argued, moreover, that the achievement of political independence has not significantly improved prospects of development in the periphery.

A number of arguments are put forward to support the above position. Warren picks out three as being particularly important.

(a) A drain of economic surplus from periphery to centre is said to arise from the flow of profits from foreign investment in the periphery back to the metropolitan country, and from unequal exchange in trade.

Warren points out “that for such a drain to retard economic development it must be an absolute drain not simply an unequal transaction that nevertheless leaves both sides better off than before …”. For example, the comparison that people make between profit outflow and capital inflow tends to be very misleading. Surplus extraction under capitalism is not comparable to the plunder practiced by the empires of antiquity.
Foreign investment creates the surplus (with the help of local labor of course) before it extracts it; and it does this by developing the productive forces. You can certainly criticise the form taken by foreign investment and trade, and argue that Third World countries would gain if they were better organised. What you cannot argue is that the wealth of Third World countries is being depleted.

Closely related to this surplus gain concept is the idea that developed countries are better off than others because they have more than their share of the world’s resources. In other words the reason why we have better plumbing than people in Bangladesh is because we have more than our share of the world’s supply of pipes and trained plumbers.

Or to put it more generally, there is a fixed quantity of some substance called prosperity and the more that goes to one lot of people the less there is for everybody else. This is a total failure to understand economic development as a process of economic accumulation. Its most negative effect is the implication that the interests of people in the developed and underdeveloped world are at loggerheads.

(b) The ‘traditional’ division of labor between centre and periphery countries whereby the former produce manufactured goods and the latter primary goods, is seen to be imposed by the centre on the periphery and is a source of its backwardness.

Warren argues that the validity of the argument rests on two assumptions, which he sets out to refute. These are first that there was a possible and desirable alternative line of development to primary-product, export-lead growth in the backward countries concerned; and second, that the initial emphasis on the export of primary products actually erected serious impediments to subsequent diversification, especially along the lines of industrialisation.

(c) Imperialism or centre/periphery relations are said to encourage the preservation of precapitalist modes of production. This is discussed at two levels. First, there is the case where capitalist production at one point encourages pre-capitalist production at another point (eg, cotton production based on slavery). Here Warren correctly argues that the destructive force of capitalist relations would far outweigh any conserving tendencies.

Second, there is the claim that imperialism has tended to ally itself with local feudalism at the expense of progressive bourgeois forces. Warren replies thatthis is largely undercut by the almost universal willingness of feudal classes to transform themselves, at least partly, into capitalist industrialisers once conditions are ripe. Where

Warren falls short on this question in failing to emphasise that a thoroughly bourgeois revolution would far more successfully unleash capitalist development.

At a more general and theoretical level Warren attacks dependency theory on a number of grounds.

To begin with it is a static view. While a change in form over time tends to be conceded, the possibility of declining dependency is precluded. Moreover, changes in the centres of power is inadequately allowed for.

The theory is ahistorical in that it assumes the following:

(a) that there were latent suppressed historical alternatives to the development that actually took place; (b) that the failure of alternatives to materialise was primarily the result of external imposition (colonial policy).

The theory is metaphysical in that it basically explains social phenomenon in terms of external causes, rather than as an interaction of both internal and external factors. (Mao spoke of external factors as the conditions of change and internal factors as the basis of change.) Dependency theorists would, for example, explain a country’s backwardness by the fact that foreign capital is only invested in enclaves or cash crops.

A more sensible approach would perhaps be to see cause and effect running the other way – because the country is backward these industries are the only opportunities for investment. The backwardness would then be explained essentially by internal factors, namely a social system and mode of production significantly inferior to, or historically less advanced than, capitalism in developed countries.

Dependency theory has a strong thread of nationalist utopia, which establishes a set of thoroughly dubious criteria of what is good and what is detrimental. The first blossoms of bourgeois society are denounced simply as imperialist cultural penetration (coca cola culture) serving the interests of the mutinationals and reinforcing dependent status.

There is also the concept of articulated economy. Every country has to have its own steel industry, for example. It is argued that if you do not have the full range of industries you are trapped into some narrow and enslaving international division of labor.

This last point touches on a major area of confusion, namely, the distinction between dependence and interdependence. Warren says:

Since national economies are becoming increasingly interdependent, the meaning of dependence is even more elusive, not to say mystical.(Warren, 1980, p 182)

In fact with the increasing importance of international trade and capital movement, it is often the case that dependence on trade and foreign investment is a sign of economic development.

The last section of Warren’s book provides extensive evidence that considerable economic development has occurred in the Third Word during the post-war period. It has been meteoric in comparison with that in western countries. The western countries took centuries to emerge from the Middle Ages and eventually achieve an industrial takeoff in the nineteenth century.

On Lenin’s views of imperialism

In Warren’s opinion, the more recent theories of imperialism, such as underdevelopment and dependency are best regarded as post-war versions of the views expressed by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism,or at any rate stemming, or continuing, from where he left off. Warren also claimed that in this book Lenin was espousing views that were at variance with his earlier writings on the Narodniks and the role of capitalist development in Russia.

Here Warren is skating on thin ice. Much of his case rests on Lenin’s use of particular words, especially ‘moribund’, ‘stagnant’ and ‘parasitic’. By ‘moribund’, Lenin is referring to the increasing obsolescence of capitalism, exemplified most starkly by two world wars and economic crises of the sort that hit in the 1930s and will hit again in the future. He is not saying that social and economic development ceases.

In his use of the word, ‘stagnation’, Lenin is not saying that capitalism is no longer revolutionising the productive forces – a proposition that would obviously be wrong. He is referring to its increasing tardiness relative to a communist organisation of production – the productive forces are outgrowing the capitalist mode of production.
Warren tries to equate Lenin’s description of monopoly capital and imperialist countries as parasitic with the crude “surplus drain’ view . However, Lenin is not denying that the export of capital develops the productive forces in recipient countries; he is just saying that the centralisation in the ownership of capital shows up geographically.

Places such as London and New York have a far higher than average proportion of the world’s bloodsuckers; they tend to be richer and their ‘portfolios’ span the world. When Lenin explicitly discussed the impact of imperialism on the then colonies, he said that it was developing the productive forces. Warren unjustifiably shrugs this off as lip service to Marxist orthodoxy.

Warren had a number of other criticisms of Lenin’s position. However, they are not central to our present discussion. He claims (a) that capital exports have not increased in signifcance, (b) that Lenin espoused underconsumptionism and (c) that inter-imperialist rivalry was based on trade rather than competing capital. These and other issues could perhaps be looked at on some other occasion in a fuller discussion of Lenin’s book.

Bibliography
Amin, S., Accumulation on a World Scale, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1974.

Avineri, S., ed., Karl Marx on Colonialism and Modernisation, New York, Anchor Books, 1969. Frank, A. G., Capitalism and Underdevelopment in LatinAmerica, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1971.

Greene, F., The Enemy, Notes on Imperialism and Revolution, London, Jonathon Cape, 1970. One of the more readable and also more appalling renderings of the ‘anti-imperialist’ position.

Lenin, VI, ‘On the So-Called Market Question’ Collected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1963.

———– ‘The economic content of Narodism and the criticism of it in Mr Struve’s book’, Collected Works, Vol. 7, Moscow, 1963.

———–, Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking, Foreign Language Press.

Marx, K., Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1964.

———– and Engels, F., Manifesto of the Communist Party, Peking, Foreign Language Press, 1968.

Warren, W., Imperialism and capitalist industrialisation, in New Left Review (1973).

———–, Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism, British and Irish Communist Organisation (March 1977).

———–, Nations and corporations, in Times Literary Supplement, 1 November 1977..

———–, Poverty and prosperity in Times Literary Supplement, 12 December 1975.

———–, Imperialism, Pioneer of Capitalism, Verso, 1980, 274 p.

Hasn’t Communism Already Failed? (More from The Communist Manifesto Project)

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There is a lot to be done on the democratic front. This includes:

supporting freedom of speech and assembly, government transparency, right to due process and freedom from government harassment and surveillance;

helping neutralize any emerging fascists trends;

struggling for a democratic political culture within the communist movement that effectively deals with controlling personalities, sycophants and attempts to close down critical thinking;

being better than others at exposing the folly of professional politicians;

proposing changes to the constitution and system of representation that would open up politics to greater scrutiny and participation;

and showing how vested economic interests under capitalism have a corrupting effect on government.

(More from The Communist Manifesto Project)

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There is a thoroughly entrenched view that the experience of revolutions during the 20th century shows that communism has failed. There was indeed a failure. However, it was not of communism, but of an attempt to sustain a path towards it when its preconditions were absent. Russia in 1917 and China in 1949 were essentially backward pre-capitalist societies. Most people were peasants rather than proletarians, and they were more interested in land for the tiller than social ownership. There was little modern industry and thinking was medieval. They had not passed through the capitalist stage, which is required for a successful communist revolution. As the experience of other backward countries shows, even getting capitalism off the ground under these circumstances is hard enough, let alone a society that is supposed to supersede it.

This peculiar state of affairs arose because the bourgeoisie was too weak, cowardly or treacherous to carry out its own tasks. Instead, communists found themselves at the head of both anti-feudal modernist revolutions and patriotic resistance to fascist aggression and occupation. The Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union was joined after World War II by a host of other countries in what became ‘the socialist camp’. It included China, Vietnam and Yugoslavia that had taken power with their own revolutionary forces, and eastern and central Europe and northern Korea where regimes were established by virtue of Soviet military occupation in the aftermath of the defeat of Germany and Japan. So, by historical accident communists found themselves burdened with the task of raising their societies out of social and economic backwardness. They had to perform the work of capitalism. They had to create an industrial base and trained work force virtually from scratch. The “failure of communism” was a consequence of the failure of capitalism.

Under these conditions the move in a communist direction could only be quite limited and proved unsustainable. They took important preliminary measures but did not achieve the real substance. Industry was placed under state ownership which meant that capitalist industry was expropriated and the new accumulation of private wealth prevented. At the same time there was a degree of economic security for workers. The system was described as socialism, the first stage on the road to communism. However, the weakness of the proletariat placed severe limits on what could be achieved. With some minor exceptions in Europe, it only began to become a significant section of society with the industrialization that followed the revolution. Proletarians were former peasants engaged mainly in the low paid toil that you would expect at this stage of development. They were simply not ready to be a ruling class. There was not the basis for a society based on mutual regard. Enthusiasm and unprompted initiative was limited in the harsh conditions and so there was a heavy reliance on material incentives and top down command with all kinds of perverse results. The freedom and democracy required for the full development of the proletariat was not possible given the intensity of external and internal opposition and the weakness of the revolutionary forces. Conditions also dictated a heavy reliance on a “revolutionary vanguard”.

Because most work was arduous and repetitive manual labor, and the education level and background of typical workers left them ill-equipped for involvement in the mental aspects of production, there was a minority who did the thinking and deciding. These were the managers, engineers and officials – generally referred to as ‘cadres’. Members of this elite had a vested interest in entrenching their privileged position and were unlikely to encourage an invasion of their domain as workers became more skilled and educated, and industry more mechanized, nor to willingly start to take upon themselves a share of the more routine forms of labor.

Once career, income and position are the primary impulse, economic results take a second place to empire building, undermining rivals, promoting loyal followers, scamming the system and concealing one’s poor performance from superiors. The opportunity for workers to resist these developments was limited by the lack of freedom and the culture of subordination which drains away confidence and the courage to act. This can be very strong even in the absence of political tyranny as we can see in any liberal capitalist society. At the same time, one can imagine that any rank and file worker with special abilities or talents would tend to be more interested in escaping the workers’ lot by becoming one of the privileged rather than struggling against them.

Mao Zedong, the head of the Chinese Communist Party until his death in 1976, referred to this process, once fully entrenched and endorsed at the top, as capitalist restoration and those encouraging it as revisionists and capitalist roaders. The Chinese Cultural Revolution that he led in the late 1960s is the only attempt to beat back this trend. However, that revolution was sabotaged and defeated, and the capitalist roaders were able to seize supreme power in China after his death.

The Soviet Union and like regimes in Eastern Europe represented a distinctive type of dead-end economically, politically and socially, and their demise in 1989-90 is one of the celebrated events of the late 20th centuries. By discarding much of the empty and dysfunctional formal shell of socialism and operating more like normal capitalist economies both China and Vietnam have managed to achieve considerable economic development in recent decades. Cuba is now beginning to take this route. The monstrosity in North Korea relies on mass terror and the support of the Chinese. All these regimes are an affront to freedom and democracy, and must be overthrown.

Notwithstanding this grim picture, there were still some significant achievements. In a large part of the world landlords and feudal relations were swept from the countryside. Industrialization was raised from a very low base and generally outperformed the backward countries in the capitalist camp. Most importantly, after a crash industrialization in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was able to defeat Nazi Germany. This is something for which the world should be eternally grateful.

The dilemma faced by 20th century communists was anticipated by Engels in the following passage from chapter 6 of The Peasant War in Germany, published in 1850:

The worst thing that can befall a leader of an extreme party is to be compelled to take over a government in an epoch when the movement is not yet ripe for the domination of the class which he represents and for the realization of the measures which that domination would imply. What he can do depends not upon his will but upon the sharpness of the clash of interests between the various classes, and upon the degree of development of the material means of existence, the relations of production and means of communication upon which the clash of interests of the classes is based every time. What he ought to do, what his party demands of him, again depends not upon him, or upon the degree of development of the class struggle and its conditions. He is bound to his doctrines and the demands hitherto propounded which do not emanate from the interrelations of the social classes at a given moment, or from the more or less accidental level of relations of production and means of communication, but from his more or less penetrating insight into the general result of the social and political movement. Thus he necessarily finds himself in a dilemma. What he can do is in contrast to all his actions as hitherto practised, to all his principles and to the present interests of his party; what he ought to do cannot be achieved. In a word, he is compelled to represent not his party or his class, but the class for whom conditions are ripe for domination. In the interests of the movement itself, he is compelled to defend the interests of an alien class, and to feed his own class with phrases and promises, with the assertion that the interests of that alien class are their own interests. Whoever puts himself in this awkward position is irrevocably lost.

What is to be Done?

At the moment when inquiring minds seek to learn about communism they will encounter a range of appalling nonsense from various tiny groups claiming to be communist or Marxist. Some support the regimes in Cuba and China, and there are even the occasional North Korea supporters. The absurd regime in Venezuela inspires many of them. They all cling onto the once true but now outdated view that US imperialism is the main problem in the world today, and for this reason some even see a good side to Daesh, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They all share the mainstream view that regime change in Iraq has been a disaster and the fascist Baath Party should have been left in power. These groups never talk about how capitalism is creating the conditions for communism but simply whine about how terrible the system is, and often do this in a reactionary way particularly in their opposition to “globalization” and acceptance of green views on virtually everything. They rarely talk about and scarcely understand communism, and they simply see it as something in never-never land rather than their real purpose.

It will be up to the now very young or yet to be born to rediscover communism. For older people it would require too much of a break from their entrenched ways of thinking. Only then can we expect to see the beginnings of a communist movement.

As well as understanding and conveying the ultimate aims of communism and social ownership, with its elimination of market relations and the full development of the individual, they will also need to come to grips with how we get there. This has a number of phases. Listing them in reverse chronological order they are: the period of revolutionary transition when we shake off all the “muck of the ages”; the initial phase of the revolution, day one so to speak; and the here and now.

On the transition phase it will be particularly important to understand the tenacity of the bourgeoisie and old bad habits and thinking, and the need for the proletariat to transforms itself in the struggle. The new society cannot be created overnight. A vigorous mass movement will be critical for the transition because a passive population means certain defeat at the hands of a new bourgeoisie. In this context there would need to be a firm rebuttal to any idea of ‘socialism’ that is not seen as a revolutionary transition stage on the road to communism. There has to be a fundamental change in human behavior and the way society operates. It is that or capitalism. Any halfway stage has to proceed to communism or revert to capitalism.

During the initial phase, one of the first tasks of the revolution will be the neutralization of the bourgeoisie by expropriating their assets. This could be done fairly quickly and would not have to await more fundamental changes in economic arrangements. It could be achieved with a 100 per cent wealth tax on all wealth over a certain level. All the company stock, bonds, bank deposits and other income earning assets belonging to the bourgeoisie would become the property of the state. This would in an instant drastically reduce their economic and political power. People in executive positions would simply be instructed to keep doing their job under threat of dismissal. Some capable executives are indeed capitalists so some concessions may need to be made to them if they are prepared to cooperate.

During the pre-revolutionary period there are many matters that the communist movement will need to deal with. It is important to connect with those resisting the various symptoms of the existing order because they would be among the more amenable to communist ideas and there is much to be achieved in the here and now that is necessary for communism.

There is a lot to be done on the democratic front. This includes: supporting freedom of speech and assembly, government transparency, right to due process and freedom from government harassment and surveillance; helping neutralize any emerging fascists trends; struggling for a democratic political culture within the communist movement that effectively deals with controlling personalities, sycophants and attempts to close down critical thinking; being better than others at exposing the folly of professional politicians; proposing changes to the constitution and system of representation that would open up politics to greater scrutiny and participation; and showing how vested economic interests under capitalism have a corrupting effect on government.

People are seeking remedies to the various ills of the present system. They seek the alleviation of poverty, better healthcare and education. While helping to pursue improvements in the here and now communists would be there explaining the limitations of what can be achieved under the system. They would not simply be demanding the same things but in a more militant in tone. Their central focus would not be on denouncing governments for under-spending in these areas or for pursuing this policy or that. Rather, they would stress that only communism can ensure jobs and economic security and explain how it would lead to better healthcare and education through the fundamental changes in human behavior.

Communists must advocate rapid scientific advance and denounce capitalism for its tardiness in this area. It is critical to both our ability to thrive on this planet and to create the material conditions for communism. In the process they will have to lock horns with the green opponents of “technofix” who think that science just creates new problems. For the greens, the “solution” is less consumption and a population collapse.

Communists will need to be vocally demanding that the international bourgeoisie do far more to further what Marx called the bourgeois democratic revolution. Their tardiness in this area is legendary. For example, if a communist movement existed at this very moment it would be vigorously demanding that the powers that be quickly sort out the appalling situation in Syria and Iraq. Their failure to give effective assistance to the legitimate rebel forces in Syria meant that Daesh was able to thrive with appalling results. US President Barak Obama’s inaction in the early phase of the Syrian civil war should be condemned as should that country’s ongoing underwriting of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians. Generally we should be demanding that our rulers do everything possible to re-spark the Arab Spring.

Part of the problem is a prevailing pacifism both within the ruling class and society at large. A communist movement would be particularly concerned that the liberal democracies retain their military supremacy and stay well ahead of Russia and China. A large defense reserve should play a role, and would ensure that professionals are not the only ones with military training.

The Communist Manifesto Project – opposing the ‘reactionists’. Some annotations.

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“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part” – Karl Marx 1848

Marx considered capitalism revolutionary, an advance on all previous societies. Most contemporary “Marxists” and the pseudo left more broadly either disagree or are highly ambivalent… For example, they bemoan “corporate globalization” and believe that the very far from complete process of economic development is ecologically unsustainable and we need to revert to a something “simpler”. Marx refers to these people as “reactionists”.

(Via The Communist Manifesto Project)

 

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Annotations

These are some comments to consider while reading The Communist Manifesto. Most of them highlight the many instances where Marx’s views are contrary to those of present-day “Marxists”. Marx is referred to as the writer here. While Engels was a co-author, the final writing was the work of Marx.

Chapter 1: Bourgeois and Proletarians

“The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.”

Marx then goes on to elaborate on this point in the subsequent 11 paragraphs. He considered capitalism revolutionary, an advance on all previous societies. Most contemporary “Marxists” and the pseudo left more broadly either disagree or are highly ambivalent. They do not see the capitalist transformation of the economy and society as the launching pad for communism. Rather, the society they want requires a retreat from this process. For example, they bemoan “corporate globalization” and believe that the very far from complete process of economic development is ecologically unsustainable and we need to revert to a something “simpler”. Marx refers to these people as “reactionists”.

” We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.”

So the transition from capitalism to communism will not be unique. As well as the transition from feudalism to capitalism there was also the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture based society. In each case there was a total change in thinking and doing – “human nature”.

” For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. ”

Marx goes on to cite capitalist economic crises as a prime example of the system’s obsolescence. Some claim that crises are not inevitable under capitalism. However, the evidence seems to suggest that they can only be delayed and at the cost of making them worse.

Other economic failings of the system include its slowness to innovate [see here] and its inability to tap the enthusiasm and initiative of workers [see here].

” Owing to the extensive use of machinery, ……. according to their age and sex.”

This is an accurate description of machine tending where work becomes confined to simple repetition. However, this should not be taken to be Marx’s overall assessment of work under capitalism. In Capital Vol. I Chapter Fifteen Section 9, he has two paragraphs that gives his general view of the labor process under capitalism. These are quoted in full below.

“Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative. [225] By means of machinery, chemical processes and other methods, it is continually causing changes not only in the technical basis of production, but also in the functions of the labourer, and in the social combinations of the labour-process. At the same time, it thereby also revolutionises the division of labour within the society, and incessantly launches masses of capital and of workpeople from one branch of production to another. But if modern industry, by its very nature, therefore necessitates variation of labour, fluency of function, universal mobility of the labourer, on the other hand, in its capitalistic form, it reproduces the old division of labour with its ossified particularisations.We have seen how this absolute contradiction between the technical necessities of modern industry, and the social character inherent in its capitalistic form, dispels all fixity and security in the situation of the labourer; how it constantly threatens, by taking away the instruments of labour, to snatch from his hands his means of subsistence, [226] and, by suppressing his detail-function, to make him superfluous, we have seen, too, how this antagonism vents its rage in the creation of that monstrosity, an industrial reserve army, kept in misery in order to be always at the disposal of capital; in the incessant human sacrifices from among the working-class, in the most reckless squandering of labour-power and in the devastation caused by a social anarchy which turns every economic progress into a social calamity. This is the negative side. But if, on the one hand, variation of work at present imposes itself after the manner of an overpowering natural law, and with the blindly destructive action of a natural law that meets with resistance [227] at all points, modern industry, on the other hand, through its catastrophes imposes the necessity of recognising, as a fundamental law of production, variation of work, consequently fitness of the labourer for varied work, consequently the greatest possible development of his varied aptitudes. It becomes a question of life and death for society to adapt the mode of production to the normal functioning of this law. Modern Industry, indeed, compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-worker of to-day, grappled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and thus reduced to the mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own natural and acquired powers.

“One step already spontaneously taken towards effecting this revolution is the establishment of technical and agricultural schools, and of “écoles d’enseignement professionnel,” in which the children of the working-men receive some little instruction in technology and in the practical handling of the various implements of labour. Though the Factory Act, that first and meagre concession wrung from capital, is limited to combining elementary education with work in the factory, there can be no doubt that when the working-class comes into power, as inevitably it must, technical instruction, both theoretical and practical, will take its proper place in the working-class schools. There is also no doubt that such revolutionary ferments, the final result of which is the abolition of the old division of labour, are diametrically opposed to the capitalistic form of production, and to the economic status of the labourer corresponding to that form. But the historical development of the antagonisms, immanent in a given form of production, is the only way in which that form of production can be dissolved and a new form established. “Ne sutor ultra crepidam” — this nec plus ultra of handicraft wisdom became sheer nonsense, from the moment the watchmaker Watt invented the steam-engine, the barber Arkwright, the throstle, and the working-jeweller, Fulton, the steamship. [228]”

“226.
“You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live.”
Shakespeare.

227. A French workman, on his return from San-Francisco, writes as follows: “I never could have believed, that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing…. Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their shirt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, &c. In consequence of thus finding out that I am fit to any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.” (A. Corbon, “De l’enseignement professionnel,” 2ème ed., p. 50.)

228. John Bellers, a very phenomenon in the history of Political Economy, saw most clearly at the end of the 17th century, the necessity for abolishing the present system of education and division of labour, which beget hypertrophy and atrophy at the two opposite extremities of society. Amongst other things he says this: “An idle learning being little better than the learning of idleness…. Bodily labour, it’s a primitive institution of God…. Labour being as proper for the bodies’ health as eating is for its living; for what pains a man saves by ease, he will find in disease…. Labour adds oil to the lamp of life, when thinking inflames it…. A childish silly employ” (a warning this, by presentiment, against the Basedows and their modern imitators) “leaves the children’s minds silly,” (“Proposals for Raising a Colledge of Industry of all Useful Trades and Husbandry.” Lond., 1696, pp. 12, 14, 18.)”

The basic message is that despite the tendency for capitalism to impose a narrow division of labor, the objective conditions of modern industry limit the extent they can do that.

This view is very much at odds with Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital, The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. This book has had a very unfortunate influence of how people on the left view the labor process under capitalism. It claims that capitalism tends to increasingly degrade work and deskill workers. The present situation totally refutes this view given that 15-20 per cent of the workforce have university degrees and a larger number have vocational training. If it were true that capitalism was simply reducing the workforce to automatons, it would be hard to see how they could ever get rid of, and then manage without, the bourgeoisie. For a full refutation of Braverman see Deskilling Debunked.

” The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalized, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. ”

While proletarians are no longer mainly machine tenders, the point about equalization is still quite valid.
The wage disparity among the vast majority of workers is not enough to generate major differences in material conditions of life. There is a mass mainstream, with perhaps 10 per cent at the top and 10 per cent at the bottom living in different worlds. This is important from the point of view of overall solidarity and individuals identifying with most other people. The way that the vast bulk of people think of themselves as ‘middle class’ is one reflection of this.

” Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.”

Now most members of the intelligentsia are part of the proletariat. They come from proletarian families and works for a salary. Unfortunately, because of their employee status most are hacks working in the service of the bourgeoisie. This includes the pseudo left in the social sciences who have done much to stifle young inquiring minds. Under these circumstances independent thinkers with independent means would be most valuable.

” Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.”

In modern capitalist societies the vast majority of people are members of the proletariat. They are either wage or salary earners or on welfare. They have no means of production of their own. The capitalists are a tiny minority and the petty bourgeoisie comprise around 10 per cent. The proletariat is revolutionary because it has no interest in the present system and can do without the bourgeoisie. For more on the modern proletariat go here.

“All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

“All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.”

The proletariat has to own all the means of production in common. Parceling them out to separate groups of workers would simply bring you back to capitalism.

” The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.”

This is still indeed the case for a significant section of the proletariat. A pauper is someone who cannot support them-self. In the present context that means being on the dole or invalid pension. Pauperism occurs because capitalism fails to ensure that everyone is equipped with the abilities required for the workforce and also leaves many people the psychological casualties of a dog eat dog society.

Chapter 2: Proletarians and Communists

“In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.’

A lot of the pseudo left demand protection from “cheap foreign labor”.

“Communistic abolition of buying and selling”
This means no more markets. Most “Marxists” have gone to water on this and agree with the bourgeoisie that it is impossible. For a discussion of how communism would thrive without markets go here.

” The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State,i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.”

This is totally at odds with the green anti-growth view that is now so widely held.

” In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Another way of expressing this is to say – each person’s free development depends on the free development of everyone else. This is obvious if you think about how difficult it would be to fully thrive if those around you are hopelessly inadequate.

Chapter 3: Socialist and Communist Literature

​In this chapter Marx lists the various types of “anti -capitalism” that prevailed at that time. A new list for the present time needs to be prepared. There will be significant similarities and they will be as equally reactionary.

Chapter 4: Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties

This chapter looks at immediate tasks for communists at that time. At the present moment the big issue is the Arab Spring. This revolution, no matter however totally bourgeois, is in the interest of the proletariat and people, both of the region and internationally. The major capitalist powers must be placed under the greatest possible pressure to do all they can assist, including militarily. The “Marxists” and other pseudo leftists have done all they can to oppose this and are a total disgrace.

The Communist Manifesto Project

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The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. That’s a long time ago. And the communist revolutions of last century have ultimately failed. So what would a C21st version look like?

That’s the aim of an exciting new project that seeks to ‘save Marx from the Marxists’!

download

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Here’s the preamble from the project’s draft document:

The Communist Manifesto Project, October 2015

Preamble

Marx and Engels published The Communist Manifesto in 1848 and “Marxists” have been disregarding its message ever since. It tells us how communism cannot emerge without capitalism first creating both the pre-conditions and the forces that will bring it to fulfillment. Capitalism is like the caterpillar to the communist butterfly. Communism is a consequence of capitalism and the next step in the progress of humanity

Present-day “Marxists” totally oppose this view. Their anti-capitalism is reactionary. They believe capitalism is destroying much of the past that should be preserved and is leading us down a path from which we must retreat. There are no prospects for their backward looking project and if there were it would be self-defeating because we would be simply reverting to conditions that history shows would eventually bring us back to where we are. In their day Marx and Engels had to contend with similar trends and, indeed, a section of The Communist Manifesto is devoted to them.

The message of The Communist Manifesto of course is also ignored by those for whom capitalism is the best of all possible worlds. It gets in the way of their “communism has failed” mantra which they base on abortive revolutions in backward essentially pre-capitalist regions during the 20th century. This experience in fact only confirms the message that communism can only successfully emerge from advanced capitalism.

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Dialectics – what is it, what are examples of it?

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KM

 

 

I learned from this philosophical discussion of dialectical materialism in 2004 when it was published at the lastsuperpower site, and thus reprint it now for readers’ consideration and comment.

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Question “The only experience that I have with dialectics is a horrible essay that I had to write at university about Mozart and Beethoven. I’ve never really understood what dialectics means, except that it’s a great word to use when pretending to be intellectual over a cup of coffee. Most other people don’t really seem to understand the concept either, but would prefer not to admit it. I know this as I regularly drop it into conversations and no one has pulled me up on it yet.. see emperor’s new clothes post!”

Dialectics – What is it, what are examples of it?

by Keza 2004

I mentioned in The relation between materialism and idealism topic that materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett doesn’t mention the word dialectics – so in reading Dennett I’ve been looking out for what language he uses when describing concepts that are dialectical.

I’ve found one instance – he uses words like paradoxical to describe the problem and then in detailing his solution says things like, “this is not paradoxical at all”

An example is that Mother Nature / Evolution has no foresight and yet has managed to create humans who have foresight.

• Re: progress and dialectics

Posted by keza at 2004-12-28

The best laid plans of mice and men…. if practically everything that we do results in something not intended then why do we plan, why do we struggle, why do we try to move the world in a certain direction?

When Engels wrote that consciously willed actions often result in quite unintended consequences I think he was disputing the Hegelian idea that history is “the gradual realisation of ideas”. His point was that what happens in history comes about not as a direct result of abstract ideas, wishes, intentions (and so on) but is governed by ‘inner laws’ – ie what is possible (and therefore real and rational) in a given epoch. Movements don’t arise just because someone comes up with a good or bad) idea and manages to convince lots of people to follow them. Movements for change arise out of material conditions – the possibility for change is present and that opportunity is seized. The ideology in which the movement is clothed is (somewhat) secondary.

“The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production … and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”

Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Philosophy (1859)

An example is the idea of “equality” in the bourgeois democratic revolution. The idea that “all men are created equal” stood in direct opposition to the feudal belief that all men are most definitely not created equal. The growth of capitalism made it not only possible but also necessary for the idea that rulers are made rather than born to take hold. Thus on a conscious level the motivation for bourgeois revolution was belief in ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ but at a more fundamental level, the revolution was driven by the necessity to liberate the productive forces from the constraints of feudalism. That reason (or motivation) was only dimly appreciated however.

Friedrich Engels wrote in 1893 that:

“Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces.

I don’t think this means that bourgeois revolutionaries didn’t really believe in liberty, equality, fraternity – or that the battles they fought weren’t really for these things. We all know (except perhaps for the pseudo left) that as a result of the democratic revolution we have freedoms and rights that were hardly even dreamed of previously. However the ideas themselves weren’t the driving force – these ideas could only take hold because the material conditions were crying out for them (so to speak).

I think what bothers a lot of people is the feeling that perhaps this means that what they as individuals actually do doesn’t really matter – that somehow we are all carried along by a tide of “underlying forces” , that we are seized by ideas rather than seizing them ourselves etc etc. Engels refuted this when he said “freedom is the recognition of necessity” (Anti Duhring?) … once we come to understand “how things work” – “the rules of the game” then we do have a real chance of using our understanding to influence the course of history. Engels’ Letter to Franz Mehring in Berlin is interesting in this respect.”

He starts by pointing out that both he and Marx tended to neglect the role of ideas/ consciousness in bringing about change…

“Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side – the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about – for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings and distortions…..”

and later:

“Hanging together with this is the fatuous notion of the ideologists that because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we also deny them any effect upon history. The basis of this is the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentlemen often almost deliberately forget that once an historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it.”

No time to write any more now!! I’ll finish with a quote I quite like though:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living…. “
(Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napolean)

end Keza

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19 01:54 AM

More about the usefulness of dialectics, being a bit more specific about it than in my previous reply to sally.

1) socialist / not socialist dialectic

A few years ago (maybe 20) I went to a debate where someone from the pro-Soviet so called communist party was arguing that the Soviet Union was still a socialist country. This person was so wrapped up in the details and scope of his argument that I could see that no single point could be made in question time that could possibly persuade him that he might be wrong. I wanted to support the case that the Soviet Union wasn’t socialist and so was racking my brains for a question that might get through, if not to the speaker, then at least to the audience.

What I thought of and asked the pro-Soviet speaker was: ” Are there any possible circumstances that might arise in the future which would persuade you that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist?”

To the amusement and bemusement of some of the audience, he replied, “No, the Soviet Union will always be socialist”

2) progressive / reactionary dialectic

I think a similar sort of point can be made to the pseudo-left in connection to the US invasion of Iraq.

In my view it’s pretty straightforward that the US has led a campaign to overthrow the fascist government of Saddam Hussein and is now proceeding to help Iraqis create a democratic government. That has to be progressive.

Because historically US Imperialism has been very reactionary, as exemplified by the Vietnam war and much more, there are now many people in the world who seem incapable of conceptualising that the US could possibly do something progressive. It’s always possible for these people to point to bad things that the US does – there is no shortage of examples.

Maybe part of the problem is that they have an ingrained black and white, non dialectic world view, which implicitly denies the very possibility that the US could do something progressive.

I’m not saying that thinking dialectically is a substitute for studying the details of processes in detail – including the details of what the Soviet Union became historically and the details of what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East. But that having the concept of dialectics (the coexistence of opposites in things) might help prevent falling into the rigid black and white thinking illustrated in the two examples above. If some people can’t even conceptualise that it might be possible for US Imperialism today to do something progressive then no amount of detail is going to change their mind about Iraq. Their thinking is dogmatically stuck at another level to do with their whole world view. I’m arguing that studying dialectics is useful because it helps us keep our minds open to these possibilities.

Here’s a paragraph from Dennett:

“One of the standard (and much needed) correctives issued to those who study evolution is the old line about how natural selection has no foresight at all. It is true, of course. Evolution is the blind watchmaker, and we must never forget it. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that Mother Nature is well supplied with the wisdom of hindsight. Her motto might well be “If I’m so myopic, how come I’m so rich?” And while Mother Nature is herself lacking in foresight, she has managed to create things – us human beings, preeminently – who do have foresight, and are even beginning to put this foresight to use in guiding and abetting the very processes of natural selection on this planet. I occasionally encounter even quite sophisticated evolutionary theorists who find this paradoxical. How could a process with no foresight invent a process with foresight? One of the main goals of my book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” was to show that this is not paradoxical at all. The process of natural selection, slowly and without foresight, invents processes or phenomena that speed up the evolutionary process itself – cranes, not skyhooks in my fanciful terminology – until the souped up evolutionary process finally reaches the point where explorations within the lifetime of individual organisms can affect the underlying slow process of genetic evolution, and even, in some circumstances, usurp it.”
– Freedom Evolves, page 53

So, this illustrates that one can think dialectically without formally studying dialectics or even using the word dialectic. Dennett’s ability to do this would presumedly arise out of his deep study of the science of evolution combined with his materialistic philosophy.

In dialectical language no foresight and foresight would constitute a unity of opposites and in the process of development one can transform into the other. I think this way of looking at it is preferable to Dennet’s apparent paradox that turns out not to be a paradox.

But it’s probably more important to really study the topic deeply (in this case, evolution) than just to be able to spout the magic words. But I also believe that it’s important to study dialectics itself (Mao, Hegel etc.) because this creates an awareness or sensitivity to possibilities of things turning into their opposite that we otherwise might not even notice – it has the potential to make our thinking more fluid and flexible.

end post

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19

Dialectics is the co-existence of opposites in everything, nature, mind, society. I’ll explain by reference to something said in The Emperor’s New Clothes thread:

Think of all the people scared to speak in public, or scared to admit how they feel about something, or someone! I know for a fact that my private side is very different from my public face. So in my opinion this is a ‘problem’ that stretches right across the board, it’s not just in intellectual circles. People in general are afraid to speak their minds! Me too, so afraid that I don’t want to post this, but I will anyway.

What you are saying here is full of dialectics IMO. You talk about fear of speaking out and feeling compelled to speak out coexisting in your mind. Both of these opposites co-exist side by side. In some circumstances the fear might be stronger and you don’t speak. In other circumstances the compulsion to speak out might be stronger.

I think it’s fair to say that these opposite tendencies exist in everybody and so we are talking about something that is universal.

So, by contrast, what would be a non dialectical way of looking at this? We might view some people as always speaking out, the sort of people we wish would shut up sometimes. We might view other people as never speaking out, the sort of people that we don’t know what they are thinking. We might form black and white opinions about people with these extreme tendencies and as a result lose our curiosity, for example, not notice that a normally garrulous person has gone quiet in certain circumstances.

But of course there are no people like either of these two extremes. Although some people speak too much and others hardly at all these are just tendencies across the spectrum of possibilities. In reality, the two opposite tendencies coexist within everyone.

I’ve just taken one example of dialectics here from something you wrote in order to explain the idea. But whatever you are thinking about or studying I would argue that you can always conceptualise opposites that coexist within that thing. At the least I think it’s a very handy way to think about things because it can open up new ways of looking at something.

Turn down the hype (by Arthur Dent, formerly Albert Langer)

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Originally published as a guest post at Bill Kerr‘s blog by Arthur Dent on 21st May, 2015.

 

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According to the World Bank:

“By acting now, acting together and acting differently, we will be able to transition to a low emissions, climate resilient development path and hold warming below 2°C.”(1)

To help achieve this, a MOOC sponsored by the World Bank (Turn Down the Heat) requires students to produce “digital artefacts” with the aim “create a sense of urgency and a call to action for individuals, companies or countries to change behaviors associated with a warming planet”.

My call is for the World Bank to change its behaviour and “turn down the hype”.

It should be obvious that none of the measures advocated by the World Bank have had much impact on the planet warming, and there is no reason to expect that creating a sense of urgency in support of more of the same will have a better result.

The IPCC’s authoritative report on Mitigation of Climate Change(2) shows clearly that there is no realistic prospect of holding warming below 2°C.

The simple reality is that most emissions will result from the rapid industrialization of developing countries like India and China who cannot and will not switch from the cheapest energy sources available while they remain poor. No amount of hype will change that reality.

If the problem was as grave and urgent as claimed there would be no alternative but for developed nations who can afford the cost to switch from cheaper fossil fuels to more expensive nuclear power and also pay the costs of the entire world doing the same. But the World Bank does not advocate that, so it is difficult to believe it takes its own hype seriously.

Wind and solar power cannot solve the problem because they are intermittant. Power is also needed when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. There is no technology on the horizon that could store energy cheaply enough to compete with the dispatchable power from fossil fuels, even if wind and solar power was free. Instead of pretending that wind and solar could do the job it is clearly necessary to act differently. Since there is no viable replacement for fossil fuels on the horizon that developing countries could afford, it is necessary to do something very different from what the World Bank advocates.

We will need some breakthroughs in fundamental technology. Neither the regulatory nor the market pricing mechanisms advocated by the World Bank can achieve that. Massive investments in research and development and fundamental science are required. Contrary to the hype there is no “return” on that investment. As with all fundamental science, the results have to be made freely available to the countries that are too poor to pay for it. So the “free rider” problem ensures that no carbon pricing mechanism could motivate such investment. At present each developed country is hoping that somebody else will pay to develop the necessary technology. There is no “national” benefit in doing so. It is a global, not a national problem. The most ambitious national targets for R&D are about 3% of GDP for all purposes. These targets are not being met, despite the fact that new technology is the driving force for economic growth.

A global levy on developed countries that can afford it is required, to pay for the costs of a massive global R&D program that is not expected to produce any “return” on the investment, other than “merely” solving the problem of global warming.

That may require a significant expansion in the total scientific workforce and consequently a long lead time for education.

If it is not successful, then we will have to resort to some combination of geo-engineering, adaptation strategies and subsidizing nuclear power in all countries, at potentially vastly greater costs. But even if a massive global R&D program failed to produce clean energy competitive with fossil fuels, it would at least accelerate economic growth generally and enable the whole world to afford more expensive energy than fossil fuels more quickly.

“Modernization has liberated ever more people from lives of poverty and hard agricultural labor, women from chattel status, children and ethnic minorities from oppression, and societies from capricious and arbitrary governance. Greater resource productivity associated with modern socio-technological systems has allowed human societies to meet human needs with fewer resource inputs and less impact on the environment. More-productive economies are wealthier economies, capable of better meeting human needs while committing more of their economic surplus to non-economic amenities, including better human health, greater human freedom and opportunity, arts, culture, and the conservation of nature.”(3)

We need more modern technology, not medieval windmills.

(1) WDR 2010: Development and Climate Change
(2) Working Group 3
(3) An Ecomodernist Manifesto

DH Lawrence, his poem ‘Poverty’ – and what does it mean to be progressive?

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DH Lawrence (1885-1930)

 

Marx understood perfectly well that capitalism was disruptive; that was what he liked about it, that, along with the possibilities that such disruption opened up in its wake.

The following is contributed by guest blogger TomG.

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DH Lawrence’s poem ‘Poverty’ was read to me by an old friend several years ago as a birthday gift. It turned out to be a very good one. I knew that DH Lawrence had a reputation as a right wing sympathizer; I also knew he hated the bourgeoisie and had written a poem, ‘How Beastly the Bourgeoisie Is’, to that effect. But aside from that poem I was unfamiliar with any other of his poetry. Beside liking ‘Poverty’ and appreciating my friend’s consideration of me I became sufficiently intrigued to pursue Lawrence’s poetry and ended up reading a collection of his shorter poems, Pansies, written toward the end of his life and which contained both ‘Poverty’ and ‘How Beastly the Bourgeoisie Is’. Both of these poems were written after the 1926 General Strike in the U.K. but before the rise of Hitler or the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, neither of which Lawrence lived to witness or offer an opinion about.

What is it about this man, who died in 1930, age 44, who hates poverty and the bourgeoisie with a visceral intensity (the bourgeoisie were not too keen on him either), and whose sympathies lie with the right? On a flippant note I think: this is the perfect man for today’s strange and politically discordant times. On a more serious note, on reading his poems, ‘Poverty’ in particular, I am reminded of the confusion that abounds today about just what terms like “progressive” and “reactionary” mean. Since my initial political schooling in the 1970’s, particularly in supporting the National Liberation Front in the Vietnam War and embracing revolutionary Marxism, these terms seem to have morphed into one another, the revolutionary left in the developed world has collapsed completely, the reformist left looks cadaverous and economic development and internationalism, once proud mantles of the left, are being championed more by the right. Go figure.

So looking at Lawrence’s poem became a vehicle for raising some very contemporary questions. But first, the poem.

Poverty

The only people I ever heard talk about my Lady Poverty
Were rich people, or people who imagined themselves rich.
Saint Francis himself was a rich and spoiled young man.

Being born among the working people
I know poverty is a hard old hag,
and a monster, when you’re pinched for actual necessities.
And whoever says she isn’t is a liar.

I don’t want to be poor, it means I’m pinched.
But neither do I want to be rich.
When I look at this pine-tree near the sea,
That grows out of rock, and it plumes forth, plumes forth,
I see it has a natural abundance.

With its roots it has a natural grip on its daily bread,
And its plumes look like a green cup held up to the sun and air
And full of wine.

I want to be like that, to have a natural abundance
And plume forth, and be splendid.

I remember being impressed when I first heard it and further readings deepened my appreciation. It captures the grim determination to survive that those subjected to the rule of the old hag need to have as they try to escape her grip; and it evokes their desire to flourish. One of its great strengths is its authentic tone; no privileged condescension here, Lawrence is speaking from a personal and very individual experience. This, I think, also proves to be its central weakness; more on this below. Its aims of natural abundance and splendour are modest; who could possibly deny the right to material comfort, to the personal and cultural growth Lawrence yearns for in the poems last lines, to those who either do not enjoy them or whose experience of them is tenuous or subject to the caprice of external forces?

But the question I returned to was how progressive is the poem? It would have been a pertinent question when Lawrence wrote it; and in today’s climate where confusion reigns about what it means to be progressive, it remains pertinent. In trying to answer this I ended up looking at the poem from two angles. The first of these is aspirational, deeply personal and all the more powerful because of it. The second deals with the ‘how to?’ question, the road to take to consign the old hag to the history books. The poem’s silence on this last point should not forbade us from taking this matter up for the silence contains suggestions which are implicit in the poem and are faithful to the man.

The Aspirational

Lawrence knew poverty first hand and arguably its effects contributed to his early death from tuberculosis; there is a bitterness, a knowing, which is intimately felt and communicated. Like those who feel her pinch now, the desire is to escape, to get out from under, to get ahead. This is a progressive yearning; it always has been and it remains so whether or not the pinch is felt in the so-called developed world or in the undeveloped or third world.

Lawrence’s attack on the romanticism accorded “lady poverty” by the privileged, his exposure of their hubris is also personally felt, hard edged and progressive. He wants the old hag removed, along with the pieties of her well heeled apologists; he wants to develop, to move forward (literally, to progress). No problems here. In spite of his generally right wing sympathies he could be speaking for workers everywhere; so too for those ground down and “pinched” by poverty over the millennia.

You take the high road and I’ll take the low road*

If Lawrence offers suggestions here, of what is the best path to take escape from the old hag’s grip, they are ambiguous to the point of being opaque; the poem is, after all a personal testament and not a manifesto. And I must confess to liking the way the question is left open. It is up to the reader to pick up and develop this should they be inclined to do so.

Being a communist I’m inclined to do so and somewhat absurdly perhaps the first person that popped into my mind when I read the poem was Richard Burton. The second was Deng Xiaoping, but more on him later. Actually the Burton reference is not so absurd: both he and D.H. were sons of miners who knew what it was to be pinched, and both became famous in their respective artistic fields, one being sympathetic to the left, the other the right. So while the reference to the dearly departed Welsh thespian is playful, it is also serious. Burton described himself as a socialist (a communist on occasions – because, he said, he didn’t exploit others) and justified his wealth and lifestyle by pointing out that everyone should be able to live like him. He was right. He too wanted to have a natural abundance and be splendid and it is something he thought all people should have. Greens and assorted pseudo-leftists, please take note.

If Marxists, of whatever stripe, are to promote beliefs in economic and social development and the cultural and personal transformations which spring from these, then we aim to level upwards, not downwards. We can argue about roads, (can of worms anyone?) but as soon as we concede, hands wringing, that development may have gone too far, too quickly, too disruptively; that it is ruinous to the environment or to ‘fragile eco-systems’ and must therefore be stopped; that the human footprint is bad; that modernity has sold us a lemon and so on, we cease to be progressive let alone Marxist and we give the old hag a legitimacy she does not deserve. We may remain concerned, decent and politically active souls involved in any number of things; and, heaven knows, there is a chance that some of these activities may even be progressive, but we ourselves are left at the starting blocks.

Marx understood perfectly well that capitalism was disruptive; that was what he liked about it, that, along with the possibilities that such disruption opened up in its wake. He understood too that in order to create a propertyless working class capitalist development dispossessed the mass of peasants and drove them into the arms of what was then (and is now, in developing countries) an unregulated free labour market with all the uncertainty, impoverishment, degradation and possibilities that accompanied this. But even before the Manifesto was written he also understood the need and opportunity that these same developments afforded the working class to organise and fight for political rights and economic concessions. And while it is true that he had wanted and expected the working class to recognise the need for revolutionary transformation – a task that still beckons – it is also true that the working classes in all advanced countries has been able to wrest significant democratic and economic concessions from their respective ruling classes, thereby ameliorating the kind of poverty that characterised the Industrial Revolution of Marx’s and Dickens’ time. While the old hag is still with us, she has been forced to give ground and develop the capacity to ‘shape shift’ as developed economies see a widening wealth gap accompanied by a decline in absolute poverty. In the undeveloped world she remains a traditional old hag while in the developed world she has also assumed a distinctly post modernist capacity.

Hit the road Jack …

Above I had indicated that Lawrence had made no suggestions about what road to take or whether there was even a choice of route. However such a view is disingenuous.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and a silence is just a silence; but not here, not with DH Lawrence. While this has something to do with his right wing sympathies, leaving it at this is a cheap shot. More at issue is his individualism and how this individualism is largely cut off from his working class roots. There is, for example, a warmth and a fidelity to his past in Burton which one struggles to find in DH Lawrence. It is as though the experience has been too painful and embittering for him to want to do anything other than turn his back on it and escape. He doesn’t want to be rich, to be one of “them”; he just wants to get out from under and to flourish. This is a modest enough desire on the one hand, but it’s all about him (as opposed to him and his mates, and beyond this, his class) on the other. And this is where Deng comes in.

Two sayings of Deng’s stand out above all others: “Black cat, White cat? Who cares so long as it catches mice?”, and “To get rich is glorious”. The former was a metaphor for promoting capitalist economic development over socialist economic development, was uttered under proletarian rule and was designed to fudge. The latter is a blunt, honest admission of his position and was said under restorationist rule where the need to fudge had disappeared. Cats may not matter, but roads do and Deng knew it. So too did his protagonists, which is why they were after his hide.

DH Lawrence and Deng neither knew, or knew of, each other and at first take they make strange bedfellows. But there exists a certain similarity between them, between their yearnings and the politics each is drawn to or promotes. The similarity is around paths to development or what Lawrence may describe as escaping the clutches of the old hag. When Deng uttered his infamous ‘black cat, white cat’ line he was not meaning the he was indifferent as to what approach was taken or that he valued each equally – no post modernist relativism for this man or the newly emerging class that he represented. He had an antipathy to the ‘socialist road’ and favoured the ‘capitalist road’. His appeal was both to the new, privileged class that found organisational and political expression in the communist party (those in power taking the capitalist road) and to the narrow type of individualistic aspirations this class nourished. It is all about getting ahead any way you can and Deng’s way (the capitalist way) will get you there quicker because you won’t have to worry about who you step over, or step on, on your way to achieve your “glorious” prize.

So far as I am aware DH Lawrence did not take an active interest in political economy and it is not on this level that he sidles up to Deng. Lawrence mistrusted and was estranged from his class. The idea of collectivism, of collective action as a means of getting out from under – and in the process, of finding himself as an individual, a very different individual from the one he became – scared him viscerally. My guess is he feared being overwhelmed individually to the point of losing himself. Nietzsche’s modernist affirmation of individualism – that the individual has always had to struggle against being overwhelmed by the tribe and that nothing was more important than the privilege of owning oneself – would have struck a deep chord in Lawrence. It is his rejection of his class and of class politics as such that place Lawrence alongside Deng and places his poetry in a very different political camp than that of the great communist poets like Mayakovsky, Brecht or Hikmet.

DH Lawrence ‘s path to salvation, to getting out from under, is an individual and lonely one. While there is occasional reference made in his poetry to workers, the poor, the rich… there is no sense of attachment or connection and even less of trust. There is a chasm that separates him from his class of origin which finds expression in his poetry. His attempts to bridge this chasm, to really connect, fail. He reaches out to individuals, generally women, never to his class. I think he would have argued that he didn’t reach out to any class, certainly not to the bourgeois class that he despised. While this is true in one sense it also reinforces my point. In terms of class, or even community attachment, he felt and was isolated. This affected his yearnings and his means of escape. It leaves him and Deng sharing an affinity around roads. While the encouragement to get rich would have stuck in his craw the idea of black cat, white cat, of get me out of here any which way, would have appealed.

Lawrence’s mistrust of class, particularly the class consciousness and loyalty that the working class requires if it is to overthrow the capitalist class and to rule society itself, his elevation of individual aspiration above all else, is precisely the bait that Deng (and his equivalents elsewhere) rely upon and appeal to. One doesn’t have to agree with all of it – as mentioned above, Lawrence would have rejected the appeal to be a bourgeois fat cat – to be hooked and reeled in. This is one of the appeals of petty bourgeois individualism (to give it its PC, old school description); we may be genuinely appalled at the behaviour of those who stab others in the back, push or keep others down as they go for glory and we may even protest the fact. But so long as we abjure a class identification and solidarity and put all of our eggs into the narrow form of individuality that appealed to Lawrence, such protest would be as effective as pissing into the wind and the pull of that lone pine tree, flourishing and abundant, becomes impossible to resist. No wonder the tree appealed – it was as cut off from its kind as Lawrence was from his. This type of reaction would have suited Deng and the new Mandarins right down to the ground.

(As an aside, the term ‘petty bourgeois individualism’ certainly describes the kind of individualism Lawrence was drawn to. Unfortunately it’s a term that has been typically used by the radical (and, too often, censorious) left as a term of abuse designed to silence rather than to critically analyse. This is a pity because it tends to discourage communists from asking what kind of individualism, or perhaps more accurately, individualisms, will flourish in post revolutionary and communist societies and how we can recognise their beginnings and encourage their development under capitalism.)

Lawrence’s poem, then, is progressive in so far that it is identifying a problem and in aspiring to rise above them, but reactionary in the solution it implies – individual talent and enterprise cut off from its social base – a solution that, by definition, excludes most of those in the old hag’s grip, leaving them to their own devices as well as to hers.

It might be eighty-five years since Lawrence’s early death from tuberculosis but the question of what constitutes progressive, the question of ‘roads’, if you like, is contemporary and urgent. As mentioned above, this piece is not so much about Lawrence as it is about us. Marxists, there have been numerous incarnations, have been the inheritors and are now the remnants of a once vibrant revolutionary movement (or movements, depending on your stripe) who are now so marginalised and irrelevant to the day to day life and struggles of the modern working class and, very importantly, the individuals who make up this class, that we can now comfortably meet in the roomy confines of a broom closet. To become relevant enough to move out of the broom closet, let alone be credible as a challenge to bourgeois hegemony we need to rediscover what it means to be progressive as well as revolutionary (Marx is a good place to start) and be prepared to fight for it.

If some of the divergent strands of DH Lawrence’s poetry can be of assistance with this then, eighty five years on, we can happily acknowledge the contribution he is now making to a progressive cause.

*The reference is to an old Jacobin song The Bonnie Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond. While the Jacobin cause of Bonnie Prince Charlie was a dud one the song is correct to suggest that roads matter (and that the low road, the one the common folk were made to take, is the right one). The chorus, which has a very familiar ring, is reproduced here:

O ye’ll tak’ the high road and I’ll tak’ the low road
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye
For me and my true love will ne-er meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’.

If the Dalai Lama is Marxist, then so was Leo X111.

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Last month at a university lecture in Kolkata, India, the Dalai Lama declared that, when it comes to “socio-economic theory”, he is a Marxist. His reasoning was as follows:

“In capitalist countries, there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In Marxism, there is emphasis on equal distribution.”

The Dalai Lama joins a growing list of religious leaders, including Pope Francis, and other global celebrities, to declare an affinity with the notion of ‘equal distribution of wealth’, an idea that is widely (but wrongly) regarded as being Marxist. A leftist influenced by Marxism does not ask, “How can wealth be distributed more equitably?” but rather “Who produces the wealth in the first place?” And: “Why does socially produced wealth end up in the hands of the owners of the means of producing it (machines, factories, raw materials, etc) rather than in the hands of those without whom it could not have been generated?”

The positive side of the publicity is that Marxism is of international interest again, as a theory that helps to understand the dynamics of capitalism. This is happening  at a time when, in the advanced economies, capitalism isn’t delivering the promised goods any more and growing numbers of people are pissed off.

But, one must feel some sympathy for old Karl. His exasperation with those who adopted the brand without understanding the content led him to declare 150 years ago that “If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist”. Marxism is not, and has never been, about the equal distribution of wealth.

‘To each according to his contribution’: Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme

In his Critique of the Gotha Programme, written as a letter in 1875 in response to the draft platform of the German Social Democratic Workers Party (SDAP), Marx pulled no punches when he described the idea of “fair distribution” being proposed by the SDAP as “obsolete verbal rubbish”, which ‘perverted a realistic outlook’.

He first tackles the proposal in the draft platform that “the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society” and asks: “’To all members of society’? To those who do not work as well? What remains then of the ‘undiminished’ proceeds of labor? Only to those members of society who work? What remains then of the ‘equal right’ of all members of society?”

Marx then dissects the notion of “proceeds of labor” in the sense of “a product of labor” with the co-operative proceeds “the total social product”.

“From this”, he points out, “must now be deducted: First, cover for replacement of the means of production used up. Second, additional portion for expansion of production. Third, reserve or insurance funds to provide against accidents, dislocations caused by natural calamities, etc. These deductions from the ‘undiminished’ proceeds of labor are an economic necessity, and their magnitude is to be determined according to available means and forces, and partly by computation of probabilities, but they are in no way calculable by equity”.

He continues: “There remains the other part of the total product, intended to serve as means of consumption. Before this is divided among the individuals, there has to be deducted again, from it: First, the general costs of administration not belonging to production. This part will, from the outset, be very considerably restricted in comparison with present-day society, and it diminishes in proportion as the new society develops. Second, that which is intended for the common satisfaction of needs, such as schools, health services, etc. From the outset, this part grows considerably in comparison with present-day society, and it grows in proportion as the new society develops. Third, funds for those unable to work, etc., in short, for what is included under so-called official poor relief today. Only now do we come to the ‘distribution’… to that part of the means of consumption which is divided among the individual producers of the co-operative society”.

As Marx notes, the “undiminished” proceeds of labor in the draft have now become converted into the “diminished” proceeds, “although what the producer is deprived of in his capacity as a private individual benefits him directly or indirectly in his capacity as a member of society”.

And what of the obvious and natural inequality among individual workers?  “… one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only — for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal”.

The Critique of the Gotha Programme is one of my favourite works by Marx. In it, he is thinking practically about how the future society based on socialism – ‘To each according to his contribution’ – and then communism – ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ – might develop. A most important point is that the new socialist society emerges from the old capitalist one and will still be marked by the culture and habits of the past. It will not be a wholly new system simply because the old social relations have been overthrown.

Accordingly, argues Marx, the individual producer in socialist society receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – “exactly what he gives to it”. He continues: “What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor…The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another”. Marx’s view of how this could be done involved certificates rather than money.

And, “the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values… a given amount of labor in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labor in another form. Hence, equal right here is still in principle – bourgeois right, although principle and practice are no longer at loggerheads, while the exchange of equivalents in commodity exchange exists only on the average and not in the individual case. In spite of this advance, this equal right is still constantly stigmatized by a bourgeois limitation. The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor.”

Progressive taxation as a distributive measure

It is true that in the Communist Manifesto, Marx advocated a system of “heavy progressive or graduated income” taxation, which is the way wealth is redistributed by governments, and argued about, in capitalist societies today. But progressive taxation has now been part and parcel of capitalism for more than a century. It would be absurd to regard the Prussian government of 1891, when modern progressive taxation was first introduced, as Marxist; even if Emperor Wilhelm 11 did regard himself as “king of the mob”.

Progressive taxation imposes a greater rate of tax on the wealthier income-earners. In Australia, people who earn less than $18,200 per year pay no income tax, those who earn between $18,200 and $180,000 pay (an average of) 20%, while those who earn over $180,000 pay at a rate of 45%. It can be a way of redistributing wealth downwards, as in the case of funding the Welfare State, or upwards through subsidies and ‘bail-outs’ to the capitalist class. Labor parties, or right-wing social democratic parties, are particularly good at the latter. In Australia, under the former Labor government led by Prime Minister Gillard, subsidies amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars were handed out to the big capitalists. In 2012 alone, nearly $90 million went to General Motors Holden.

Mind you, the US experience shows that ‘right-wing’ parties, like the Republicans, are also extremely good at it too. Witness Bush jr’s $700 billion bail-outs to failed financial-services capitalists over there. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Democrats or Republicans, or Labor or Coalition, they will do what it takes with workers’ money to keep zombie capitalism going. Naturally, people become disenchanted with a political party system of that kind and it becomes common to hear phrases such as “No matter who you vote for, you end up with a politician”.

It cannot be disputed that progressive taxation occurs under capitalism and does not in any way challenge the basic set of social relations defining it.

Rerum Novarum, distributism and fascism

By the measure of the notion of fair wealth distribution, the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo X111, which was formulated in 1891 as a Catholic conservative response to the ills of capitalism and the ascendancy of secular democracy and the growing interest in socialism among the working classes, might also be regarded as ‘Marxist’. Rerum Novarum advocated ‘distributism’, a system in which means of production and property are distributed throughout society as in medieval times, as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. It was, and is, a desire to return to the era of the guild, an economy centred on small land holdings and artisan production, and based on class collaboration (ie, the peasants/workers ‘accepting their place’ in return for being exploited more nicely).

In Australia, the best known advocate of this system was B.A. Santamaria. In his book, The earth, our Mother (1945), the basis of the new small-scale distributive society was to be the family unit living as close to possible to self-sufficiency on the land. As in medieval times, prior to industrial capitalism, this society would be protected from the ‘corrupting’ influences of big cities and secular materialism by the unifying ‘higher’ spiritual values of the Church. The cooperation of owners and producers would also be cemented through the promotion of nationalism, adherence to custom and tradition, and ethnic solidarity (the folk or volk).

Much of this has resonance today in E. F. Schumacher’s Small is beautiful (1973) and the Green movement. The higher spiritual value from the viewpoint of green ideology is Gaia, or the idea of harmony with, and subservience to, Nature.

Not surprisingly, in the twentieth century, Rerum Novarum and distributism influenced fascist movements, including Italy’s with its corporatist form of tyranny under Mussolini. That influence is also seen in the right-wing social democratic and Christian Democratic commitment to systems of arbitration between workers and owners of means of production. Australia currently has one avowedly ‘distributionist’ parliamentary political party: the Democratic Labour Party. Appropriately, its representative in the federal Senate is a practitioner of one of the medieval era’s ‘mechanical arts’: blacksmithing.

Given that the medieval feudal past cannot – (and should not!) – return, then the quest for more equitable distribution of wealth ends up being a defence of the status quo, capitalism. To socialists influenced by Marxism, capitalism was a revolutionary leap forward from feudalism, because feudalism limited the capacity of individuals to expand their horizons and to be freer. It trapped people in what Marx called “rural idiocy”. At best, from a Marxist perspective, the issue of wealth distribution – the gap ‘between rich and poor’, as the media likes to put it – is useful because it can raise the real question of production rather than distribution, of how value is produced and how it is appropriated. And, from there, why the appropriators need to be expropriated.

The revolutionary nature of capitalism in the nineteenth century

To Marx, capitalism was revolutionary in the way it overturned feudal claptrap and “at last” compelled people “to face with sober senses their real conditions of life and their relations with their kind”.

In the Communist Manifesto, he put it poetically:

“The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former exoduses of nations and crusades.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air… “

Industrial capitalism created material conditions that cannot be unmade but only taken further, and social relations that can be overturned and transformed into something new and better.

Marxists are all for progress with a big ‘P’. It’s about the future, not yearning for a ‘small is beautiful’ rural past.

Distribution of wealth and relations of production

Under capitalism, with private ownership of means of production, and production for private profit, distribution of social wealth flows from the relations of production. The resultant scale of inequality can be no other way. Increases in inequality between rich and poor or, more to the point, between the owning class and the working class is part of the system of exploitation of wage labour itself, through which value is created.

In Wage Labour and Capital, Marx points out how,

“…even the most favorable situation for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth of capital, however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the capitalist. Profit and wages remain as before, in inverse proportion. If capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him from the capitalist has widened…

“Growth of productive capital and rise of wages, are they really so indissolubly united as the bourgeois economists maintain? We must not believe their mere words. We dare not believe them even when they claim that the fatter capital is the more will its slave be pampered. The bourgeoisie is too much enlightened, it keeps its accounts much too carefully, to share the prejudices of the feudal lord, who makes an ostentatious display of the magnificence of his retinue.”

On this last point, I think Marx would reconsider his position were he alive today. The ostentatiousness of the big bourgeoisie is sometimes astonishing – be it in the USA, the Russian Federation or China.

Marx would also be amazed at the material progress that has taken place, especially for the working class, but any great thinker from the nineteenth century would be the same. Marx acknowledged that the material conditions for the workers were improving even in his time. The important point is that the social chasm widens. (There are, of course, plenty of other reasons why capitalism sucks and has outlived its usefulness).

Labour theory of value: Marx meets the Jetsons!

The Marxist labour theory of value (LTV) explains how exchange value is created by labour’s interaction with nature and how, in the capitalist mode of production, wage labour is exploited. Bourgeois economists hate the theory because it lay at the heart of Marx’s analysis of the need for revolution. Capitalism reaches a point where it is a fetter on production – as we have seen for some decades now. Workers as a class without borders have nothing to lose by overthrowing this system based on their exploitation. Some real productivity can then occur, free from the constraints of production geared to the pursuit of private profit. For starters, we’ll be able to mass produce and have our own flying-cars!

I wanted to find a good summary of the theory that wasn’t too scant, and found the following at a non-Marxist economics blog called ‘Unlearning Economics’:

“Marx’s theory goes as follows: under capitalism, the value of commodities is determined by the ‘socially necessary’ amount of labour required to produce them (‘variable capital’), plus the current necessary cost of the capital used up in production (‘constant capital’). Fixed capital, such as machines, adds value at the same rate it depreciates, while raw commodities are used up completely and so add all of their value. Labour is generally paid less than the value it adds, and therefore is the sole source of profit.

“Here’s a brief mathematical example: say an hour of labour adds £1 of value, and a certain type of chair requires 8 hours of labour (‘labour-time’), uses £2 worth of wood and depreciates a saw worth £10 by 1/10th (i.e. after the saw is used 10 times it will break). It follows that, according to the LTV, the value of this chair is:

“(1/10)*£10 + (8*£1) + £2 = £11

“The only way the capitalist can make a profit is to pay the labourer less than the value he creates (for the most part, Marx suggested wages were determined by a social subsistence level). So if the wage is, say, £0.50, the capitalist will have £4 worth of profit. Contrary to what many think, this does not imply that capital-intensive industries will have lower rates of profit, as the rate of profit will tend to equalise between industries, ‘sharing out’ the total surplus value produced in the economy.

“The qualifiers of “necessary” costs and “socially necessary” labour are also important. It’s logically possible that a madman could purchase a saw for £100 for some reason, or that a lazy labourer could take 10 hours to make the chair, but this would do nothing to alter the resultant value of the chair. Marx was concerned with general rules, not specific cases, which could obviously fluctuate wildly as they are based on human behaviour.

“The main implication of this theory is that, since capitalists tend to use labour saving technology to increase productivity, over time they use relatively more constant capital – which cannot be a source of surplus – and this drives down the rate of profit: the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF). Though the first capitalist who uses the technology will be able to sell at the market price, and thus gain, once the technology is widely adopted, the value of the commodity will decrease – a ‘fallacy of composition’. Again, this may not be true in particular industries at any one time, but it holds true across the economy as a whole. The result will be intermittent crises as capitalists face lower profits and try to increase them by pushing down wages, devaluing their constant capital, or through technological progress. Marx never predicted capitalism would collapse in on itself, though he did suggest that the working class would revolt as their wages were pushed down”.

Conclusion

A shared prosperity can only spring from common ownership of the means of production. It is not possible under capitalism. The system would grind to a halt. The capitalist would not invest and they would have no incentive to force alienated workers to keep their noses to the grind stone. The system of distribution cannot be separated from the system of ownership.

 

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INTERVIEW WITH A UKRAINIAN MARXIST AND SOLDIER FIGHTING IN THE DONBAS (from Ukraine Solidarity Campaign)

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“In Russia right-wing conservatism and authoritarianism are not just a tendency but full reality”.

Reprinted with permission from ukrainesolidaritycampaign in Donbas, January 12, 2015

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anti-imperialist-action

Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas with the symbol of Anti-Fascist Action – and slogan ‘Anti-Imperialist Action’.

Andriy M. (the name was changed) is one of those Kiev white-collar leftists, who after some hesitations supported Maidan last winter and in spring took a decisive stand against the reaction in Crimea and in Eastern Ukraine. His stand finally led him to the Ukrainian army and now Andriy is taking part in the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) in the Donbas. Having known this, “Nihilist” [1] asked him a few questions. Republished courtesy of Zbigniew Marcin Kowalewski.

– How did you come to join the army? What unit is it?

– A very ordinary one, the 72nd Separate Mechanized Brigade. The one that was surrounded near Izvarino in July. In that time it was constantly being shot at, while suffering heavy personnel and equipment losses. Four hundred soldiers were even forced to withdraw to Russian territory, an outcome that generated a lot of media hype. Later the Ukrainian troops gained control of Savur-Mohyla barrow, liberated the surrounded brigade, and led it out of the ATO zone. In August-September near Melitopol the brigade was replenished with personnel and armored fighting vehicles. I then joined that brigade as a gunner and was mobilized in August. At the moment the brigade is again in the ATO zone.

– Could you have evaded military service?

– Technically yes, definitely I could. But already in March I went to the military commissariat and told the commander that the army can count on me. At that time Crimea was just annexed and the riots in the Donbas and Kharkov had begun. It was clear to me that a big war was coming. I was also convinced that Russian Army intrusion was a matter of a few weeks. For me the Putin regime, Russian occupation, and ideas of “Russian World” are absolutely unacceptable. Therefore it was impossible for me to remain a bystander. Then everything went a bit different than expected. Instead of regular army invasion, Putin began by using local paramilitary formations, but in reality it did not change the situation. Of course, lots of friends offered me “help” – shelter, leaving Kiev and going abroad, applying for a visa etc. I did not take such alternatives into consideration for reasons of principle.

– Do you characterize yourself as a leftist and a Marxist today?

– In respect of beliefs, a worldview – definitely yes. However, if one takes a point of view that sees Marxism as a political practice in the first place, I could be reproached that according to this criteria I am not a Marxist. I will not argue with that, but I just ask whether the Bolsheviks were Marxists when they were defending the Kerensky government from the Kornilov Revolt.

As a Marxist, I am aware of the fact that today a Ukrainian state is an unpleasant thing. There are very strong rightist conservative and nationalist tendencies there, with the power in the hands of big capital – the same as before, a powerful offensive is launched against the social component of state spending and workers’ rights. You know, as in the “socialist realist” art, the priority was depiction of a conflict between the good and the better, today in the Donbas there is a conflict between the bad and the worse. In Russia right-wing conservatism and authoritarianism are not just a tendency but full reality. The new expansionism in the sauce of the “Russian World” is a disgusting reactionary ideology that in reality is translated into war, violence, lies and hatred. In the Donbas all of them are in full bloom and trying to expand themselves. In my opinion, the main task is to stop it. Referring to the Kornilovism analogy, I will mention that a good friend of mine, a socialist, says that this war takes place between Petliuraites [2] and White Guards. This analogy is a bit lame, but in the situation when at war there is no communist side, for me as a Marxist the choice between White Guards and Petliuraites is obvious: in favor of the latter. At the same time it is evident that we are not even allies but just fellow travellers and just to the first crossroad.

– What do you think about Maidan? What was that?

– Maidan is a very complicated theme. On the one hand, it was a popular uprising and an experience of the self-organization of the masses, followed by the creation of volunteer battalions and a powerful and effective network of volunteers supporting those battalions, but on the other hand, there was an openly right-wing political wrapping. My approach to Maidan was changing from careful neutrality towards critical support following the infamous 16 January Laws. In any case, even the very right-wing wrapping was not sufficient to discredit the powerful democratic component of Maidan. In my opinion, it is enough to deserve acknowledgment. In any way, Maidan is in the past now; we live in the post-Maidan epoch and at the moment that mixture of progress and reaction, prepared on Maidan, is breaking down into its components: so much the better. It would be easier to separate the wheat from the chaff.

– What is this war for you?

– Firstly, it is a huge tragedy for millions of people – sorry for the banality. The civilian population is being disinformed, deceived and terrorized by both sides. In those rare cases, when the dialogue with the local inhabitants is held, the majority of them ask: “Why have you come armed to our land?” When you answer: “To prevent separatists and Putin’s soldiers from coming armed to our land”, they do not accept it. However, this is a real goal. There are lots of aspects of this war and I clearly see political profits gained by the Ukrainian and Russian elites – the profits generated from sufferings of local population and Ukrainian and Russian soldiers. For me personally, such phantasms as a territorial integrity or a national statehood have no meaning and I do not see them worth life and blood. However, if Ukraine lays down arms, the war will not stop but imperialist Russia will just continue its bloody expansion undisturbed. It is an aggression and the aggressor must be stopped not appeased. Unfortunately, there is no good solution here. One has to choose between the bad and the worse.

– What are Ukrainian soldiers in the East fighting for?

– Every soldier is fighting for his own reasons. For example, my colleague, a Maidanist and romantic nationalist, Sanya is fighting for his fatherland and the centuries-old Ukrainian dream of independence. A robust peasant, Misha, is fighting so that no-one from abroad tells him, his children, and grand-children what rules they should live by. An electrician Serhiy is fighting only because he was mobilized and he is very unhappy with it. He is also personally unhappy with the commissar who sent him to the slaughter instead of somebody more suitable. However all that does not prevent him from performing combat missions with dignity. Some people do not hide that they are fighting for money – due to the poverty and unemployment in civilian life, going to war has become a noteworthy alternative for a number of people. The majority of soldiers are convinced that they are fighting for Ukraine, its territorial integrity, the right to live not on orders from Kremlin, preventing “Donetsk bandits” and “commies” for good from trying to govern the country. That is the main motivation.

– It turns out that the soldiers are anticommunists and it is a mass phenomenon. How could you explain it?

– There is a great temptation to shift the entire responsibility to the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU). The party of Petro Simonenko did really all that could have been done to make the word “communist” offensive. Years of serving the interests of oligarchs accompanied by the socialist rhetoric and last year’s explicit support for the enemy – all that leaves a trace. However, this is not only the matter of the KPU. The ancestors of numerous soldiers and officers were victims of Stalinist repressions or died during the Holodomor (extermination by famine). For each of them those things are not an abstraction or historical events but a tragedy that directly touched their families, a crime committed by the Soviet government. And through two decades the Ukrainian state propaganda machine was successfully flooding the masses with the idea that the famine, violence and executions are the essence of communism. No wonder people easily adopt it as their own viewpoint.

– Does a communist feel comfortable in such an environment?

– Of course not. But there is one good principle: “neither to cry nor to laugh but to understand”. To keep one’s cool. To notice that the hatred to communism among the masses of soldiers is not hatred toward the ideas of justice, cooperation, solidarity and freedom. On the contrary, it is hatred of the social parasitism that typifies communist party hierarchies, and hatred of the total physical, ideological and economical violence. And it is entirely compatible with sharp non-acceptance of the new post-Maidan government. For the majority of soldiers Poroshenko, Yatseniuk and Klychko are no better than Yanukovych. The timeliness of the social question has not been abolished. Certainly, today the ultra-right forces are trying to speculate with it but that is because the left in Ukraine turned out unable to play on its traditional political field.

– Is that why the left has lost in Ukraine?

– It is a complicated question. Now I am to say a handful of standard phrases about the combination of objective and subjective factors. And where did you see a victory of the left in the period of primitive accumulation and redistribution of capital? The actual left-wing class-oriented mass movement has not been able to form yet – one cannot take for the left the Soviet-conservative KPU or pale pink bourgeois socialists! Not to mention commercial and technological political projects like Borotba, which, from the very beginning, were created to fulfill completely non-leftist tasks. Those left-wing organizations that were actually trying to fulfill the proper tasks, either were organizationally too weak to grow out of little circles or turned out to be so accustomed to the certain conditions that they were not able to realize themselves outside those conditions – like for example the Direct Action [3].

– Has your approach to the Western and Russian left changed?

– It has not changed but rather definitely formed. In the West the left is characterized by rational conformism, by dogmatism or – most often – by a combination of both of those unpleasant features. They, more or less successfully, fulfill the tasks in their own countries but in respect to Ukraine their position is affected in varying degrees by adjusting their thinking on the Ukrainian situation to some of the usual dogmas and to “export” opinions of their Ukrainian contacts that very often turn out to be presenting and analyzing in bad faith Ukrainian developments. As a result, numerous Western leftists believe that there is a socialist revolution in the Donbas, that Ukraine is a fascist state and this state is drowning the popular uprising in blood on the orders from Washington. To make them change their mind is incredibly hard, even impossible. Therefore, in my view, it is easier and better to live as if there was no Western left. As for the Russian left, a huge part of it is under the impression of bygone “Soviet socialism” and the “great victory against fascism”. The Soviet Union passed away long time ago, in the Kremlin there are no people in power who defeated fascism in 1945. Meanwhile in Kiev the power is not in hands of Bandera and Shukhevytch, but the matrix is in use and people who curse the regime furiously turn out to be faithful Putinists when it comes to the issue of Ukraine. Fortunately, not all Russian left is like that, but…

– What should be done?

– To observe attentively. In no case to shut away in an ivory tower but, quite the contrary, to be in the thick of things, as close to people as possible. As a matter of fact, it is another reason why I am in the war now. As long as we have the first-hand experience of what the people of Ukraine live and breathe, we will be able to create an effective strategy and tactics. A very complicated time is coming. A right-wing consensus in the society combined with an unsolved social question can lead to a fascist coup. One should become aware of this danger and prepare for it. To educate the masses, to propose a solution to social conflicts that would be based on a class approach. That solution must be more effective than the one proposed by the right-wing national-social populism. And I have fallen into the abstract again. Let us finish the war and then we will talk about this issue in more detail, ok?

Nihilist, December 6, 2014

Translated by Katarzyna Bielińska and edited by Louis N. Proyect

[1] “Nihilist” is a web portal edited in Ukraine by anarchists and left-wing anti-authoritarian radicals who try to “combine constant theoretical search with everyday revolutionary practice”.
[2] Petliuraites was the popular name of supporters of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, formed in Kiev after the fall of the Russian Empire. It existed since January until April 1918 and since December 1918 until November 1920. It was in war both with Soviet Russia and the imperialist Great Russian White Guards. Its Commander-in-Chief and, since February 1919, its President was Symon Petliura.
[3] The Direct Action (PD) is a network of independent students’ unions, with a left-wing anti-authoritarian and syndicalist orientation, established in 2008 in Kiev and active also in some other universitary centers of the country.

REVIEW: Bright Future: abundance and progress in the 21st century

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This is a review I wrote in 2007 of David McMullen’s book “Bright Future – Abundance and Progress in the 21st Century“. The review appeared in the Canberra Times (Saturday 3 February 2007, Panorama supplement, p. 17)

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As a young long-haired student radical in the late 1960s, I used to gain inspiration from a cartoon that appeared in my university newspaper. The multi-panelled strip commenced with two characters crouched tightly in a sparse door-less little room. One of the characters stretches out his arms, accidentally damaging a wall. He becomes curious and starts making a hole in the wall but his companion is distressed and urges him to desist, lest he damage the room. The final panel shows an aerial view of the scene: both figures are actually confined in a tiny box but outside the box is a beautiful big sunny world. The message was and is clear: creativity requires destruction, a better world only comes from overturning the familiar safe one.

David McMullen’s book is refreshing in that it revives that spirit in consideration of the future.  His analysis will jar anyone who uncritically accepts the prevailing ethos of ‘doom and gloom’. He reclaims rational optimism and rebelliousness, rejecting the inherent conservatism of opposition to globalisation and modern industrial society – which he characterises as pseudo-left.

Bright Future is no mere polemic. McMullen’s training in economics informs his view as much as his decades of involvement in left-wing movements. His analysis is essentially a Marxist one, though this is not stated in the book. The text is meticulously researched and there are nearly 700 endnotes to lead the critical reader into sources of substantiation for claims made. The book will either be ignored or, hopefully, will have an influence in promoting debate about the issues canvassed, including, controversially, the author’s support for ‘collective ownership’ as an alternative to capitalism.

The content is wide-ranging but focuses strongly on the question of food production and world hunger, affluence and resource exploitation. Specific issues discussed include GM foods, soil degradation, water, fisheries, non-renewable resources, fossil fuels, global warming, alternative energies, nuclear power, pollution, deforestation and species extinction. He shows how food production can be increased through technological and scientific advance and better management practices. It is possible he argues, to eliminate hunger by the end of the century ‘The planet’s capacity to comfortably accommodate us’, he says, ‘is limited only by the application of human ingenuity, something we are never going to run out of’.

While not downplaying environmental problems, McMullen’s take is that Nature is remarkably resilient and human impact is minor compared to the planet’s ‘battering on a regular basis from super volcanoes, meteors and ice ages’. Moreover, the affluence of modern industrial societies is what allows for environmental awareness and protection.  For example, the best way to save the tropical forests is to integrate the children of subsistence farmers into the modern economy rather than to idealize their way of life.

The author sees capitalism as playing a continuing progressive role in those places still emerging from pre-industrial feudalistic systems and a section of the text dealing with the problem of kleptocracy in Africa is particularly informative and cogently argued.

What makes McMullen’s book unusual and important however is that it does not reach the conclusion of those who argue from the Right that material progress under capitalism is our benefactor and that this system is therefore the ‘end of history’. McMullen points out that affluence under capitalism continues to mask gross inequality and is only achieved through the alienation of wage slavery which chokes personal development and human initiative.

He argues that the continuing industrial revolution creates the conditions necessary for capitalism’s demise. As technological change progressively does away with the old back-breaking, dangerous and boring jobs, making work more complex, interesting and challenging, the need for a capitalist ruling class becomes less and less. More than half the workforce in the most advanced industrial societies now requires post-secondary education. With the automation of the most unpleasant jobs, who needs the profit motive? And who needs what McMullen calls “the master class”?

Collective ownership, he argues, will be ‘the obvious way to go’ and would unleash the creative energies of the individual, ‘freeing the economy from the distorting effects of sectional interest’. This, he says, is ‘real free enterprise’.

The obvious challenge to McMullen’s thesis is that socialism, when attempted under Communist governments, has failed. To this he responds that the experience of such socialism has been limited to places that had barely emerged from feudalism and had not yet developed advanced forms of industrial capitalism.

‘Bright Future’ is a scintillatingly dangerous book; a threat to the stability of walls and boxed thinking everywhere.