With a medical/biological war still raging against a virus, an industrial mass production war currently operating against nature and various military wars by political and military elites against other human beings, the capitalist mode of production is clearly in a process of self-inflicted meltdown. Its intellectual elites, so extensively and intensively educated with full time supported research assistants have detailed knowledge of individual parts of the capitalist system but no clear understanding of why the system as a whole is in such an absolute meltdown crisis.

Some skilled elites are capable of organising and creating trips to the Moon, Mars etc., whilst others produce multiple detailed volumes upon the history of Egypt, Greece, Rome and Europe etc. Others produce detailed economics textbooks, medical and scientific journals but few, if any predicted or prevented economic and financial collapses, multiple pandemics, or continuous outbreaks of localised and regionalised warfare. Yet they have also allowed the super elites in all countries, to establish themselves at the top of an authoritarian system of governance with unlimited powers and have allowed it without any serious or sustained protest.

We now have the spectacle of yet another elite authorised military war in Ukraine coming after elite authorised wars in Vietnam, Korea, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and Palestine. These were all wars of brutal and indiscriminate killing of civilians, yet not one of the victims or the perpetrators citizens voted for the decision to invade another country, kill its citizens or destroy its houses and buildings. They were all elite made decisions. Moreover, these mad brutalities came after a world war “to end all wars’ (the First) and a Second World War, initiated by another elite also headed by a male megalomaniac.

In all this time, not one among the elites has bothered to consider implementing or promoting a system of production and government which would prevent this from reoccurring. Despite all the above instances of horror (and more) they have not suggested any means by which a small handful of oligarchs could be prevented from controlling such decisions, nor allow for the vast majority of the citizens of each country to oppose and counter such decisions if by chance an elite group tried to do this. There is only one conclusion; the elites like the unhindered power to do as they wish so much, that even if it allows the numerous occurrences of above noted disaster and devastation to take place, then it is still worth having – for them!.

The problem for the non-elite citizens of all capitalist countries, is that when these elite controlled systems go into brutal control and exterminate mode it is the ordinary people who bear the brunt of the horrors being inflicted during them. It is not Putin’s Residence, property and life which is being destroyed, or his supporters, by his Blitzkrieg authored incursion, but those of the citizens of Ukraine. It is not the elites of the NATO west, whose residences, property and lives which were in danger when they bombed Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia, etc., or who now sit on their hands and watch as people in Ukraine are being cut off from the basics of civilisation such as water, food, shelter and medical attention.

Why are they not organising a Berlin style food and material airlift?

Note also, whilst most attention is focused upon Ukraine, other elites in other parts of the world have begun doing horrible things practically undetected. All this says so much about how the capitalist mode of production has corrupted the intelligence and basic humanity of the elite and those who willingly carry out their brutal orders, but it also reveals much more. It reveals the system-induced lethargy of non-elites in general; many of whom, when these things happen have just shrugged their shoulders. As long as it has not impinged upon their own particular lives far too many have just carried on as usual.

Whilst it is true, that there are impediments to ordinary people being more active at the moment, there are few obstacles in literate societies to read alternative views to the justification propaganda of their own and other elites. It is possible to emphatically say no in private if not in public. An increased understanding is an important first step in preventing half truths becoming mistaken for whole truths, and from preventing opinion being accepted as the ‘fact’. Really useful information is out there even though so too are the mis-informers and dis-informers. However, a really useful starting point is to look for rational explanations to the following composite question;

‘Why, given all the intelligence, ability and experience the human species has amassed over thousands of years, are we still allowing elites to initiate wars, ecological destruction, pollution, poverty, fragile supply chains and the destruction of our own and other species?’

Does that make any sense? And if it doesn’t; isnt it time we did something more than just moan about it?

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2022)