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Profiting from Death and Extinction.

As is the case with many animal species which are social, the vast majority of human beings from birth to adulthood, are part of a community of significant others. This formative family experience within hierarchical mass societies, particularly when it is a close one, helps to create a contradictory physical and emotional social essence within human beings. Initially, the vast majority of children experience almost unconditional love yet, their existence within hierarchical mass societies, soon becomes conditional upon fitting into a prescribed and restrictive division of labour in general. In the entire history of its existence, the hierarchical mass society system has been designed to obtain the surplus-labour (historically often the tithe or tenth) from each subordinate citizen. Under the capitalist mode of production, this surplus-labour from workers takes the form of surplus-value or profit, extracted whilst they too are often employed in repetitive, stressful, hazardous conditions during damaging and dangerous activities. In other words, the capitalists profit and wealth is gained at the cost of occupational illnesses, injuries and sheer exhaustion that their workers experience during long and frequent shifts throughout their working lives.

Consequently, throughout history, the elites as a class do not value working class citizens as amazing human products of evolution, they only value them, as a necessary ‘means’ of production and surplus value creation – and then only when needed. [Doubters check out Aristotle in chapter 5 of his book on ‘Politics’] These living ‘means’, like the none-living ‘means of production’ are either owned or controlled wholely (as with slaves) or partly controlled (as peasants or wage/salary slaves) and ‘let go’ (made redundant) when they no longer produce services or profits. In a similar way, the raw materials capitalists purchase for the workers to use to manufacture commodities (which contain the surplus-value/profits) are also not valued as intrinsic parts of life on earth. These raw material resources are extracted from nature without any concern for the microorganisms, plants, animals and insects whose life cycles of Nourishment, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) are dependent upon these parts of nature (on land or in sea) that are destroyed, damaged or polluted by extraction or destruction. Capitalists profits, therefore arise from the consequent Deaths and Extinctions of organisms which supply our oxygen, make soil fertile and numerous other key species which keep the base of the Nourishment, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) cycle of life on earth functioning.

So within the capitalist sphere of hierarchical mass society operations, each generation of the working classes, experiences being undervalued, exploited and ‘let go’ during the cycles of boom, bust and slump. But as representatives of an intelligent, emotional species, human beings also suffer something arguably far worse. Due to the low pay and long working hours within hierarchical mass societies, the unconditional love of the majority of working fathers and mothers for their offspring is short lived. The overwhelming majority of children, by circumstances or legal requirements are removed from their natural supportive family environment, to which they have socially adapted, and sent to be professionally ‘schooled’ (socialised/groomed/disciplined) by total strangers. In modern hierarchical mass societies, the alienating trauma of this transition to re-adapt themselves to a life without unconditional love and regard, can be intense. From as young as four or five years to sixteen years and beyond, pupils (as trainee workers) are taught to accept day long and year long control by a teaching authority in exchange for occupationally based and biased knowledge. Consequently each new generation of working class children not only suffer a loss of unconditional love and security at a tender age, but are given chains of responsibility, discipline and variable crumbs of social regard, by overstretched teachers. Furthermore the form of social regard which they then recieve is conditional upon continuous targeted assessments and regular success in passing elite determined examination hurdles.

As we know from direct and indirect experience, all that trauma and school-induced competition/stress is merely a prelude to becoming the next generation of those employed to labour at producing a service or a surplus-value in the form of profits or taxes for an elite that live a completely different life, in completely different locations and in completely different homes. Although it is taken for granted, the lack of intrinsic value for working class human beings – within all hierarchical mass societies – is also vividly illustrated and demonstrated by the treatment working people suffer when they are unable to find unemployment. Hence if an individual is not employed by an elite member of hierarchical mass society in some way and are not creating profits, services or taxes for them, these unfortunate victims cease to have any form of value to the elite or their system of production. If this is doubted, by the reader, just consider the status of the long-term unemployed victims of the patterns of boom and bust of capitalist economic cycles and labour replacement technologies, who are then often blamed for being dependent upon state benefits or charity.

Furthermore, consider the working class old-age pensioner worn out by a lifetime of work then provided with a pittance of a pension at retirement and left abandoned to their own reduced abilities to cope with social neglect and emotional indifference. No job = no status = just pity! Likewise ponder the status of immigrants and other asylum seekers driven by circumstances – beyond their control – to leave their places of birth to seek a place of safety or sustenance. In this case, no job = no status, and in this case = little or no pity! Consider also the anxiety of those currently employed as workers who see in immigrants and asylum seekers, only cheap replacements for their own deteriorating status as producers of value and surplus-value and also see immigrants to the advanced capitalist countries as rivals for a share of the shrinking welfare and housing services within hierarchical mass societies. Under capitalist dominated hierarchical mass society systems a reverse form of normal collective logic is applied. Adding extra people to a national workforce should mean that there is either a lower duration of work needed by everyone in order to ensure the same economic output; or the same duration of work implemented by greater numbers would ensure a greater national output.

In a rational system, in addition to normal essential life supporting economic activity, this additional workforce, would allow all the crumbling school and hospital buildings, all the decaying bridges, reservoirs, sewers, sea defences and depleted forests, etc., to be restored or remedied. But capitalist logic is not normal logic, because capital only wants to pay as little as possible to working people and employ them only to do those things that can be sold to make a profit or yield interest. Schools, hospitals, bridges, reservoirs, sewers, sea defences and tree planting are not saleable mass produced and consumed commodities, they are merely parts of a social infrastructure. In this way, hierarchical mass societies reverse normal/natural human logic and working people no longer work primarily for the benefit of each other in order to live, but they live primarily in order to work for the benefit of the elite. But to return to a focus on the loss of intrinsic value – as human beings – by workers in hierarchical mass societies, it is essential to recognise this loss as a contradictory form of physical and emotional alienation caused by the hierarchical profit-based social form. This dual alienation, from community and love often surfaces as anger and resentment against other human beings who have been turned by the hierarchical system into rivals rather than social companions and burden sharers.

“All you need is Love; Love is all you need”.

Well not really, John! Nourishment (N) of (N-M-G -R + A – B) plays a foundational part of all life on earth, but indeed, the loss of love in hierarchical mass societies really has resulted in an almost obsessive pursuit of regaining it in some form or other. Therefore, it is important to consider and understand the emotional and psychological problems of living within hierarchical mass societies. In such societies with extensive divisions of labour, as soon as childhood is passed, large numbers of adolescent and teenagers become emotionally disturbed, intellectually constrained and even considerably physically and emotionally altered by the restricted and unnaturally controlled environments they live in; the type of social regulation they endure; and the repetitive occupations they begin to fulfil. As adolescents and adults the desire to find an alternative source to parental unconditional love and acceptance – simply for being a human being – in hierarchical mass societies can become a desperate, life-long, unfulfiled search for millions upon millions of citizens. The proliferation of songs, novels, plays and films based upon the need and search for success (and failure) to find love indicates the extent of its much lamented universal loss from childhood to adulthood within hierarchical mass societies.

In some cases the failure to find this source of companionship, love, belonging and acceptance results in counter-productive attempts to buy or force a semblance of love and respect from another human being. The question of whether hate is a fundamental characteristic of humanity (ie as per the ideas of monotheism and Freud etc.) or a contingent reaction against the loss (or removal) of love (ie. as per Suttie) has yet to be satisfactorily answered. However, practical experience suggests that childhood cooperative working and being together during play and childhood companionship invariably preceeds the onset of fighting and hurting each other between pre-adolescent male and female companions. Since hatred occurs no where else in nature, I suggest it is not natural; it therefore has to be socially learned and actuated. So too with gender prejudice and low status discrimination. From the onset of hierarchical mass societies, most females have been alienated from their natural social role as equal companions in obtaining the (N) in the life processes of (N-M-G-R + A-D) and have primarily become the unnatural socialised objects of male sexual desire and the bearers of ‘their’ children. This role reduction for the female half of our species has been perpetuated every generation since hierarchical mass societies began. Yet the natural essence of companionship and love cannot be entirely suffocated by socialization.

Even among those who are officially trained to systematically kill others of their own species, there still occasionally develop bonds of openly declared ‘love’ for their ‘band of brothers’. It is an affection and altruistic form of love among soldiers which arises from a lengthy shared common, inter-dependent task and is only destroyed within humanity in general by the divisions of class and competition for sources of occupational labour and wellbeing. Money can’t buy you love, (as the song goes) but within hierarchical mass societies dominated by the capitalist mode of production, money can buy highly profitable surrogates and substitutes produced for just this purpose. Physical and emotional distractions from the tragic realities of hierarchical mass society existence have become mass production enterprises for big-business. However, a lonely, loveless life, surrounded by inanimate artifacts of amazing complexity, variety and functionality, can still often be a fate worse than death, for those so situated. Hence the frequency of suicide among those with double or treble of everything – except what they really need. In contrast, to the deforming emotional characteristics running through. all hierarchical mass societies, there are at the physical level, also alterations to the morphological form of human beings. These can be the result of occupational illnesses and injuries along with air quality degradations in work place activities along with the the hierarchical regulation of time and energy expended during a life-time of long working shifts.

These social and occupational conditions can lead to premature ageing, illnesses, incapacity, deformities and even premature death among the most exploited workers. Many intellectual and emotional emotional effects derive from the demands associated with the alloted occupational tasks, such as stress, boredom, monotony and fear of punishment for not completing designated tasks. In addition the inherent competition and alienation within such hierarchical mass societies also promote loneliness, conformity and fear. Even among the successfully socialised (and outwardly groomed) therefore the range of negatively experienced emotional responses are extensive, varied and continuous as are the remedial cognitive, physical, chemical (drugs) and psychological (therapies) attempts to ameliorate the effects of such negative experiences. In regard to social conformity, it should be noted that the control based aspect of the mass media (radio, television, film, magazines etc.) in highlighting and rewarding conforming behaviour on the one hand and condemning challenges to the system on the other, has proliferated in extent and volume, during the 20th century. In many countries, the pulpit has ceased to be the dispenser of approval and disapproval for elite sponsored ways of coping with living in this historically determined and unnatural way.

In the west, bourgeois humanities official post Apocalypse saviour, designated as Jesus, weilding a sword of retribution and offering keys to heaven, was mostly abandoned in the 20th century and replaced with the post-war industrial distribution of ignition keys for personal automotive, petrol-headed, polluting transport. The ‘freedom of the road’ after enduring the 40 weekly hours or more of cramped wage-slavery at the office or factory, became the promised land of escape from monotony and drudgery – until!. Until eventually road rage, congestion and exhaust pollution intensified hierarchical mass society tensions and problems. The knights of the road turned into tailgating, overtaking, accident-prone risk takers. The city street and road, became the 24/7 (inhospitable) locations for administering a compulsory dose of toxic chemical gas to the delicate lungs of infant, adult and old alike.

Then also in the name of secular progress, following and worshiping a charismatic ‘holy man’ was replaced by following and worshiping a charismatic ‘celebrity’ and the ability to groom favours (sexual and non-sexual) from faithful ‘followers’ was shared between religious and entertainment elites. The next hyped up promise of ‘progress’ was of ‘free’ unlimited ‘clean’ (sic) Nuclear Power; then it was Star Trek type space travel tourism, automation, computers and the 3D printing of anything not making it to the mass production shopping malls. The construction of these 20th century Cathedrals of Commerce made access to ‘cheap stuff’ available 24/7 to unthinking commodity worshippers and entitlement fetishists with no concern for the living sources of these products.

The advent of Facebook, Instagram, Tic Tok and other such personal media platforms has not only allowed the spread of entitlement consumption ideology, but also various forms of intellectual and cultural grooming (thought control) to proliferate globally. These platforms of ersatz free speech have also encouraged the consumption and regurgitation of hate speech, fake news and the self-defeating de-humanising of ourselves and other communities of our own species. Entering such peer group sub-domains, linked together by such platforms, can allow the continuous and sustained influencing/grooming (yes I suggest that consistent media influencing is another form of intellectual and cultural grooming) of gullible, vulnerable, alienated, individuals to either conform to the latest half-baked opinion, or deny and deform their own gender, or even check out of living altogether by internet suggested/assisted suicide. Condemning and judging everything but the form of hierarchical mass societies and its domination by capitalism, is now routinely considered and legitimised by capitalist determined platforms. Encouraging the most severely alienated to step along the paths of active self-harming, prejudice, terrorism, body dysmorphia, suicide, mysogeny and mass shooting, has become a ‘clicking’ internet business opportunity ‘enabling’ monetary accumulation for platform providers.

Internet relationships are limited to ideas, virtual reality, photo-shopped images and money transactions, rather than real contacts to real people and support for their struggle to resist the system which deforms the humanity of so many. Although the influencing/grooming of tastes, attitudes and consumer choices has long been an attribute of elite promoted ideology within religion, historical narrative, cultural disemination and philosophical discourse, it had by the late 20th century, mostly abandoned the pulpit, the lecture hall and the newspaper broadsheets. By then it had entered practically every home by broadcast radio and television. These two mediating electro-magnetic wave forms, combine, entertainment, education and establishment politics. Which are all forms of elite sponsored, cultural and political grooming. Nevertheless, with the introduction of cell phones and unlimited internet access the means for elite sponsored 24/7 socialisation/grooming has entered the pockets and handbags of the vast majority of those people who can afford to purchase a network provider and network receiver to control their physical and mental space.

Such technology has realised and legitimised a virtual reality aspect of the basic individualism created by hierarchical mass society divisions of labour. What is left of the available work and non-work time for real face to face contact with other real human beings is being replaced with electronic contact with virtual, often photo-shopped avatars of distant people. This intimate intercourse with an alternative virtual world now routinely takes place simultaneously alongside the real world. Whilst people sit together around a table, occupy a room or relaxing at home with friends or family, they are at the same time deeply hypnotised by the latest millionaire-making interactive software or hardware controlled by and controlling their fingers and thoughts. Being physically in the real world whilst intellectually retreating into a virtual world is a doubtless a new form escapism but it is also so much more. Being fixated on the electronic gadget held in their hands and becoming willing prey to consuming the data gathering, profit-based, influencing/grooming messages and images it is delivering 24/7, is an amazingly profitable, cynical but ultimately de-humanising form of control over human beings. Families and entire communities have been transformed into willing 24/7 consumers and consequently polluters of their own nature based sources of food, water and air quality.

Even clicking and liking without buying, transfers money into some distant charlatan platform builders or influencers account. The latest twist to this ongoing improvement of elite social control by collecting, collating and profiting from processing digitised information appears to be the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to language, images and statistics. AI is also the latest investment opportunity frothing up the oral excitement of many financial speculators and technical wizz-kid’s as public attention is neatly deflected away from the broader reality of real world climate degradation, poverty, warfare, pollution and ecological disintegration. NB. AI is also more than likely to be the next substantial financial bubble to rapidly expand and and even more rapidly burst as obscene levels of monetised wealth seeks such lucrative avenues to multiply itself further.

Artificial Intelligence!

Artificial it certainly is, but intelligence? According to it’s own elite hype this computer aided AI data crunching will allegedly improve most of the systems inadequately addressed solutions to current ills. It will not solve or prevent unemployment, poverty, loneliness, cancer, poor staffing of essential services, etc., but AI games will pass the time, AI counselling perhaps numb the emotional pain whilst AI tracking of images and activities may improve catching benefit cheats, but not rich, tax-dodging, tax-haven, wealth-hiding cheats. Undoubtedly, it will improve elite control and regulation of the diminishing resources available to those suffering from the systems unequal distribution of production. In 2023, we are being told some of us will be saved from bureaucratic mistakes by rapid electronic number crunching and pattern recognition, based on the data harvesting of every move we make or don’t make. Indeed, ‘Every move you make, every breath you take, I’ll be watching you’, can now represent more than just an obsessive stalkers menacing film voice-over, but a national anthem or even requiem for 21st century elite surveillance.

We are earnestly promised by the newly installed high priests of Artificial Intelligence, that it will shorten hospital waiting times, improve diagnosis of illnesses, spot criminals, terrorists and drug dealers, ease traffic congestion and drop bombs and explosive land mines more effectively and efficiently. In other words according to it’s new cult activists and preachers, artificial intelligence is going to save humanity from destroying itself in inefficient and unnecessary and unprofitable ways and allow it to do so with less effort. In future AI will allow us to continue to destroy ourselves by doing what has been done in the past – mass produce and consume commodities – but in future ever more quickly and efficiently. Meanwhile the planet in the name of ‘progress’ and without full-blown AI ultra-efficiency is already experiencing, burning, flooding, drought and AI drone assisted warfare.

Beneath all the techno-babble spun around Artificial Intelligence is the fact that it is no more than the latest iteration of a method of observing, collating and controlling information that in essence is as old as hierarchical mass societies themselves. From the earliest versions of hierarchical mass societies, in Persia, Babylon, Greece, Egypt and Rome, the elites had to solve the problem of how to observe and control the masses – who as the sources of all essential and non-essential production, (food, essential materials, and luxury products) – where the essential economic foundation of the system upon which the elites comfortably situated themselves. Information about the location, activities, work type and duration of the agricultural slaves and artisans along with food stores and allocations needed to be collated and organised, by overseers and beaurocracies using the early technologies of clay tablets, vellum scrolls, papyrus documents and stele monuments. Then in modernity came passports and national insurance numbers. Without these beaurocratic means of identification and control in the eyes of bourgeois statisticians humans don’t ‘officially’ exist.

Now a further technological upgrade to the collecting, processing and recording of data needed by the hierarchy is available, thus rendering many of the present lot of statistics experts and paper processing beaurocrats surplus to requirements. This is a fate also awaiting those citizens who have carved out a comfortable careers and esteemed places in the various levels of hierarchical mass societies, writing novels, childrens books, plays, songs, film scripts, advertisements and even academic essays. Using the data bases of all previous works of literature – in all fields – a computer engine programmed with AI software can scan, select, borrow, assemble, produce and publish from these billions of words long or short new varieties on a level with most of the acceptable human attempts to do the same thing, but in routinely short time scales.

Instant AI produced songs, scripts, jingles and content re-writes are becoming available to accompany the instant coffee or micro-waved TV dinner we supposedly enjoy. Reality has caught up and exceeded Orwell’s 1984 description of the logical direction of hierarchical mass societies with their constant Big Brother surveillance and culturally imposed Newspeak re-writes and Newthink requirements routinely modified by changing versions of elite-promoted political correctness. What previous speculations once suggested about how long it would take a troop of apes banging on typewriters to produce a coherent document has now been doubly rendered as a pointless esoteric debate as coherent documents can now be achieved in minutes and seconds and at very low cost, by a metal or plastic box running a previously constructed computer program. By ‘mining’ and ‘extracting’ the accumulated sediment of previous layers of intellectual and visual production something ersatzly different, but not really new, will artificially emerge.

But this reproduction of previous authors words and images, cut and pasted into new combinations is not intelligence, artificial or otherwise, it is electronic data sifting and sorting to order. By scanning previously produced visual and sound data, AI created virtual vocalists can now sing AI created songs more cheaply than paying living human songwriter’s and performers to entertain us. Consuming a live visual performance by a human being is to be replaced by consuming a computerised image of a virtual avatar performer. At one level such aggregated assembling of collective mediocrity and excellence will just illustrate that every so-called individual human skill is actually a skill socially replicated from and developed out of, all the contributions that other previous, parents, teachers, trainers and influencers have made. Privileged people making a handsome living from years of studying the thoughts and images of the esteemed dead and imposing their own opinions and prejudices on the past has a long history, now it can be done by a low paid data entering clerk with a licence to process extracts from previous authors perceptions of historical reality.

At another level the existing, and the more AI virtual substitutes for reality yet to come, are just examples of a potential new 21st century industry – plagiaristic data-mining for profit – by those owning/controlling this new means of production. This outcome is hardly surprising emerging as it does from a mode of production based on the industrialised, debasement and extraction of everything valuable that exists – human and non-human – in order to turn over a profit. Mechanical robots have already replaced thousands of industrial workers and now virtual AI robots are set to replace, artists, writers, academics, doctors, designers, lecturers and managers of companies and industries. Furthermore, profit seeking from this high tech development designated as Artificial Intelligence has already piloted the creation of avatar substitutes of dead parents constructed out of available family data files. A photographic moving image that can be animated and reproduce the words of some long gone loved or esteemed one is now available for a price. These are already being offered in some countries to adults who suffer from excessive nostalgia or separation anxiety with regard to their deceased mothers, fathers or hero’s.

Even the past literary and artistic production of the dead and the anxieties of the immature are to be exploited for a projected rate of profit calculated according to how much family or public data the programmers are able or willing to cost-effectively ‘mine’ and incorporate into the avatars data banks. If all that sounds a bit like a high-tech seance and thus creepily weird, then there is more. On the presumption that an electric supply will be always be available and affordable, the creation of a reliable, (once it is switched on) inter-active, avatar friend is now within arms reach (for a price) to compensate for the fact that in hierarchical mass societies most people are too busy or have become too indifferent to commit to the process of establishing real caring communities and friendships. It says a lot about the so-called progress of ‘civilisation’ when it’s evolutionary trajectory is to replace relationships between people with relationships to yet more sophisticated electronic commodities. Welcome to the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence, where those of us who can afford to buy the AI bundle can ‘fiddle’ with it on our own (like Nero – allegedly) while everyone and everything around us burns down, gets drowned or is bombed into rubble.

And indeed, these AI developments already have a further emerging dark side to such sad and ridiculous real-world 21st century substitutions, because the military industrial complex will eagerly employ AI to design and improve armaments, quickly and cheaply whilst sifting the data for the most cost effective and efficient ways of using them to kill the greatest numbers of our fellow human beings. This fact along with the already rising industrialised extraction, destruction, exploitation and debasement of the rest of life on earth and mining the planets deep-sea natural environments, may eventually seep into more consciences. The further alienation and radicalisation of the middle classes and white collar working classes, whose income generation from their future labour will suffer further reduction or even termination in the wake of AI induced redundancy may wake up the remaining dreamers of unlimited technological and scientific progress. The dream (or fantasy) of unlimited technological progress and wealth accumulation for the few (or many) became an international nightmare in the 20th century wars of extermination, the 21st century looks set to repeat them globally.

Further examples of capitalism eliminating more middle-class humans from essential and inessential income generating production may contribute to revolutionary responses from them to that outcome as well as to the progressive disintegration of the hierarchical mass society system. With the replacement of income and profit producing jobs and careers by computer aided automation and AI the question of ‘where are the sales and profits to come from‘ has yet to be seriously considered. In this way, AI may also contribute to the eventual puncturing and deflation of the current self-inflicted, blind arrogance of elite promoted Anthropocentric capitalism. But herein lies another potential outcome of looming danger for humanities working populations. The danger lies, in the frustrated and displaced middle-classes who by using their accumulated advantages become the spokespersons and putitive ‘leaders’ of resurrecting alternative populist forms of hierarchical mass societies – masquerading as vaguely anti-capitalist. However, replacing one form of hierarchical mass society, with another form of hierarchical mass society does not constitute a social revolution. That is a topic which will be considered in ‘Technology and Social Control Part 4’, to follow.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2023)

The last in this series, Part 4. Replacing hierarchical control with hierarchical control, will follow.

At the end of part 1 of this series concerning social control and war crimes, I concluded that;

“within hierachical mass societies, not everyone was (or is) committing atrocities but many by following scheduled tasks, obeying specific orders and staying silent, were (and are) directly and indirectly enabling such atrocities to be committed by others.”.

Part 2 provides further evidence to support that observation.

Following the Leader. (Learning to obey authority.)

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, a number of psychologists in the USA, were so perturbed by the Nuremberg prosecution and defence (as noted in part 1) that they decided to test the following concept: that ordinary ‘normal’ (ie. hierarchically socialised) people could be recruited into doing abnormal things by circumstances and by being situated within a chain of hierarchical authority. In particular one psychologist, Stanley Milgram, mentored by the academic Solomon Asch, devised an experiment to test the validity and extent of the ‘I was following orders‘ defence of ordinary hierarchical mass society citizens who had carried out inhumane actions. The experiment involved recruiting a series of ordinary people to assist in what was claimed to be the development of an educational learning method. Each volunteer played the role of a teacher and another participant played the role of a learner. The teacher was told that the learner was the subject of the experiment when actually it was the teaching role that was the subject of the experiment.

The learner was attached to fake electrical wires and although not receiving an electrical shock was asked to pretend that he had received one if the teacher attempted to administer one whenever the learner got the answers wrong. The teacher was told to give the learner a list of things to remember as a task and if the learner failed to remember accurately the teacher was to press a switch ostensibly giving the learner an electric shock. This was justified to the teacher on the basis that the pain would improve the learners ability and motivation to learn. There was a range of switches facing the ‘teacher’, labelled from low, to medium, to high and on to dangerous.

The organiser of the experiment, in this case the ‘leader’ Stanley Milgram, was dressed in a white coat and explained to the ‘teacher’ that the experiment required that the electrical voltage should be increased if the learner kept failing to answer correctly. To the amazement of the originator of the experiment (and the many other university departments who later replicated it), up to 75 percent of people would push the scale of electrical shocks to the learner up to the dangerous and lethal levels despite the pretended screams and cries to stop from the pretend learners. Milgram reported that;

“Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the victim being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out. This was seen time and again in our studies and has been observed in several universities where the experiment was repeated. It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.” (Obediance to Authority’ by Stanley Milgram. Chapter 1. Emphasis added RR.)

In other words, the majority of participants had been successfully taught (and thus ‘learned’) to obey authority. The explanation for such inhuman conduct of one person against another clearly lies within the total implicit and explicit socialisation process in hierarchical mass societies, with its routine disciplines, divided loyalties, vested interests, and reinforced habits of obedience and conformity. However, along with the often seemingly benign circumstances of routine grooming/socialisation to economically and socially ‘fit in’ to hierarchical mass societies, there exists a range of punishments and rewards available to hand out by the elite ‘leaders’ in charge of them. These design factors, introduce to the process of socialisation a layer of malign purposes to the process of conformity and obedience to authority. This is something which occurs within all hierarchical mass societies.

Therefore, it should be clearly understood, that these methods and purposes are not deviations from some benign hierarchical mass society norm, carried out by some occasionally demented power-hungry psychopaths – as many blinkered hopefuls suggest they are. Historical and contemporary evidence, both written, verbal and observable confirms that severe or light punishments on the one hand, and small or huge rewards (bribes) on the other for obedience and conformity or lack of it, are not deviations from the hierarchical mass society norm – they are the continuing norm! In this particular 20th century case, the author summed up the results of these experiments in the following way;

“…the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority. A variety of inhibitions against disobeying authority come into play and successfully keep the person in his place. (ibid)

This not only explains how the authority of the Nazi Fuhrer (leader) controlled state-authorities were able to programme the total war conquest of other nations and organise their final solutions for extermination of disabled people plus Slavs and Jews, but much more. It explains why the allied armies and civilians also became willing agents of Churchills war cabinet and Commander (fuhrer) ‘Bomber Harris’s, brutal area carpet bombing campaign of German cities, the intentional holocaust fire bombing of Dresden, and the US Presidential (leader) unopposed authorising the double Atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The evidence suggests that the vast majority of all hierarchical mass society citizens have been (and are being) taught to and learning to obey authority rather than their own more humane actions and attitudes. However, before considering this aspect of obedience to authority further it is worth considering some other, equally interesting/chilling social experiments, which nonetheless illustrate the problems of human alienation and alienated behaviour within hierarchical mass societies.

The previously noted mentor of Stanley Milgram, Solomon Asch, conducted experiments on conforming behaviour in which peer group pressure could actually result in people disbelieving their own eyes and conforming to expressed opinions that were not their own and which were clearly and verifiable false. The Solomon Asch experiments involved presenting a line of a standard length and three other lines, two of which were the same length as the standard and one a different length.

The participants were asked to identify the line that matched the standard one. All participants taking part on their own quickly identified the correct match, however when they were part of a group – the rest of whom were covertly asked to deliberately identify an incorrect line as matching the standard line – most participants in the experiment eventually altered their decisions to conform to the group judgement. The results were clear.

“The subject hears the unanimous verdict of other subjects (three or more is all it takes) that one of the unequal lines is in fact , equal to the standard. The group judgement contradicts what the subject sees clearly with his or her own eyes.” (The Legacy of Solomon Asch. Edited by Irvin Rock. Section 1).

This indicates that influential opinion, advocating fake news/opinion succeeded in influencing people away from observing or seeking the actual facts, way before fake news became the standard operating procedures for official and unofficial influencers. In a variation of the above experiment it was recorded in the same section of the above book that;

“…ninety percent of the minority subjects went with the majority, shunning the other correct alternative”. (ibid)

In other words ninety percent of group participants ignored the reality of their own senses and agreed with a false ‘fake’ reality promoted by a group of manipulating influencers. This phenomenon became known as peer group pressure in that within most social settings there can be pressure from peers group members as well as authority figures to adjust to or coordinate ones own perspective of reality to ‘conform’ to the perspective of the ‘leader’ or others. The motive being in order to attempt to achieve a “mutually shared” view of reality, or at least to avoid group friction and dispute.

In such group dynamics, the social nature of human experience attempts to overcome any competition and alienation within hierarchical mass societies by denying it and by the subordination or sublimation of ones own view of reality in order to feel a sense of belonging, (however tenuously) to a part of the community. That part of the community being the hoped for source of some form of support to be gained or threat reduced. These two experiments confirm the reality of hierarchical mass society pressures that most of us experience daily, weekly and yearly, from our childhood to our adulthood .

Both the patterns of obedience to authority (ie. following a powerful or ‘charismatic’ leader) and the wish, (or need) to conform to peer group ‘common sense’, ensures that any changes or challenges to the open or covert oppressions endemic in hierarchical mass society living (from sexism, racism, homophobia, social inequality, air pollution, low pay, state orchestrated violence at home and abroad, etc.) are frequently accepted or ignored.

Consequently, any changes not directly and consistently championed by authority or sanctioned by the ‘leader’, will in general only be championed by those few ‘misfits’ who can manage to summon up the resources needed to resist authority. In most instances, the rest of the population will simply follow the leader or influencers or simply follow the majority. This partly explains why so little is being currently done to stop climate change by fossil fuel burning, air and water pollution by over-production and over consumption of raw materials, commodities and leisure services.

But missing from such socio-psychological analysis which are primarily directed at the masses, are the distorting effects of hierarchical mass society living on the humanity of the ruling elites and their leadership contenders. With the exception of Xerses, Ramassees, Alexander, Nero, Caligula, Vlad the Impaler, Charlemagne, Hitler, Mussolini and a few other power-hungry demented individuals, ‘leading’ hierarchical mass societies, little of use has been published on the social psychological effects of the dehumanisation of elites in general and leaders in particular.

Of course, not all of the histories of thousands of elites, from ancient to modern times will include executing their own fathers, mothers, brothers and children who got in their way or exterminated whole tribes of dissenters who failed to pay tribute or taxes on time. However, the effects on leaders (and politicians) of living ‘above‘ and ‘beyond‘ the rest of their communities they rule, takes it’s own toll on their individual and collective humanity. In general the top leaders only hear what their lackeys think the leader wants to hear. Deep down, they also know that their inevitable inabilities and shortcomings negate their own pretense and any public expectation of them being above average or even ‘great. This socialised distortion of their individual and social essence, cannot do anything other than distort their humanity away from any semblance of a natural and un-groomed form.

Having the best of everything whilst those around you are treated many times worse than your favourite horse (eg. Caligula), shoe cupboard (eg. Immelda) or corgi dogs’ (eg. Elizabeth 2) must numb or suppress ‘normal’ human emotions away from the reality of social inter-dependence of all. Relying on the masses to supply electricity, water, food, clothing, transport, sewage removal, cleaning, etc., whilst not seriously caring how they survive cannot but create a constantly schitzophrenic intellect when they regard the rest of the hierarchical mass society form of which they are the parasitic ‘establishment‘. And this is just to reference the very tops of the hierarchical mass society pyramid these elites sit upon.

Below them are the elite enablers of their exalted positions who are able to legally and informally extort high government salaries, for mediocre abilities (ie. for managing! Brexit, Pandemics and school building repairs etc) and milking the Parliamentary system (consultancies and cash for questions) for Covid contracts and bloated expenses. Mediocrity, and lead swinging of course permeates all classes in hierarchical mass societies, but only among the elite in such societies, can mediocrity be rewarded so handsomely and undeservedly. Rambling speeches and articles, delivered by well placed elites, (Blair and Johnson etc.) containing little or no rigour, rectitude or relevance can attract hundreds of thousands of pounds per lecture or per article.

In contrast the pay for the obvious rigour, rectitude and relevance of essential workers such as the majority of nurses, teachers, care workers, shop workers, transport drivers and firefighters etc., can barely keep pace with current rent and mortgage rises. The elite at all levels, are intelligent enough to know the unfairness of the existing system and the physical and mental damage this hierarchical mass society form of existence does to all classes within the system, yet they prefer to keep their relative privileges intact by perpetuating the existing hierarchical system.

This preference includes perpetuating the nonsensical myth that to ‘follow the leadership’ of a bumbling blond-haired clown, a pint swilling Knight of the Realm, or a geriatric candidate for a care home, is better than following no leader at all. Yet as any orchestra or complex organisation constantly demonstrates, the rank and file doing the actual jobs can do their tasks just as well – or even better – when not hampered by someone who thinks they know better that the collective intelligence and experience of the workers actually staffing the public service or manufacturing enterprise.

In concluding this second part of a look at Technology and Social Control, it is worth reminding ourselves that even after thousands of years of ethnic, cultural and gender discrimination and exploitation within and by hierarchical mass socienties, no one is actually born with the discriminatory attitudes of racism, sexism, or ageism etc. Nor is anyone born as an arrogant, supercilious elite tax avoider and exploiter. Furthermore, no one is ever born with the characteristics of an obedient, gullible follower of some self-deluded crackpot or incompetent leader.

The stubborn fact is that each of these characteristics have to be taught and learned during the socialisation and grooming processes occuring within hierarchical mass societies. Moreover, these divisive characteristics have to not only be encouraged and supported but also repeatedly enabled by rewards and punishments in such a consistent way that many people come to embody them throughout their adolescent and adult life.

Similarly, no one is born a capitalist or a worker, they are subsequently groomed and placed in these socio-economic positions by a family and class system which is based upon controlling an occupational, class based status and perpetuating an understanding of what the mode of production they have inherited considers is ‘business as usual’. Consequently, if the dominant message from authority and peer group influence is to continue business as usual – and business as usual is the mass production and consumption of commodities and the mass burning of Petro-chemical based fuels – then most citizens will conform to that so-called form of wisdom and ‘intelligence’. The majority will not fully understanding the actual and future potential cul-de-sac humanity and the rest of life on earth is being escorted down.

This pattern of hierarchical mass society socialisation also helps to explain why those few activists who do persistently advocate change are easily labelled as anti-social ‘rebels’, by elites, by their supporters and those by those existentially trapped in the hierarchical mass society rat-race. This pattern of response to anti-capitalist activism is also the basis for the following conclusion. That until a sufficiently large critical-mass of national and international citizens cohere around a revolutionary-humanist perspective on revolutionising mass societies, very little will change. The need to actively commit to a future which re-balances the human relationship with it’s own species and the rest of life on earth and consistently adheres to it, has yet to emerge.

The relatively large destructive impacts of climate change and species loss in many regions of the world, on their own, are creating no significant alteration or transformation of the current industrialised path of inter and intra species alienation, death and destruction. Faith in ‘leaders’ of hierarchical mass societies, to sort out problems they and their systems are responsible for, is as self-delusional as the leaders themselves. Elites convincing themselves that they are part of the solution rather than the problem is itself a symptom of alienation – this time also from reality.

Roy Ratcliffe. (September 2023.)

Part 3. ‘Profiting from Death, Destruction and Extinction’, will follow soon.

Part 1. Fundamentals.

Beneath all the accumulated cultural baggage (and garbage) erected on the foundations of hierarchical mass societies, now dominated by the capitalist mode of production, the most important factors determining life on earth in general and human life in particular are frequently ignored or insufficiently considered. These basic fundamentals comprise of the internal relationships of each species individual to each other (the social dimension) and their relationships to their means of production and reproduction (the bio-chemical dimension). The phases or stages of life on earth, which I abbreviate here and elsewhere as (N-M-G-R + A-D) are those which cover both of these two these dimensions. Without adequate bio-chemical Nutrition (N) there can be no Metabolic processes and synthesis (M) and without (M) there will be little or no Growth (G). Furthermore, without sociability in some form, there would be no sexual Reproduction (R), and without the first three stages being completed and species reproduction (R), taking place, there would be no continuation of life – only extinction. Ageing (A) ensures death (D) and death ensures the recycling of all organic materials into (N) for other forms of life on earth  – and so life goes on.  In general we humans may not think of life on earth in this way, but perhaps we should. The life-cycle stages represented by (N-M-G-R + A-D) are the foundation of all forms of life on earth.

Outside of the current hierarchical mass society forms, the ‘natural’ affinity of human and non-human social animals for forms of non-hierarchical social living, means that when infant and childhood dependence has ended, the continued association between humans is naturally voluntary and negotiated, rather than socially controlled or manipulated. Indeed, before the onset of agriculturally based hierarchical mass society formations, the human species was no exception in this regard. For many hundreds of thousands of years, hunting and gathering by humans was sustainable because, like other animal, predators or grazers, obtaining nutrition was ‘natural’ and primarily took place for reasonably immediate consumption only. Until the colonial era, most of global humanity existed in this way. The few remaining 21st century hunter-gatherer communities (approximately fifty worldwide) still maintain that sustainable relationship with nature. However, with the onset of hierarchical mass society systems, in certain regions, the history of humanities evolutionary journey became diverted into a series of elite determined, self-alienating modes of association and production, egotistically labelled ‘civilisation’.

Consequently, one of the most important factors determining the continued existence of the agriculturally-based, hierarchical forms of human social existence has been the techniques and technology of social control. Controlling the human and non-human factors (nature) involved in the mass production and mass consumption of the inorganic and organic materials needed for large-scale human and animal life to survive within them, became a fundamental condition of these systems. The non-human animal and plant resources needed to be controlled and regulated, both to ensure the regular availability and sufficiency of (N); likewise the availability and sufficiency of the human skill and energy needed to process these resources also needed to be controlled and regulated. Therefore, the plant and animal resources were controlled by the early technological means of fencing, planting, reaping, storing, cooking and consuming. In the case of animal nutrition, the additional means of control included shackling, chaining and inflicting pain through sensitive areas such as the nose, the mouth, the neck and the buttocks, before slaughtering, dismembering and consuming.

Indeed, in hierarchical mass societies, the technical means of controlling human beings when required to labour as slaves, serfs or peasants, in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome for example, replicated all the above noted control measures applied to the ‘domestication’ of animals. For until these unfortunate captured humans were sufficiently ‘tamed’ to work for ‘the system’ without being whipped or tortured and without frequently running away, the technology of animal shackling, imprisoning and whipping was used to control the human labouring population. This was something repeated during the colonial era. Historically, an alternative, less-violent technique of domesticating human beings, was also invented and this is usually referred to as the process of ‘socialisation’. Nevertheless, socialisation incorporates essentially the same technological features (less the shackles – but not always) as domestication does for animals. Socialisation in general is the process of successfually adapting the behaviour of social individuals to the then dominant hierarchical mass society mode of production, exchange and consumption needed to obtain the organic and inorganic materials needed for mass society living.

The popular biblically derived phrase; ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, indicates that from from early to later times in hierarchical mass societies, sticks, fists and whips were the ‘hard’ technologies used to exert control over young and old, male and female, for any minor infringements of socially prescribed etiquette or behaviour. For major infringements, the long history of instruments of imprisonment, torture and the associated techniques of capital punishment, indicate what were the common hierarchical mass society technologies behind the more severe aspects of control, within them. However, ‘softer’ forms of control have also long been exerted by developing the techniques of reward, disapproval and reprimand. These are the additional social means by which animals as well as people can be persuaded to metaphorically or literally jump through hoops or over hurdles that they would otherwise choose to avoid.

In other words socialisation within hierarchical mass societies also involves intellectual and cultural techniques which amount to a meta form of institutionalised grooming. In this sense, all citizens who manage to be relatively comfortably ‘fit in’ to ancient and modern hierarchical mass societies, have been successfully socialised or groomed. Those who are not successfully socialised/groomed or resist its forms of control and remain ‘alienated’ by the hierarchical mass society system are considered by those who are, as the various intellectual and social ‘misfits’ – which interestingly, have always existed in one form or another. In modern, capitalist based, hierarchical mass societies the ‘mis-fits’ often become ‘rebels with or without cause’ alcoholics, drug takers, self-harmers, criminals and are to be found among the occupants of prison wards, psychiatric suites, park benches, shop doorways or members of gangs and terrorist cells.

Although blaming these various resisters and ‘victims’ of the hierarchical mass society system is the reactionary position of the ‘establishments’ self-defense mechanism, their existence is revealing. Adding up all numbers of such modern alienated and partly or totally un-socialised citizens, would reveal a staggering figure. It  would also expose the magnitude of the relative and absolute human rejection of the hierarchical mass society ‘system’. Such numbers would of course also reveal the fact that despite all the high intensity efforts of persuasion, rewards and subtle or severe punishments at their disposal, the elites who overehelmingly control and benefit from the hierarchical mass society systems are unable to reconcile large numbers of human beings to their system of discrimination, exploitation and oppression.

Yet it also remains a fact that many more can be reconciled to a life of 24/7 drudgery serving and supporting the elites within hierarchical mass societies, by much softer techniques. They can be persuaded to overlook the detrimental effect on their own and loved ones health and well being and to the increasing detriment of the planets natural balance of, air, water, soil and other life forms. Thus, it becomes obvious from a study of the history and evolution of hierarchical mass societies that in addition to force and compulsion the human species – being an intellectually developed species – have also been controlled by the successful means of intellectual and emotional manipulation directed from pulpit, classroom, state edict or political benches. Of course, the success of schooling and propaganda, is itself almost entirely dependent upon being constantly backed up by reward, disapproval and a sufficiently large  range and severity of punishments.

Therefore, the history of hierarchical mass societies is also the parallel history of the elite specialists who use physical, technical and intellectual means of identifying, enforcing, rationalising and applying various technical means of social control. The purpose of control is so that the hierarchical mass society system, which predominantly functions for the benefit of the elites, is able to continue. Evidence from the records of history, indicates that these techniques and practices are independent of the particular mode of production in place at the time. It is also independent of whatever the ethnicity, gender, religion or politics of the current elite happens to be! By their very alienated and alienating socio-economic structures, the functioning of hierarchical mass society systems, whether during the Fuedal, Capitalist, Fascist, Liberal, Religious, Socialist, or Communist iterations, all need to be constantly controlled by an elite and its members – animal and human – governed and disciplined. I will consider the latest non-physical high-tech improvements to the way elites exert control over the, intellectual and emotional relationships of the masses under their control in a later part 3 of this series.

Meanwhile it is worth considering the results of a social and psychological appraisal of human responses to events triggered by an elite determined competitive (death-agony) struggle between rival capitalist based hierarchical mass society power-blocs, during the 20th century. In the aftermath of the Second World War during the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi elites for genocide and Crimes against Humanity, the prosecuting side (the allies) depicted the Nazi elite and their followers as despicable, degenerate sadistic monsters. In contrast many of the defending Nazis at the trial claimed they were only ordinary men and women just following orders. Which of these opposed depictions was the most accurate became an issue for some people at the time, but one which had to wait until later when anger and recriminations had died down. A more accurate understanding of participants war conduct would need to be obtained by considering the alienating and alienated reality of most – if not all – members of all hierarchical mass societies. The question to be addressed later was did the particular socio-economic systems effect its members in both these ways and in a number of others. For example, it was obvious that there are those in all classes, genders and ethnicities who become racist and elitist; there are those who become misogynist and controlling.

There are also those who become intolerant and brutal, others who become gentle and as we shall see there are many who just ‘borrow’ their thinking and activities from influencers and therefore follow trends, go along with the crowd and those who unthinkingly obey orders. During and in the aftermath of this trial, the commonly articulated demonising of the ordinary German population, many of whom directly or indirectly contributed willingly to the worst horrors of the war effort, as inhuman monsters, was criticised by only a few on the allied side. In particular, a female academic Hannah Arendt eventually coined the term ‘banality of evil‘ and produced a lengthy book entitled ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’. The term banality was an indirect reference to the extensive divisions of labour within hierarchical mass societies. These ‘normalised’ divisions within such societies exist in such a way that whole societies once engaged in modern warfare easily became complicit in everything that happens. The extensive divisions of labour in hierarchical mass societies, combined with the highly efficient technical levels of production of the essentials for living, enable an extensive specialisation of public and hidden roles to be developed and sustained by elite interests.

The war effort in Germany, during 1914-18 and 1939-45, was organised in such a way that a clerk doing nothing more than processing railway time tables was complicit in enabling the railway system to not only deliver food, but to also transport bombs, shells, bullets as well as Jewish and socialist victims to death camps and gas chambers. Similarly, the canteen workers providing meals for concentration camp guards and the Gestapo did not themselves abuse, kill or gas any victims, but they enabled other individuals within the system to remain healthy and energetic whilst following orders to do so and others to carry out the brutal bombing of civilians and other ‘specialists’ to inflict torture or acts of extermination. The same hierarchical mass society systems allowed sequences of specialists to design, manufacture and deliver the most brutal forms of mass killing by chemical, biological and eventually by atomic means.

But before any reader becomes myopic or nationalistically prejudiced it should be remembered that not only the citizens of Germany, Italy and Japan were engaged in their own war effort in such a routine socialised way, but so too where the citizens of the UK, the USA and their various allies. All hierarchical mass societies – on all sides of these wars against other countries – had their workers producing bombs, shells and bullets and their transport clerks processing their delivery to those in their armed forces who then followed orders and aimed them directly at civilians. If war is evil, and I suggest all torture and killing can be so classified, then all sides in both those wars demonstrated their own versions of Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’. Personally, I prefer to classify torture and killing as the ‘banality (or tyranny) of the normal’ within the ancient and modern hierarchical mass society formations, I have studied.  Furthermore, the phenomenon continued to exist for the rest of the 20th century, in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., and continues in the 21st. In other words, in hierachical mass societies, not everyone was (or is) committing atrocities but many by following scheduled tasks, obeying specific orders and staying silent, were (and are) directly and indirectly enabling such atrocities to be committed by others.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2023.

(Part 2. ‘Following the Leader’. Will be published shortly.)

A) Blame things on the Virus.

Most current economic pundits seem to be blaming the present state of the world economy upon the interference in human affairs of a tiny speck of bio- chemical organic matter (a virus) plus the reaction of politicians to its spread (the pandemic).  Blaming something external – at this point on time, the Virus – has become for the petite-bourgeoisie a convenient scape goat for the ills of the capitalist mode of production. The rest of us are supposed to be unaware of or ignore the fact that this and many other viruses have been circulating among bats and few other animals in some remote parts of the world, for millions of years, before human profit-seeking interference in one form or another, picked it up and transported it along the global ‘just-in-time’ or ‘gain of purpose’ supply lines. What petite-bourgeois politicians and economic pundits don’t yet understand is that the full depth of a world wide economic collapse has yet to occur.

For in actual fact, the economic stagnation which has followed the Covid pandemic is merely a postponed continuation of what had occurred before the pandemic after the financial collapse in 2008. By then, there was already a massive neo-liberal overproduction of commodities and capital and a further reduction of the general rate of profit, which apart from some particular profitable sectors, had led to speculative financial, commercial and production based bankruptcies and unemployment. This reduction in employment led in turn to a reduction in both purchasing and investment activity and general demand. The well established capitalist economic cycle of boom, slump, and collapse, had already entered its slump phase before the microscopic bio-chemical viral life form and covid lock-downs both accelerated and sustained the arrival of the slump phase.  The covid payment schemes during the various lock downs had propped up some aspects of the food and basics areas of the capitalist economic model and thus prolonged the slump stage whilst postponing the unfolding of the collapse.

However, it is the case that many media  commentators actually think capitalism is a stable economic system and that it only gets messed up by natural or political interference and thus they focus only on one aspect. Lacking an understanding of the system as a whole, it seems obvious to them that insufficient demand is the problem.  But they simplistically identify this continuing lack of demand as having been caused by the political response to the covid pandemic and a post lock-down muted, or lack-luster ‘bounce back’. Those who think like that therefore wish to prompt politicians to stimulate growth and repeatedly say so. Consequently, politicians of left and right, who also fail to understand the capitalist system often agree and make there own feeble recommendations for stimulating growth. However, none of these elite citizens of modern hierarchical mass societies entirely control economics, even those employed within authoritarian state systems.  Therefore, as those in UK engineering used to say to me as an apprentice, these optimists are sort of ‘urinating into the wind’ with the obvious blow-back consequences.

The history of the capitalist mode of production suggests that renewed incremental growth after a protracted slump phase cannot return until the collapse phase has persisted long enough to reduce the productive capacity and its exchange value substantially below its previous boom phase. Many indirect and direct investors in capitalist commodity production know this and therefore, will not sufficiently invest in production when they estimate that extra production cannot be sold sufficiently well to create profits. Consequently they will park their capital somewhere safe (in gold, government bonds or property) or they will use it to speculate in financial markets for example. But of course financial markets do not produce anything material. It only  produces winners and losers of the same mass of value tokens, thrown into financial circulation. When someone gains there someone else loses, or many may also lose if currencies are devalued by one means or another. With some exceptions this is basically the economic situation which has been with the global economy since the financial crisis of 2008.

B) Blame things on the Financial Crash.

That 2008 crash itself was already a symptom of the previous overproduction of capital, which on the basis of vast amounts of credit and cheap foreign labour, had saturated the available production and financial possibilities and encouraged fraudulent ponsey type investment vehicles. These financial ‘vehicles’ and ‘instruments’ were created, precisely because there was too much liquid capital chasing too few profitable investment opportunities  in relatively ‘safe’  illiquid assets, such as buildings and means of production. Therefore, futures, currency speculation and mortgage-based paper instruments, became an alternative outlet for surplus capital. Nevertheless, speculation and financial risk taking exists in forms other than ‘financial instruments’ and trading in shares and with similar predictable results. Speculation is invariably accompanied by loans (to firms and even to governments) and thus the capitalist system in order to continue its chains of debt obligations, relies on the need for an ultimate repayment. Therefore, when the receiver of the loan cannot repay, bankruptsy follows and the debt is written off and/or someone else has to pay.

All these outcomes occurred during and after the 2008 debt crisis. First, the banks had their debts completely or partly written off or reduced; second, the introduction of general austerity measures and the raising tax revenues were the means by which everyone else payed something to keep the bankruptcies to a level lower than was otherwise needed. It should be remembered, in this context, that governments, such as Greece, had borrowed huge amounts of money to keep itself functioning and also faced default and/or bankruptcy. To avoid this outcome the political and financial elite in Greece was persuaded by the financial institutions to restructure its economy to the benefit of the rich (who bought tangible assets cheap) and at the expense of the ordinary citizen and the already poor, who found everything had become dearer. Greece was not the first country and will not be the last to travel along that particular trajectory. A similar repayment and re-structuring crisis had occurred in Argentina in 2001 and of course an even earlier one in Germany at the end of the 1914-18 war.

The Versailles Treaty imposed by the allied forces of the USA, UK and France, caused an almost complete collapse of the German economy. This collapse placed such a socio-economic burden on the ordinary people that millions of them – seeing no help coming from other political tendencies – eventually backed a megalomaniac at the head of a radical racist German National Socialist Party. Not long after this when the Nazi Party became strong enough, the outcome resulted in the Second World War. I ask the reader to bear with me for a little longer in this slight historical detour, because I suggest history may well be going to repeat itself – again! The UK winner of the war  – in terms of the welfare of working classes – was also an immense loser. I have dragged the tip of this two-world-war history iceburg into this article because at least a substantial part of what happened then, is beginning to happen again. An important thing to understand is that the debt from the war loans plus the Marshal Plan reconstruction loans that the UK elites had been given from America were also largely repayed by the working classes of the UK, Europe and the ex colonies.

C) Blame things on the War.

Consequently, long periods of post-war austerity from 1945 to the 1960’s ensued and the UK population was yearly paying the USA elite lending sources for most of the remaining 20th century. The ‘special relationship’ of the UK to the USA was in part the troubled ‘servile’ relationship of a debtor to a rich debt collector. Now if we zoom forward to the present and we consider the much celebrated billions of dollars, pounds or Euros’ of aid to Ukraine’s war effort from America, UK and Europe, we should not imagine that these billion dollar bundles of military hardware and supplies are wonderful acts of an amazing charitable disposition. Despite some grants, which may or may not be eventually repaid, the bulk of these vastly expensive resources are in the form of long-term loans and thus long-term debt, which even in the event of a Ukraine victory some of them  may never be directly repaid. Add to that, the fact that the destruction of Ukraine buildings and infrastructure by Russian munitions is so vast that Ukraine will need further billions of loans (guess who from?) to replace these before anything borrowed can be repaid.

Now at this point, it doesn’t take a university degree to figure out that Ukraine now and in the future, has become  a servile debtor to the US, UK and Europe. Like the UK and Europe before them their subservient status will continue for a few generations into the future and any unpaid debts and loans by Ukraine will be clawed back from the working populations of the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere. So, although on the intellectualised surface of events it appears that the workers of Ukraine are courageously fighting for their own countries autonomy, there is a darker perspective and narrative playing out below the propaganda. In fact whenever workers are fighting for their country – when it exists in the form of a hierarchical mass society – they are fighting to be controlled and exploited by one elite rather than another. And the actual rather than the imagined difference between rival ruling elites in the long term may well be extremely minute. A Thatcher or a Blair; a Trump or a Biden; a Stalin or a Putin, are hardly inspiring choices for working people to make. Indeed, in this war or any other, under the present capitalist system, the least oppressive outcome will probably be the most positive outcome possible.

But even such a slight positive outcome is not certain. This is because if the present and future chain of inter-dependent Ukraine war and reconstruction debts, eventually trigger a 1929 or 2008 banking type crisis, then the entite international system will likely collapse and civil wars and/or a third world war becomes possible – if not probable. That is what capitalism is and does and the owners of capitalist investments, being dependent upon them know this. Their dependency means they can see no alternative to employing capital directly for profitable production or lending it in interest bearing loans. This is why although the planet and all its living inhabitants are suffering from climate change, widespread air, sea and land pollution and key species loss, due to massive overproduction and consumption,  they continue to invest when and where possible in unlimited production, transport, commerce and war. Like drug takers who know the drug they are obtaining is killing them and destroying their families and neighbourhoods, they are so dependent upon wealth accumulation and consumption that they just cannot stop obtaining and consuming it. They are even prepared to take everyone else in their communities down with them in order to maintain their own particular ‘highs’ of conspicuous consumption.

D) Blame things on the next Symptom.

If and when this future collapse finally arrives, petite-bourgeois  politicians, economists and media will no doubt continue to blame  it on something other than  the capitalist system itself. Unless there is another pandemic, the virus will have by then outlived its usefulness. The war in Ukraine has already been used as an added scapegoat for higher food prices and taxes. Climate change, fire or flood disaster, are probably the next candidates lined up along the corridors of power waiting to be chosen as front runners for a future employment in rationalising or excusing a system collapse. Anything but the inherent contradictions of the hierarchical economic system itself will be used. Yet all the above, war, climate change, excessive forest and grassland fires, abnormal floods, like the covid Pandemic are and will be direct or indirect symptoms of the economic system’s over-production crises. Yes of course these symptoms will also amplify any future crisis but they will not be the cause of it.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2023)

“A Lesson too late for the learning?”

Large swathes of the world are currently either being burnt to destruction by grassland and forest fires, flooded away by swollen rivers and incessant downpours, or being bombed into rubble by orders of some unhinged military or political elites. All of this mayhem is creating immediate devastation for people, animals and vegetation. Even many of the so-called advanced countries where these fires, floods and fighting are occuring are being plunged into pre-industrial and pre-medieval conditions as electricity, fresh water and food supplies are compromised or totally interrupted. The much depleted modern emergency services (fire, flood and health) are stretched beyond their capacity to fully respond. The much celebrated 20th century precarious normality can now be gone in the space of a day or two!

The focus of media attention is of course, primarily on the places where these disasters are occuring, but the repercussions of these extreme climate events will be much wider. The world’s climate, like the worlds economic system is globally connected. A loss of arable land by fire, flood (or war) in one region has geographical implications and time dependent repercussions upon other regions. The current mode of production dominated by capital and capitalists has been more concerned with speculation and immediate returns on investments to have bothered to make sure sufficient defences and reserves are available to deal with such frequently predicted disasters. It will therefore, take time to make devastated land fertile again and time to repair accidentally and deliberately destroyed buildings and infrastructure before production and distribution of essentials can return to pre-disaster levels.

In the collapsed  intervals between, it will not be the elite who suffer. Indeed, given the current climate instability, pre-disaster levels will only return if these predictable disasters are not followed too closely by another. The present unprepared situation in 2023, like the predicted, but unprepared Covid Pandemic crisis, should come as no surprise. Disasters such as these have been warned about for years, sometimes decades, before unfolding,  but governments and oppositions comprised of pro-capitalist elites have preferred to ensure that the future profits and dividends for themselves and their supporters are secure rather than their countries citizens, their infrastructure and services.

Bailing out their banker buddies with billions after the 2008 financial crash was preferred by elites to ensuring billions were spent on robust sea, river and fire defences and that emergency services were amply staffed and adequately paid. During the late 20th and early 21st century decades when the systems elites were creating the means for the number of millionaires and billionaires to mushroom, the basic urban infrastructure was neglected, jobs for workers were reduced, or made precarious and intentionally under valued and underpaid.

The same period witnessed repeated climate warnings and dire predictions by scientists which were denied or discredited by elites of all persuasions until the evidence could no longer be denied. The tactic was then changed into engaging in a period of protracted ‘pie crusts and promises’ discussions and delays interspersed by the annual rounds of COP meetings. This was a tried and tested strategy of procrastination for the governing elite have ensured that the capitalist mode of production is designed and modified to enable the needs of capital to dominate over the needs of humanity.

So despite the widespread knowledge in the late 20th century, of the progressive deterioration and pollution of air, water and soil quality, plus the intentional and unintentional culling of essential insects, plants and animals over the past fifty or more years, the systems elites and their supporters have ploughed on literally, metaphorically and industrially, by encouraging production and consumption regardless of the consequences for life on earth in general. The current elite strategy of pretending to be promoting a solution to climate change, pollution and ecological destruction by ‘green’ production methods is all form and no substance.

The maximum amount of production and consumption possible to facilitate the acquisition of profits and to accumulate wealth is still the elites reason d’ etra. In addition to the elite motive of uncontrolled greed, too few of the global population are aware of, or concerned about, the future of life on earth, to bother with the serious study of the socio-economic system and to trouble themselves with the level of activist commitment needed to produce a radical transformation. The hierarchical mass society system and its commoditised rewards has captured humanity, both physically, intellectually and emotionally. The desire for unlimited electrical energy has become a drug for many modern users; the desire for it has now become a ‘conditioned’ need and so any risk to ensure a present and future ‘fix’ will be contemplated. Even some on the left have hopped on the nuclear energy bandwagon on the basis that they would prefer future generations to suffer further nuclear contamination rather than themselves make do with less electricity now or an intermittent supply in future.

The distractions of immediate gratification, entitlement and self-satisfaction has saturated the daily thinking and activities of overwhelming numbers of all classes. The consequences therefore, are eerily predictable. The elite and their supporters in the middle classes will continue to keep the present system producing and consuming whilst ignoring or covering up and fudging the problems and avoiding radical solutions whilst they do so. It is obvious that humanity cannot and would not want to entirely undo the complex division of labour and technology within mass society formations, but humanity needs to do something to bring production and consumption into an ecologically balanced relationship with the rest of life on earth before too much imbalance triggers much larger extinction events.

The obvious first step would be to end the ability of the class who are the key instigators of the process of ever increasing production and consumption to continue to pollute air, sea and land, to cut down forests, and dig open cast mining scars wherever they see fit. Since it is the ruling elites, who through ownership and control of capital investments and the technical means of production, are the key instigators of ever increasing production and consumption, these capitalist organisations need to be prevented from doing so. Furthermore, since from decades of overwhelming evidence they clearly will not voluntarily reduce production and consumption to a level compatible with radically reducing climate warming, and ending ecological destruction and pollution, they will need to be forced to do so. However, as this class has all the organs of influence and power within its control, this will not be an easy or simple task.

Consequently, preventing them from continuing business as usual will require a strong and determined popular movement with a clear intention to remove them and their ilk from those decision-making positions of power and influence. Indeed, any such radical movement would also need to remove all decision-making positions of power and influence so that the wielding of power – in all its manifestations – (economic, financial, political and military), by a minority can no longer be used to take mass society communities in directions that have not recieved unanimous approval by all citizens. However, such radical revolutions do not occur as a conspiracy of a few so-called revolutionaries, they are the result of large scale dissatisfaction among populations who have tried to improve their situation over long periods of time without success.

When dissatisfaction has turned into desperation for a ‘critical mass’ of people and existential problems simultaneously exist for the wider  masses, then a revolutionary movement can start to form. A study of past top-down revolutionary changes, (eg .the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution) suggests that an additional factor to the above internal tensions which can trigger revolutionary events are irreconcilable antagonisms and splits occuring within the ruling elite. However, even then, as in the Arab Spring, maintaining or creating positions of power and leaving a new elite in control of those positions, does not solve the inherited problems for the natural world in general or for the bulk of humanity in particular.

An additional, conservative factor in the 20th and 21st centuries, is that the elites have now created an international brotherhood of alliances and mutual pacts of cooperation and defence such as United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, (NATO). Although these are ostensibly agreements to defend each others hierarchical mass society system against foreign overthrow and conquest, they can easily be used to defend each members hierarchical systems against internal attempts at overthrowing any hierarchical system. These alliances have been used this way in the past and will be undoubtedly used in that way again. Furthermore, it is a matter of historical record that for close to a century, national elites have been characterising organised internal dissent as the work of foreign countries or their willing agents among the indigenous populations.

In the event of serious attempts to oust the elite or change the system there is every possibility that these elite international institutions will be used to prevent or reverse such a revolutionary transformation. There would therefore, need to be a considerable atrophy or dissolution of such elite alliances for a challenge to the hierarchical mass society formation in any particular country to prove successful. Until such processes have matured and decayed sufficiently the hierarchical mass society system dominated by capitalist elites will continue until some form of ecological or climate collapse will occur. Indeed, I suggest that what is most likely to happen before enough people (a critical mass) emerges prepared to advocate a revolutionary change to social forms of production, is a catastrophic system collapse either due to another destructive world war or a domino like series of ecologically or climatically triggered catastrophes.

I would love to be wrong in this latter regard but either way, in the wake of any form of existential catastrophe, or an unexpected revolutionary change of socio-economic direction, it will be essential to any future construction or reconstruction of human mass societies that the knowledge of, and lessons learned from, the past and present are preserved and made widely available. It would be a tragedy of immense proportions for humanity to continue to make the same tragic historic mistakes yet again and replicate the past pattern of recreating yet more hierarchical mass societies on the self-destroyed ruins of previous hierarchical mass societies. The alternative form of mass society to a hierarchical one is obvious from the logic of the form itself. Since the skills and activities of the whole community are needed to allow mass societies to function, so the whole community should ensure that an effective means of collective decision making – by the whole community – is designed and implemented.

Such a collective decision making process would be the obvious arena for all proposals and actions to ensure that present and future production levels should not pollute, damage or destroy any part of the remaining life on earth support system which had survived and to restore as much as possible of what has already been lost. Such a community led programme of action producing goods and services for need rather than greed would solve the problem of unemployment for there would also be a probable desire to correct all the past neglect and restore to life on earth what has been intentionally and unintentionally taken away from life on earth. Producing for sustainability and restoration of lost balance instead of production geared to elite private wealth accumulation would create worthwhile jobs for all along with reduced hours of working.

As the most conscious and knowledgeable species of life on earth, the time is well overdue for humanity to re-establish an acute awareness of our responsibility to understand and protect the complexity and inter-dependence of life on earth. Therefore, every new recruit to viewing humanity from the ecologically sustainable standpoint of the rest of life on earth, rather than viewing life on earth from the unsustainable standpoint of current anthropocentric humanity, will become a vitally important part of the tasks ahead. I suggest the further evolution of our bio-chemically conscious, self-conscious human species into a non-discriminatory supporter of life on earth – in all its varied forms – is a more sustainable and worthy alternative than continuing to be the equivalent of a self-indulgent, alienated species bent consciously or unconsciously on destroying all the organisms on its own planet.

“The times, they are a changing”.

The starting and ending sub titles are borrowed from my teen age memories of singing Bob Dillon songs.

Roy Ratcliffe (July 2023)

This final article on this series of misunderstandings of Marx, by ‘Marxists’ and other commentators who misunderstand aspects of Marx’s research, concerns the idea that Marx proposed a definite economic mode of production to replace capitalism. It is a common mistake made by system designing ideologists on the left, particularly talented intellectual ones. Even among the most sincere of them, there is often a patronising wish to save working people from the trouble of having to work things out for themselves and from having to evalulate and change things when they get them wrong.

The elitist assumption, taken from the bourgeois and petite-bourgeois playbooks, is that the mass of ordinary people will need a blue-print produced by experts of various kinds, which they can then meticulously follow. The history of the Bolshevik leadership in the aftermath of the collapse of Russian Feudalism in 1917 demonstrates the results of this assumption. The Bolshevik Central Committee discussions and the setting up of the State Planning Commission and the numerous Organising Bureau’s, indicate the elitist thinking involved. Furthermore, Lenin at the ‘Extraordinary Seventh Congress’ of the Russian Communist Party convinced the delegates that what was needed in Russia was;

“…the transformation of the whole of the state economic mechanism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan…unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary….” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 27 page 90/91 and 296.)

A single plan and worker subordination to a single will, that was the alienating essence of Bolshevik socialism’. Years previous to this, Marx had written a particularly scathing analysis of an earlier ‘programmatic’ blue-print influenced by a man (Ferdinand Lassalle) who also thought he knew best how guide working people. In an letter, later entitled ‘Critique of The Gotha Programme’, Marx, describes much of the content as; “verbal rubbish; “ideological nonsense”; “trash”; and, “a monstrous attack on the understanding“. The whole document is well worth the read and he often returned to the theme. In a further example Marx notes the following;

“Individual thinkers provide a critique of social antagonisms, and put forward fantastic solutions which the mass if workers can only accept, pass on and put into practice. By their very nature, the sects established by these initiators are abstentionists, strangers to all genuine action,…” (Marx . ‘The First International and After.’ Penguin. Page 298.)

Turning from the role of individual thinkers to the role of elite created state organisations, Marx studied and wrote about the oppressive power of centralised states and concluded in the case of France and other similar examples that;

“The executive power possesses an immense bureaucratic and military organisation, an ingenious and broadly based state machinery, and an army of half a million officials alongside the actual army, which numbered a further half a million…Every common interest was immediately detached from society, opposed to it as a higher, general interest, torn away from the self-activity of the individual members of society and made a subject for governmental activity, whether it was a bridge, a schoolhouse, the common property of a village community, or the railways, the national wealth…(Marx. Surveys, from Exile. Pelican. Page 237/238.)

The multiple alienations Marx had identified in the 1844, Manuscripts, German Ideology and many other early and later writings, created by the divisions of labour in hierarchical mass societies, were given structural solidity by state institutions. Any serious student of the development of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1923, before Stalin took over total control of the Party and State, will recognise that the above extract describes, with a high level of accuracy, the general pattern of state control established in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Bolshevik Central Committee. It was a pattern which lasted until the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and was repeated elsewhere and mirrored in either a Fascist or liberal form in a many other countries. Any serious study of Marx would conclude he was not an advocate of recreating a future hierarchical mass society state formation to replace the capitalist one.

I suggest that the many observations of capitalism and the frequent mentions of ‘socialism’ by the extremely dilligent Marx, constitute the literary basis for numerous intellectuals and commentators thinking that Marx had a definite, alternative social system in mind. Thus, at a superficial level of comprehension, Marx’s frequent references to ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, are incorrectly interpreted as the presentation by Marx of an embryonic, alternative hierarchical socio-economic system to capitalism. However, that particular interpretation can only be upheld by ignoring the many references by Marx which not only undermines any such impressionistic idea but completely negates it. For example Marx elsewhere makes completely clear the function of communism in his view;

“Communism is the position as the negation of the negation and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism, as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society.” (Collected Works. Volume 3 page 306. Emphasis added. RR.)

If main thing readers absorb from the above extract are the two mentions of ‘communism’, then their uses as abstract, (and as yet insufficiently defined process) has been intellectually transformed into representing a future system of hierarchical mass society based production and consumption. Whether or not this was the path of misunderstanding that the Bolsheviks took from an incomplete and partial reading of Marx, it is impossible to say, but it is clear from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and many other Bolsheviks – that is how they understood the content of the terms, socialism and communism. For example, Trotsky echoing Lenin’s ‘single plan’ and single will, ‘asserted;

“..we can have no other way to socialism except by authoritative regulation of the economic forces and resources of the country, and in the centralised distribution of labour power in harmony with the general state plan. The labour state considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where his work is necessary. And not one serious socialist will begin to deny to the labour state the right to lay its hand on the worker who refuses to execute his labour duty. (Trotsky. ‘ Terrorism and Communism’. New Park. Page 153.)

The above abstract demonstrates how far a self-proclaimed Marxist intellectual such as Trotsky can get from Marx’s revolutionary-humanism even after having read some of Marx. The same applies to Lenin. Little wonder that other less intellectually gifted ‘Marxists’ have also completely misunderstood Marx. Trotsky, throughout his political career was dedicated to “authoritive regulation’ saw working people not as potentially rounded and capable species beings, but primarily as sources of ‘labour power’ to be stripped of their self-activity and detached from any common interests and subordinated to themselves and their higher power state plan.

Just how far Trotsky had kept himself away from Marx’s revolutionary-humanism can be judged by re-reading the above quote from his ‘Terrorism and Communism’ and mentally inserting the word ‘national’ in front of every occurrence of the word ‘socialism’. I invite the reader to go back over the previous quote and try it for themselves! This renders the passage entirely in line with the reality of National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Third Reich Germany. Interestingly, this whole question of misunderstanding Marx was anticipated during his life time and after his death by his close friend and activist buddy Engels. Engels wrote;

“Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado as soon as they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent ‘Marxists’ from this reproach, for the most amazing stuff has been produced in that quarter too.” (Engels. Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 396.)

In the context of considering the potential second hand misunderstandings of Marx’s use of the abstractions ‘socialism’ and ‘commumism’, it is important to understand that Marx – as an activist and intellectual – was not operating in a vacuum. At that 19th century period of time, there was a vibrant international activist trend among the working classes who were using the terms socialism and communism. Therefore in corresponding and meeting with them, Marx and Engels also used these commonly used and then accepted terms.

The 20th century Stalinist nightmare of authoritative regulation had not at that time totally degraded the meaning of the term communism into its political opposite – as a Fascist form of authoritarian regulation. Consequently, Marx had his own definition and interpretation of the meaning of socialism and communism – which is contained in the phrases highlighted above in bold and now repeated below. Marx in particular was concerned to identify and articulate the revolutionary role of the working and oppressed classes as part of a;

“..historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation‘; and, ‘communism, as such is not the goal of human development”.

For Marx the concept of ‘communism’, therefore, did not represent the post-capitalist “goal” of yet another system of hierarchical mass society, but the term represented the generic evolving ‘process of human emancipation and rehabilitation’. Furthermore, according to Marx, no such ism was the goal of human development nor the future ‘form of human society’. Indeed, Marx had previously written that the socialism and the later communism he referred to was to be understood as follows;

“This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism.” (Collected Works. Volume 3 page 296)

So in Marx’s own words, he considered that the next stage in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation (after the latest hierachical mass society form based upon capitalism), was to be based upon a fully developed naturalism, which equalled humanism and a fully developed humanism required a revolution to achieve. Moreover, Marx at the time, considered that capitalism would be the last antagonistic form of social production.

“The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that eminates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence…(Marx. Preface. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.)

Of course Marx could not know that Bolshevik ‘Marxists’ would later interpret his views as the need to usher in a state-capitalist mode of social production crammed with so many antagonisms, that show trials, assassinations, gulags and tortured confessions were necessary to ensure the hyper exploitation of human labour continued under their rule. Thus the bourgeois mode of production was not the last antagonistic form of social production, the Bolshevik and Maoist led modes of state-capitalist production continued the tradition of hierarchical mass society formations. This 20th century outcome reveals in no uncertain terms that Marx, was never a Marxist, (as he asserted before he died), but a revolutionary-humanist. His Revolutionary-Humanism was so thorough that it also extended to a criticism of politics.

“Revolution in general – the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old relationships – is a political act. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. It needs this political act insofar as it needs destruction and dissolution. But where its organising activity begins, where its proper object, its soul comes to the fore – there socialism throws off the political cloak.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 3. Page 206)

Marx was not always correct and even when his conclusions were entirely valid at the time he made them, the socio-economic changes which have occurred during the period since his death, may have made some of them less valid or some not even valid at all. However, few intellects have equalled him and no one has surpassed him in his economic, social and political analysis of the capitalist form of hiersrchical mass societies. Consequently, in my opinion he deserves far more respect than he is given by his detractors and more than is often expressed by his so-called admirers. He dedicated much if his life to identifying and assisting in;

“…the great transformation to which the century is moving – the reconciliation of mankind with nature and itself. (Marx. Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy.)

After two World Wars and countless wars between nations alongside a continuing war against nature in the form of climate change, insect, plant and animal destruction, air and water pollution; the reconciliation of mankind with itself – and with nature – has never been more pressing and Marx’s ‘Revolutionary-Humanist’ perspective has never been more relevant.

Roy Ratcliffe (July 2023)

Despite a number of references to Marx, the documentary evidence I have recently seen which was focused upon a reformist transition from the capitalist mode of production to an eco-socialist mode of production, indicates further misunderstandings of Marx. This evidence suggests that some of these documents are the products of a privileged intellectual trend from within the middle class. Before considering these more recent examples further, it will be useful to remind ourselves of the problems associated with a fundamental division of labour in hierarchical mass societies. One of the crucial divisions of labour in this regard is between those individuals whose labour is predominantly manual; and those whose labour is predominantly intellectual.

Manual labour, by it’s very essence deals with real tangible objects, which can only be manipulated and recombined by considerable physical effort and using limited physical means (mechanical, electrical, or chemical) of one kind or another. Consequently, external reality is a constant, direct companion and objective tutor in correcting the efforts and final outcomes of the manual labourer. If the manual labourer gets some or all of it wrong this is obvious; the product doesn’t work or function satisfactorily.

Intellectual labour, however, deals purely with thought entities (abstractions) which can be manipulated and recombined freely at will and with relatively little physical effort. Consequently, various levels of internal virtual reality or unreality, are the constant companions of the intellectual labourer. The only objective tutor (‘reality’) is often far removed from the mental efforts of the intellectual. If intellectual labourers get their formulations wrong (eg. the sun going around the earth), it may not be immediately obvious that it is wrong. In this way, imaginary and incorrect (flat earth type) thought entities can persist widely and for many generations. Even the potential corrective of peer review (in this case by earth centred medieval religious scholars) is nevertheless still a subjective corrective, and for many generations was used to confirm rather than correct this mistake.

Unless intellectual assumptions can be experimentally confirmed, confirmation bias can perpetuate misunderstandings that are far removed from reality. Even the more science based disciplines of knowledge are frequently burdened with having to correct false and unwarranted assumptions about the reality intellectuals were at one time certain about. Marx frequently raised the problem of a growing difference between ideas and reality.

“Logic – minds coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature – its essence which has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal – is ‘alienated thinking’, and therefore, thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man; abstract thinking.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. ‘Critique of Hegelian Dialectic’.)

Marx points out that ‘logic’, the tool we use to think about thought-entities (ie. words and concepts), often becomes indifferent to all real determinateness and thus becomes unreal – or alienated thinking. Too often thought entities are  considered by intellectuals to be real entities. For example, Plato’s ideal thought entities he considered as the true entities and the real natural entities he considered as imperfect copies of the ideal. Although in the above extract Marx was considering the philosophical mind set, (as personified by Hegel with his Hegalian pursuit of the ‘absolute’, ‘reason’ and ‘divine providence’,) yet elsewhere Marx locates this same trend in the religious and political realms of thinking.

The danger for us ‘thinkers’ he points out is that our thinking too easily becomes ‘abstract thinking’, and thus ‘alienated thinking’. By assuming our thought entities are ‘real’ entities it becomes easy for us to intellectually manipulate our abstractions and assume we have started from a ‘true’ understanding and arrived at an even greater one.  When in fact more often than not we have never even departed from the virtual world of ideas. In this way intellectual thinking can become self contained or ‘alienated’ from it’s natural source – reality! Here is an example of this type of intellectual manipulation of thought entity abstractions, that I recently came across’;

“…even in an ecosocialist, post-capitalist regime: “Ecosocialism does not exclude the possibility of pursuing further sustainable economic growth once capitalist production is overcome, but degrowth communism maintains that growth is not sustainable nor desirable even in socialism.” (emphasis added. RR.)

In this particular extract, the intellectual projection of an imaginary future transition between the present capitalist mode of production and an indeterminate ‘speculative’, “eco-socialist post-capitalist regime” (ie. mode of production complete with a ‘regime’), contains an amazing number of abstractions. The determinants of a present and future reality have disappeared from the authors mind and imaginary ‘isms’ (ecosocialism, degrowth communism and regimes) are given agency to “pursue sustainable economic growth”. The lack of any deterministic connection with reality in this extract is therefore quite mind boggling. The real agency of change – life on earth – in the form of humans, other life forms and nature along with their real contemporary context, are nowhere referenced. Such ‘thought entities’ are floating adrift in their own virtual world of abstractions.

The real and present danger is that strung together thought-entity passages, like those above (and below) can be considered by non-intellectuals as ultra clever and beyond their understanding. Consequently working people start to assume that thinking about the future is best left to the intellectuals. In actual fact the extract above describes nothing real. It is not just beyond ordinary understanding it is beyond ordinary reality. In his critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx described such misguided abstractions – within anti-capitalist discourse – as verbal rubbish and ideological nonsense; and more tellingly warned that they perverted a realistic outlook. As Marx added to the above noted ‘critique’ extract, they cease to represent real nature and real human beings;

“The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – man’s products – appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thought entities.” (Marx. Ibid above)

The producers and promoters of abstract anti-capitalist thought entities are not above using bits of Marx as a reputational means to support a degree of authenticity to their abstract propositions and future speculation about ‘regimes’.  Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were exceptionally skilled at using (and abusing) Marx’s writings this way. This mode of thinking and the practice of not fully understanding the problem of hierarchical mass socIety alienations, exposes two critical things about the petite bourgeois nature of such assertions and hypotheses. 1. Their misunderstanding of the function and role ideas and 2, Their misunderstanding of the human agents of revolutionary change. Therefore when Marx noted that;

“It is not the consciousness of men which determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Marx. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’.)

Marx was alerting the reader to the fact that a persons social position in a hierarchical system (their social existence or social being) to a considerable extent, determines their consciousness and this in turn determines how that consciousness is manifested and articulated. What and how they think, say and write is not neutral or untainted by their position in the social division of labour. The partial level of understanding by intellectuals was the basis of Marx’s frequently articulated principle that the working classes should be the authors and architects of their own emancipation in any transition from wage slavery and full slavery to a post hierarchical, post capitalist mode of production. He resolutely considered that;

“The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working classes themselves. We cannot therefore cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes.” (Marx/Engels. Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 307.)

Marx had a number of things in mind with regard to thinking and being, but among them was the recognition that the division of intellectual and manual labour in hierarchical mass societies, was more detrimental to the revolutionary humanity of intellectual workers than to manual workers. Their privileged position in the hierarchical division of labour, creates the illusion among them of the superiority of mental workers over manual workers and the socio-economic subordination of the latter to the former. For students of the role of the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Revolution in Russia, it becomes clear that the Bolshevik Central Committee of middle class, lawyers, academics, writers and former clerics, were not aware of the principle of workers self-determination repeatedly articulated by Marx, or if they were, they clearly ignored it and set themselves up as the ‘thinkers‘ guiding and instructing the ‘doers‘.

This socially imposed hierarchical distortion between social thinking and social doing requires an appropriate recognition and remedial action prior to and during any revolutionary transition from capitalism to any post capitalist mode of production that revolutionary workers deem appropriate. Marx was clear from understanding the reality of hierarchical mass societies, that there was a need – as soon as possible – to permanently abolish the actual as well as the intellectual distinction between mental and physical labour. So when we also read the following, pre-determined speculative thoughts about an intellectually imagined future, alarm bells should be ringing deafeningly.

“… from a socio-ecological point of view the question of growth or de-growth is simple: there cannot be a yes or no answer. Some flows, stock, and activities should grow; others should not grow but decrease, for example, the production of weapons.”

And;

“In this transition, starting under capitalism, the capacity for climate mitigation and adaptation along with elimination of energy poverty afflicting the global South must be created in the form of mainly wind and solar energy supplies.”

And;

“Degrowth Communism is close in concept to Solar Communism both with a steady-state physical economy, realizing a 21st century update of Marx, “From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs”

And;

“Society, particularly in rich countries, must move towards a steady-state economy, which requires a shift to an economy without net capital formation, one that stays within the solar budget. Development, particularly in the rich economies, must assume a new form: qualitative, collective, and cultural — emphasizing sustainable human development in harmony with Marx’s original view of socialism.

And;

“But rich countries, having the historic responsibility for generating dangerous climate change from their consumption of fossil fuels with the greatest impacts on the global South, now must be held accountable to finance and help implement the necessary wind/solar energy infrastructure especially in the global South, as well as converting their own physical economies to green cities, electrified public transit, agroecologies, etc, dismantling the military industrial fossil fuel complex.”

In these previous five quotes, we have modern philanthropic intellectuals (well meaning or not) debating what future socio-economic formations of working people should be implementing. Indeed, in reality, the abstraction ‘rich countries‘ like all abstract collective terms cannot have responsibility for anything. Countries do not generate anything. Only specific communities of people generate dangerous climate change and some very poor people living in rich countries generate very little – so why – even in speculation or imagination – should the latter be responsible for financing the global south, wind and solar energy infrastructure?

These so-called eco-socialist formulations lack a concept of the responsibility of the ruling capitalist class elites within hierarchical mass societies that have long determined productive activity. This latter formulation also implies that the existing system of rich countries will be conserved, rather than revolutionised in order to implement these green city measures. The use of words such as ‘must’ and ‘should’ indicate an implicit, if not explicit desire of intellectuals to ultimately direct what future actions in a future (as yet non existent) eco-society should be implemented. And unless stated otherwise, these ‘must-do’ measures, surely imply the continuation of a top-down model of society to ensure that what the intellectuals think rich societies, ‘must’ and ‘should’ do – is actually done.

Which is exactly what the Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists achieved prior to and during (including utilising references to Marx) the early 20th century revolutionary uprisings – with such dire totalitarian consequences! Those 20th century intellectuals were consciously and systematically prescribing a privileged (vanguard) role for themselves as articulate intellectual leaders (ie. ‘thought entity’ creators and manipulators) and persuaded (and eventually forced) the oppressed to become ‘their’ followers and this intellectual ‘vanguard’ led them back into the intense exploitation of factories, fields and five year orgburo plans.

It is clear to me that although the authors of the above quotes have referenced Marx a number of times they have failed to fully understand the revolutionary-humanist principles established by Marx, many of which have been mentioned in each of this series of ‘Misunderstanding Marx’. I suggest that the authors of the quotes, instead of updating or being in harmony with Marx, are dangerously close to becoming similar to some radical activists that Marx identified during the Paris Commune and wrote about in 1848.

“In every revolution, there intrude, at the side of the true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition;…….After the 18th March, some such men did also turn up and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminant parts. As far as their power went they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous revolution.” (Marx. ‘Class Struggles in France’. Peking edition page 84.)

Yes of course there is a need to update some of Marx’s suggestions, where the actual material circumstances have changed, but the principle essences and fundamental structures of hierarchical mass societies such as classes, multiple alienations, extreme exploitation of human and other ‘natural’ resources and unnatural divisions of labour, have not changed. The working classes are no longer assembled in massive factories, warehouses, shipyards, offices, mines and foreign- based factories, and many are now precariously employed, unemployed, homeless or desperate migrants. Consequently this ‘occupational’ change of working people needs to be factored into the lived reality of the 21st century. The ruling classes are also more numerous, more diverse and more heavily defended than in previous centuries. The degradation of nature and climate changes have also accelerated so all these changes need to enter the present revolutionary-humanist perspective pioneered by Marx.

However, the alienation and estrangement of the bulk of humanity from their own essential social-species nature continues, as does the domination of intellectual labour over manual labour in social, political and economic affairs. The continuous degradation of the whole integrated and interdependent bio-chemical planetary system which is the foundation upon which all life on earth has evolved also continues unabated. Human beings are through their natural evolution, a socially integrated and multi-talented species, but one now conflicted and divided within itself by the formation of hierarchical, divided mass societies, which started in the near and far east.

It is only in the last four or five hundred years that this capitalist based hierarchical model was imposed on the whole planet by armed Europeans in a project of armed conquest and extermination. In creating hierarchical mass societies historical individuals introduced a negated version of human social forms and this hierarchical model needs to be progressively terminated (negated) by humanity or else nature and humanity will possibly be substantially terminated by the hierarchical mass society model. In conclusion, here is final critical note from Marx on those intellectuals who assume they have all the answers needed for the future of humanity and the rest of societies individuals just need to listen and implement.

“These prophets ‘teach’ their disciples, who appear in remarkable ignorance of their own interests, how they are to work and enjoy communally.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 6 page 47.)

I would add that those of us who have some love of mankind and nature, should like Marx, become, articulate associates alongside and with the exploited and oppressed in any movement aimed at the actual transition of the present hierarchical forms to future non-hierarchical forms.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)

All hierarchical mass societies from ancient to modern (whether authoritarian or democratic) have been riven by conflicts which are products of the occupational and class-based contradictions within them. The ruling elites within them can only continue to rule as long as sufficient numbers within society in general or within their own class in particular, are relatively content or if not, are unable to rebel. The ruling elite individuals themselves can only continue to rule as long as the elite clique which supports them are sufficiently united and have control of the main means of repression.

Splits in the ruling elites can threaten the domination of the faction in control, but any such cleavage of itself, does not present revolutionary opportunities. Divisions occuring purely within the elite do not represent anything other than the possibility of a change in the personnel who will dominate in future or in the consolidation of the existing one. Clearly such active splits in ruling elites can take the form of political or military manoeuvring to test out or achieve some kind of resolution. However, in the case of extremely authoritarian elites, such as Russia, where political solutions are restricted or absent, military solutions become the dominant means of change or resistance to change.

The fissures in the ruling edifice of Putin’s Russia are probably many, but mostly opaque to the outside observer. However, the one that has opened up between the two war criminals, Prigozhin and Putin, has undoubtedly widened. The first named heading the Wagner group and the second one heading the Russian Federation. The cracks that widened during the the Special Miltary Operation (War) in Ukraine however, are not confined to these two criminals. The earlier anti-Putin and anti-war tendencies in Russia were silenced in the predictable totalitarian manner.

In order, to engage in a predatory war against Ukraine, Putin has not only jailed opposition characters but has physically eliminated many of them and like Lenin and Stalin before him has effectively silenced any form of public criticism. Yet the cracks in the social system are still there and more are appearing. The war effort itself has further impoverished the ordinary Russian citizen and taken the lives of many family members. As was the case under Stalin, what cannot be said publically can be thought privately. How wide this public rift now becomes and how it is resolved remains to be seen, as will the ideological expressions utilised by each side to justify their actions.

However, for the two ‘leading’ characters in this Russian ruling elite drama, the rift is increasingly existential. If this acrimonious division is not quickly resolved, the results will be catastrophic for one or the other or even both and will be detrimental those who get caught up in the dispute. This ‘rebellion’ of the Wagner group, with its seizure of cities, assets and sorte toward Moscow, was no Battleship Potemkin moment heralding a revolution of the lower classes, as occurred in 1917. If this manoeuvre was not a ruse to secure a deal between the two agents of Crimes Against Humanity, it may be phase two of a struggle among rivals for ultimate control of the Russian war machine.

Of course if the schism between the two escalates it will further exhaust the resources of the state and further alienate the suffering population of Russia from the ruling elite. However, it should be remembered that the complaint by Prigozhin all along was not against elite power, or against the war on Ukraine but the fact that it was being mismanaged by the Russian military elite. He considered that the Russian armed forces were so badly supplied and led that they were being treated as ‘cannon fodder’. An allied complaint being that his own troops were bearing the brunt of the fighting.

Whilst we do not know the detail of the deal brokered by Lukashenko of Belarus it is possible that Putin has agreed to shake up the Russian Military establishment and intensify the attack on Ukraine, providing Prigozhin exits and ceases to be involved. The fact that the mobile advance toward Moscow by Wagner troops was called off and its leader given exile in Belarus suggests that Prigozhin’s initiative did not attract sufficient support within the Russian military establishment or among enough of the rank and file soldiers. This is despite the widespread disatisfaction of Russian troops with how the Special Operation is being conducted.

If the above was the case, for Prigozhin, therefore, a negotiated retreat was a better alternative to outright civil war or defeat. If Putin has not been sufficiently weakened by the failure of this war to achieve its objectives and also by his failure to prevent or counter this highly visible ‘rebellion’, then Prigozhin’s future exile may be short lived. Putin is weakened if he carries out this threat against the Wagner Group mutiny and weakened if he doesn’t.  As we know, anyone who crosses Putin, on less serious or public issues, tends to fall out of buildings, have heart attacks or have their coffee or door handles poisoned – no matter where they seek exile.

Putin’s public declaration of dealing severely and quickly with this  mutinous ‘stab in the back’, has ongoing implications. At this level revenge is possible by any number of indirect means. This entire incident demonstrates that the control of power in unpopular totalitarian regimes is often weaker than it appears on the surface. It is often secured by a delicate balance between many interested and influential forces. It only takes one important source of regime support to be removed (or reinforced) to cause either a collapse or a strengthening of totalitarian power. The ‘balance’ between the many conflicting needs in Russia is so precariously constructed that it will take very little shaking to destabilise the existing establishment.

In the short term, either Prigozhin or Putin could ‘fall’ (literally or metaphorically) or even prevail in an uneasy truce or in a superficial reconciliation, but it is unlikely that the Russian state will continue its present trajectory for much longer before further fissures widen and other divisions break out. This truncated rebellion has demonstrated that rebellion is possible against Putin but requires more strategic planning. When the dust has settled around this dispute between these two Mafia style oligarchs, the reality of the global socio-economic crisis will reassert itself. Like all hierarchical mass societies, Russia is in a profound social, economic, financial, political, environmental and ecological crisis.

The Special Military Operation authorised by Putin was in many ways a distraction to deflect from the growing socio-economic crisis in Russia and to gain some extra resources by control of the Ukraine economy. It was bound to fail against Ukraine and in fact this adventure to make him and the Russian State ‘Great Again’ has done the opposite. It has exposed Russia’s  totalitarian fragility.

Every hierarchical mass society country, large or small, faces the problem that the needs and excesses of sustaining their elites, are draining the wealth created by the working classes away from those at the bottom of the hierarchical structure and depositing it in the accounts of the already rich. The productive capacity of industrial countries is now so independent of mass labour and so dependent upon high intensity machinery that the gap between the increasing volume of mass production and the decreasing purchasing ability of mass populations, has created an unbridgeable gap. Consequently, a severe socio-economic social crisis looms everywhere.

All the world’s elites are unstable, because the hierarchical mass society system itself is unstable and the modern versions, based upon the capitalist mode of production, have accelerated and intensified that instability. Russia’s territorial size will not shield it from the global malaise. Its removal as a global competitor for production will not save the western capitalist alliance. The culture of entitlement to unlimited consumption engendered by the capitalist system is so embedded in mass society consciousness – particularly in the west – that very few are prepared to even cap their consumption at present levels let alone consider reducing them for the sake of other underconsuming global citizens or for the ecological or climatic health of the planet.

Furthermore, the possibility of mass society living without hierarchical structures based on occupation and class, has failed to register as a possibility, within all classes. The current consensus among politicians, economists, bankers and media that by finding the holy grail of some future ‘clean energy’ and increasing production and efficiency this will solve most problems is naive to say the least. In theoretical speculation on paper and in imagination, this proposed ‘economic’ solution will satisfy elite wealth accumulation and stave off civil unrest by the discontented masses, but in reality it will only increase the current problems not solve them. World Wars dominated the 20th century, Civil Wars may well dominate the 21st.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)

This is the fourth article in this series of ‘Misunderstandings of Marx’ prompted by statements I have come across during 2023. The first dealt with the mistake of assuming that Marx considered capitalism as the fundamental problem facing humanity. The second that Marx considered that the concept of a ‘socialist mode of production’ was the means of replacing the capitalist mode of production’. The third that Marx considered that the working classes should overthrow the capitalist state and create a socialist (or workers) state. This fourth article attempts to explain 1, why Marx has been so frequently misunderstood; 2, to provide further detail on the causes of the multiple alienations of humanity; and to 3, stress the uniqueness, (among all the species of life on earth) of the routine inter-species extermination of life forms and human beings by other human beings.

The individual versus the collective.

Misunderstandings of Marx arise, not only from the general neglect of the huge extent and detail of his published writing, but also because he is more famous for his unique forensic analysis of the capitalist mode of production, than for anything else. The three volumes of Das Capital, the three volumes of notes on Surplus Value and the series of notebooks known as the Grudrisse, are all devoted to understanding the functioning and purpose of societies based upon the domination of capital. This predominant focus on capitalism, by Marx, has given the impression to many people, (both those who agree with Marx and those who disagree), that he considered the capitalist mode of production as the fundamental cause of the problems facing the bulk of humanity. Whilst it is true that capitalism – as the latest form of hierarchical mass society – has accelerated production and amplified the problems of alienation and servitude facing humanity, Marx recognised that it is the hierarchical mass society form itself which is the fundamental problem. It is this form of society, which is not only a problem for humanity, but also for the rest of life on earth. With regard to the former, Marx noted that;

“The starting point of the development that gave rise to the wage labourer as well as the capitalist, was the servitude of the labourer.” (Marx Capital Vol 1, page 715.)

In other words Marx recognised that prior to the capitalist mode of production, society’s were hierarchical and divided into classes, in which large sections of humanity were forcibly bound to forms of ‘labour’ servitude, known as serfs, peasants or actual slaves. Therefore, the alienation of the bulk of humanity from their natural, species essence had occurred prior to the domination of capital and had coincided with the formation of hierarchical mass societies. Indeed, in a number of places and toward the end of what became volume 3 of Das Capital, extracted from Marx’s notes contained the following;

“We have seen that the capitalist process of production is a historically determined form of the social process of production in general. The latter is as much a process of material conditions of human life as a process taking place under specific historical and economic production relations, producing and reproducing these productive relations themselves, and thereby also the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence and their mutual relations, ie., theirparticular socio-economic form. For the aggregate of these relations, in which the the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one and another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure. Like all its predecessors, the capitalist process of production proceeds under definite material conditions, which are, however, simultaneously the bearers of definite social relations entered into in the process of reproducing their life.” (Capital. Volume 3, section 3, chapter XLV 111)

Whilst recognising that Volume 3 was assembled by Freidrich Engels, from Marx’s notes, the fact that this excerpt chimes accurately with many other such statements by Marx, means we can be assured it accurately portrays Marx’s assessment of previous hierarchical mass society forms. This needs to be mentioned because Engels did not always portray Marx accurately, a fact which has led some ‘Marxists’ in the tradition of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky and Mao, to also misunderstand Marx’s revolutionary-humanist perspectives. The Capitalist process of production, “Like all its predecessors” maintains, alienating divisions of labour, class divisions, and gender inequalities and thus the need to exercise oppressive forms of control and manipulation.  Hierarchical mass societies, through the division of labour, certainly introduced the possibility and actuality of larger and larger human societies living together as economically viable collectives. However, hierarchical societies achieved this result only at the expense of introducing a rift between the socialised human individual and their natural species essence.

The extreme exploitation of nature and people became the normal operating procedure for hierarchical mass societies, from their ancient inception. The three forms of human alienation noted in ‘Misunderstanding Marx – 3’ (ie. from nature, from each other and from other human communities) are consequently the originating alienations of humanity from nature and thus the natural essence of the human species. These alienations have continued to exist. Ageism, Sexism, Misogyny, Racism and Sectarianism are all symptoms of alienation resulting from the denial of the natural/social essence of humanity and its replacement by individual competition within hierarchical mass society formations. In 1843, Marx duly noted this rift between the natural ‘species being’ evolution of humanity and the alienated ‘individual being’ within hierarchical mass societies. This recognition was almost two decades before his major forensic level of economic analysis in Das Capital. He had reasoned that;

“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself, the abstract citizen, and as an individual human being – has become a species being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation….only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.”(Marx. Collected Works Volume 3, page 168.)

The need for human beings in their everyday life to return to their earlier condition of acting and thinking for each other and for the the benefit of the collective (ie. acting as species beings) rather than acting and thinking purely for themselves (ie. acting as competitive individual beings), was the humanist motivation behind Marx’s life-long philosophic, economic and political endeavours. As previously mentioned, he correctly noted that by the creation of ‘divisions of labour’ within mass societies, the undoubted efficiency gained in total social production, had been offset by a varying degree of alienation and conflict arising directly and indirectly from those divisions. With the development of set divisions of labour, individual interests became the primary focus of individual existence and of day to day concern, within hierarchical mass societies. Gradually, therefore, the common interests of the whole society, (and the species) became subordinate to the concerns of the most powerful individuals. Where classes or socio-economic associations of individuals developed, the shared individual concerns within the various classes also became separated from the interests common to the whole community.

In this way, individual conflicts, class-based conflicts and national conflicts became the constantly abrasive interactions within and between hierarchical mass societies. By the perpetuation of this hierarchical social means of living, the human species became engaged in perpetual forms of conflict within their own social formation and with various other human communities. These conflicts are muted at times and flare up at others, but are never entirely absent. Thus, for example, the the interests of wealthy classes, to increase their wealth at the expense of the interests of the other classes, may be resented by the majority but may not flare up immediately into open conflict (slave revolts, peasant uprisings, general strikes, civil wars) until it reaches a certain explosive intensity. Furthermore, these internal group alliances within mass societies rarely cohere around a single policy idea or a single individual representing one, but around a cluster of personal interests and/or ruling factions, with one promoted from within them as a figurehead.

Thus, the interests of powerfully placed elite individuals within a ruling dynasty or faction desiring more wealth, power and control, (eg. Alexander, Xerses, Charlemagne, Hitler, Putin, Trump, Johnson etc.) can arrogantly drag a whole society into a war of attrition, or manufacture an economic depression. During such conflicts, the common interests of the majority and even the personal interests of the elite, are exponentially compromised and frequently totally sacrificed. It is also the case that many, if not most decisions taken by elites are not rationally based but result from their emotional reactions to the contradictions within hierarchical mass society. Furthermore, the relatively well off within hierarchical mass societies, can (and do) also wilfully ignore the reduced status and welfare of minority groups until these take action (such as peasants in previous modes of production, and now nurses, teachers, transport workers etc). These low status victims of the hierarchical mass society system are then hypocritically blamed and pilloried for frustrating or ignoring the personal or common interests of the the elite or the rest of society.

The actual and potential conflicts between the individual interests, the class interests, and the collective interests of humanity have been elevated exponentially by past and present hierarchical mass societies and are the underlying sources of personal struggles and anxieties as well as social and political ones. Mental health disturbances; forms of addiction; anti-social outbursts; incarceration and a scale of legal punishments, are the manifestations of these unresolved conflicts at an individual level. These exist alongside the collective manifestations of these same tensions and conflicts which also result in religious, political, gender, ethnic and identity struggles and the negative behaviours resulting from them. This particular form of hierarchical social evolution by humanity to maintain the pattern of Nourishment, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) has brought it into existential conflict with the natural, bio-chemical processes of evolution for all forms of life on earth – including it’s own.

Individual and collective inter-dependence.

Within the rest of life on earth it is also possible to distinguish between the individual and the collective in each species, and also to establish how these two interests among each species of life on earth are integrated, rather than being continually fought over. Each species individual is actually reproduced from within each species by the cooperation of other individuals. One generation begets another and the young either integrate socially or move elsewhere and if they find adequate resources they repeat the (N-M-G-R + A-D) process of all previous generations. Objectively, the individual could not exist without the existence of the collective and the collective could not function smoothly without the cooperation of the individuals. That is how life on earth in general and for all forms of life on earth, (from bacterial cells to schools of whales) has ‘naturally’ continued for the millions of years that it has existed. It is also how the hominid mammalian species functioned as they evolved into their modern Homo sapien, variants some hundreds of thousands of years ago. Marx acknowledged this pre-historical stage of human societies which alongside hierarchical mass societies, continues throughout all history before he moved on to analyse the capitalist form of social cooperation, noting that;.

“…life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things…..Therefore, in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its implications and to accord it it’s due importance…The production of life, both of ones own in labour and of fresh life in procreation, now appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social we understand the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. ” (Marx. ‘The German Ideology’. Section 1 History.)

The first part of this generalisation concerning life applies to all life forms and indeed since the 20th century we can now give due importance to the original natural and social, Nutrition, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) processes of life on earth. However, less than ten thousand years ago, what really began to negatively distinguish sections of the human species – from the rest of the ‘life on earth’ species – was not language, fire or tools, but the formation of hierarchical mass societies. Notably, along with these hierarchical formations, emerged a unique tendency and propensity for the human species to continually turn upon itself and ruthlessly destroy individuals and groups of it’s own species. No other species of life on earth has individual organisms routinely and deliberately harming or assassinating other members of their own species either in single events (murder), larger events (multiple homicides/massacres/school shootings etc.), or collectively in the mass assassinations and extinctions, known as wars and other types of genocidal incursions.

Although predatory species have evolved, which routinely engage in the killing of individuals from other species for nourishment (N) they do not do so to individuals of their own species, either for food or other reasons. Nor do they engage in mass cullings of prey animals, they just kill enough for survival. Even the well publicised animal conflicts between males for mating among the other species are discontinued well before life is extinguished for the losing animal. Simply backing off or moving away by one combatant ends such animal conflicts over mating. Moreover, there are no insect or animal equivalents of the so-called honour killings or the rapes and murder of females within any other of the millions of species of life on earth. Yet it is an indisputable statistical fact that a proportion of the so-called ‘civilised’ human species – within hierarchical mass societies – aggressively discriminate, hurt, oppress and enslave members of their own species (and other species) and fight and kill each other routinely, by wars and skirmishes for a variety of random reasons.

That contrast, between life on earth – outside of hierarchical mass society formations – and those within them, should give sufficient cause for most of us to stop, think and consider. Why has a species classifying itself as wise and claiming to have created ‘civilisation’ out of ‘barbarism’ actually created it’s own self-alienating and self-destructive tendencies and self-perpetuating cycles of killing it’s own kind? And, of course, along with that self-destruction, the routine and mechanized destruction of many other key, life-sustaining species, by deforestation, overfishing and pollution. Since such behaviours only emanate from within hierarchical mass society formations, the how and why is answered by studying the socialisation and normalisation processes contained within such societies. Beyond such research studies, in considering the future for life on earth, it becomes obvious that humans need to end hierarchical forms of mass society living, abandon their own self-indulgent, ego-centrism and change the focus of their concerns.

A revolution in thinking and behaving is needed.

Hitherto, ‘life on earth’ has always been studied from the perspective of a curious and/or acquisitive, wealth-seeking, section of humanity. The study of humanity from the perspective of ‘life on earth’ has hardly begun. I suggest this can be now be achieved relatively easily and needs to urgently begin – if there is to be any useful evolutionary future for humanity. Just as an individual organism is dependent upon the collective species for its bio-chemical and social existence, (for birth, support and reproduction), each individual species of life on earth, is dependent upon the collective conitributions of all the integrated species of life on earth – even the largest animal is dependent upon the smallest grain of pollen! It may appear to current anthropocentric, ideological reasoning that the future survival of nature ultimately depends upon humanity; but in reality it is the future survival of humanity which ultimately depends upon the survival of the integrated life support system of nature. Destroying that is an indirect form of self-destruction. Consequently a revolution in how humanity thinks needs to accompany a revolution in how humanity lives.

It is undoubtedly the case that, all mass societies require mass production and mass consumption of (N) and these in turn create mass pollution and massive disturbances of the organic and inorganic structure of the planet. The ‘green’ agenda of obtaining and using so-called ‘cleaner’ energy sources will not break this self-destructive anthropocentric cycle of production and consumption. Indeed, the creation of a source of cheaper and cleaner energy would only spur on the productive dynamic of elite-led hierarchical mass societies to even greater intensities and increase rubbish accumulation, contamination and pollution. The potential knock on effect is obvious. With increases in production and consumption – whatever the energy source – there will be increased global warming, further sea temperature rises, more forest fires and even more air-born industrial pollution. Therefore, there is a present and future danger of insufficient clean and clear air around the planet.

Without sufficient clear air, there will not only be breathing problems for all us animals with lungs, but but also insufficient sunlight; without sufficient solar radiation, there will be insufficient photosynthesis by land and sea plants.
Without sufficient photosynthesis by ‘healthy’ land and sea plants, insufficient oxygen-absorbed air and plant nutrition will be available for insects and animals to Metabolise, Grow and Reproduce. Without sufficient insects and many animals, very little plant pollination will occur, without sufficient plant pollination there will be even less nutrition (N) available and even less production of oxygen. Hierarchical mass society humanity is already on a decades long downward trajectory! Therefore, a few thousand factory air filters and millions of home insulations are not going to prevent such an outcome. At least one past huge extinction (dinosaurs) has been put down to a heavily contaminated atmosphere preventing sufficient land and sea based plant photosynthesis.

Moreover, the collapse of an integrated, and interdependent circle (or cycle) of anything can begin at any point in the circle. In the case of life on earth a serious and continual disruption – within any key species – and within any of the natural, Nourishment, Metabolic, Growth, Reproductive, Ageing and Death phases (N-M-G-R + A-D), which are common to all forms of life on earth, and the outcome is predictable. Sooner or later this disruption and distortion of life on earth will trigger a catastrophic extinction event.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)

Another recent example of misunderstanding Marx recently came to my attention and exemplified the attempt to use Marx to underpin a position that I suggest had it been made while Marx was alive, he would almost certainly have rejected. I read the following assertion;

“One of the main ideas that separates revolutionary socialists from reformists is the tremendous insight that Karl Marx learned from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”[23] In other words, as Lenin expanded upon in State and Revolution,[24] the state is not a neutral body that could be used just as well by the working class for its aims, as the capitalist class uses it. Instead it needs to be dismantled and replaced by a new, genuinely democratic state that would serve the interests of the working class in power.”

Whilst the first part is essentially accurate, the second section, linking Lenin, to ‘expanding upon’ Marx is either a result of naivity, ignorance or a sectarian form of recruitment propaganda. On many levels the above extract displays the dangers of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing. The assumption of sufficient knowledge – in such cases – produces confident assertions of correct understandings that are far from it. In fact the actual creation of a state against the interests of the working class in 1917 to the 1940’is purely a creative action by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, not Marx. In fact Lenin admitted at the 4th Congress of the Commintern as early as 1923 that the state the Bolsheviks had created was operating against them and thus against the interests of the working class. (See Lenins Complete Works Volume 33 page 428/429). But since Marx is named as the inspiration for the above extract, here is what Marx went on to say about the essential nature of the state;

“Where political parties exist, each party sees the root of evil in the fact that instead of itself an opposing party stands at the helm of the state. Even radical and revolutionary politicians seek the root of evil not in the essential nature of the state, but in a definite state form which they wish to replace by a different state form. (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Vol 3. page 197. Emphasis added RR)

Students of the Russian Revolution of the 20th century, will recognise that this replacement of the state form was essentially the key part of Bolshevik political programme. It is a common mistake to think we have grasped a complete understanding of something when only a part of it has been grasped – and even then not always fully. Indeed, it would seem from their efforts, not only the author of the above lines, but also Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and most of the Bolshevik intelligentsia had also failed to fully understand Marx. The revolutionary-humanist perspective of Karl Marx on ‘politics’ the ‘state’ and ‘alienation’ seems to have entirely escaped their attention. Lenin’s polemic in the ‘State and Revolution’ and his theoretical mention of the ‘withering away of the state’ was replaced with its absolute strengthening under his own post 1917 rule and also that of Trotsky and Stalin.

It seems that reality, rather than ideology, has still not sunk into most examples of oppositional consciousness. In fact is the hierarchical mass form of society, with its class divisions which gives rise to the need for a ‘state’. It is not the state or capitalism, which gives rise to class divisions. Retain class and other established divisions within any socio-economic system and alienation and insoluble conflict will continue and so to will the need for a state to ‘manage’ and control them. In contrast, Marx was absolutely clear on the need for the economic foundations of human societies to be free of the class control of the means of production, whether the class was comprised of ancient tribal warriors, medieval feudal aristocrats, modern bourgeois capitalists, or any kind of political vanguard.

The really sad part to me is that after more than 100 years and the availability of most of Marx’s writings, he is so little understood. Consequently, it is possible in 2023, to read the following;

“Ours is a strategy to build an ecosocialist movement powerful enough that it could overturn and dismantle the existing capitalist state and replace it with a genuinely democratic and participative workers’ state.”

Really! A “genuinely democratic and participative workers’ state.” Now what would that look like? Does the author know, and hope that the reader does, or is its inclusion just a rote-learned abstraction, plucked out of a previous historical contex? In fact a state according to Marx is “based upon the contradiction between public and private life, on the contradiction between the general interests and the private interests.” (ibid Vol 3 p 198). This contradiction and the need for its permanent removal will be briefly considered in ‘Misunderstanding Marx – 4’, to be published later. Meanwhile, land and human alienation, another source of neglected  insights emphasised by Marx.

Land! The first condition of human existence.

“To make land an object of huckstering – the land which is our one and all, the first condition of our existence – was the last step toward making oneself an object of huckstering. It was and is to this very day an immorality surpassed only the immorality of self-alienation.” (Marx ‘Outlines of Political Economy’.)

In the 21st century, it needs to be recognised that the ‘immorality’ of human self-alienation achieved within hierarchical mass societies (including their self-flattering description as ‘Civilisations’) is not the direct result of the forces of nature, as bourgeois ideology likes to imagine. It is in fact the indirect results of the human social forces of nature implemented and mediated through just one type of human social structure – hierarchical mass societies!

Biologically and economically, hierarchical mass society humanity remains absolutely dependent upon life on earth in general (ie nature), for air, water, food and non-food materials, but unlike hunter-gatherer humans and all other life forms, human individuals within hierachical mass societies do not relate intimately and directly to life on earth’s essential bio-chemical sources of nutrition (N) and other useful raw materials. In hierarchical mass societies the relationship of human individuals to their own Nutrition, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) life-cycle processes, are several times removed and socially mediated.

The natural materials they encounter, utilise and fashion on a daily basis, are already in an alien, socially processed form. They exist as dead, value-laden commodities. The vast majority of citizens are provided with natures products by a numerically variable, often far-distant minority, whilst the rest (the majority of citizens) are at least one, and sometimes twice, removed from continual direct contact with the other living and non-living materials, they actually need to survive. In this way it appears in their individual and social consciousness as if their survival directly depends upon the hierarchical mass society structure and not directly upon life on earth in general.

For example, the baker, does not raise the crops or grind the grain; the butcher does not hunt, raise or kill the animal; the woodworker does not grow or fell the trees, the metal worker does not mine the ore, etc. In advanced hierarchical mass societies, the vast majority of citizens see only partly finished organic raw materials to work on or finished organic materials to consume by use or digestion. For the majority of human beings in hierarchical mass society forms of existence, the direct daily link between humanity and those many other species of life on earth they actually depend upon, has been severed.

In hierarchical mass societies, even those who have retained a direct link with life on earth, such as animal breeders, herders and slaughterers, crop planters, grain harvesters, lumberjack’s, miners, etc., their relationship to their occupation has become a routine daily and weekly grind. There is little (or in some cases no) positive emotional involvement during their direct contact with the human and non-human organic world in general. Furthermore, for obvious limited sensory reasons, there is no immediately detectable connection between land and sea based plant photosynthesis and the sufficiently oxygenated air we all need to continually breathe – so it is taken for granted, instead of understood.

These (and other) natural sensory and social ‘disconnections’ represent one generic form of human alienation – alienation from the rest of nature – the very source from which humanity emerged and of which it remains an integral part. In addition, the hierarchical and occupational divisions between mass society citizens also removes most daily practical common activities between them or with the other human beings in different classes. This daily, occupational social isolation, is intensified as within classes and between classes, individuals are encouraged (or required by the system) to compete with each other for status, position, rewards, and even base line benefits, such as food and housing.

Although at one level the hierarchical mass society is a functioning whole it is a fundamentally fractured unity of internally competing individual, family or class conflicts. Hierarchical mass societies are riddled with contradictions and riven with conflicts that reach deep into the most intimate personal human relationships. These contradictions and conflicts have to be patiently endured, emotionally or chemically controlled or forcibly contained, but they are never fully resolved.

This constant competition represents another form of human alienation – this time citizens are alienated from members of their own family, their own community or their own national society. Furthermore, when each hierarchical mass society runs out of sufficient ‘nature’ (ie. natural resources) to keep its citizens in the manner they have become accustomed, the logic of the elite is to expand its geographical area of exploitation. If the area sought for land or resource acquisition is already occupied, then the compelling solution for the elite is to take what they desire by force from those already relying upon it. This represents yet a third form of human alienation – this time from other human communities. This is another form of alienation within and between it’s own species.

This lack of common daily unified tasks and in particularly the continuous deadly competition between human individuals and between their societies is therefore unique among all the other forms of bacterial cell, plant, insect and animal social life forms on earth, but not unique in a good way. The resulting intra and inter-species antipathy and even hatred produced by hierarchical mass societies since they began within the last 10,000 years, is a uniquely human and late-developed species phenomenon. It is the first of it’s kind to emerge during the millions of years that the millions of other species of life on earth have evolved.

Moreover, alienation from nature and each other in the 21st century has gone even further than in previous centuries. Individual transport vehicles driving on crowded roads, has visibly and statistically increased intolerance (road rage) of other people similarly occupied. Takeaway food (just eat), video games, and working from home has isolated individuals even further from each other, and from nature. Even the working classes (or the precarious proletariat) are no longer employed to work in large numbers together as automation and artificial intelligence have reduced their numbers in factories, fields, mines, docks and offices. In the 21st century, automation, machine learning and computer-guided robotic appendages, have relegated masses of workers to a largely redundant status.

Alternatively, it has increasingly forced many of them – ironically amid modern mass societies – to eek out a contradictory individual existence in the, self-employed, dog eat dog, gig economy. Obsession with mobile phones and computer games has also dragged many individuals further away from a positive collective social reality into an individual world of frequently competitive, negative, electronic virtual realities. In these ways, the obvious long term mental health issues promoted by social competition and alienation are continually amplified by the ‘systems’ economic and financial ‘gamers’ and compounded by escapes into their profit-motivated, gadget assisted, personal fantasies.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)