critical-mass.net

The political and military class elites in control of Russia have this week copied the aggressive tactics of their western equivalents and invaded a territory occupied by an elite they do not like. And of course this is horrible and terribly wrong. But from the western alliance of capitalist countries and their mouthpieces in the media you would think what Putin and his oligarchical elite have committed is something the Nato Alliance countries of America, Britain, France, Italy and Germany have never done, or would never do. The whole history of the last 200 years of European colonial invasions and military incursions into country after country, has been and will be totally ignored now and in the coming weeks.

So too is the more recent history of western capitalist invasions in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya and twice in Iraq. All of the above, have left death, devastation and untold hardship on civilian communities the world over. Of course when is an invasion not an invasion is a debate for media sophists and there are many about on all sides. Being a paid (or otherwise rewarded) intellectual supporter of exploitative regimes means there are ample numbers of those in the media and elsewhere who are happy to park their memories and morals in the ‘not now’ filing cabinet or on the hard drive to be accessed later.

However, lets not follow this example of how to be a one-sided, biased media hack, and tell the story of the capitalist invasion tactic – as it actually is. There may be real economic, political or military reasons (or all three) why an elite in control of a country might decide to send it’s troops to gain temporary or permanent control of a foreign territory. Crucially important resources or lucrative markets; uncooperative governments or confiscated assets; or even covert military opposition. There may also be many reasons why such real motives would need to be shrouded by a blanket of ‘plausible’ or ‘invented’ justifications either because the real reasons must be kept secret or they would be just too embarrassing to reveal.

Because of real (or deliberate) current confusion about motives, it may be difficult to unpick what is really going on between the currently opposed sides. However, a few things are fairly clear; 1. very few ordinary people on any side would want to start a war or risk their lives in military confrontations just to gain territory or to gain control of more people. War is purely an elite thing! Populations world wide are still in the middle of a pandemic or at a point where coping with its effects are still of deep concern. 2. All the elites are nationalist parts of a crisis riddled international capitalist mode of production, which at the moment cannot suitably employ all their citizens – hence the mass emigrations everywhere. War is also a crisis thing!

The capitalist system everywhere is in severe economic, financial, social, economic, ecological, political and moral crisis. Making sense out of this chaos and confusion and imagining a solution to one or solutions to all these problems is clearly just as difficult for the elites as it is for ordinary citizens. However, gaining territory has always been a fall-back card played by elites in existential trouble. This is particularly so when a section of the population of the target country feels aggrieved and already identifies linguistically or nationalistically with the aggressor country. The latter can then pretend to be invading to support those who feel aggrieved.

Germany under the Nazis in 1938/39 did just that and it led to a second world war. Putin’s recent long – winded rant mentioning the former Bolshevik leader Lenin and outlining how the Soviet Union became so widespread, indicated he considered Ukraine and it’s Russian speakers ‘belonged’ historically to Russia, just as the Chinese leadership consider that Hong-Kong, Taiwan and their Chinese speakers ‘belong’ historically to China. The current economic weakness, social divisions and political ineptitude demonstrated by the former world powers of the UK and USA, have undoubtedly emboldened Putin; and the Chinese oligarchy may well pursue their own version of a mini blitzkrieg – to get back former territories.

Even if the economic gains from this Putin land grab (and any others) turn out to be marginal due to the decades of economic crisis, the political gains may be worth it to all the elite participants. People easily influenced by patriotic propaganda and feelings tend to fall in behind any leader and mute their criticism during a military crisis – whether real or manufactured. With a compound set of crises in most countries the distraction of military action may help Boris Johnson, Joe Biden and Putin to stem any current unpopularity and further any campaigns for re-election. Furthermore, running down existing military hardware inventory will always please the military industrial complex and navy, military and air-force brass are always happy to engage in war game planning and execution whether real or simulated. So they are all beneficiaries.

Any potential social unrest and class warfare in the post-Covid future are also more easily managed during emergency powers legislation passed during heightened tensions. And tensions are definitely being heightened as the crisis deepens and any military and non military action will compound it. And, ratcheting tensions up is precisely what the loyal pro-capitalist media are now doing. They are correctly designating the Putin invasion as a nasty authoritarian invasion, but have hypocritically stayed completely silent about the invasions by the USA and the UK into Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc., and the horrors attached to those.

The mainstream western media have conducted no examination of the parallel pattern followed by all capitalist countries (including their own) when they become powerful enough to impose their will on all and sundry. One UK pro-government media commentator this week had the temerity to draw attention to a discussion by Russia authorities to freeze the bank accounts of anyone in Russia who objected to Putin’s policy in the Ukraine, but failed to mention that Canada’s government had already discussed doing exactly the same to the vaccine mandate protesting truckers.

Working people and civil communities in all countries should resist this propaganda and demand that their leaders stop war preparations and military manoeuvres. The demand should be raised to commence peaceful, green reconstruction of all the social, infrastructure, ecological, financial, medical and employment problems faced in all countries. It is crucially important that people resist becoming pawns in the power games the pro-capitalist elites are playing internationally and begin organising a movement campaigning for peace, full employment and also an end to the exploitation of people and the environment by the capitalist mode of production.

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2022)

As the Covid 19 pandemic eases somewhat, the economic consequences of the decline of capitalism are again becoming clearer. Despite some key shortages in the labour market, businesses, jobs and incomes for the working classes, blue collar and white and lower middle-classes are being reduced drastically. Food and fuel price rises are again exposing increased instances of low pay related poverty along with homelessness. These tragedies are set to increase in Spring 2022, this time among privileged layers of the working and middle classes previously unaffected. As costs go up further and incomes stagnate or fall, more and more people will become desperate.

The growing class struggle between working people and the pro-capitalist elite in 2020, was suspended by Covid19 Pandemic isolation, but it is now resurfacing with a vengeance. The shake up of voting patterns and yellow vest and similar struggles motivated by the desire of working people to live at a reasonable level of comfort manifested in 2018 and 2019 are beginning again and will undoubtedly intensify. So too is the ‘establishments’ efforts to blame the working classes for the capitalist economic systems failures. To survive the worst which is to come, we will need to stop isolating in 2022 and begin building real solidarity within all our struggling communities

Something should be crystal clear to those who wish to see what is currently happening within politics and governance. It is the fact that ‘blaming the victims’ of the capitalist mode of production is a built in reflex of those in power. We need only recall that the Luddite victims of capitalist industry in the 19th century were branded in the UK as selfish and ‘enemies of society’, as we’re the suffragettes after them. The Triple Alliance of trade unionists also in the UK in 1919 and those in the later 1929 General Strike, we’re also labelled as self-centred ‘enemies of the people’.

Post war in the UK”s 1978/79 ‘Winter of Discontent’, the later Poll Tax riots, and the Council House Rent Strikes, participants were all painted by the establishments propaganda as enemies of society, rather than as people struggling to survive the effects of capitalist crisis. Similar reflexes of violence against working class victims were exhibited throughout Europe by the ruling elites in those countries.

In the Americas, (North and South) the working class struggle for reforms to their living and working conditions were also met with authoritarian violence and intimidation – activists simply ‘disappeared’. The indigenous Indians and the later disturbances by those enslaved in the US were all declared rebels, enemies and traitors as were US farmers rent striking in 1839. So too were more modern struggles in the era of McCarthyism and the 20th century ‘occupation’ movement. At each period of such national and international struggles the middle-classes and the media in each country sided with their pro-capitalist establishments in designating protesters, occupiers and strikers as selfish enemies of society.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the same pattern has occurred during the Covid 19 pandemic with regard to those choosing not to be vaccinated. Nor should it surprise us that it is the turn of the Canadian Truckers and others in Europe and elsewhere to be designated as selfish and enemies of society as a whole. The capitalist system is once again in an extreme existential crisis both in terms of the damage it is doing the the ecology of the planet and the damage it is doing to the welfare of the world’s working classes. Any action for change which does not meet with the approval of these ‘establishments’ will be vilified by them. False accusations will be invented and unconnected disturbances will be blamed upon those who actively campaign for change.

The full weight, power and resources of the capitalist states will be harnessed to demonise and destroy any movement aimed at undermining – however slightly – the economic, financial and political elites in control of the present system of exploitation. One can only imagine what venom and vilification would be heaped by the establishment on any revolutionary movement of people wishing to actually change the capitalist mode of production, when you see what the truckers are now receiving for wanting to end a vaccine mandate and state control of every aspect of their lives.

Solidarity among the poor, the disadvantaged, the working class, (blue collar and white), vaccinated and un-vaccinated is the last thing the incompetent international elite and their loyal leftist supporters want to face. So instead economic and political elites will combine to smear, distort and try to divide any opposition which begins to develop. Ruling class intolerance of intellectual opposition and working class activism is the new 21st century norm and it’s supporters are already emerging in the most unlikely of politically correct places.

When the normal pattern of living, coping and thinking is substantially disrupted, many people become confused and disorientated. Contradictions arise which do not conveniently fall into familiar dualistic categories. At such times previously self-chosen identity reflexes and thought patterns need to be replaced by careful study.

Just as the ruling elite (left, right and centre) condemn any struggle that doesn’t meet with their exacting approval, so too will the dogmatists of the left sectarians. They too will demand from the sidelines of any embryonic struggle (against authoritarianism) that the class struggle should adhere to their particular sectarian leadership and world view. This is because although they differ politically from the current pro-capitalist elites, they share the ruling class prejudice that ordinary working people are too uneducated or too stupid to emancipate themselves and build society anew.

Many on the self-styled left are still convinced that working people need to be guided and led – in all they do, say and think – by those from the upper and middle classes. Yet the Covid 19 Pandemic has shown how reliable and competent ordinary working people are and how incompetent and unreliable the upper and middle-class leaders’ are. So in direct opposition to the various ‘establishments’ condemnations of trucker activism, I say;

“Thank you truckers for your continued deliveries of all the ‘essentials’ I and others needed throughout this pandemic, and also for your timely demonstration of another important aspect of humane based solidarity – solidarity among vaccinated and un-vaccinated people!“

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2022)

[See also Jim Kavanagh at thepolemicist. net/2022/02/shallow-marxist-trashing-of-truckers ]

Dis-information and mis-information.

It is undoubtedly the case that there has been much misinformation (spun through ignorance) and disinformation (spun deliberately) in the various media by many actors during this entire pandemic. Scarcely anyone has avoided putting their own particular spin on what has occurred or is still occurring in relationship to Covid19. However, we need also to be clear that those with the most money, power and influence are the ones who can publicise their chosen viewpoint most widely and consistently. In this regard, what used to be classified in the UK as the ‘establishment’ (the elites in Government, Civil Service, Media, Academia, Armed Forces) have a consistent track record of dis-information and mis-information and the ample means to broadcast it.

The existence of ‘official secrets’ (recently revealed by Snowden, Manning etc), ‘gagging orders’, ‘false accusations’, ‘trumped up charges’ (against Assange, etc) and ‘dodgy dossiers’ (Blair) are so openly admitted and well known as to not require any further conclusion than that members of the ‘establishment’ are full time, professional promoters of mis-information and dis-information. The more subtle ways of controlling their preferred narrative, such promotions, demotions, honours, retractions, blackmail, although universally denied are also widely known. So with regard to the ongoing Covid19 pandemic it is not surprising that the dominant section of the UK and US establishments (among others) have preached – almost in complete unison – the most one-sided version of deadly potentials facing us since the Iraq War.

Tensions and unity within the Establishment.

It should also be remembered that the capitalist mode of production has created two distinct methods of benefiting from the capitalist exploitation of wage and salaried labour. The most dominant sector of capitalism is finance-capital which benefits from loans, credit and futures speculation. The second sector comprises of the productive and commercial sectors which require bums on seats and endless purchases of commodities. The two sdctors do not always see eye to eye. For example, in the UK, the finance capital (banking) sector heavily backed the Brexit campaign for leaving the European Union and despite dis-information on both sides – the financial sector won. At the outbreak of the Covid19 Pandemic the two sectors again had very different perspectives.

The industrial and commercial sectors did not want any lock downs at all, whilst the finance sector didn’t mind for they can make money out of any crisis, including lock downs, supply chain interruptions, bets on ‘future’ development’s (including future pharmaceutical vaccines). The political classes in the UK, US and elsewhere, tried for a time to placate both sectors, by subsidising wages, salaries and rent and rate freezes along with conducting confused alternations between ‘lock downs’ and ‘freedom days’. However, this initial – in for a while, then out for a while – strategy was a failure so a second more unifying strategy was sought. For both sectors of capital, the idea of ‘vaccinate the world’ became the preferred method of returning to profitability simply because their hope was that finance, industrial and commercial businesses could all return to a semblance of capitalist normality.

That is to say cafes, theaters, sports venues, holiday destinations, shopping centres could all fill their seats, car parks and malls, whilst financial investors could continue to reap profits not only from speculation, monopoly and quantitative easing handouts, but also from pharmaceutical investments. All these sectors are now the behind the scenes, elite supporters and backers of this vaccinate everybody strategy. Of course people needed to be scared out of their wits in order to accept this increasingly authoritarian – do as we tell you – vaccination mandate. The only flies in this one-sided universal injection of intravenous fluids, were the few remaining critics and skeptics who no longer trusted government narratives and of course – the really big fly in the ointment – is unfolding reality! Consequently, all critics and skeptics had to be ridiculed, marginalised or silenced and reality had to be denied or obscured.

Obscuring reality.

Statistics are a good way of obscuring reality, because what is counted and revealed is often less significant than what is not counted or revealed. For example, governments using statistics have recently claimed that more working class jobs have been created in the gig economy than have been lost. However, they fail to mention, that these jobs are part-time, precarious, zero hours occupations that have caused losses of homes, health, increases in malnutrition and fuel poverty. Statistics can be a source – par excellence – of mis-information and dis-information.

In Covid terms, how many of the deaths publicised during the first wave of Covid (and since) were caused by Covid19 and not some other environmentally induced factor? Some critics have guessed that to increase fear and vaccine uptake the true deaths from Covid19 were obscured by quoting all deaths which included deaths from all co-morbidities. I do not have access to such statistics to check this claim out but we do now have sight of a government research project which reveals how little danger there was (and is) to the average healthy adult.

At a specialist unit in the UK a ‘Human Challenge Programme’ was conducted by infecting 36 un-vaccinated (and not previously Covid infected) volunteers with a small amount of the first Covid19 strain to reach the UK – the one apparently killing so many people that it put absolute fear into the hearts of most people. The research programme was to examine the real pattern of infection, it’s extent, its duration and it’s severity. The report concludes that not one of the infected volunteers “..developed severe symptoms”.. or raised “clinical concerns”. Symptoms began within “42 hours” of a drop containing the original Covid 19 virus being administered. Nasal load ..”peaked at 5 days”, and lasted between “9 and 12 days”.

Throughout the research programme, the symptoms varied from ..”mild to moderate, cold like symptoms”. The participants were given regular lateral flow tests as these tests became “a good indicator of viable virus in nose or throat”. The nose invariably contained more viral load than throat indicating masks which covered the nose were better than those just covering the mouth. This sample of 36 healthy adults is indeed a very small number, but it confirms a familiar but neglected two year pattern of known Covid19 effects.

Many healthy adults have had asymptomatic infections and many others have only experienced low level symptoms, with all variants, before final recovery. In other words, effective, masking, testing, isolation and full recovery were enough for the bulk of healthy adult members of society. However, publicising this reassuring probability, rather than emphasising the possibility or probability of death, did not fit the vaccine story the pro-capitalist establishment prefers us to accept. Furthermore as the January 2022 edition of Foreign Affairs noted with regard to reality rather than the vaccinate the world fantasy;

“Wealthy governments might continuously seek ways to “boost” their citizens, at least until SARS-CoV-2 evolves from pandemic to endemic or milder disease status. But that is a daunting challenge, as it will be unfeasible to try to vaccinate the entire world’s population once, or even twice, every year against the virus.”

Indeed, the ‘world’ has not even had one dose yet.

Silencing critics and skeptics.

We need to be clear that there are people who love to exaggerate bad things and those who exaggerate good things. Some will even invent fantastic things. These are traits of a small section of humanity evident down the ages. However, there has been a concerted attempt by supporters of the capitalist and pro – capitalist ‘establishment’ to paint all criticism of the official vaccine narrative as cranky or dangerous. The most recent ‘labeling’ of vaccine criticism as dangerous disinformation has been amplified by some entertainers with an obvious greedy finger plucking on the lucrative strings of the capitalist system. These musical parasites, preying on the emotional needs of the lonely and alienated, should stick to singing their wealth-appropriating, commodified songs instead of exposing their one-sided intellectual ignorance. Others lucratively clowning around the rings of their political circuses should get back to their party-gate meeting rooms and cease to arrogantly lecture and disrespect working class anti-establishment critics.

Resisting the establishments.

In this regard, it is welcome news that the truckers in Canada have resisted their establishments attempts to split working people into pro-vaccination and anti – vaccination camps in order to steamroller their increasingly authoritarian, Trudeau – led governance over the whole of the working class in Canada. It is to be hoped that other workers in other countries follow suite and refuse to allow themselves to become split asunder with one section becoming part of the pro – capitalist efforts to stabilise their system at the expense of the poor and desperate sections of working class humanity. Of course, a sprinkling of cranks and misfits, will try to attach themselves to any principled movement for human emancipation and change. That too has always been the case, but these marginal elements can be understood and rejected humanely as alienated symptoms of the system not as a sufficient cause to be imitated or followed.

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2022)

(follow the link – imperial.ac.uk/news/233514/covid-19-human-challenge-study for a fuller review of the above noted Covid19 study and the official comments it prompted.)

The book ‘Revolutionary-Humanism and the Anti-capitalist Struggle’ has now been re-published in two volumes. This decision was made to allow minor editing corrections to the single volume edition and to make it a more manageable read for those interested in this topic. The link to Volume 1 has already been placed on this blog.

Now Volume 2 is available. It contains chapters on Marx’s concept of ‘revolutionary-humanism’; the material basis for humanism and cooperation; his economic analysis of capitalism; on how past revolutions have occurred and what preparations are needed for going ‘beyond capital’. This second volume can be now downloaded for free by clicking on or pasting the long link below into a search engine.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTIV1TanSiwdV9RWt1OwnWd5WcF32ed_6dd_fn2bCP1fA8Kc83V41znCMvjI7NQaWG34VDW2ZFTT8GY/pub

R. Ratcliffe. (January 2022.

Capitalism and vaccination propaganda.

When considering any product which is manufactured under the capitalist mode of production any sensible person will bear in mind that the bottom line in its production will be profitable investment. The intention of any capital deployed in manufacture and sales will be to maximise the return on investment – or profit! The more profitable the commodity might be, the more the manufacturers of it will extol its virtues and play down its dangers.

Indeed, professional scientists and media people will be employed to both support the alleged virtues of the product and deny or minimise any dangers. One only need bear in mind the history of tobacco and the cigarette. While people were dying of lung cancer, medical science was being used by the tobacco industry to promote the benefits and deny that smoking was detrimental to human health.

Or if the reader is too young to remember this and other instances, then research it and with it also consider the case of ‘lead’ added to petrol. In the latter case, scientists were employed to prove that leaded petrol was a benefit not a damaging factor for communities inundated by motor vehicles. Then there are other lines of inquiry: Scientists once reassured us that, Pesticides, Hydrofracking and Nuclear energy, were not detrimental to life in town and country.

In the context of capitalism, Medicines and Vaccines are particularly profitable products and it is a fact of historical record that medical and scientific experts were used to deny the fact that Thalidomide was unsafe to be used by pregnant mothers; or that Depo-Provera was a safe form of contraception. So can we be really sure that elements of the Medical Industrial Complex are not just as biased in their own interests as those in the Military Industrial Complex?

So when capitalists and pro-capitalists advise the public to take ‘follow the science’ a wise public should ask themselves – whose science, or which view of science? All science within capitalist modes of production is subject to two sources of open (or hidden) deviation from the necessary scientific impartiality. The first is direct financial reward to promote a certain narrative; and the second is present and future possibility of prestige and promotion in sustaining a particular viewpoint.

Anyone who thinks these biases and influences do not apply to the current Vaccines and the vaccination mania that has gripped the world during the Covid 19 pandemic have forgotten a great deal. Ask yourself; has the 200 year checkered history of medical science and human guinea-pig experiments been temporarily set aside or even deliberately ignored, by our high living elite?

Also definitely being ignored is the fact that vaccines are commodities – produced under the specific conditions of domination by capital – with all that, that entails! So in this regard I suggest we also need to consider what we are not being told by this dominant ideological narrative. Those who are for vaccination and those who are against should at least know what they may be getting inside them or avoiding.

What the pro-vaccine narrative omits to say.

1) The vaccine narrative never mentions that most vaccines contain poisonous chemicals or metals such as the mercury based ‘Thimerosal’ (ethylmercury) and often aluminium as ingredients and preservatives. These are often contained in Flu and MMR vaccines. Even at low doses, anything containing residues of mercury are potentially long term hazards to cells (particularly their vital membrane structure) and whole internal organs of otherwise fit and healthy human beings. They can be extremely dangerous in the short term to those individuals with low or compromised immune systems. Thus children, the old, those suffering other infections or damaged organs can be particularly vulnerable to any collateral damage from these substances.

We need to ask ourselves why governments, medical professionals and pharmaceutical representatives have not eagerly revealed a full list of ingredients contained in their vaccines. Or at the very least we should ask ourselves, why they have not openly declared that no mercury, aluminium, formaldehyde or other toxic derivatives have been used in these new Covid vaccines. Ingredients are particularly pertinent as these vaccines are now to be administered not once, but multiple times (3 or 4 so far and counting).

Unnatural ‘elements’ in the human body such as metallic based inorganic materials, such as those noted above, can be incrementally stored in organs, such as kidneys, heart and brain. Moreover the pro-vaccine narrative has failed to mentioned that unused vaccines containing toxic substances cannot be put into landfill sites! Why? Because such vaccine ingredients can be sufficiently unhealthy to life to be classed as hazardous chemicals!

2) Another glaring ommission is the following: Despite current vaccine fetishism and retrospective cure-everything fantasies, most serious diseases and infections since the Victorian period have been eliminated by public health measures – not vaccines. This is because the most important form of individual and collective resistance to all forms of serious contagious illness and diseases are uncontaminated, well-ventilated workplaces, non-crowded modern homes, unpolluted air and water, lowered mental stress, lower physical exhaustion and healthy nutritious food.

Yet all of these public health forms of resistance to illness, epidemics/pandemics and means to raise individual immunity are partially or even fully denied to the working people of countries dominated by capital. This deprivation applies particularly to the old, the poor and the unemployed. For millions of people throughout the globe, their living and working conditions along with their limited access to clean water and nutritious food are a modern day immune depleting scandal.

Note also that the vaccinate the world propaganda of current governments never even mention or suggest such public health prevention measures which would also benefit ordinary working people in other ways. Instead, they urge numerous profitable injections of undisclosed chemical concoctions, the sale of which primarily benefit the owners and shareholders of pharmaceutical companies.

And no mention of Industrial Pathogens.

The capitalist and pro-capitalists elites hope that by fear and panic most people will forget the last two or three generations of working class experience of living and working under the domination of capital. They hope everybody will buy into their multiple vaccine strategy which they mistakenly think will rescue the capitalist mode of production – at the cost of even more lives. However, capitalism’s end game is already in its latter stages. The pathogens and antigens of viruses which can destroy our individual cells are only part of the problem currently facing humanity.

The capitalist mode of commodity production produces industrial pathogens and antigens which like Covid19 are also passed along commodity supply chains. Unlike Covid, these industrial level antigens don’t just enter and destroy individual human cells, but enter and destroy entire ecosystems; they don’t just invade our human lungs, but invade the earths atmospheric lungs; they don’t just give us a raised body temperature, but raise the temperature of the entire planetary body; they don’t just saturate our blood and saliva, but saturate our rivers, lakes and seas.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2022)

The book ‘Revolutionary-Humanism and the Anti-capitalist Struggle’ has now been re-published in two volumes. This decision was made to allow minor editing corrections to the single volume edition and to make it more manageable for readers.

Volume One contains definitions of sectarianism from a number of anti-capitalist sources and examples of it in practice over a period of 60 decades of the anti-capitalist struggle. This first volume can be now downloaded for free by clicking on or pasting the long link below into a search engine. Volume Two will follow in early 2022.

R. Ratcliffe. (January 2022.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTw_bORxqh8Hhk9jmXWWZRzNdkRpLbLnrlo618g_04A9ssG8hhDken3LHQ4fxbiE2kwWfBoKHwdxtU1/pub

Jabs, Jabs and more jabs.

Although it is as yet early days and the numbers infected by Omicron are relatively small, there are some worrying indicators behind the jabber, jabber of government medical and political reassurances that they know what they are doing. First of all, Omicron was already being widely spread before it was officially identified by a South African medical team. This means that not only had vaccine jab number one (along with inadequate transmission precautions) had not halted the Alpha or Delta variants of the pandemic. Moreover, despite ‘official’ health and political elite assurances, vaccine jab number two had not halted the transmission of the two (or more) variants.

Furthermore, it now turns out that despite even more official jabber, jabber by the dominant, pro-capitalist ‘two Jabs’ enthusiasts, this second injection of a secret chemical concoction along with a third ‘booster’ is still not enough. In a study done in Denmark over 80% of those young and middle aged who contracted Omicron had been double jabbed and some also ‘boosted’. Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London concluded that; “..Omicron can evade prior immunity given by infection or vaccination..”. Researchers at Imperial College London who examined data on Omicron infections found no evidence that Omicron was “ less severe than Delta”.

The same research sources estimated that “vaccine effectiveness after two doses at 0% to 20%”. According to this research two doses of this so-called scientific miracle is at best 20% effective – meaning logically it is 80% ineffective! Natural immunity could hardly be worse and probably better than this – weak or suppressed individual immunity excepted. South African Health Minister Joe Phaaiha said that the early reports of Omicron being less virulent was possibly, due to immunity from previous infection. Furthermore, Tyra Grove Krause, a Chief Epidemiologist in Denmark noted that “Denmark’s data shows that people with two doses to be just as vulnerable as the unvaccinated.” So double vaccination has not stopped vaccinated people spreading the virus.

Indeed, even before we knew the Omicron variant existed, it was, like the previous ones being passed from person to person, city to city and country to country along global economic or sport and leisure transport supply lines. This time by people who thought it safe to travel – because they were single or double vaccinated! We need to bear in mind that for the whole of this Pandemic, from January 2020 and forward to January 2022, the global capitalist and pro-capitalist establishment and their witting and unwitting supporters preferred to keep their global system functioning as close to normal as possible, which has allowed virus wave after wave to flood in.

To assist their life-support funding strategy for capitalism, the elite chose to pay astronomical levels of money to large pharmaceutical companies. The irony of this system-induced contradiction is apparently lost on the media. No mention is made of the fact that the capitalist pharmaceutical industry now needs to be given billions to produce a vaccine which is only 20% effective to try to combat a virus that the capitalist supply chain system released from the wild. The double irony being that capitalist industries and businesses needed to be given additional billions to keep them afloat during the half-hearted pandemic restrictions.

Jabber, Jabber and more Jabber.

A critique of this bailout is completely missing from the media jabber as is a critique of the ‘two job’ politicians in Parliaments, Senate’s and Congresses who have handed over billions in their own countries currencies to big Pharmacy for an ineffective ‘two Jab’ profit-based vaccines strategy. Now they are prepared to hand over more millions for a third (booster) with no guarantee that this will end the pandemic either.

In fact according to the officials at the World Health Organisation, the boosters will extend the Pandemic. The logic of this particular line of reasoning is asserted because the spread of the – virus among non-vaccinated countries – means it will mutate there and create new variants. But to this general biological possibility has been added a further slur upon third world countries. In explaining the appearance of Omicron, some media commentators (even some on the left) have suggested that; “…poor and middle – income countries became ‘breeding grounds’ for new variants of the virus.”

Note that in this misguided Eurocentric/Imperialistic view of the world, it seems evolution and the successful mutation of virus species only occurs in poor countries. Amazingly, rich country intellectuals (left, right and centre) cannot imagine their ‘advanced’ countries could be ‘breeding grounds’ for virus mutations. This is despite the fact, that historically the advanced mass-society countries of Europe and North America incubated the influenza, venereal, smallpox diseases and others before devastatingly exporting them in the 19th and 20th centuries to the supposedly poor and middle income countries.

Jabs, jabber and Jet-setting.

In actual fact there is the distinct possibility that any 21st century Covid variant not subdued and defeated by natural or induced bodily immunity in highly vaccinated countries will survive as stronger variants than those which are eliminated. And more damning still is the fact that it is more likely that any surviving and new virus variants including Omicron, is being spread globally by double vaccinated wealthy folk. For it is mostly these who are still jetting about the planet making profitable deals and/or lavishly entertaining themselves on some tropical or sub-tropical beach destination.

Meanwhile, billionaire owners of big-pharma and millionaire shareholders and their paid political advocates particularly those in the advanced countries are reaping in abnormal financial rewards, whilst working people and the poor – of all countries – in addition to suffering from Covid are suffering abnormal poverty, hardship and danger. Food banks are now unable to keep up with the needs placed upon them by ordinary people who have insufficient funds to keep warm, dry and keep hunger at bay – all of which lowers immunity. And all this social abnormality is occurring during a period which is abnormal in so many other ways. Abnormal weather patterns, abnormal levels of pollution, abnormal levels of global warming, abnormal ecological damage and abnormal species loss.

Yet no one in mainstream media, entertainment, finance, medicine, politics and government in the so-called advanced countries are the slightest bit embarrassed about this situation. The connection between the manufacture of huge wealth and the continuing global circulation of industrial pollutants and biological and chemical induced diseases is ignored. For at least two centuries, capitalist daily normality has continued to produce multiple forms of yearly abnormality. The intellectual disease of greed, corruption and ‘individual entitlement’ has dominated the thinking of too many citizens of the capitalist mode of production. This mentality and the economic system which enables and encourages it, continues to stand in the way of creating a healthy population and a healthy planet.

Roy Ratcliffe (December 2021)

And so the Pandemic continues.

As predicted on this blog (and on many others), the capitalist motivated techno-fix of vaccination to keep the profit-based system running is proving a failure. As noted in Corona virus pandemic 37, the Delta variant of the Covid 19 virus was already dodging the vaccines developed to deal with the earlier Covid 19 variant. It was even making double vaccinated people ill whilst they continued to pass the delta variant on to vaccinated and non-vaccinated victim’s of the politically motivated economic dogmatism. It was hoped that by relaxing prevention measures and ‘opening up the economy’, profits would quickly return. Profits did return for some, but so did the virus – in a mutated form.

The attempt to blame the un-vaccinated for the spread of the pandemic within highly vaccinated communities was always a politically motivated tactic intended to shift blame away from the governing elites and their big business supporters whose activities let the virus in and who have always put profit before health. But the ‘all for us’ distribution of the ‘profitable vaccination tactic’ of the advanced capitalist countries has now spectacularly backfired! For a new Covid 19 variant of concern (VOC) identified on November 22 in South Africa, (a country deliberately starved of vaccines) has now emerged.

This latest Covid 19 variant, quickly designated on 24 November 2021 as B.1.1.529 ‘Omicron’, has had the time and opportunity to spread and develop even more mutations (30 plus), some of which it is feared, may make it more spreadable and more adapted to avoiding vaccine induced immunity. And just as before, once a variant has made someone ill and been identified – it’s already been spread by air or sea transport. Yes it’s already everywhere and yet there is still too little accurate testing and tracing – the community based solution! In typical political fashion, having nailed their reputations to the profit-based pharmaceutical vaccine solution, to what is a social problem, the international cabal of pro-capitalist medical and political elites, cannot admit failure and think again. Instead, they are hell bent on continuing a nationally based medical tactic instead of an internationally based social strategy.

The elites sound like a stuck record.

So the mantra is still vaccinate everyone in ‘our own’ country – as often as it takes – and scientific fingers crossed, hope it works this time. However, it could never have worked in the first place and even at over 80% vaccinated has predictably failed so far. It will also fail again at over 90% because ‘vaccinate the world’ solution is based upon an idealised assumption that science and technology can solve socially created problems caused by capitalist global investment strategies. The spreading of the Covid 19 virus (ie it’s global transmission) is not caused by too little science, but too much of it – and of the wrong kind! The spread of this virus, as with others, is a result of the socio-economic drive for multifarious sources of profits for global capital production and the consequent returns on investment – for those who now like to live off them.

The unearthing of the Covid 19 virus – if it has not been manufactured and accidentally released by a biological weapons research lab – will probably be the result of too close an interface between wild-life habitats and extensive capital investments in animal and vegetable farming or mineral mining. And in fact the virus is only one of the problems facing humanity because the same profit motivated investment which is spreading the virus, is already involved in producing and spreading global warming, climate change and ecological destruction. Even in the wildest fantasies of the employees of pharmaceutical and biological science labs there is no possible vaccine or secret bio-chemical concoction which can prevent that either.

Let us be clear: The biological virus of Covid 19 (and others yet to follow) is dependent upon and rides in tandem with the human intellectual virus of entitlement. The latter being the motivation to exploit human labour and earth’s resources for profit and/or enjoyment. If anything, that intellectual virus of entitlement to exploit, amass and consume wealth, is more detrimental to human survival than any biological virus. This is because the human internal micro-biology covered by the term ‘immune system’, is better a detecting and combating enemies of its internal well being and individual existence than the current general intellectual ability to detect and combat the profit based enemies of humanities future social existence.

More dislocation and distress.

Nevertheless, a sharp reminder is already heading our way. The predicted dislocations of the capitalistic determined employment and supply chains are already falling apart under the impact of Covid and emission reduction necessities. The temporary fix of Covid inspired rent and income support has been tapered or ended and more people are becoming unemployed and/or homeless and more small business are being closed. Essential supply chains linked to profitable sources of cheap foreign labour are becoming fractured and shortages and price increases will undoubtedly negatively impact upon the existing and new low-paid survivors of the capitalist system.

If the latest ‘Omicron’ variant of Covid 19 does prove more invasive and destructive than previous variants, then we are in for even more casualties and dislocation of medical and social interactions. With patience already stretched to breaking point citizens of all countries will undoubtedly see further civil unrest over lock downs, shortages or the insufferable conditions imposed upon them. The pressure to save as much of the present capitalist system as possible will emanate from the middle and upper classes who have the most to lose by its continuing disintegration and collapse. This pressure will be exerted in authoritarian directions – as is already the case – with some middle class elites considering compulsory vaccination and passports.

Even though logic is not on the side of such pro-capitalist measures, this fact will be largely ignored by most of the current elites. Even though vaccine passports will undoubtedly get forged; double and treble vaccinated people will still spread the virus and perpetuate the pandemic; and even though virus mutation will continue to out-pace the efforts of vaccine laboratories to produce new vaccines, none of this will matter. Those whose object is, or becomes, saving the present profit-based system rather than saving the planet or the lives of those who produce all our essential needs, will continue to operate by their own form of entitlement business as usual based logic.

In addition to the preventative measures suggested in Corona Virus Pandemic 37, another logic – of sustainable egalitarian production and consumption – needs to capture the imagination and intellectual output of more of humanity and it needs to start now. I suggest learning about the history and functioning of the capitalist mode of production now and during any future lock downs should equal or even replace solitary forms of entertainment. Surely, the atmosphere and ecology on this blue dot in the vast cosmos is worth saving by some sustained intellectual effort.

Roy Ratcliffe (December 2021)

The previous four articles in this series have outlined the many problems facing humanity caused by the global domination of the capitalist mode of production. Before considering future alternatives to capitalism, it is useful to understand why the Russian Bolsheviks around, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Chinese Communists around, Mao, created forms of state-capitalist authoritarianism that were almost a mirror image of Nazi version of Fascism.

The reason why right-wing and left-wing authoritarian outcomes were so strikingly similar, stem from the fact that mass societies governed by elites face essentially the same problems and are met with the same class-based solutions – compulsion! Elite governed mass societies need production to match the rhythm of a machine not the relaxed rhythm of nature or human nature. This fact is most starkly revealed by the statements and actions of two of the leaders of the Russian Revolution of 1917.

“Universal labour conscription is introduced. All citizens of both sexes between the ages of sixteen and fifty – five shall be obliged to perform work assigned to them..” (Lenin, Complete works. Vol 26, p 392. Emphasis added. RR)

“..the transformation of the whole state economic mechanism into a single huge machine,…that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan..” (Lenin, Vol 27, p 90/91. Emphasis added RR)

“..the principle of discipline, organisation, harmonious cooperation on the basis of modern machine industry and strict accounting and control..” (Lenin ibid p 163)

“There is, therefore, absolutely no contradiction in principle between Soviet (that is socialist) democracy and the exercise of dictatorial powers by individuals…unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary for the success of processes organised on the pattern of large-scale machine industry ” (Lenin, ibid p 268/26 Emphasis added. RR.)

These quotations (and there are many more) clearly illustrate a common authoritarian solution to the functioning of mass societies dictated by an elite class. Workers are compelled to labour at essential productive tasks in a manner the elite decide. Lenin’s claim that Bolshevik leadership was in the best interests of working people is as false as Hitler’s similar claim. That both the Nazis and Bolsheviks included the term ‘socialist’ in their literature, party names and banners indicates a strategy of misleading uncritical followers. Lenin was not alone in this view.

“…we can have no 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.” (Trotsky, Terrorism and Communism. P 253. Emphasis added RR.)

The essence of mass societies.

So in any discussion of the future, the essential nature of the present capitalist mode of production needs to be considered. Capitalist mass societies depend upon continuously daily and even hourly production to sustain their populations. This is done using two forms of economic activity; productive and unproductive labour. Productive labour is the type work which directly produces more goods or services (in value terms) than it consumes in producing them.

Such productive forms of labour thus create surplus objects of production which can be used for other purposes; eg. to create income streams from sales such as profits and interest or to support those involved in unproductive forms of labour. Unproductive labour, however useful, does not create a surplus of exchangeable objects. (See article 4 of this series)

In addition, the capitalist method of production has greatly increased the general level and efficiency of all kinds of industrialised labour. Indeed, it has risen to such an extent that a smaller and smaller number of productive workers can produce enough to support an ever greater number of unproductive workers and other non-workers.

Productive workers fall into two important categories. First, there are those ‘essential workers’ who produce the things necessary for everyone’s survival such as food, water, clothing, housing, care, education, transport, medicine, energy for lighting, heating and cooking.

These essential workers not only produce profits for capitalist investors, but also supply the essential survival needs of all other citizens, such as teachers, nurses, doctors, social workers, politicians, police, military, royalty, capitalists etc. Second, there are non-essential workers who produce things which are not essential for survival, but which can be useful and also profitable to manufacture and sell. These exist in such realms as fashion, sports, entertainment, leisure, hospitality etc.

The capitalist motive for technological improvements to production has predominantly been profit seeking. This motivation not only enabled mass societies to expand, but also created serious social and ecological problems. Some people have become extremely rich, consuming disproportionally more products (and thus resources) than the poor and to use their wealth to influence politicians and others. Profit seeking has also created the incentive to mass produce endless streams of non-essential products, which exhaust the earth’s essential resources, pollute air, rivers, seas and cause waste products to go into land-fill, lakes and seas.

This class of capitalists have for decades successfully lobbied governments to ignore or dilute any proposals to restrict those activities leading to air and land pollution and deforestation. They will continue to resist radical and egalitarian changes to the ‘system’ for they have come to believe they are entitled to extract enormous wealth from the labour of working people and from the earth’s natural productive ecology.

The members of this class will stand in the way of any future form of eco-friendly progress which does not allow them to continually enrich themselves. Guided by a self-serving mode of thinking, they will do everything they can to maintain their system and thus engineer even more ways to create ecological destruction and climate change.

Humane alternatives are possible.

Yet, ‘saving the planet’ and proving that ‘another world is possible’, follows logically from what was described earlier. The exceptional productivity of labour power in the realm of essential production means very few workers are now needed to supply the masses of citizens with the basics of modern survival. Also many existing workers are already employed by non-profit public service organisations.

At least half the population in most capitalist countries are already employed by one or other of the public services – including the highly paid members of the government and civil service. This means they are not subject to the same profit motives and precarious employment terms and conditions as in the capitalist sector. The capitalist sector by definition will only do what is profitable, not what is necessary.

Furthermore, when profits cannot be made by capitalists, wages and salaries can be reduced or employment terminated. Pensions can also disappear overnight. Elsewhere, I have explained how Capitalist investment isn’t necessary to produce and circulate essential and non-essential goods, so I will not repeat that here. [See Link below.]

Public service versus private exploitation.

From a Revolutionary-Humanist perspective, the following is obvious. If in a transition to a public service mode of production, every working age citizen was offered employment with a public service organisation of their choice, on an average living salary, then work could begin on unprofitable – but urgently needed production. This could be cleaning up pollution, repairing bridges, dams, reservoirs, sea defences, sewers, waste disposal depots, upgrading and building, schools, hospitals, care homes and adequately staffing them. Planting trees and building affordable eco-viable houses could also be done.

Furthermore, the extra workforce voluntarily entering into the public service production of essential products and services could be employed in helping develop the most eco-friendly, non-polluting and non-wasteful methods of production.

In stage 2 of such a humane transition, (if not in stage 1) it would be sensible to address the ridiculous discrepancies in pay and power, between those on the lowest wages and salaries and those on the highest. It is already clear that in government, politics, education, commerce, banking and industry, those on pay levels ten or twenty times higher than the lowest are not ten or twenty times more intelligent, skilful or useful to society than those on the lowest. In fact the number of visible duffers in the highest ranks of society suggest that luck or good family connections have more to do with higher pay and status than operational ability.

The creation of a 21st century unified, non-elite, community based defence of humane living standards – for all – along environmental sustainability for the natural world, would be revolutionary. It could be a modern, humane version of the ‘Your Country Needs You’ called into being at the outset of the Second World War in 1939. The 1939/45 ‘national campaigns’ on both sides of the European war was support for rival elite privilege. In fact elites on all sides (Allies and Axis) enthusiastically created full-employment in agriculture, armies, navies, air-forces and munitions factories – all for the purpose of killing each others citizens. Over 6 million men, women and children died.

In contrast to such warfare and death, national based, full-employment, ‘community campaigns’ to help save the planet and vulnerable communities would be saving lives rather than sacrificing them. However, the elites in power will not willingly allow such a transitional change to happen. They will do all in their power to maintain capitalism (in any of its forms) and resist giving up their wealth and privileges.

Finally, at the risk of repetition, the ecology of the planet can no longer sustain mass societies based on the profit motive and humanity cannot exist humanely on the basis of extreme wealth for a few and poverty for the many. Unless stopped, the capitalist system will continue to trigger devastation either by overproduction, further climate change, more pollution and resource depletion, viral pandemics or further warfare.
Any future generations who survive such devastations will still be faced with the need to change the mode of production to ones based upon the needs of the majority and ecology not the greed of a minority.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2021)

[Use the link below to view the chapters 8 & 9 on alternatives to capitalist production in the book ‘Introduction to Revolutionary-Humanism’. ]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTgiCGN-50rGR9uOFKxOmWztx8_4v88kKMy3dHtlTGjZcC5wBQYKu3CXRlmUZcvtQegx-lzvWl83peo/pub

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As the capitalist mode of production developed, its members had to struggle against the social and economic domination of the previous feudal land-owning class. These aristocratic regimes and their Monarch’s, had long dominated the countries and people of Europe. In opposing aristocratic privilege and exploitation, the rising bourgeoisie promoted the rights of all male citizens to be free of feudal bondage and to have representation in governments The intellectual high point of this capitalist struggle, came with various political declarations of the ‘rights of man’.

In England, France and America, successful revolutions took place against the aristocratic establishment. Whilst not ridding itself of patriarchal prejudices and practices against women, members of the capitalist class did for a short time champion – at least in theory – the rights of all men. The ‘No Taxation Without Representation’ mantra was replicated by the bourgeoisie in England and America whilst in France they chose Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. However, perhaps the clearest expression of this short period of political ‘enlightenment’ was formulated in the American Declaration of Independence;

“ We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal….”

If that is judged to be the moral high point of the male-centred capitalist class struggle against feudal absolutism, its morality declined quickly. Such political declarations had from the start left out more than half the population from the equality equation (females and males without independent means) and they made absolute slaves of non – European people’s – both male and female. However, before considering the profit-led fictional bifurcation of the human species into separate biological categories and so-called racial types, we should consider the other divisive bourgeois invention – nations!

The invention of nationality.

Although capitalism is now international and even global, it’s origins and roots were, and to an extent still are, tied to specific territorial locations. During their development, the capitalist classes transformed the territories they progressively controlled into modern nation-states – complete with clearly defined borders. The purpose of the bourgeois nation-state was to be an authoritarian, repressive tool supporting and defending the interests of the capitalist class and their mode of production.

Because the capitalist mode of production was already authoritarian by design it was only necessary to modify the previous aristocratic/monarchical, might-is-right practice of governance, not abolish it. Feudal working for ’the man’ involved several days per week usually lasting from dawn to dusk. This was extended by capitalist employment practices to include six (or more) days per week and night time working. Furthermore, from the moment the worker steps into the factory, shop or office, he or she must do as they are told, and work at the speed and efficiency decided by the owner/manager. Henceforth, there was to be no wandering off in the woods hunting or gathering wood, or snoozing in the meadow, as earlier peasant workers liked to do.

In sharp contrast, the capitalist boss, or his or her avatar, became a de-facto industrial or commercial ‘sovereign’ and the economic process is governed more or less as the ‘boss’ pleases. Not surprisingly, therefore, when the capitalist classes deposed the previous top down monarchs they merely replaced a single sovereign power with a collective one! As the English philosopher, Edmund Burke had pointed out;

“….whatsoever power is given to the Soveraign, whether a Monarch, or a Soveraign Assembly, without which the Common-wealth cannot stand, such as is the power of War and Peace, of Judicature, of Election of Officers, and of doing whatsoever he shall think necessary for the Publique good.” (Edmund Burke. ‘LEVIATHON’. Page 292.)

So when lines were drawn on maps to delineate the territorial limits of the new capitalist states, the bourgeois “sovereign assemblies”, did just that! They not only decided what constituted the ‘public good’, but did whatever they thought necessary (torture, assassinations, genocidal wars) to pursue their version of it. So a varying degree of dictatorship (total or partial) is in the nature of capitalistic rule – even if it is relaxed from time to time. Elite state-controlled sovereign assemblies, capitalist and state-capitalist ones included, were never intended to serve the people; the people were always intended to serve the sovereign assemblies and the governing elites. However, in this case, those governed were no longer agricultural ‘village people’ but urban town and city proletarian masses.

O Neighbour, Where Art Thou?

The nationalistic drawing of straight lines on maps also produced other divisive effects upon humanity. Traditional communities (and sometimes extended families) were split up as borders were drawn between previously connected villages and even down the middle of rivers. For the first time in the millions of years of human history, legally fixed boundaries, with armed guards, were erected to keep some people in and others out of a designated territory. The people ‘inside’ becoming subjected to numerous state laws and taxes.

In this way a new bourgeois political form of human identity – nationality – was invented and imposed so that Burke’s ‘sovereign assemblies’ of capitalists and pro-capitalists could do as they saw fit. Common lands were enclosed, peasants turfed out of cottages, walls and fences put up. Eventually glorious anthems were devised and people taught to be proud of the nation they found themselves trapped in – no matter what crimes against humanity their ‘sovereign assemblies’ initiated!

Even more damaging to the common origin, morality and shared biology of the human species and the biosphere they all shared, the people corralled within the new national boundaries were taught to despise and even hate people living in other such manufactured ‘nation-states’. The fierce economic competition between national based rival capitalist elites to sell their commodities internationally was foisted upon, and culturally massaged into the neurons and ganglia of everyone under the control of their elite ‘sovereign assemblies’.

Patriotic fervour for the abstract term ‘country’ was elevated way above any rational concern for individuals of the human family or the planet we all depend upon. Nationalistic prejudice, and as we shall see, the politically motivated invention of ‘race’ systematically adulterated the understanding of our common humanity and our shared planetary ecology. The bourgeois sovereign assemblies had the power, by the use of state dictated conscription, to force citizens to take up arms against citizens of other nations and lands and to kill and main other members of their own species – in unprecedented numbers.

But this 20th century ecological and moral ‘decline of capitalism’, had not sunk far enough to disturb the conscience of the capitalistically inclined elite of Europe. They also decided to conquer the rest of the world and dehumanise it’s native inhabitants.

The invention of ‘race’.

The ideology of race required two fictions to be dogmatically asserted as facts. The central fiction of the invented category of race was that humanity consisted of biologically different sub-species which had evolved from some ancient hominid stock. To this central fiction was added a second; that certain skin colours and techniques determined which was the inferior category of human being and which was the superior. Dark skin was classed inferior, pale skin was classed as superior.

In the ‘scramble’ for Africa, for example, African skin was asserted as Black and European skin asserted as White. Neither assertion depicted reality, these terms were all fraudulent political fictions. No human being has black skin and no human being has white skin – and furthermore, there are no races! These nonsense concepts were bourgeois politically motivated metaphors for ideas justifying extreme prejudice and foreign conquest.

In the upside-down worlds, often constructed by bourgeois ideologues and those in their thrall, politically motivated distortions of reality are frequently asserted as truths. For example, militarised killing forces are described as peace-keepers; job training is labelled as ‘education’; a privileged class system is defined as ‘equality of opportunity’; wage and salary slavery is presented as ‘freedom’. More recently, according to petite-bourgeois political correctness advocates, a biological man can claim to be classed genderwise as a woman – if he so chooses. As capitalism economically, morally and ideologically degenerates, it drags others down with it. Clear biological and historical categories are dissolved away by the sectarian acid of political correctness.

Discrimination (based upon intolerance of human variation) wedded to the 19th century economic incentive to profit from trade, also led European capitalists to exploit much of the known world. Political fictions concerning ethnic identity and human difference became so embedded in European language and thinking that these invented fictions infected practically everyone educated in Western elitist values. Hume, Kant, Gobineau etc., provided extra intellectual and philosophical backing to forms of racist ideology which reached their abhorrent peaks (or rather depths) in ‘Heart of Darkness’ European Colonialism/Imperialism and the mythical Aryan roots of 20th century Fascist ideology.

Moreover, once the fiction of racial categories was uncritically accepted as fact, by victim and perpetrator alike, a further erroneous assumption followed. The brutality and discrimination epitomised by capitalist exploitation justified by its twisted racial ideology and openly manifested in the capitalist inspired Atlantic slave trade, was erroneously viewed – as a product of European biology and pale skin colour. This one-dimensional – black and white – virtual-reality version of humanity perpetuated the racist assumption that biology, not socio-economic structures, ultimately determine social position and intellectual attitudes.

The assumption of a European biologically determined motivation for prejudice and discrimination, also ignored the actual socio-economic foundations for, and motivation of, the capitalist mode of production. That is to say, the categories of – wage-slavery – and full slavery. NB. Historically, slavery and the politics of colour prejudice, was, (and in the contemporary world still is) practised by powerful elites – of all skin shades or colours! Forms of prejudice and discrimination between human beings are ideological manifestations of practices which arise within elite governed socio-economic systems. The continued use of race is merely an extreme example of how low and loose the language of elite inspired prejudice and discrimination has been allowed to sink.

The logic flowing from recognising that the invention of race is a fraudulent, politically motivated, bourgeois invention is clear. The use of the term, in any of its forms, in any setting, and by any person, without immediately pointing out its fictional origin and the lack of supportive evidence for its existence, is merely helping to perpetuate a dangerous and divisive, politically motivated myth.

Unless these two fiction-based ideologies – nationalism and racism – are consistently and categorically opposed and intellectually refuted, the consequences will be dire. Left intact, these two fictions will be used to misdirected the struggle for a future ecologically sustainable mode of production and consumption into a self-defeating conflict within the human species itself. As the practical and moral decline and fall of capitalism continues, any conflicts prompted by national or racial fictions will devastate humanity rather than refresh it; such conflicts will destroy ecological balance rather than reconstruct it; and they will annihilate essential species, rather than maintain or repopulate them.

An alternative, ecologically sound and humanist based mode of production is possible, but unless enough people begin to campaign and organise for one, then the decline and fall of the capitalist mode of production will either continue over several decades or collapse more rapidly through the actions of one or more of its many obvious contradictions.

The final, (fifth) part of this series, will consider how future mass societies will need to adjust their mode of production in order to maintain the ecological sustainability of humanity and all other life on the planet.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2021)

[For further evidence that; “…races do not exist in humans” See ‘R W Sussman. ‘The Myth of Race’] [For a lengthy discussion of race and class see http://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/03/class-race-%5D