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THE ECONOMICS OF IMMIGRATION.

Posted on December 1, 2016 by stutteringsteps

Any attempt to understand the current political, social or cultural turmoil caused by immigration which does not include the capitalistic economic motive in its analysis, will remain incomplete and distorted. In most, if not all, the more recent media discussions between those arguing for and those arguing against immigration, the economic factor and the key role this plays in capitalist economic cycles has been either downplayed or missing altogether. Yet immigration, in its present form, (as the ‘free movement of labour’) is entirely a product of the capitalist mode of production. Strongly expressed opinions for or against the ‘free movement of labour’ cannot be fully understood until the costs of labour-power in the process of capitalist forms of wealth accumulation are openly recognised.

Those who own or control capital can only maintain or augment it’s value by using it to make profits or attract interest. If they do not use it in this way, they must live off it and see it decrease in amounts which are commensurate with how they choose to live. Furthermore, the class of capitalists can only maintain their capital or augment it if large numbers of them use it to employ workers to make things or do things which are valuable and can be sold. To do this they must use the capital they control to supply the workers with the tools of production, the means of production and pay them wages or salaries which the workers then use to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families. The trick the capitalist engage in to produce sufficient value in production to produce huge profits is simple, but not immediately obvious.

They pay the workers an amount (in wages or salaries) which is of considerably less value than the value the workers create during their employment. The difference between these two values is the surplus value which is contained within the products (commodities or services) and will be realised in monetary form when these commodities or services are sold. It is obvious that in this production process, the installments of profit accruing to the capitalists will be greater the lower the amount they have to pay to their workers. Therefore, cheap labour has always been the sought after golden goose that has helped the employers of labour-power to amass their past and present fortunes. The free movement of labour is the current method of ensuring the golden goose constantly migrates toward capital.

Low pay equals big profits.

So it is in the interests of those who employ workers to keep wages low, and it is in the interests of those who work to try to keep them at a level which they feel is appropriate to how they want to live. This is the economic basis of what became known as the class struggle. In the past, (as now) the employers invariably had the upper hand and used many means to keep wages low. They would lay individual workers off until they were starving and would agree to work for wages the employers thought gave them enough profit. In response the early workers formed unions and associations and defended their wages and conditions by negotiating and if necessary striking. In such circumstances, the employers then introduced a method of strike breaking by bringing in workers from elsewhere who were able and prepared to work at the wage or salary levels the employers insisted upon.

Cheap labour-power from outside (or occasionally within) the immediate area was used to replace local organised labour-power. It was known as strike – breaking and the workers who in this way were undermined or defeated gave those strike-breaking workers the unpleasant name of scabs. It was their name for this early bourgeois form of the ‘movement of free labour’. That is labour which was ‘free’ to starve or free to be used to replace other workers in dispute. These new imported workers who in this way took the jobs from other workers were despised and hated because they had effectively taken the food from the mouths of the strikers and their wives and children.

Very little consideration was given to the fact that those who took their jobs were also victims of the same capitalist system. Capitalism is a mode of production which had in many such cases rendered them so desperate to feed themselves and their families, that they were prepared to leave their place of origin, risk their own wellbeing and suffer the hatred of those whose jobs they had taken. Poor workers were being moved around in order to undermine other poor workers – and they still are. That is the essence of the ‘free movement of labour’. It was a cynical case of ‘divide and rule’ and was a process which eventually took two major forms – emigration and immigration.

Capitalist inspired Emigration.

When the capitalist mode of production reached a certain stage of industrial development the numbers of workers needed to saturate the home market with commodities was much reduced. This created two problems for the capitalist class and their supporters. The first problem was an economic one – where to sell the surplus production pouring out of the factories and workshops. The second problem was a social one – what to do with the growing numbers of unemployed workers who had by this time no other means of earning a living. Britain as the dominant capitalist nation in the 19th century, solved these two problems with one solution – Colonial/Imperial inspired emigration! Others would follow. For example;

“My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem, ie in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for goods produced in factories and the mines. The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war you must become imperialists.” (Cecil Rhodes. Quoted in ‘The Third World.’ Worsley M. page 28.)

It is rare these days to find such a clear and honest statement of the capitalist purpose behind Imperialist emigration and the other side of this bourgeois coin – immigration. Yet the stages of Imperialism and Colonialism – served exactly this purpose. The purpose being to obtain the essential components of capitalist production – raw materials, cheap labour and markets. Where cheap labour was unavailable as in the new world colonies of North and South America, the the forced emigration from Africa of slave-labourers supplied the deficiency. In this case it was a ‘less free’ movement of labour, but a movement of labour nonetheless.

The captured slaves became the forced emigrants from Africa arriving as the enslaved immigrants to this ‘new world’ of capitalist exploitation. They became slave workers and were forced at a minimal cost to produce surplus-value in the cotton, tobacco and sugar plantations of North and South America and the Caribbean. We can see from this and what comes next that under the capitalist mode of production, emigration and immigration are terms used for regulating the international flow of ‘free’, cheap and/or desperate labour to where it is needed by the owners and beneficiaries of capitalist accumulation.

Capitalist inspired Immigration.

As noted it is undoubtedly a fact that with a few exceptions, under the capitalist mode of production, cheap labour is essential for maximising profits. Under developed capitalist systems, the free movement of labour serves the same economic purpose as strike breakers did in previous periods of union militancy. The economic purpose being to keep wages down and working conditions as basic as possible. Immigration and strikebreaking are just two different ways of using one set of desperate workers, against another group of workers who are struggling to maintain or improve their standards of living. Both strikebreakers and poor immigrants have been deliberately recruited and ‘moved’ around to where they are needed by capitalist employers for exactly that economic purpose and no other. Of course this is seldom openly admitted by those championing immigration.

In the UK, for example, with the final defeat of trade union militancy in the mid to late 20th century, strike breakers were no longer needed by employers but lowering wages was still desired by capitalists and their pro – capitalist supporters in politics and government. Immigration was therefore the obvious solution. In Europe, the EEC and later the EU with its clauses on ‘free movement of labour’ and capital were deliberately designed for that precise purpose. In the late 20th century and on into the 21st, the recruitment of cheap labour and the undercutting of wages and salaries in most advanced capitalist countries, has been achieved primarily through immigration.

It is this aspect of of the role of immigrant labour which is resented by many working people, not primarily the country of origin, ethnicity, culture, colour or religion of those being brought into the countries of Europe and North America. It is only immigration in its ‘free movement of labour’ guise which arouses large-scale opposition. Apart from a racist minority, most of the prejudice against immigration is because immigrant labour has become predominantly prejudicial to the wages and welfare of the indigenous workers. Being against immigration is primarily a prejudice against a capitalist tactic of lowering wages, salaries and conditions. Of course if some individuals from these immigrant communities, also introduce criminality or terrorism, then these factors become another additional reason for indigenous workers resenting or even fearing large-scale immigration.

The reason that the middle-classes are generally less prejudiced against immigration and some accuse workers of being racist is because their socio-economic conditions are less threatened by it. It rarely effects their access to housing, schools or health care. Some even gain from the free movement of labour – from cheap domestic labour, cheap service labour or cheap productive labour. In fact these self-serving middle-classes are often more prejudiced against their own working classes and their unions for being less docile and deferential than immigrant workers. For when workers strike, demonstrate or riot, it invariably does effect their socio-economic wellbeing. It also offends their petite-bourgeois ideas of social stability and order in which everyone knows their place and respectfully accepts whatever austerity is is handed out to them. Middle-class prejudice against workers is demonstrated when they blanket accuse anti-immigration workers of being motivated by racism.

Meanwhile, because the dominant capitalist ideology and narrative (supported and promoted by most of the middle-classes in academia, media and politics) ignores or covers up the insidious forms of economic exploitation and social oppression, workers are left with very little option but to oppose immigration (as free movement of labour) simply for existential reasons – as it severely and detrimentally effects their lives and their families. If there is no well publicised alternative perspective of going beyond private ownership and production for profit, then what other perspective is available to workers faced with rapidly reducing standards of living?

Will the workers of the world ever unite?

If there is no generally accepted clear perspective of a future economic system which is communal and produces for need instead of greed and which reduces hours of work so that everyone (regardless of colour or creed) can be economically active and live a decent life (and there isn’t – yet!) then there there are only two other options remaining. The first is to accept the capitalist inspired conditions resulting from the free movement of capital and labour and live with the injurous effects of unemployment, austerity, low pay, precarious employment and dwindling social resources. The second is to oppose the free movement of labour by voting for any radical right-wing pro-capitalist charlatans such as Farage, Le Penn and Trump who falsely claim they will regulate it. A more radical alternative is needed.

Fortunately one distorted and dictatorial perspective of a non-capitalist mode of production has been thoroughly discredited if not entirely destroyed by those Leninists, Stalinists and Maoists etc., who called themselves anticapitalists. In the past these so-called revolutionary leaders sought to replace the situation of privately owned capital dictating the wages and conditions of workers by state owned capital dictating the wages and conditions of workers. They too had their own enforced versions of the ‘movement of labour’. Theirs was not a socio-economic revolution, but a political revolution.

They merely replaced one oppressive and exploititive male ruling elite with another, a situation which they described as socialism or communism. However, in no place was a post-capitalist society established for not one of them tried to resolve the contradictions of wage-labour and surplus-value extraction by elites. Nor did they allow the institution of communal ownership and control of production. But this tragedy of the blind leading the short-sighted leaves a problem of what is to replace it. In the 21st century, the economic and social perspective of a free association of working people, minus a parasitic ruling elite, needs to be resurrected or rather re-discovered for it still survives in a few isolated places. Here is one such survival from the writings of that much maligned champion of the working class Karl Marx.

“Social progress cannot consist in the dissolution of all association, but in the replacement of the forced and oppressive associations of times past by voluntary and equitable associations……Perfection is found in voluntary associations, which by their union multiply the forces, without taking away the energy, the morality and the responsibility of individual authority.” (Marx. Grundrisse page 581 electronic version Penguin.)

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, Economics, Marx, Revolutionary-Humanism | Tagged immigration | Leave a comment

PRODUCTION AND PRODUCTIVITY.

Posted on November 26, 2016 by stutteringsteps

In the UK, both Teresa May, Prime Minister and Chancellor Philip Hammond have both recently made statements asserting the need for greater productivity from workers in order to increase their pay from this increased productivity. This proves quite conclusively that despite a university education neither of them understand the economic processes of the capitalist mode of production. They are not on their own. The call for productivity has become commonplace among European elite. As this desire is likely to be replicated almost everywhere among the global elite, it is well worth examining the concept of productivity further.

Productivity, in the economic sense is the rate at which products (commodities, materials and services) are created either as finished products (or as parts and raw materials destined to be used in the production and operation of finished products). The time it takes to produce something under the capitalist mode of production, is the socio-economic basis of its value. So making it quicker reduces it’s value but other factors being equal, this is compensated to some extent by the fact that there are more products to sell in a given period of time. Hence greater potential profits.

Mr Hammond in his autumn statement to the British Parliament (November 2016) gave the following example. ‘In Germany what took 4 days to complete took 5 days in the UK. In other words German workers were making things quicker than workers in the UK. As a consequence, the UK government wanted UK workers to at least match them or make things in an even shorter time. As noted, the elites alleged motive for desiring UK workers to work faster or more efficiently was so they would get increased wages and salaries.

The secondary (or perhaps primary) implication of this simplistic, not to mention confused, logic being that with increased wages and salaries workers will be able to buy more things or perhaps prevent themselves having to visit a food bank or losing their homes. However, as we shall see there is no direct economic link between what wages are paid (and therefore will buy) and how much is produced in a given time. What wages will purchase also depends upon the cost of living, not how quickly particular workers produce things. Over the last 30 years, productivity has undoubtedly risen everywhere in the advanced capitalist countries but, taken as a whole class, most ordinary working people (white collar and blue) are certainly not better off. Indeed, past increased productivity has had two important and serious effects upon peoples lives. The first has already been mentioned but let’s consider it further in the light of Philip Hammond’s comparison of British and German workers.

Post War productivity.

Car workers, for example, are producing far more cars per hour in 2016 than they were two or three decades ago, but in certain areas what their wages will buy has gone down. In many countries despite numerous ‘speedups‘ (productivity increases) in automobile production, whole factories have closed down and working communities have been devastated by unemployment and poverty – Detroit in the USA for example. In the UK the coal industry and coal mining communities were also destroyed despite incremental advances in mechanised mining productivity. This process of factory closures and community devastation (including small businesses) is a direct result of global productivity increases.

For under the urging of international investment capital, productivity had increased even faster elsewhere than the US, UK and Europe – Japan and Korea – for example, where wages were also far lower despite higher productivity. Under the capitalist mode of production, increases in productivity, spurred on by competition for profits, has for decades pitted workers in one country against workers in another country. It has been a downward race toward the lowest wages possible. As a consequence closure after closure occured as thousands upon thousands were pushed into benefit queues for state handouts, or to applications for charity or in many cases to homelessness and begging.

Even for those workers still producing automobiles in the 21st century, the price of the new cars they make means that fewer of them can afford to purchase one along with the anciliary costs (insurance, tax etc.) which are needed to operate them. Over the same period of 30 years, the general productivity of most US, UK and European workers has risen, even if not at the same rate as Germany. Nevertheless fewer and fewer of these workers are able to buy or rent a decent home. In many regions, of the UK, teachers, health workers, local government employees, fire-fighters, electricians, engineers, transport workers and factory workers, despite increases in productivity, are now living a precarious hand to mouth existence.

Productivity and redundancy.

It is very little different in the USA along with the rest of Europe and many other parts of the industrialised world for this process of relative and absolute impoverishment is a global phenomena. Increased productivity under the present capital dominated economic system is actually a means for employers and investors to gain more profits whilst workers work harder and steadily work each other out of a job. In other words productivity leads to redundancy. It represents a confidence trick played upon workers, when they are told by economists, business men (and women) and politicians, that their salvation lies in increased productivity. The opposite is the most probable and indeed the eventual case.

If the same number of workers through productivity increases can produce things faster, then by the same token fewer workers can produce the same number of things, and as already noted, this can (and has) led to large-scale unemployment in all the advanced countries. If these fewer workers then increase their productivity (and they have) then there becomes a downward economic spiral for workers and an upward economic spiral for those at the top of the economic pyramid. Which is exactly what we now have in Europe and North America. However, lower purchasing power, redundances and poverty are not the only negative effects of increased productivity.

It should be obvious that increased productivity produces more and more products which even if they are all sold, increase the need for more and more scarce raw materials to make them, create more spin-off manufacturing pollution and more problems of waste and rubbish disposal. Viewed without the rose-tinted spectacles of bourgeois pro-capitalist ‘experts’, the world is already producing too much too quickly.

The effects of increased industrial and agricultural production along with the commercial transportation of its results are already exhausting resources, polluting the air, the seas and destroying the ecological balance of the planet. Furthermore the tangible results of increased production, under the capitalist mode of production need to be sold at a profit or production will be halted either temporarily or permanently. This is another inter-related aspect of the capitalist economic process, which our political and scientific elite do not appear to understand.

Productivity and consumption.

Yet it should be obvious that production – under any socio-economic system – is ultimately dependent upon consumption. If what is produced is not consistently consumed, then sooner or later, there will be surplus production. Over time that surplus of products will either rot if it is organic, deteriorate if not protected from the elements if metallic, or would need to be stockpiled. Such a surplus would become an uneccessary economic burden if continued beyond a certain point. Capitalism is no different in this regard except that it routinely goes beyond that certain point and often dumps surplus things in the sea. A rational non-profit making socio-economic system would under such circumstances slow down production or declare longer holidays from production. At the very least it would orchestrate a reduction in productivity to avoid such a waste of resources, not increase productivity.

Capitalism cannot do this and the reason is simple. Production and consumption under capitalism is not based upon what is rationally needed, but upon what is profitable. What is rational for capitalists is usually not rational from a perspective of the interests of working humanity. The rationale of capital is to maximise surplus-value ie profits and interest. That is its driving motivational purpose for production and for increasing productivity. Although the value which becomes profit is created (as added value) during the process of production, is only realised when the products and services are sold. For this reason there has to be enough buyers to purchase enough of the products at a price which produces a profit.

When there are not sufficient buyers at these prices then production ceases either slowly (through short time working) or quickly (through closure or bankruptcy). Is it not obvious that if productivity is increased, then there has to be even more buyers with sufficient cash (or credit) to purchase these products at the profitable price? It is here we unveil yet another of the partially hidden (and little understood) contradictions within the capitalist mode of production – a crisis of relative over-production. It is not that more production is created than is needed by people (housing for example) but more production than can be sold at a profit. We have seen earlier, that past productivity has led to large-scale unemployment and therefore to less purchasing power for the goods which are streaming off the various production lines. Therefore further, productivity increases – under the present system – will only make the matters worse.

More goods chasing fewer buyers has already produced a crisis of relative over production. It was this which led over some decades in the 20th century to the financial crisis of 2008 and the current unstable condition of the economic and political structures of most of the capitalist dominated world. Decades of capitalist production had produced not only vast quantities of products and serious ecological, pollution and disposal problems, but also large quantities of surplus capital whose owners looked for further profit by investing in collatoralised debt. This particular speculative bubble eventually burst and triggered the above mentioned 2008 financial collapse. Incidentally there is bound to be another such collapse because investment greed is still creating numerous speculative bubbles. For these reasons, increased productivity under the capitalist mode of production, is the last thing working people and the other non-human planetary life forms need.

R. Ratcliffe ( November 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Economics, neo-liberalism, Politics | Tagged productivity, redundancies | Leave a comment

CULTURE AND ECONOMICS.

Posted on November 20, 2016 by stutteringsteps

In the superficial descriptions and explanations of the current shifts in voting patterns within Britain, Europe and the US, the mass media and other forms of communication are currently focused upon the issues of immigration, race and religion. These important issues are generally seen as being the primary factors now causing divisions between communities, whether at the local, regional, national or international level. However, in these descriptions and explanations, two contemporary aspects of the five-fold crisis of capitalism are being confused – economics and culture. Something more fundamental than politics is once again producing and exagerating the cultural symptoms of reaction and division – that something is economics.

It is also the case that reactions to immigration, race and religion are being made even more problematic by the overwhelming majority of the media and ‘expert’ (sic) descriptions and suppositions concerning these issues. For they are invariably presented as if they were completely separate from the economic system in which we all live. In this view ‘reaction’ to these issues is just down to ‘backward‘ cultural attitudes. Wherever it is manifested, this failure to distinguish between culture and economics exposes a serious shortcoming. Cultural developments are not independent of the economic base, but arise upon it. Contradictions within contemporary cultural assumptions merely reflect directly or indirectly the contradictions within the economic system.

This glaring shortcoming among the bourgeois intellectuals, cannot be surprising since those who dominate the public discourse on all matters, including politics, (news, media outlets, politicians, economists, sociologists etc.) are not only dependent upon the current capitalist economic system but are also mostly doing well out of it. It is generally the case that the salaries and pensions of media presenters, economists, sociologists and politicians are far above and far more secure, than those of the huge numbers of low paid, zero – hours, precariously employed, unemployed, and state dependent working people. For this reason these commentators focus upon cultural issues and can usually only find minor faults with the economic system which currently dominates the world. Not being as threatrened, they are rendered intellectually myopic or even ideologically blind by their favourable economic position.

However, the socio-economic understanding and perspective is very different for those who are in the majority and not so well situated in the economic system. Those who in the current terminology have been ‘left behind‘ by globalisation or ‘disinherited‘ from the post Second World War social promise of full employment, adequate social, medical and educational entitlement, have a different view. It may lack academic finesse but their understanding is one that sees their primary loss and problems as economic – not political or cultural. If there was full employment in well paid, secure jobs with adequate pensions, good housing for all, good, well staffed schools everywhere and top class, sufficiently staffed, health services everywhere, there would be little or no ‘cultural’ dissent and disruption by ‘despicables’.

In the experience of those in the lower ranks of the capitalist economic and social pyramid, the current crisis in the economic system has everything to do with the contemporary manifestation of anti – immigration, racial methods of exclusion and fears of radicalised religious violence. It should be clear (to those who want to see), that human beings are not born as racists, opposed to immigration or with religious ideas and violent prejudices – these characteristics have to be culturally learned. And learning is either first hand or second hand. However, first hand direct experience is one of the greatest educational teachers.

For example it is overwhelmingly the case that if one human being offers to help another human being without any strings attached, that help will be willingly accepted no matter what religion, colour, or gender the person happens to be. Future friendships and mutual help will be also engendered by such acts. What is true of individuals is also true of groups of individuals. However, if one individual or group of individuals, threatens to harm directly or indirectly another human being or group of human beings, then it cannot be surprising if suspicion, hostility and fear develop among those directly effected. This contrast of direct economic and social existential experiences (or even indirect if reliable) needs to be constantly born in mind when the issues of anti – immigration, continued racial discrimination and understandable prejudice against violent expressions of religious fundamentalism are considered.

As long as cultural issues and cultural divisions are projected as more important than economic, then certain things will follow. Demonstrations and actions will focus on cultural or political issues which will serve only to divide the oppressed and exploited. This is a logical process which is already being demonstrated in Europe, the UK and the USA etc. Campaigns for and against Brexit (or the EU.); for and against immigration, for and against Trump etc., etc. In this kind of climate and on this basis there will be anything but campaigns and demonstrations against the capitalist mode of production. As long as the domination of this cultural perspective goes unchallenged, the real world will continue to be seen upside down and the role of the economic base will be largely ignored. Sadly too few seem to be unable to rise to this challenge. Furthermore it should be obvious that this situation will only be to the advantage of those minorities benefiting from the present system.

Yet the study of history demonstrates that it only takes a few people to keep alive a critical understanding of a particular mode of production. The fact that at any period of time, this critical understanding is not shared by the bulk of the population, does not mean that at some future period that understanding will not usefully inform those who are able to institute revolutionary transitions. The critical understanding of the capitalist mode of production was most comprehensively developed by the revolutionary-humanist perspective of Karl Marx. It is this revolutionary-humanist perspective which was ignored and even opposed by the Leninist, Stalinist, Trotskyist, and Maoist anti-capitalists. It is this perspective which needs to be defended and kept alive for future generations if the present generation is unable to make use of it.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, dispossession, Economics, neo-liberalism, Politics, Religion, Revolutionary-Humanism | Tagged culture, Economics, immigration, revolutionary-humanism | Leave a comment

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGING!

Posted on November 10, 2016 by stutteringsteps

The Presidential election victory of Donald Trump – against all the wishes of the social democratic establishment – confirms that the intellectual hold of this section of the liberal establishment is weakening. Practically all the major socially liberal political figures in the USA and Europe, ably aided by the global mass media, openly (and often hypocritically) vilified and distorted practically everything Donald Trump said and did. Yet this middle-class liberal politically-correct onslaught, whether valid or not, was no longer effective. This fact proves, that as was the case with the Brexit vote in the UK, and the rise of right- wing nationalist movements in Europe, that the times really are changing. Not in exactly the same way as envisioned by Bob Dylan in a song with the same title as this article, but changing they are.

The fact that two or three crudely charismatic individuals such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Donald Trump could shoulder aside the desires of dominant sections of the global, economic, financial and political elite has come as a distressing shock to some liberal sensibilities. Yet despite appearances, these defeats have not been inflicted upon the liberal, social democratic establishment by these political opponents – who they variously described as, racists and sexist buffoons. These establishment defeats are the result of large numbers of disaffected, disgusted and determined blue and white-collar working class voters, refusing to be hoodwinked yet again by left liberal and social-democratic rhetoric. With no sufficiently radical working class alternative, large numbers of working people in the US and Europe have chosen to vote for those who appear to be the most anti-establishment, whether politically correct or not. They clearly want a radical change in their economic and social circumstances .

As was the case in the Brexit vote, large numbers of blue and white-collar workers, also seeing no acceptable radical alternative, have for the moment continued to vote for neo-liberal establishment figures. Many of them in the US, particularly the young voters, would have undoubtedly preferred Bernie Sanders, but this option was sabataged by the pro-Clinton political establishment. Of course some of these voters and advocates of the social-democratic establishment represented by Clinton, and others, are definately benefiting from the current neo-liberal phase of the capitalist mode of production. They have a vested interest in conserving the status quo. However, not all those who voted for Hilary Clinton were of the same mind.

It would be wrong to assume that everyone in this Clinton voting (or Brexit remaining) section of the white-collar and blue-collar working class are happy with the current economic and social conditions facing them and their communities or with the current social-democratic political class. These particular sections just do not want a right-wing racist/sexist leaning radical alternative to the current social-democratic neo-liberal mess the world is in. It is highly unlikely that many voting for Clinton, wanted a continuation of the same corrupt and indifferent practices. In this sense both sides are right. The Trump camp is not going to usher in a new positive way forward for humanity; but neither is the Clinton dynasty. Both are simply different faces of the same neo-liberal capitalist reality in the 21st century. It is to suffer from illusions to think otherwise. Corruption and hypocricy would continue (and disappointment would follow) no matter who had won this latest electoral theatre of the absurd.

This current political bifurcation of working class opinion is a product of two important factors. First, the extreme nature of the economic crisis; and second, the pathetic nature of the liberal middle-classes. Elsewhere on this blog I have dealt with the economic crisis and other related aspects in a number of articles (ie. ‘Capital and Crisis’, ‘The Five-fold Crisis of Capitalism’, ‘What triggered the crisis’, ‘Productive and Unproductive Labour’, ‘Workers and others in the 21st century’.). Stated generally, the capitalist mode of production is now in a compound form of crisis, comprising of economic, financial, ecological, social and moral dimensions. So in this article I will consider the economic and social nature of the modern social-democratic middle-classes and suggest the underlying factors which have contributed to the ongoing atrophy of their political dominance.

The enlargement of the petite-bourgeoisie.

The economic base of the modern, middle-classes has changed from being dominated by the small business person in alliance with the legal and religious establishment and supplemented by a hereditory civil service profession. Its economic base, particularly among the political sectors, is now predominantly drawn from within the financial, legal middle class and University educated working class sectors of societies. Nevertheless, despite its heterogeneous nature this group occupies an economic and social position which lies between, the working classes and the capitalist class. The economic base of this new middle class, therefore, still remains within the unproductive levels of the capitalist mode of production even though these unproductive categories have changed.

Production has always comprised of two aspects. Production for immediate consumption (necessary production) and production for other forms of consumption (surplus production). Under the capitalist mode of production, necessary production and surplus production are produced by the working classes. Once monetised as surplus-value, surplus production becomes the revenue fund from which all other classes draw their salaries, rents, interest and profits. With the introduction of machinery and industrial and now automated production methods, the surplus value created by the working classes, has enabled the feeding, clothing and housing of increasing numbers of those who do not provide these essentials of life for themselves. This is not a recent development, but it does have novel characteristics. For example, Marx whilst reading Malthus and others in the 19th century noted that;

“…the constantly growing number of the middle classes, those who stand between the workman on the one hand and the capitalist and the landlord on the other. The middle-classes maintain themselves to an ever increasing extent directly out of revenue, they are a burden weighing heavily on the working base and increase the social security and power of the upper ten thousand.” (Marx. ‘Theories of Surplus Value’. Volume 2. page 573.)

This same advance in productive variety and efficiency also allows the reduced numbers of workers to supply a greater number and range of non essential commodities and services (art and entertainments) to those already in a privileged position. In this way the economic, social and political gulf between the productive working class and the other classes continually grows. On a local, national and global scale, the privileged become more privileged and the lives of the underprivileged become less so. These two negative characteristics of the middle-classes; the economic burden upon the working classes and their social support for the capitalist system still exist today. Their burden on the working classes, is the necessity under the capitalist system, for workers to continue to work long hours at a high intensity for most of their lives on necessary and surplus production. They are required to do so in order to support not only the capitalist class but the growing numbers of people engaged in other forms of social, financial and political activity. Under this system, improvements in economic productivity do not lead to working people working less hours per day and fewer years of their lives, but merely goes to fund more and more of those who live off this increased production but also take this privileged position for granted.

The enfeebling of the petite-bourgeoisie.

The political sections of the new middle-classes are particular, (but not exclusive) examples of those who take their exalted positions for granted. Given the complexity of the capitalist socio-economic system, it appears to the political class (and others) that they play a necessary and positive role within it. In fact, as with many others within the non-surplus producing middle-classes, politicians are parasitic upon their surplus-value producing working communities. They could not live their lives if the working classes were not producing and transporting the extra food, water, fuel, energy, housing, clothing, education and the cleansing needs of our advanced form of society. By taking the capitalist mode of production and their position within it for granted and necessary, they act as a ideological and practical support network for the capitalist mode of production. This is one aspect of their lives which enfeebles their role in any progressive development for humanity.

They seem to think that the state system which pays them ample salaries and pensions produces this value out of thin air rather than out of the combined productive efforts of the global working classes. Even the most well educated of them have failed to understand the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. This is another aspect (intellectual constipation) which enfeebles any historical role they might have otherwise played. The most humane of these middle-class politicians – along with those elevated from within the working class – patronisingly think it only necessary to slightly ease the burden of exploitation placed upon the working classes, not remove it. Since before the Second World War, they have all made promise after promise to improve the condition of workers and the poor. Prior to numerous elections they have consistently peddled (door to door) their social-democratic rhetoric of concern for the poor only to feather their own nests when in office and watch working class conditions deteriorate.

It is this latter section of the left-leaning, social democratic petite-bourgeoisie, who say they wish to help the working classes but have failed to do so, which millions of voters are now rejecting in Europe and the USA as the examples of Brexit and Trump’s election reveal. Revealing also is the fact that this same socio-economic mileu has failed to produce any radical critics of the capitalist mode of production, let alone any who seriously challenge the capitalist system. The labour aristocracy embedded within the trade union and labour movements are little better. They have accomodated themselves intellectually and practically to the capitalist mode of production which as long as it continues, ensures their full time occupations and post employment pensions. These two elements of the petite-bourgeoisie (left social democrats and full time trade union officials) have the time and training necessary to understand and publicise the fundamental exploitation at the heart of the capitalist mode of production, but they do not have the inclination or the desire.

Political vacuums will be filled.

The representatives of the neo-liberal phase of capitalism, which demands the subordination of nations, peoples, ecology and climate to the needs of big business capital in finance, commerce and production, are also supporting the impoverishment of billions of working people. It is inevitable that sooner or later there would be a ‘despicables‘ push-back by those effected by unemployment, precarious employment, austerity, high prices, high taxes and usurous lending terms. Only those who have failed to understand the frustrations and the lack of positive alternatives facing working people can be surprised or shocked that this push-back has taken the present forms – Brexit, the growth of Nationalist parties, and the election of Donald Trump. As is frequently the case, the neo-liberal spectrum of elites (the perpetrators) and their supporters invariably blame their victims rather than themselves and the system they admininster. In the circumstances of economic crisis and decline of welfare capitalism, this feebleness of the ‘left’ and centrist social-democratic elite leaves a vacuum into which may step any number of radical-sounding charismatic chancers.

In addition, only those who have failed to learn the lessons from the 1920 – 1930 severe crisis of the capitalist mode of production, can be surprised that such working class push-back can take counterproductive forms. (See ‘Nazis; a double lesson from history’, on this blog.) Rejection of the social-democratic political elite is a necessary stage in any process of liberating humanity from the cancerous grip of capitalism, but there is yet more to do. If a revolutionary-humanist anti-capitalist movement which identifies the real problem for the bulk of humanity and the ecological aspects of life, does not emerge, then it is only to be expected that alternatives sources of blame will be targeted. Those who avoid helping to build such a movement and see the main problem as those who do not vote in the way they think best, will only have themselves to blame when post election disappointment and divisive scapegoating becomes unstoppable and societies continue to plunge further and further into the present dystopian abyss.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2016)

Posted in neo-liberalism, Politics, Revolutionary-Humanism | Tagged Clinton, Trump, US elections | 1 Comment

CLINTON OR TRUMP?

Posted on November 2, 2016 by stutteringsteps

As the US presidential race nears it’s final days, it appears from many who have expressed an opinion on which they favour, that the United States electorate are almost equally divided between the two candidates. The press cannot make up their minds whether Clinton will ‘trump’ Trump, or whether Trump will ‘trump’ Clinton. As a consequence there is a great deal of hopeful or fearful guessing. Leaving aside (for the moment) the dubious qualities of both candidates an important question remains to be posed. Will either one seriously help the blue or white-collar workers who are currently mired in the ruins of yet another systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production? The answer is almost certainly – no!

Despite the rhetoric of ‘making America great again’ (Trump) or ushering in ‘a brighter future’ (Clinton) something entirely different is certain. Before and during this competition for the top post in the lucrative gravy-train they are both aspiring to, promises and obligations have been made. They will be the kind of promises and obligations, which will, to a greater or lesser extent, determine what follows. Despite appearances to the contrary, whoever, gains this presidential office will become the political puppets of those who control the complex web of economic, financial, political and military strings to which they are attached in one way or another. In addition, they will be unable to significantly influence the underlying problems facing America. The five-fold crisis of the capitalist mode of production (economic, financial, social, ecological and moral) in the 21st century, cannot be adequately addressed, let alone solved by the political class or under the economic system they uphold.

Those who onced pinned their hopes on Obama, had them dashed for exactly these multifaceted reasons. Those who are now persuaded into thinking that Trump and Clinton represent a radical difference, are similarly mistaken. Disillusionment is bound to follow. This is because the splits in the ruling elites of America revealed again by the current presidential campaign are only superficial. They represent the Janus faces of the neo-liberal advocates of 21st century capitalism which are being replicated throughout the world.

The reaction of much of the white and blue-collar citizens in the USA will probably fall into one of four probable patterns. Some may well vote for Trump simply to stop Clinton gaining office whilst others vote for Clinton just to prevent Trump getting into the oval room. Many others, disgusted with both candidates, may vote for one of the alternatives. It will also not be surprising if considerable numbers just abstain from voting at all, whether from disillusionment, disgust or disinterest.

Yet these four probabilities will doubtless serve to disguise the fact that, as was the case in the Brexit vote in the UK, the vast majority of the working classes are wanting radical change for the better rather than more of the same. Two fundamental problems face the vast majority of working people in any attempt to realise this common ambition. The first is the existing, religious, ethnic, and gender divisions within the working classes. These manufactured identities of social divisiveness were created precisely to ensure exploited human beings would be impeded from recognising their common humanity and the commonality of their economic exploitation by an elite. The second fundamental problem is of more recent origin. It is the deliberately orchestrated illusion that the politics of bourgeois democracy are the only realistic means to achieve any improvement or amelioration of the conditions experienced by those who are exploited.

During the last few weeks, during a vicous and prolonged attack by a flu – like virus, I took the opportunity offered by long boring periods in bed with honey, hot lemon and paracetamol tablets to re-read that excellent book, ‘A people’s history of the United States’, by Howard Zinn. More people should read it. In it I was struck by the following pertinent lines concerning the period of 1830 to 1840.

“Both major parties were controlled largely by men of wealth and ambition. Lawyers, newspaper editors, merchants, industrialists, large landowners and speculators….It was the new politics of ambiguity – speaking for the lower and middle-classes to get their support in times of rapid growth and turmoil. The two – party system came into its own at this time. It gave people a choice between two different parties and allow them in a period of rebellion to choose the more slightly more democratic. It was an ingenious mode of control.” (‘A people’s history of the United States’. Howard Zinn. Chapter 10.)

How little has changed from this assessment of 19th century American politics by Howard Zinn. We can now add that a few female members have established themselves among the elite and bankers have enthusiastically joined the speculators, but otherwise it is the same ‘modus operandi’ established by the elite over 100 years ago. We are undoubtedly in a period of turmoil and rebellion and we can witness the same mode of control is being exercised – and not only in the USA. It has been said that if we do not learn from history, we are bound to repeat it. Let’s hope enough people do learn from it to a least challenge if not overcome the religious, ethnic and gender divisions of working people and to finally disperse the illusion that bourgeois politics are part of the solution to what faces the human species.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Economics, neo-liberalism | Tagged Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton | Leave a comment

RHETORIC AND REALITY.

Posted on October 11, 2016 by stutteringsteps

Rhetoric.

A centre-stage slogan at the recent Conservative Party Conference in the UK actually made me laugh out loud. In huge letters behind the lectern and on it, could be read;

A COUNTRY WHICH WORKS FOR ALL.

Some senior figures within the Conservative Party, no doubt in conjunction with a few from the advertising world, must have decided this combination of sound-bite words was significantly better than any others they could come up with. Someone then obviously ordered the printing of this nonsensical phrase on a placard and pinned it up. Those who were to speak to the audience gathered in the conference hall, were obviously tasked with promoting this nonsensical phrase, for this they duly did on numerous occasions to enthusiastic applause from those listening. Bear in mind those suggesting this slogan, agreeing to it, articulating it, applauding it’s utterance, and mediating and broadcasting it, are all part of a ruling elite and support team governing a powerful country of some fifty million plus citizens. Yet no one amongst this variegated section of the right-wing British elite seemed able to point out the ludicrous nature of this ill-thought out abstraction, let alone it’s sheer hypocricy.

Let us consider the content of this slogan, which probably took hours, if not weeks, of meetings and discussion among grandees and media gurus. First of all a country doesn’t work. Not for anyone, let alone for all. The country implicitly being referenced is of course – Britain! But ‘Britain’ is an geo-political name identifying a specific geographical and political area. So Britain doesn’t work either, not in a literal or even a metaphorical sense. Given the high levels of unemployment and the number of parasites who live off the labour of others the slogan reveals a degree of hypocricy. Yet at this conference we are informed that a geographical territory can work and that it is possible that it could work for all! This slogan is complete nonsense. Only animated beings (including people) can ‘work’. That is to say the term ‘work’ is only used rationally when applied to people who labour at certain tasks in certain situations.

Clearly these elite politicians know the difference between a country and a being that works, but this slogan indicates that in some intellectual matters they rarely bother to critically think through what they are writing or speaking. And an elite which fails to seriously think things through are a dangerous breed to be in charge of anything let alone a country with weapons of mass destruction. Memories of elites waving papers signed by Hitler and asserting this meant ‘peace in our time’ come eerily to mind. No wonder catastrophic blunders like the invasions into Afghanistan, Iraq and bombings of Lybia, Syria and Yemen are still piling up and making the world unsafe for everyone who does not have elite forms of protection.

Further rhetoric.

A global economy working for everyone?

Another Conference example of not thinking things through was in a speech referencing a commitment to wealth building and raised the rhetorical question ‘how our global economy can be made to work for everyone’. Here again an economy doesn’t ‘work’. The best that can be said of an economy (by itself a fairly meaninglessness abstraction) is that it functions. In this regard it is as plain as day to practically everyone by now that the global economy (the production and consumption of useful and necessary items – commodities and services) functions in a way that creates huge amounts of wealth for 1% of the global population. However, it is clearly known by the elite that the current economic system is a capitalist based one so once again they demonstrate the inability or a determined refusal to think things through. Bear in mind all this is from the combined intellect of a meritocratic elite.

The capitalist mode of production cannot work for all because it works in favour of those who own and/or control capital. In this case, as with others, the clue is in the name. Capital exploits labour. It does so in the following manner. Capitalists exploit workers primarily at work in order to extract surplus-value (value greater than the wages they pay) from what they produce in order to transform this surplus-value into monetary form which emerges as as profits. An economic system based upon the domination of capital over the means of production can do no other than this. It cannot be made to work for everyone. It never has been able to, and it never will be able to. The economic system of capitalism needs replacing, not propping up with ‘quantitative easing’ (ie printing money and giving it to the already rich) or any other such ill thought out fiddling while this corrupt system stagnates before it collapses.

The best that people running the system can do under certain circumstances – if they are so inclined – is to ease the burden of exploitation placed upon those who work but don’t control the means of production and distribution. And it cannot even do that for everyone as the example of the various welfare – state forms of capitalism have demonstrated. Even in the best of circumstances, in the post – second world war period, for example, the rich got richer and the poor stayed obscenely poor in all countries. It is true that a few sections of skilled workers experienced a short boom time in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but this was by no means universal. And this brief period was only possible because it came after a capitalist inspired war of commodity, infrastructure and human destruction. The systematic elimination of human beings by guns and bombs led to a shortage of skilled labour and an urgent need to rebuild the damaged infrastructure. That period has long gone – hasn’t it?

The reality.

Clearly the Conservative Party since the Brexit vote have been trying to imply to the citizens watching and listening to them, that as a government in power they would govern in such a manner that their decisions would benefit everyone within the country of Britain. But of course they cannot. I suggest that the reason the slogan is so confused and abstract is because any government dependent upon the capitalist mode of production cannot but respond to the needs of capitalists above all else. However, its human agents cannot openly acknowledge this. They have to pretend they will work for all. They use words (in the form of abstractions) to promote that pretence in the hope that people will either be gullible enough to accept them or insufficiently awake to recognise that actions speak louder than words. And actions there were.

For the same week that the abstraction ‘a country which works for all’ was plastered across the front of the conference hall (3 – 9 October 2016) and rhetoric of making the global economy work for everyone, was gushing out of ministerial lips, the Conservative government also allowed fracking to go ahead in the north of England. This decision was taken in full knowledge that large numbers of people in the north had objected to this proposal and their elected local government representatives had voted to ban this dangerous and chemically polluting method of extracting eco-damaging fossil fuel from beneath the ground. Clearly Lancashire citizens are not considered part of the ‘all‘.

Later in the week the proposal to make British employers to publish the ratio of foriegn workers to indigenous workers was scrapped. This was not done out of sensitivity to the feeings of immigrant workers, but so as not to embarrass the owners and controller’s of industry and commerce who are exploiting desperate people as sources of cheap labour. If this ratio was published it would allow people to boycott certain industries and commercial outlets if they so chose. These two examples alone indicate that the Conservative government is not working for all, but working for the owners of large capitalist firms. And not just any large firms, but the ones which are paying the lowest wages and those who haved polluted previous places, and are looking for the next location to pillage and plunder before moving on.

Roy Ratcliffe ( October 2016 )

Posted in capitalism, Critique, Economics, neo-liberalism | Tagged Tory Conference | Leave a comment

MERITOCRATS – THE REAL DESPICABLES!

Posted on September 24, 2016 by stutteringsteps

During the same week in September 2016, Teresa May in the UK and Hillary Clinton in the USA made interesting and revealing statements. May on the need to ‘improve access to the meritocracy’ in Britain; Clinton on stereotyping half the supporters of Donald Trump in the United States of America as a ‘basket of despicables’. Both these opinions were met with a considerable degree of media surprise in their respective countries. Yet the only thing that was really surprising was the fact that these two opinions were openly articulated by members of the political elite who were both alpha-females. Otherwise these views were just modern versions of an age old elite prejudice arising from the division of societies into two great classes.

Lower class citizens, who don’t follow the wishes or dictates of the ruling elite have always been considered troublesome or despicable. Elites can never imagine ordinary people as having ‘merit’ or being capable of self-governance. They automatically assume we need them to guide us. In the ancient world societies were split into Patricians and Plebians, Despots and Helots, etc., the latter catagories being frequently described as troublesome or despicable. During the Feudal mode of agricultural production the predominant class divisions within societies were between the Aristocracy (power originally gained by the sword) who owned and controlled the main means of production (land) and the peasants who were forced to work for them upon it.

The peasants were frequently unruly (there were many armed peasant revolts) and some were so routinely disruptive they were classed as ‘rogues’ and ‘sturdy beggars’. They would not always do as they were told. These latter categories were the medieval version of Clintons ‘basket of despicables’. There was no merit by education back then. For centuries the aristocrats, prior to the bourgeois revolutions, had been an hereditary ruling class. With very few exceptions, aristocrats were predominantly born into the elite and even most of the exceptions were admitted into it by the actions of an hereditary monarch. So the ordinary peasants (including the despicable rogues and sturdy beggars) could be under no illusion that whatever efforts they made and however amenable they made themselves, they could never rise into the ranks of the elite.

In contrast to the medieval period, the representatives of the capitalist mode of production, by means of a political and economic revolution, introduced the domination of a capital-owning meritocracy. It was this new class which became the economic elite and came to own and control the dominant means of production (land and industry) and created a working class who supplied the labour to operate them. The bourgeois mode of production, based upon the ownership and control of capital, created the possibility (and consequently a widespread illusion) that things could be different under this new mode of production. That particular illusion was (and still is) promoted in the form that; ‘we can be whatever we want to be’.

Bourgeois Meritocracy.

Supporters of the capital dominated mode of production claimed that by individual and family effort, ordinary working people could become part of the elite. It was further suggested that this would require considerable effort in the areas of thrift and educational attainment. By this logic an illusion was created that by unrelenting application of these characteristics, the old barriers of class could be overcome for anyone who wanted it enough. Eventually Grammar schools and the new universities in the UK and their equivalents in Europe, the USA and elsewhere, became the educational conduits for a few members of the working class and many members of the middle classes through which they could rise above their birth status and find a place in the ranks of the meritocratic pyramid. Without success in these areas they were not considered fit for anything other than wage labour.

It is to rectify an estimated decline in blue and white – collar working class access to this meritocracy, which ostensively lies behind the 2016 proposal of Teresa May and her neo-liberal supporters in the British Conservative Party, to promote a greater role for grammer and other forms of selective schools. More probably, this group of Conservatives reason that significant numbers of parents from these sectors of the working class will vote for the Conservative form of bourgeous rule if they dangle this particular carrot. The motivation of some parents being the hope that their children will be able to escape the increasingly degenerating economic and social conditions of working and lower middle-class life.

And some working class parents are still prepared to sacrifice almost everything and pressure their children to succeed educationally for exactly that reason. However, the scope for such opportunities, never great, is now rapidly dwindling. Neither the right-wing form of bourgeios rule (Conservative or Republican) nor the left-wing petite – bourgeoisie form (Labour or Democratic) or their analogues elsewhere, can halt the structural changes taking place within the capitalist mode of production. The shrinking size of the capitalist welfare state and the globalisation of skilled labour have depressed opportunities for all those not already ensconced within the privileged elite. As small capital is squeezed out by large capital and the economic role of the middle-class declines, a future of meritocratic advancement and career security is becoming an obvious mirage. Tens of thousands of graduates (or more) are already unable to find employment at any secure level of economic life and already many more thousands are in the pipeline. However, there is more than one fundamental illusion attached to the concept of meritocracy.

Bourgeois and petite-bourgeois reasoning assumes that creating a meritocracy is both an adequate way of governing modern societies and also the best possible way. For at least two or three generations, this meritocratic process has been in operation within most advanced capitalist countries, their ex-colonies and in the previous state-capitalist countries of the Soviet Union and China. Having said this, it ought to be recognised that family, religious, or political influences have still played an important part in distributing the definite benefits of entry into this international meritocracy. So even in so-called meritocratic democracies, this method of choosing the elite who own, control, govern and administer the capitalist mode of production is not as fair as it tries to make out. Someone who has been coached through elite schools and universities such as Eton, Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, with family connections, are certain to become higher placed than those who went to Tyldesley County Primary and then Bolton or Bradford Universities. Someone who has inherited considerable capital will be at the front of the queue to join the elite compared to someone who has not. A similar advantage is gained in the rest of the world.

The meritocratic con trick.

When some of the elites, who have previously escaped the wage-labour slavery of their parents, tell the rest of us they made it through their own hard work and dedication, then this statement may well contain a small element of truth. However, when they go on to add (during school or college assemblies or on television broadcasts) as the govenor of the Bank of England recently did, that any one listening or watching can do the same if they try hard enough, they are consciously (or unconsciously) promoting a fiction. It is a fantasy founded upon a few exceptions. It is the same bourgeous capitalist trick as is pulled by the organisers of lotteries or gambling and gaming machines. ‘You have to be in it to win it’ as these missionaries of mammon routinely preach. Of course they fail to add that for someone (or some few) to ‘pay to win’ money this way, millions or several millions are required to lose money. Not everyone can be a winner precisely because it is deliberately set up so the vast majority have to ‘pay to lose’ in order for there to be a large enough pool of money available for the winners and the organisers.

It is the similar with access to the elites within societies. It is true there are thousands of elite positions within modern countries, from the highest paid in business, commerce, finance, politics, education, social work, health work, military, police, state civil service, church, sport and entertainment and down to the middle and lower paid ranks of this meritocracy. Nevertheless, these numbers are relatively low (and shrinking) compared with the populations at large. For example, if there were 50,000 elite jobs in any country and ten million eager adult employable citizens then it is clear that if every one of the ten million had worked equally hard, saved and gained comparable educational qualifications, then there would still be nine million, nine hundred and fifty thousand (9, 950, 000) who could not become part of the elite – no matter how hard they worked or how high their qualifications had become. Selection would still have to be made – but on the basis of an escalating set of criteria. They would still be stacking shelves, serving tables or cleaning toilets.

It would not matter what size the population or the ratio of elite job numbers to citizens, was (whether greater or lesser) it would not change the essential outcome. It would still, therefore, be a deliberate sowing of illusions to assert that everyone who worked hard enough and wanted it enough, could eventually achieve elite status based upon any criteria of merit. It is bourgeois ideological nonesense to advocate and promote such social and political illusions. Sadly some people will always be taken in by the meritocratic mirage and aspirational parents will be in the vanguard of welcoming any such new measures. They will be the most eager to attempt to propel their offspring into to one section of the elite or another.

However, as noted earlier, access to the meritocracy is already loaded against the white and blue collar working classes of whatever skin colour or gender, but that is not the most damaging criticism which can be levelled at the past, present and any future meritocracy. The most damaging criticism is the condition of the countries governed by two or three generations of meritocracy and the now appaling state of the planet. These meritocracies, complete with their 20th and 21st century miserly quotas of working class, female and non-white members, in full knowledge of the facts and probabilities, has steered the world into racist colonial expansion, two previous world wars and has brought to the 21st century, global economic, financial, social, ecological, and environmental Armagedon.

So how good are the meritocrats?

How well meritocracy has served humanity can be judged by the record of it in every country of the world, whether of the most advanced or of the less advanced. Whether we judge the actions of the national meritocratic elites of the Near East, the Far East, Africa, South America, North America, Europe, Asia or Oceana, the record is dire if not catastrophic. Whether organised in the form of left or right dictatorships or so-called democracies, the meritocracy in each and every country, unashamedly govern and administer systems of systemic corruption, oppression, exploitation, pollution, military aggression, injustice and rabid inequalities of class, gender, race and disability.

And these are not the worst activities perpetrated by members of the meritocracy, many of whom in addition to the above, also authorise, torture, assassinations, indiscriminate bombing and gassing while yet others pocket their stipends and not wanting to ‘rock the boat’ turn a convenient blind eye. The collective organisations of these meritocratic elites are no better. Whether we judge the actions of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the European Economic Community, the Organisation of African States, the G20 or any of the dozens of other such elite organisations, the results are depressing if not downright disgusting.

In every country and within every collective organisation, international or otherwise, the meritocracy are good at ensuring they have extravagant levels of pay, wonderful living conditions, excellent pensions, generous expenses, luxurious banquets, first class travel, top level limousines and numerous bodyguards – all paid for by the efforts of others. But that’s all they are really good at. Outside of these privileged elite protected bubbles, and under their administration and governance, the world is falling apart, ecologically, environmentally, socially, economically, financially and morally. Yet they show no shame!

In addition, the vast majority of the intellectual section of the national and global meritocracy, staffing the universities, education departments and financial institutions of the world haven’t fully understood or comprehensively criticised the contradictions of the mode of production from which they derive their inflated salaries and pensions. The numbers who predicted the last financial crisis of 2008 or really understood it when it happened could be counted on one hand. And there is still hardly any recognition among the intellectual meritocrats of the gathering momentum of the next one. How credible is that?

Also in the UK this month (September 2016) members of the political meritocracy via a parliamentary committee concluded that the military effort in Iraq “is bearing fruit” (?) whilst the military strategy in Syria was considered “necessary but not sufficient” because it lacked an adequate political dimension. A member of same committee publishing the report complained that there had been only 65 aircraft strikes on Syria by the UK! He wanted more! The same month the military meritocracy mistakenly killed innocent citizens and soldiers of their own alliance. Such blunders and self-serving delusions and justifications are so typical of the national and international political and military meritocracy that they are now routine. There was not one mention from these meritocrats, that unrequested military intervention in foreign countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia and Syria has caused devastating problems. The prior lessons of the Vietnam war suggest that military invasions are probably not a good idea in the first place. Failing to learn from numerous past failures – how meritorious is that?

Bearing all the above in mind, if any group of human beings should be described as ‘a basket of despicables’ it is surely this entire global elite of multi-disciplined, meritocratic parasites. Meritocracy and the capitalist mode of production are not the solution for the working classes and suffering humanity, they are in fact the fundamental problem. And the impending ‘decline and fall’ of the empire of capital will not be arrested or transformed by a few more underprivileged individuals being allowed to try to shoulder (or sycophant) their way up the national and international meritocratic pyramids of shame.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Critique, Finance, Politics | Tagged bourgeois illusions, Despicables, Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton, Meritocracy, Teresa May | 2 Comments

GOD AND GENDER.

Posted on September 6, 2016 by stutteringsteps

Have you ever wondered why in modern religions, the designated creative, super power of the universe is invariably classed as invisible yet is always conceived as being male? Do you, like me, wonder how such a gender specific fact could be definatively known if this imagined entity (as is also always asserted) is not only invisible but unknowable? Also, has it ever crossed your mind that it may be more than just a coincidence that most, if not all, modern religions asserting a male god are dominated by a heirarchy of men with males at the pinnicle of the religious hierarchy? If any of this has occurred to you, then like me you are in an undoubted minority. If it hasn’t, then perhaps it should, because the patriarchal imagination has not always been dominant within religion. As we shall see from evidence retrieved by archeology and anthropology, the creative principle in life and religion has not always been imagined as exclusively or even predominantly male. In terms of the existence of the human species and it’s evolving consciousness (several million years), male centredness and male domination are relatively recent developments. Would it really surprise you to learn that before the emergence of a patrifocal/patriarchal obsession a few thousand years ago, the dominant creative principle of life was usually imagined to be feminine?

Spirits and Goddesses.

There is clear evidence that many ancient human communities thought that everything (animals, rivers, plants, mountains, along with climatic conditions) was endowed with an animating spirit. It is also clear from the Sumarian and Babylonian religious myths that in many places goddesses were imagined to exist who were equal or even more powerful than gods. Indeed, in one of the imaginative creation myths of this ancient period the Great Earth Mother, ‘Tiamat’ is savagely killed by the god Merodach and cut up into pieces which he uses to form the earth and the heavens. Already in this part of the myth we witness an ideological construction in which the previously imagined female creative principle has been partially preserved by the use of her body to create the sky and the earth. However, her future as the preferred Createrix deity is also violently destroyed by being killed by the imagined male principle in the guise of the god Merodach. In yet another part of the Sumerian myth the god of mischief, Enki, is imagined to have said the following to Anshar, his forefather;

“See how the mother who created us is now rejecting us? And see, father, how the traitorous gods whom you produced are fighting beside her.” (Sumarian Mythology. Adrian Ambrose. Chapter 1. Emphasis added RR.)

‘The mother who created us’ – indeed! So goddesses created gods! Since all women and men emerged as babies from the bodies of women and then were nursed and nourished by the female body as were the animals around them, there was an obvious conclusion to be drawn. For these reasons early human communities invariably concluded that the female reality and principle was the creative one. Since the earth and sea produced the roots, fruits and fish upon which hunter-gatherer communities lived, it was a logical double step to imagine that the earth was a mother and thus a mother goddess was the creative force ensuring the fertility of nature and everything living on it. Before she was brutally murdered and dismembered by Enki, Tiamat, according to the same mythical sources, was also considered to be a sea goddess, whose domain provided an abundant supply of sea food protein. Mother Hubar was another imagined goddess who also created many things. The Babylonian goddess, Bau was also considered to be a Great Mother goddess. Furthermore, in the Gilgamesh Epic, Aruru was conceptualised as a goddess of creation and Inanna was the imagined goddess of love, beauty and warfare. The latter anticipating the Greek and Roman female goddess equivalents of Artemis and Diana or Hera and Juno. It appears the religious imagination of the ancient world was bursting at the seams with goddesses. These early peoples who settled in the Tigress and Euphrates valleys were agriculturalists and;

“Like other agricultural communities they were worshippers of the ‘World Mother’ , the Createrix, who was the giver of all good things, the Preserver and also the Destroyer – the goddess whose moods were reflected by natural phenomena, and whose lovers were the spirits of the seasons.” (Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. Donald Mackenzie.)

The fertile minds of these religious representatives of ancient peoples imagined that unseasonal droughts or floods negatively effecting crop production were the results of the Great Mother having a bad mood. In Pharaohonic Egypt, in the period when it was also another ancient agriculturalist based mode of production, the Great Mother of the universe and source of the food supply, was imagined to be Isis, ‘She who has given birth to the fruits of the earth’ as an early Greek inscription asserted. And;

“In the Egyptian legend, Osiris recieved the corn seeds from Isis, which suggests that among Great Mother worshiping peoples, it was believed that agricultural civilisation had a female origin.”(Myths of Babylonia and Assyria. Donald Mackenzie.)

Across the Mediterranean in Greece the goddess Demeter (also believed to be the giver of laws) was imagined to play essentially the same role. These early civilisations were not backward in intellect or practical skills. Quite the contrary. They studied astronomy, invented writing, developed calenders, built complex water management and irrigation systems along with huge temples and city complexes. So they must have had very good reason to continue to acknowledge and celebrate – at least within myth – the undeniable outstanding contributions women made to communities. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, some communities he had evidence of, still reckoned peoples lineage by the female line – ie matrilineality. This was a practice replicated in many places of the ancient world. From all this evidence we can conclude that for millions of years of human evolution, women were not always second class citizens in everyday life and the supernatural entities communities imagined were not always male.

From goddesses to gods.

So strong was this emphasis on the centrality of the female principle in life that the imagined Queens of Heaven and other such goddesses even had ancient cities named after them. This is a fact which has emphatically preserved some of their names for posterity. The city of Athens was named after the imaginary goddess Athena, and it is suggested that the extinct city of Nineveh on the banks of the river Tigris, was named after the imagined goddess Ninsun or Nina. So in the history of religeous forms of imagination it becomes apparent that to get from goddesses and gods to a single male god a two stage transition needed to take place within some important and influential communities. It was a transition which first moved from an emphasis on female creation deities to one with an emphasis on male creation deities and then later to imagine a single male creation deity.

In the above noted Sumerian myth we can witness this first ideological stage of overthrowing the female principle in religion in favour of the male, when Enki butchers Tiamat and uses her body parts to create the planetary structure on which humans live. The original female pro-creative principle embodied in the imaginary Tiamat is not only downgraded, but symbolically killed off by a male god. The Gilgamesh myth also has Inanna, the goddess of love, beauty and warfare practically begging to become the wife of Gilgamesh. Later after visiting her sister goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal, Inanna is executed and her body callously hung on a hook. Another goddess bites the dust! In this transitional religious system many imaginary gods and goddesses are still considered to exist, but the male gods have been re-imagined as more powerful than female goddeses and with licence to kill some of them off. Where they survive goddesses have been relegated to the wives, mothers and consorts of the dominant male gods. This was essentially the same religious ideological template (with further polytheistic complexity added) as was adopted across parts of India and by the ancient Greek imagination with its male dominated pantheon situated on mount Olympus. Yet even in this first transitional phase, goddesses are still imagined to play a crucial role. For example;

“The idea that a goddess should take part with a god in man’s creation is already a familiar feature of Babylonian mythology. Thus the goddess Aruru, in cooperation with Marduk, might be credited with the creation of the human race, as she might also be pictured creating on her own initiative an individual hero such as Enkidu of the Gilgamesh Epic. The role of mother of mankind was also shared, as we have seen, by the Semitic Ishtar. (‘Legends of Babylonia and Egypt…’ LW King Paletine Press. lecture 3.)

This basic polytheistic, gender-divided, but male dominated divine framework of religeous imagination continued within the Roman Empire, albeit with additions adopted from the numerous conquered peoples as the empire expanded. But by the time of the Roman Empire, the second transitional stage had already emerged. For elsewhere, the religious imagination had developed ideas of one multi-tasking super powerful male god (monotheism) who replaced all the other job specific gods and rendered them redundant. A short-lived trial of a form of monotheism was attempted in Egypt under the Pharaoh Akhenaton, but this proved unpopular and was soon abandoned. But the idea was not. A male form of monotheism was adopted by some members of a tribe within the middle east. According to their oral and written traditions (Torah) conducted an intense and bloody internal sectarian struggle to persuade the tribe and its confederacy to abandon the worship of golden calves, Baal, Tammuz, the Queen of Heaven and numerous other local gods and goddesses.

From families of gods to a single male god.

Eventually, this middle eastern monotheistic versus polytheistic struggle was successful within these tribes and it became the religion now known as Judaism, whose charismatic leaders eventually named their one god Yahweh. They created their narratives and myths in the form of a series of oral narratives before these were copied onto scrolls and later transfered into books. Much later, a dissident group of Jews began to agitate for a change within Judaism but eventually broke away and called themselves Christians. They held onto the Judaic books (eventually known by Christians as the Old Testament) along with the concept of a male god and created a modified form of monotheism in their New Testament. The Christians introduced the concept of a son of God (Jesus) and also imagined the existence of a holy ghost – the three of which (two imaginary males and an imaginary spirit) became described as a Holy Trinity! This tiny group of Christians converted increasing numbers of people until eventually they became an accepted and then dominant religion within the declining Roman Empire and spread their influence across the western world.

Eventually a split occurred within Christianity, (the first of many) between what became known as the Catholic and Orthodox, or Western and Eastern versions. The trend toward a male form of monotheistic religion was clearly unstoppable. So much so that it eventually captured the imagination of some within the still multiple-god (polytheistic) pagans within the Arabian peninsular. After many battles and conversions, the eventual result was the third form of monotheism which is now known as Islam. This third version of male monotheism also spread to other areas of the world. Over time, this threefold patriarchal religious development, Judaism, Christianity and Islam led to the almost universal domination of the imaginary male supernatural entity, but in wildly competing forms or denominations. Henceforth, killing and torture in the name of a male God became an established and scripturaly authorised form of human interaction in major parts of the world.

It is clear from even this brief survey of religious ideology that over a period of two to three thousand years, the vast majority of religions underwent a definate gender transition. In the imagination of their priests, theologians and leading adherents, religious beliefs during that period went from being essentially matrifocal to definatively patrifocal. However, as we have seen, this transition was only achieved via a stage in which gods and goddesses were part of powerful but often disfunctional patriarchal families. This gender transformation itself is interesting and revealing, but it is equally interesting to consider what underpinned this change. What could have been the possible driving force behind this radically altered religious imagination? Perhaps a clue lies within the period of agricultural production noted above, where in the religious imagination female goddesses were still important but already subordinate to gods.

Gender and modes of production.

We know from Anthropology and Archaeology that prior to agriculture and animal husbandry, the hunter/gatherer form of food production had existed since the dawn of the human species. And of course it is still how the genders of most other life forms ensure their survival – either by hunting or gathering – or both. Prior to agriculture and animal herding, food and shelter production in non-coastal commuties was not gender specific because both male and female of all species, including the human species, could gather as well as hunt where it was safe to do so. Since gathering produced the bulk (estimated at 80%) of the nutritional requirements of early human communities, then women were for many purposes, (food production included) the equals of men and economically independent of them. Yet this was not all that determined female status. In the vitally important area of reproduction and nurture women were clearly more important than men.

Generations of being economically equal and independent, yet reproductively superior in real life, was a status for women which could hardly fail to be reflected in the thoughts and imaginations of those who found solace in spirituality and who had not yet fully understood the workings of the natural world around them. Any development of religious ideas could hardly avoid incorporating this real-world gender awareness into its ideological and imaginative framework. It is not only possible but highly probable that imaginary Goddesses and Mother Earth worship would flow naturally (or rather socially) from this fundamental hunter/gatherer base line as it merged with early agricultural production.

However, it is well established that the widespread development of agriculture and animal husbandry (as a revolutionary mode of production) also revolutionised social relations. This new mode ensured a more reliable and more abundant food supply, than the original hunter/gatherer mode. It also opened up the possibility of divisions of labour, the development of specialist skills, the accumulation of wealth and the creation of permanent religious and military elites. Conquest for regular tribute or pillage for periodic theft, became a way for elites to be ultra parasitic on the new agricultural mode of production. It can hardly be surprising if the ideas emanating from this revolutionary new reality were reflected within the realms of religious thought. If women’s access to this new mode of production was progressively reduced and their economic role gradually redefined (and it was) then sooner or later it is probable that the role of the goddesses in the imagined spiritual realm would also be redefined.

It would be strange indeed if in a male dominated economic system, male domination (patriarchy) did not also invade and conquer the religious mentality. The new mode of production also spawned civilisation with its reliance upon armed bodies of men for defence and territorial expansion. This development occurred in Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome, The invention of a divine Ashur, the god of a military state, using the human king as his earthly representative, was perhaps a typical example and one which was replicated by most, if not all, ruling elites during that period and later. The domination of elite men over production and as a consequence their domination within civil society and military institutions was sooner or later bound to be reflected in one way or another within religious institutions and religious imagination.

The subsequent empire building by Persia, Greece and Rome, with its single male King of Kings, (Xerxes’, Alexander the Greats’, Julius Ceasars’ et al,) governing the real world were perhaps the physical precursors of the imaginary divine male King of Kings governing the universe and all it contained. Can it be surprising therefore that a centuries old reality of a single male exercising life and death control over large expanses of land, cities and peoples would not influence how people thought the universe might be ruled or should be ruled? It was perhaps the next logical (or vested interest) step to begin to imagine a single male creator god who also had the power of life and death over his subjects together with the idea that everyone should obey his wishes or suffer the most devastating tortures or even death at his divine displeasure. In other words is it only a coincidence that religious monotheism was a fantasy mirror image of the then visible reality of the male dominated empires within which the idea was born?

It would seem therefore that there is a very definite link between the social status of women within modes of production and the form religious mysticism takes. When women had direct access to the dominant mode of production and control of the instruments of production, they were treated equally or even with deference. And it seems this was reflected within the sphere of religious imagination. When the later modes of production came to be controlled by men this gender revolution was accompanied by a revolutionary transformation within the realm of esoteric religious thought. How could it be otherwise? Imagination has always been absolutely necessary in order to sustain belief in an invisible and unknowable spirit, whether that belief has been animism, idol worship or the idea of an invisible, unknowable all powerful male god. Imagination and unquestioning faith just has to be the modus operandi for the asserted existence of something that cannot be proven and evaluated by means of the five human senses aided by the tools which enhance these senses. And of course if enough influential people argue that something exists, whether it exists or not, most ordinary people will find it difficult, if not impossible, to contradict this dominant view.

The transformed role of women within economic production and within the imagined religious realm serves to indicate that religious beliefs are plastic and subject to periodic change. It can also be seen from the above evidence that religious beliefs are derived ultimately from experiences gained from mundane everyday life but as modified by the power of imagination. It also suggests that real equality for women can only be achieved when once again they have direct access to, and equal control of the means and instruments of production. This alienation from direct social production and the resultant inequality, is something women share with the working classes under the capitalist mode of production but they also suffer from male gender prejudice as well. It was only 96 years ago (1920) that men in the USA allowed women there to vote and only 88 years ago (1928) that men in the UK allowed their women full voting rights. Yet then and now most men and most women still remain subordinate wage (or salary) slaves to capital. As Karl Marx, noted;

“The whole of human servitude is involved in the relationship of the worker to production, and every relation of servitude is but a modification and consequence of this relation. (Marx. Economic and Philosophic notebooks of 1844.)

So it is important for those who have realised that a post-capitalist mode of production is necessary that they should campaign for and where possible assist the achievement of women’s equality now not tell them they should wait until after a revolution.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Critique, Feminism, Patriarchy, Religion | Tagged Goddesses, Gods, Matrilineality, Patriarchy, Religion and women, Religion versus womens' rights | 3 Comments

THE PEOPLE ARE THE PROBLEM (sic)!

Posted on August 23, 2016 by stutteringsteps

The statement by German President, Joachim Gauck, (August 2016) that; “The elites are not the problem, it’s the people who are the problem”, reveals far more than perhaps was intended. Indeed, it is worth considering this opinion in a much wider context. This reactionary outburst was asserted in relation to the millions of German nationals who are increasingly opposed to the current levels of immigration. However, this arrogant attitude is symptomatic of a much broader characteristic demonstrated by the political and economic elites the world over. From the perspective of the economic and political elites, the people are always the problem when they do not agree with or follow their suggestions or dictates. This symptom applies to all elites, whether of the left, centre or right wing inclinations. When they are allowed to vote, people are capable of voting the ‘wrong’ (sic) way – according to the elite mentality.

For example, after the result of the Brexit vote in the UK, many pro-European politicians, economists, academics, pundits and commentators considered that the problem lay with the millions who voted against their wishes. These Brexit voting people were alleged to be ill informed, racist or just not capable of being rational. In the USA, the people who are supporting the elite loose cannon Donald Trump are likewise being characterised by the dominant media outlets as racist, or insufficiently intelligent to know any better. The people really are becoming a serious problem for the economic, financial and political elites the world over. This same elite attitude was also revealed not too long ago when the people of Greece massively voted against Brussels proposals for austerity. The Greek people were seen by the Brussels elite as causing a problem, not the political elite who created the sovereign debt issue by reckless borrowing and the finincial elite by their aggressive lending.

These three recent examples make clear that from the perspective of the elites, the ‘people are the problem’. This is especially so if they object to the way the current neo-liberal phase of the capitalist mode of production is being administered. In the advanced countries, when the people demonstrate or ‘occupy’ to protest they are considered such a problem that they are pepper sprayed, kettled, arrested and injured. In less advanced countries people who protest against elite corruption are incarcerated, tortured, assassinated or simply disappear. During the 20th century, the Bolshevised and Stalinised elites of Russia and China etc., despite a rhetoric of concern for the oppressed, still treated millions of working people as a problem requiring, torture, incarceration and assassination to get them to ‘toe the (Party) line’. For elites the world over, the manifold problems infecting and effecting the modern world are never caused by themselves or the system they uphold – it is always the people!

So the contemporary response of blaming the victims by the elites is nothing new. The 20th and 21st centuries are full of such examples. In the UK, the US and Europe, the people were celebrated when they fought and died in two world wars to defend the capitalist system. However, as soon as they tried to defend the living standards achieved in the aftermath of the Second World War, they once again became perceived as a problem. After having laboured to reconstruct the post-war economies and create new levels of wealth for the new elites, the ‘people’, particularly working people, were once again perceived as an intractable problem. They were considered a problem of such magnitude that the full force of the nation – states of Europe and North America were successfully marshalled to corrupt, marginalise and destroy their organisations of resistance (trade unions) and communal associations.

With the achievement of a partial socio-economic destruction of peoples lives and communities under the Thatcher and Reagan periods of the 20th century, a new (big-bang!) neo-liberal phase of the capitalist mode of production was introduced. It has been a period of unregulated and unchallenged financial domination in which everything except the air people breathe has been up for sale to those who had gained wealth during the previous stage of reconstruction. In the UK for example, water, gas, electricity, transport, communications, were privatised and transformed from public services into sources of further profit for the financial, economic and political elite. Not content with this, the same financial, economic and political elites also devised stealth inspired manouvres to get control of profitable areas of health and education.

Not surprisingly under the new conditions of large-scale unemployment, low pay, precarious employment and contraction of welfare services, working people are again faced with a serious predicament. Do they passively accept the policies handed down to them by their elites or do they resist them? It is clear that increasing numbers of the citizens of the various nation-states have little or no trust (or faith) in the established bourgeois methods of social democratic governance. In addition in most countries, there is a new generation of well educated, jobless young people who recognise the corruption, the self-interested greed and the general incompetence of the political elites. They are also rejecting the two Janus faces of bourgeois social democracy, Republican and Democratic; Labour and Conservative; or Socialist and Social Democratic. They have already realised, that the problem is not the people, but the elites.

That is the first stage of recognising the real problem. It may take some time before this new generation recognises that it is the mode of production which needs to be changed, not simply the political puppets (left, right or centre) who constantly dance to its various tunes. Meanwhile, faced with frustrated careers, social exclusion and austerity, these new workers may well vote for demagogues, not vote at all or even protest and riot. Sooner or later, however, if they conclude that ‘another world is possible’ they will need to become revolutionary rather than reformist or abstentionist. More importantly still they will need to be revolutionary – humanists if they are not to recreate the the patriarchal vanguardist pretentions and totalitarian conditions of the various 20th century Bolsheviks, Trotskyists or Stalinists. As revolutionary humanists they truly will become a problem for the elites of all political persuasions and at the same time collectively become part of the solution to the problems now facing humanity and the global eco-system upon which humanity ultimately depends.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2016)

Posted in Critique, neo-liberalism, Politics, Reformism, Revolutionary-Humanism, The State | Tagged 'people are the problem', blaming the victims | 1 Comment

THE INVENTION OF RACE.

Posted on August 5, 2016 by stutteringsteps

Differences between human beings such as those designated as ‘racial’ and religious are again being promoted as causing most, if not all, of the problems facing contemporary society. The reason is not too difficult to fathom. The economic aspects of the current crisis have created job insecurity, relative levels of poverty, contraction of welfare provisions and financial instability. In all countries in which the capitalist mode of production dominates, there are severe problems with housing, education, health provision, and employment opportunities. These symptoms have given rise to a percieved need by some to once again fall back upon exagerating differences among working people in order to have someone to blame. The five-fold crisis of the capitalist mode of production has once again provoked increased outbreaks of violence within the ranks of the exploited and oppressed.

The ‘austerity’ driven cutbacks particularly effect those in the low paid working and non-working sections of society. This in turn has produced despair, anxiety, anger and an emerging struggle between the various victims of the present system for access to the increasingly scarce resources. It is a struggle which is to some extent also directed against the state. As usual where there is organised protest against the deteriorating economic and social conditions, those who control the capitalist states defend themselves and their system aggresively. The armed bodies of men employed by the nation states are sent to pepper spray, tear gas, kettle, disperse, arrest, maim and even kill those who pay their wages but who do not accept the conditions they are currently required to endure. The capitalist system once again cannot provide adequate resources for the number of people requiring them. The resurrection of a previously invented scapegoat therefore is now in full swing.

Instead of blaming the capitalist mode of production for its many fundamental failings, the dominant ideological hold over opinion makers ensures they blame one or other of the victims of this global system of oppression and exploitation. The ersatz blame game by one set of petite bourgeois opinion makers has targeted immigrant workers as the problem causing repeated social crisis, whilst another distorted variant of petite bourgeois ideology blames the indigenous workers for being racially prejudiced, unwelcoming and exacerbating the internal crises of nation states. This is despite the fact that both these category of workers are equally the victims of the global capitalist system.

Even some of the traditional left have joined in on one side or another of this dualistic divide of blaming one or other of the working class victims who comprise of different ethnicities, skin colour, or religious denomination. Yet it should be obvious that any economic system based upon inequality needs to invent, construct and perpetuate exagerated differences such as religion, class or ‘race’ in order to justify itself. The capitalist mode of production is no different in this respect. Moreover, for the capitalist system to survive it’s periodic crises its supporters also need to choose periodic scapegoats. As we shall see, they have a long history of creating them.

In contrast to the apologists of capital, the voices and opinions raised against the capitalist system and its defensive and offensive ideology which fuels and rationalises this multifaceted crisis are feeble and few. This itself is a serious indictment of the sectarian fragmentation of the anti-capitalist movement – and the lack of a substantial one – which even fewer of its representatives are prepared to self-critically examine. Be that as it may, there is also the need to understand the economic tap roots of the cultural and ideological phenomena of prejudice in general and racial prejudice in particular. For racism, as with other discriminating prejudices is not an inevitable (or uncurable) disease but a carefully constructed, culturally driven aspect of bourgeois ideology. What follows is a contribution to furthering the understanding of that pernicious and divisive ideological feature driven by the needs of the capitalist mode of production.

The concept of race versus biology.

Dictionary definitions of race are many and they confusingly utilise a mix of environmental, geographical, linguistic and religious terms and characteristics. For example; lineage, blood, issue, people, type, clan, tribe, etc. This jumble of terms itself indicates that that the concept has little agreed social or biological content. This is perhaps not surprising since the concept of race, as has already been mentioned, is a manufactured or socially constructed invention of a previous century. Its biological basis in evolutionary reality has little or no substance.

It is a fact that people group together on the basis of family, location, religion, economic production or shared interest. It is also fact a that a permanent geographical location over extremely long periods, can alter the physical appearance and skills required by human groups to adapt to that environment. Skin pigment, muscle development and motor skills may differ from group to group by permanent residence in one location or by one habitual economic activity or another. So too will the domination of one food source lead to slight differences in health or longevity, as well as skin texture and internal tissue development. In other words humans adapt and evolve. It is also true that procreation and nurture will pass on many of these adapted characteristics, both positive and negative within any closed group of families.

But these are all minor alterations or adaptations to the basic biological/physical construction of the entire human species. Human beings can interbreed successfully between the mostly widely differently adapted groups on the planet. Thus rendering the term ‘widely different’ in evolutionary and genetic terms a microscopically small one in actual fact. In biological terms there are more genetic differences within groups of humans on the same continents (such as differences in the blood groups O, A and B and height) than between those human groups on different continents. These small differences arise because the human body along with other life forms is capable of adaptation and development which is now classed as evolution. Very few, if any, of these globally diverse changes to the basic (out of Africa) structure of all humans is permanent or irreversible. Most, if not all, physical characteristics developed over millennia of adaptation to one environmental location will alter over further millennia of adaptation if transferred to a new one.

Skill sets, cultural preferences and knowledge will take only a fraction of that time to change and be adopted or adapted. So there is in actual fact biologically and socially only one human species and if by race, biological species continuity is being referenced, there is only one race – the human race. In evolutionary terms, biological continuity is a species issue, not one determined by ethnic, geographical, economical, cultural or ideological factors. Yet despite its despicable invention and spurious justifications, the concept of race – as just one form of deliberately exagerated difference – has served and still serves a very definate purpose.

The ‘creation’ of exagerated difference.

The creation of exaggerated difference certainly has one of its tap roots in the tribal histories of those groups who later founded the Abrahamic religions. This was a period when the competitive differences concerning how and where human beings lived and worked, (pastoralism, herding, agriculture and pillage, and the location in which these modes of production took place) were further and deliberately exaggerated by the construction of separate religions out of the one common concept of a male god. As pastoral and agricultural communities grew in size and complexity, competition for scarce resources ‘begat’ increased conflict for control of them. Utilising the concepts of God’s ‘chosen people’ and God’s ‘will’ to rationalise and justify, killing, territorial conquest and economic enslavement of other human beings, this became an early Abrahamic practice. Just to take one example of many;

“I am the Lord your God who has separated you from the peoples……I have set you apart from the peoples to be mine.” (Leviticus 20 v 24 and 26.) “They will bow down to you with their faces to the earth. And lick the dust of of your feet…..And foreigners will build up your walls…..For the nation and the kingdom which will not serve you will perish. And the nations will be utterly ruined.” (Isaiah 49 v 23; 60 v 12.)

The purpose of this ‘created’ difference is made crystal clear in this extract. The Old Testament (Torah), the foundational text of both Judaism and Christianity, is full of this sort of arrogant assumption of superior difference, intentional separation and belligerent, not to mention wealth appropriating and genocidal attitude, to other peoples. That is to say those peoples standing in the way of their prefered mode of production or not accepting their version of monotheism. The third, Abrahamic religion, Islam is not bereft of the same sectarian arrogance and attitude to resource conquest and killing in the name of God, within its ‘holy’ text, the Qur’an. By the use of these and other ancient ideological forms of patriarchy, belonging to the ‘right’ religion became the ‘fictionally invented’ positive marker for tribally associated human beings.

Not belonging to the ‘right’ religeous denomination consequently became the negative social marker for other human beings. And for 21st century remnants of this religious fundamentalism within all three religions – it still is. Organised religion was and is a mystical means of asserting and exagerating superiority and differences between human beings. However, this ancient tap root of economically motivated and deliberately exagerated difference was given a further intellectual twist during the development of the capitalist era. The deliberate, cobbled together construction of different ‘racial identities’ out of bits from anthropology, biology, economic participation, history and medical pathology, was given a supposedly scientific foundation for a definate purpose. The motivation for this invention became strong during the period between the 18th to 19th centuries with regard to dealing with ‘foreign’ native populations. Why this was so, is not really a mystery when we consider the investment and realisation needs of the dominant mode of production – capitalism!

Manufacturing the concept of race.

The rapid increase in economic productivity due to the industrial revolution phase of capitalism (via extraordinary surplus value extraction) provided the stimulous for two associated developments. First, it provided the necessity and motivation for seeking new sources of raw materials and markets. It was no use being able to mass produce commodities if insufficient raw materials were available to allow continuous production by workers and machinary or if the huge quantity of finished products could not be sold. At an early point in industrial development, the local, national and international markets established by commerce no longer sufficed and according to the capitalist perspective, the rest of the world was economically, socially and politically under-developed. The periods of colonialism and imperialism, were the logical capitalist and bourgeois answer to this problem of ensuring continuous production and continuous export for consumption. The return of capital investment and profit depended upon it.

Second, the same increase in industrial productivity and surplus value on the backs of working people massed in factories, also created the means for a greater production and accumulation of educated persons in the intellectual spheres of bourgeois life. A boom time for industry and commerce led to a boon time for the developing middle classes. New universities were formed, courses were extended, academic subjects added and mainly male students from the middle-classes were recruited. These students carried their middle class prejudices and bourgeois assumptions along with their books and clothes into their halls of residence when they went down to Oxford, Cambridge (or whichever university,) to begin their studies. Advances in the breadth and depth of bourgeois scientific understanding springing from and carried into industry, commerce, state bureaucracy and the armed forces, seemed on the surface to doubly enrich capitalist culture and on the surface it did. Nevertheless it’s primary purpose was to serve the economic interests of those supported by and engaged in the capitalist mode of production.

This early globalised ambition for profit brought the bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie into closer contact and conflict with native inhabitants of the foreign lands they coveted for the raw materials and labour they could extract from them. However, the ruthless and relentless appropriation and exploitation of ‘other’ human beings needed more than just guns and steel, to maintain it. It needed both justification and rationalisation. The new sciences wielded by the newly educated middle class (ie bourgeois) intelligentia provided both. From the mid 1800’s on, Francis Galton in the UK, Charles Davenport in the USA and Erwin Baur, Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz in Europe, were outstanding advocates of ideas which ultimately led to concepts of racial identity. By the turn of the 20th century their ideas were widely accepted among the scientific community and had filtered down into popular culture. The era of a so-called scientific basis for exagerated difference had begun.

Race as a tool of capital – 1 (colonialism and genocide).

The ideological tool of race was partly, if not wholely constructed in the intellectual workshops of a late 19th century discipline which was called Eugenics. Among other things, the eugenics movement studied supposed congenital traits and inborn character whilst selectively borrowing concepts and data from anthropology and cultural studies. The political purpose of racial eugenics was to rank global human communities on a sliding scale from advanced to backward. The advanced were considered to be the white European colonists, the so-called backward were those who did not measure up to the accepted European norms in economic activity, cultural levels and religious preferences. Skulls were measured, noses profiled, heights were measured along with many other physical characteristics, such as skin colour and hair texture, as well as alleged social attributes and character traits. For a time such eugenic classification of ‘other’ human beings became a bourgeois obsession of almost global proportions. For example;

“The first ever international meeting of eugenicists, in Dresden in 1911, brought together scholars from eight different countries: Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Austria, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark. By the end of the 1930’s the eugenics network had expanded to include five times as many countries and dominions: France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Mexico, Cuba, Columbia, Guatemala, Venezuela, San Salvador, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Panama, Peru, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Siam, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and India.” (Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938 – 1945. Introduction.)

In addition to the dates (1911 and the 1930’s) the keen observer will quickly note that the countries developing these proto racist ideas were those countries which had been colonised and those which had sponsored colonialism and imperialism. For, as noted above, when the ‘advanced’ nation states of Europe became the organisational vehicles for the dispossesion of native peoples, during the colonialist and imperialist periods of capitalist expansion, their elites needed a set of rationalising theories to justify this expansion into what became 19th century Empire building. The so-called science of eugenics supported by scientists, physicians, lawyers and academics – all drawn from the educated middle-classes – provided an important part of these theories. Popularising racist ideology for the lower classes was also not neglected as the following extract from a 19th century poem by Rudyard Kippling illustrates;

“Take up the White Man’s burden
send forth the best you breed
Go bind your son’s to exile,
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild,
Your new caught, sullen peoples
Half devil and half child.”

It’s amazing how much can be compressed into such a short extract, isn’t it? Racial stereotyping and imperial justification condensed into a few populist stanzas. Yes it is all in there – except the systematic genocide perpetrated against these global indigenous communities. And of course also missing is the recognition that there was an urgent economic need to exagerate difference in order to rapidly exploit the human and natural resources of the world. Racism was (and is) merely an intellectual appendage to bourgeois ideology.

Race as a tool of capital – 2 (sterilisation/euthanasia/slave labour).

It is interesting and revealing to note that this crude ‘bioligist’ ideology of the eugenics movement developed two distinct strands, negative eugenics and positive eugenics. Positive eugenics were seen as promoting policies and procedures which enhanced the health, strength and general well being of the favoured people (now posited as a superior ‘race’) whilst negative eugenics was meant to activate policies and practices which eliminated those defective among the favoured population. Elimination was a fate, along with slavery, which also awaited any unfavoured people, now designated as a inferior (or more offensively as ‘mongrel’) races.

In other words, healthy, foods, exercise and good living conditions for the favoured people, forced sterilisation and euthanasia for the deformed or mentally handicapped, and, slavery, internment or extermination for the ‘inferior’ categories or the socially deviant. The manufactured concept of race became so widely accepted that the elite in many nations, attempted to assert, their own version of racial superiority with regard to other people’s. The search for some mythical (non existent) pure blood continuity became widespread. So in many places and particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, the ideas developed in the eugenics movement quickly morphed into ideas of racial improvement by means of so-called Racial Hygiene. For example;

“The German Society for Racial Hygiene (Deutsch Gesellschaft fur Ras senhygiene) was replicated in the years leading to and immediately after the First World War across East Central Europe. Thus, similar institutions were established in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Bulgaria, although the specific national context and social and medical practices in those countries did not differ significantly.” (Racial Science in Hitler’s New Europe, 1938 – 1945. Introduction.)

So the pseudo-scientific ideology of race was already common place throughout Central Europe, North and South America as well as Eastern Europe around the time of the First World War (1914 – 1918). After that particular war, the Nazi elite and their followers merely took the internationalised ideas of the eugenics and racial hygiene movement to their logical distorted extreme. The Nazi intelligentia and their supporters had a particular need to exagerate difference for additional political as well as economic reasons. They merely included those classed as Jews and Slavs in their list of so-called ‘mongrel races’ and applied this type of racial categorisation to the continent of Europe as well as to the colonies of Africa, America, Asia and Oceana. These newly classified unworthy and unwanted Europeans (which also included communists) were eventually forced to work as slave labour, to emigrate or were simply eliminated. And again from the standpoint of the capitalist class and their state supporters, there was a compelling economic reason for them to do so.

The European states in which capital dominated not only created a new dominant mode of production but as noted expanded the means of production into larger and larger and more efficient units. This fact together with the industrial use of machinery created not only a surplus of commodities needing foreign outlets, but soon a surplus working population, who where no longer regularly needed. These dispossessed indigenous people were a potential and actual problem for they were prone to disatisfaction, disruption and rebellion. One solution was to provide them with newly sequestered land, farms, offices and buildings obtained by invading a foreign territory. And of course this type of capitalist inspired conquest required a disciplined, healthy fighting force of loyal citizens to seize and secure the confiscated factories, shops, offices and farms.

Prior to the development of Germanic lebensraum, advanced capitalist countries, such as Holland, France and England, had already done the same resource expansion and annexation in Africa and elsewhere. Spain and Portugal had done so in the Americas etc. It was only a matter of time before others tried the same. These loyal citizens of the state, in the case of Nazi controlled Germany where classed as the ‘true Germans’ of mythical ancient Aryan stock. Hence positive eugenics was practiced for those classified as such. That left the question of what to do with those – who for whatever reason – opposed such development? The answer was concentration camps, work camps, assassinations and ghettos. What to do with the unreliable, unhealthy or handicapped elements of Germany? The answer lay in negative eugenics – assassination, sterilisation or forced euthanasia.

So to sum up so far: The accelerated invention, manufacture and distribution of ‘race’ coincided with the accelerated invention, manufacture and distribution of commodities in general and of sugar, tobacco, tea, cotton, spices and fruits in particular. It was these latter commodities that required vast areas of foreign lands to farm and large numbers of slaves or other forms of compulsory labour, to plant, grow, pick, pack and deliver as cargo to the commercial wing of the capitalist mode of production. Such ruthless subjugation, exploitation and oppression, in pursuit of a profitable return on capital required an extention and promotion of bourgeois ideology in the form of supposed European superiority, allied to Eugenics and Racism. As we have seen, the invention of race was an aspect of pro-capitalist ideology that developed in the universities and state departments of the countries most advanced capitalistically. The 20th century Fascist version of state-capitalism in Germany merely came up with the ultimate eugenicist/racist (final) solution to the problem of people who got in the way.

The legacy of exaggerated difference.

Religeous differences are still being kept alive in the 21st century and are particularly emphasised by the fundamentalists of all religious persuasions. Reaching or harking back to the fundamental tenets of religions, as Jewish, Christian and Islamic fundamentalists do, means reviving ancient texts and renewing the myths and exagerated/distorted differences contained within them. Backward ideas based upon tribal rivalries of 1,500 to 2,000 years ago have now been reintroduced as relevant to the 21st century. Killing and land appropriation in the name of God after going out of fashion for a lengthy period, returned in the 20th century and sadly continues in the 21st.

The actual textual justification and recommendation of conquest and killing in the name of God contained within the Bible and Qur’an, which the extreme fundamentalists, utilise may have been neglected by the majority of those who still subscribe to these religions, but they have not been openly rejected by them. It is perhaps revealing why this might be so. Could it be that to reject them openly would be to admit that God is not good or alternatively admit that these words were not a God’s at all, but based upon the original, tribally inspired words of some dangerous, devious, and ancient patriarchal men?

The legecy of ‘scientific’ Racism lies partly in the way in which non-white people have been and still are being treated. The cobbled together psuedo-science of racial classification, so permiated the advanced capitalist (ex colonialist) countries in the 20th century, that its residue still exists in the form of discrimination against certain peoples – usually, but not exclusively, of colour. This racism has never completely disappeared and in many cases has been institutionalised. In this regard people rarely bother to consider why racism is predominantly, if not exclusively, a white problem and prejudice. Yet it is obvious why. The domination of the capitalist mode of production, first occurred in Europe, where nations of people of light skin existed in large numbers. The continuing domination of elite white people in all aspects of European and North American life, is a direct result of the global domination of capital as a mode of production.

Since capitalism is based upon minority control of wealth and competition for scarce resources, then that minority – as a dominant economic class – will tend to be white. But also since under the class divisions of capitalism, there is competition for jobs, housing and education, then this relative scarcity for the vast majority of citizens has engendered a need to gain (or prevent loss of) economic and social advantage. In an attempt to gain an advantage, it has become useful for some people to focus on small human differences such as skin colour or nationality and to continue to exagerate them. This relative scarcity of jobs has been made even worse by the capitalist inspired recruitment of low wage workers, of different ethnicities and religions who have been encouraged to become official economic immigrants. Imigrants, themselves victims of dispossession and displacement, particularly those of colour, are being conveniently being used as scapegoats for the present economic and social ills. However, it is the capitalist mode of production which is at fault. It creates wealth for some and relative scarecity for the majority. All this evidence suggests that as long as the bourgeois system of capitalism exists bourgeois inspired practices and prejudices such as racism will continue to surface. Yet the new crisis situation in the 21st century, points to more than one possible outcome.

The first outcome is, as we now witness developing in Europe and North America in particular, the taking up of previously sanctioned exagerated differences to claim priority in jobs, housing and education, among other things and to deny them to others. In this way the concept of ‘race’ along with ‘nationality’ and ‘religion’ will remain something of a socio – economic tool of capital for it hinders and obscures the second possible response to scarcity for the non – capitalist majority of the worlds populations. Since the present system of production could be and would be capable of ensuring a high standard of existence for everyone if a minority were not disproportionally benefiting from it whilst controlling it, then the second possibility is as follows.

It would be for the oppressed majority to refuse to sanction these previously manufactured exagerated differences and unite to challenge and change the mode of production. As we have seen it is the needs of those controlling this mode of production which has created the modern concepts of race (and nationality) as well as the relative economic scarcity for those not in the top ten percent. However, the very real danger is that those who are not provided with such a practical understanding along with a coherent humanist alternative, will always be subject to bourgeois prejudices such as sectarianism, racism and nationalism.

Once again I suggest that only a revolutionary – humanist understanding can offer a non-sectarian theoretical and practical alternative to the contemporary bourgeois and petite – bourgeois ideological hegemony. This is because sectarianism (political or religious) is just another form of petite bourgeois exagerated difference manufactured for very definite purposes of discrimination, exploitation and control. A revolutionary humanist understanding also contains the intellectual tools to deconstruct the economic base of the continuing racist and nationalist narratives and thus to challenge the practice of blaming and dividing the victims. Once again I suggest a critical-mass of revolutionary – humanists urgently needs to be created.

Roy Ratcliffe (July 2016)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, Critique, Nationalism, Revolutionary-Humanism, Sectarianism, The State | Tagged blaming the victims, exagerated difference, Race | Leave a comment

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