WHITHER THE NATION-STATE?

Posted on September 4, 2015 by stutteringsteps

Whether we consider the multifarious problems in Greece, Spain and other countries, or the emergence of radical Islam (as with ISIL), the continuing 21st century economic crisis of the capitalist mode of production has undoubtedly produced a profound political crisis which impacts upon the nation-state. The present crisis is truly one of global proportions and of multiple symptoms. Of course, any systemic crisis in the economic base of the capitalist mode of production, is bound to be reflected one way or another in the socio-political practice and ideology that represents the interests of those who benefit from this system. The ideology and practice which has most accurately reflected the capitalistic interests of the bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie up until the late 20th century, has been that of nationalism. And it is indeed the practice of the bourgeois state and its ideological offspring – bourgeois nationalism – that is currently under serious attack.

The first line of attack upon the nation-state is coming from the representatives of the finance-capital, and multi-national sectors of capitalism. The needs and aspirations of this sector have long outgrown the territorial limitations of the nation-state, but now they aspire to control even more. As a group it is led by an oligarchy who wish to consolidate their global economic and financial domination of everything and this now includes significant ‘outside’ control over the politics and legislation of nation-states. The investment logic of the financial section of the bourgeoisie (the market fundamentalists) increasingly requires the submission of national sovereignty – in all matters related to their global financial interests. They now insist that their appointed fund managers and internally elected boards of directors in the IMF, ECB, for example, have the right to demand that elected governments ignore their electorates wishes, implement and enforce state laws and enter and honour contracts beneficial to their financial wellbeing.

The second line of attack upon the bourgeois nation-state is from extreme Islamic fundamentalism, whose representatives also reject the nation-state form – neo-liberal bourgeois or otherwise. This religious category of fundamentalists recognise only religious boundaries and also want their own form of global domination – more recently designated as (and centred upon) a resurrected Caliphate. These militant religious fundamentalists also insist that their unelected elites and religious oligarchs have the right to demand that elected governments bow to their wishes and implement laws (Sharia) beneficial to their Islamic religious interests. Whilst, the finance-capitalists ruthlessly wield weapons of economic destruction, the Islamists ruthlessly wield weapons of physical destruction. Both seek to govern either directly or indirectly and in pursuit of their respective aims. Both sets of elites seek to destroy each other and seriously harm anyone who gets in between or opposes their intentions.

In each case it is the ordinary people of the world who are suffering and will continue to suffer from these two sources of elite oppression and exploitation. This is done by creating fear of (and actual  loss of) jobs, homes and pensions on the one hand, (perpetrated by the economic fundamentalist IMF/ECB) and fear of (and actual loss of) life or limb (in this case by the religious fundamentalist ISIL) on the other. Both of these increasingly powerful groups wish to control the lives and labour of ordinary people – for their own elite ends. And promoting as well as implementing life threatening actions and ideology is not the only similarity between these two different ideological positions now competing for eventual global domination.

Competing ambitions.

What fuels the ambitions of the finance-capitalist sector is the arrogant assumption that the system they uphold is the best for humanity. Operating as high-level loan sharks, the logic of their economic assumptions and social aspirations are such that they consider themselves entitled to trample on other citizens rights. This amounts to a classic case of persecuting the victims (the working classes) of this current mode of production. The working classes, blue-collar and white, have no say over what is produced, how it is produced, nor do they have a say in what loans their government choose to sign up to. Yet they are the ones that suffer from unemployment by production being moved to low-cost countries or the import of low-cost labour. They are also the ones who suffer most from environmental degradation and who suffer most from taxation and the effects of governmental austerity measures.

What fuels the ambitions of the Islamists is also an arrogant assumption that Islam is the best religion for humanity. The logic of their religious assumptions and social aspirations are also such that they are convinced they are entitled to trample on other citizens rights, including the right to live. The three Abrahamic religions, of which Islam is one, are based upon ancient texts which were formulated during a period when tribal patriarchy dominated societies. Consequently these texts are deeply prejudiced not only against people of other religions but also internally against women, homosexuals and rational-based science. The existence of these ancient writings is also the textual foundation of all forms of religious fundamentalism, including those who kill in the name of God and justify it by those texts.  Followers of all these religions have killed in the name of their God, Islam is just currently the one most openly committed to perpetrating crimes against humanity.

Resistance to either of these two elite-sponsored fundamentalist attacks upon the bourgeois state has been slow to develop and only began to stir in the second decade of the 21st century. This as yet ineffectual struggle to defend the bourgeois nation-state within Europe has commenced among the professional middle-classes, who have reason to fear not only the Islamists and the neo-liberalists, but also the potential for revolution among the working classes and dispossessed. All these three constituencies threaten the ambitions and the middle-class privileged nation-state positions achieved during the 20th and 21st centuries. As yet the token resistance to finance-capital has been to be rhetorically (or in a few cases politically) opposed to neo-liberal ’austerity’. In contrast the resistance to Islamism has been less effective. In pursuit of ‘political correctness’ it has been limited to denouncing ‘killing in the name of God’ as not authentic Islam.  This is an assertion which merely indicates they have not seriously studied the Qur’an or many of the Hadiths.

Although the latter two fundamentalisms (economic and religious) differ considerably on intended outcome, they are both examples of the increasing attacks upon the ideal and reality of the secular bourgeois nation-state.  An additional and less obvious symptom of a threat to the bourgeois state is the above noted increasing disillusion among the working classes of the economically advanced capitalist countries of the world. General support for the nation-state is waning precisely because capitalist and state-capitalist states are increasingly failing their citizens. The development of the neo-liberal phase of capitalism and its attendant crisis has served to erode the supposed ‘contract’ between state elites and their citizens. The social contract to pay reasonable taxes and obey state laws in exchange for economic participation, justice, peace, protection and security has gone. For the middle and working classes, the poor and the dispossessed, taxes have gone up but economic participation, peace, justice and security has gone down.

Failed States.

It is popular amongst some sections of the press and the academic media to point to the failure of ex-colonial states as they descend into either systemic anarchic dysfunction or systemic dictatorial corruption and eventual collapse. Whilst these failures are true, such orientalist/racist prejudice labelling is to miss a glaringly obvious point. In the advanced countries of Europe and North America the technically bankrupt, bourgeois nation-state, as noted above, is also demonstrably failing its citizens. After a previous profound economic and political crisis in the early twentieth century had caused mass unemployment followed by two wars of mutual mass extermination, the bourgeois elite had promised a radically different state and a more egalitarian world in future.  Job creation, welfare provision, education, health, dignified retirement and many other areas of life were to be provided by the bourgeois nation-state.  The capitalist mode of production and its institutional off-spring, the nation-state was in future supposed to be harnessed to these and other worthwhile ends.

In actual fact this promised entitlement for every citizen was never fully realised and for those who did benefit from it, this post-war settlement did not even last for one generation before a new political elite reneged on the promise and simultaneously accelerated a new crisis. This fact has not been lost on those citizens who care to think about it. For the second or third time (two instances In the 19th century and now in the 21st) the economic system of capitalism has proved itself incapable of providing an adequate standard of living for the mass of ordinary people – the white and blue-collar working classes. Ever since its economic domination, the fulfilling of the investment needs of capital for its preservation and augmentation has prevented this possibility. In the 21st century, ‘austerity’ and ‘zero-hours’ are the words chosen by the capitalist system to attack the living standards of the working classes.  Considered open-mindedly, and from the standpoint of the working classes, employed or unemployed – the whole world is full of failed or failing states!

The investment dynamic of the capitalist mode of production, directed by its political representatives – left, right and centre – has created a global form of dystopia.  Whether we consider the advanced capitalist countries of Europe and North America, or the so-called Third World countries of Africa, South America and Asia, the capitalist system and its state-forms can no longer provide economic or social stability for even its most privileged citizens. Secure careers, secure borders, secure transport, secure pensions, secure streets, satisfactory health care are increasingly no longer a permanent possibility for the middle-classes, let alone the working classes and the poor. Whether we consider, the left reformist programmes of Venezuela or 20th century Europe, the radical neo-liberal programmes of the USA, Germany and the Nordic countries, or the numerous dictatorships around the world, capitalism and the nation-state system only works for a relatively small minority.

Another glaring failure of the bourgeois nation-state has been with regard to the promotion of the neo-liberal stage of capitalist development in Europe and its economic effects. Despite the pious rhetoric, the freedom of capital and labour to move around Europe and the world, for example, was little more than an attempt by the representatives of capital to boost profitability by eroding working class advances in economic and social welfare after the Second World War. It succeeded temporarily within the European Economic Community, as a further example, because under EEC de-restricted regulations capitalists were able to import cheap labour or export capital to places of cheap labour virtually as they saw fit. For decades, this ’open-door’ policy was championed and implemented by capitalists and mainstream politicians of all persuasions. But now we see even more of the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production that are coming home to roost.

The allied global neo-liberal economic policies with their military muscle backing them up have also caused further states to ‘fail’ together with creating massive numbers of dispossessed people – particularly in the middle-east and north Africa. These millions of dispossessed, from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya etc., are now using every conceivable means to flee to safety toward the ‘open-doors’ of Europe. Suddenly the economic and political representatives of capital are having second thoughts about the ‘free movement of labour’ policy  and these distressed individuals and families are now being treated like criminals or bureaucratically herded and processed like cattle in and between what amount to no more than makeshift ‘concentration camps’.

And this mass migration of dispossessed people from war-torn ‘failed states’ toward  European states which are themselves already failing their existing citizens, has grave implications. There are already serious infrastructure problems, in housing, health, social services, education, pension provisions, within European nation-states, all of which will become acerbated  by any serious influx of dispossessed people. So what is maturing now within and without European nation-states has revolutionary implications – at least with regard to the social fabric of European societies. Economically, the current ‘migration’ crisis is no less problematic, for the question of employment under a capitalist mode of production and nation statehood has already been revealed as unsolvable.

The system of capitalist production with profit as its motive has not been able to provide adequate full employment for its citizens in Europe for decades prior to this dislocation of economic and social life in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya etc. There is no way that the capitalist mode of production can employ all those who already need employment within the nation-states of Europe or elsewhere, let alone many thousands more who are also dispossessed and are looking for a safe and productive haven. The funding methods of the state under the capitalist mode of production has likewise rendered it unable to provide adequate, housing, health care, education, pension provision, etc., for its existing citizens, let alone millions more needing these resources as they enter and attempt to integrate into Europe. This poses the following contradictory problems for a struggling humanity: in the future there will three possible forms of socio-political struggle; the first, a struggle to change the mode of production; the second, in the form of a mutually destructive civil strife between the pro-capitalist haves and the have-nots within the capitalist state system; or a third possibility in the form of another serious war.

Revolution, Civil Strife or yet another War?

A third world war may seem an unlikely outcome of what has now become the third most serious systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production. However, bear the following in mind. Systemic crises of relative overproduction were the actual economic tap-roots of the social discontent leading to the outbreak of both the 1st and 2nd world wars. Whilst a globalised  total-war of 1938-1945 dimensions may be unlikely, there is at least the beginnings of a serious possibility of full-scale conflagration in the middle east. The stated intentions of the Islamic fundamentalists centred around ISIL is to deliberately provoke one with the west and the military and political elite in the west are already flexing their armed response muscles again. It needs to be fully understood that wars are particularly good for the capitalist mode of production when in crisis. This is not only because the profits of arms manufacturers benefit directly, but also because political and military elites become totally entrenched in power under conditions of state-regulated war. History has demonstrated that an economic crisis followed by a serious social and political crisis within an allied capitalist ‘camp’ can often be the pretext to ’bring one on’!

An important further benefit of war to the capitalist mode of production in a crisis lies in the fact that workers and materials which have become surplus to labour market requirements (ie by large-scale unemployment) can be enlisted and sequestered to serve as war materials and if necessary as expendable cannon-fodder.  The millions of workers who died during the 1st and 2nd World Wars partly solved the problem of the systems pre and post-war mass unemployment in the 19th and 20th centuries. The subsequent carnage effectively removed large numbers of human beings who might have questioned the capitalist mode of production – and the nation-state which dragged them into war – had they not had their short lives truncated. Of the three possibilities mentioned it is clear that a successful struggle to change the mode of production to a post-capitalist internationalist one would be the most beneficial to collective humanity, the bio-diversity of the planet, its eco-systems and its climate. However, the route to this particular outcome will not be an easy one.

Although humanity is an international species and linked economicaly, if not yet socially, it is also currently conceptually divided on the basis of age, gender, sexuality, nationality, politics and religion.  And of course, agencies in each division are prepared to manipulate and widen these secondary differences for their own benefit. Another dimension of this contradictory inclination of the human species lies in the divisions among the sectarian anti-capitalists, who themselves cling to outdated dogma and manage to cleave their ranks into smaller and smaller mutually antagonistic and disrespectful sects. All this means that the route to an alternative beneficial post-capitalist internationalist mode of production  may well lie through civil strife and further warfare until the repeated folly of both bring about the eventual realisation that the capitalist mode of production, the nation-state and sectarian divisions are the problems for humanity to overcome and not the practical solutions to the ecological and sociological challenges facing us.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2015)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, dispossession, Economics, Fundamentalism, Nationalism, neo-liberalism, Patriarchy, Religion, Sectarianism, The State | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

JEREMY CORBYN’S TEN POINTS!

Posted on August 20, 2015 by stutteringsteps

It can hardly escape anyone’s attention that the British Labour Party’s leadership contest has revealed the existence of deep divisions within this party of ‘left’ reformism. In addition this contest has revealed not only the sordid personal jockeying for elevated political position by some, but also the utter bankruptcy of the political class in general. There has been a total failure to recognise the existential problems caused by the capitalist mode of production in its 21st century neo-liberal stage. They seem to naively imagine that a change in the political complexion of a government can solve capitalisms fundamental contradictions. With one exception, the contestants also simply display incompetence, opportunist posturing and a complete lack of internal solidarity. Jeremy Corbyn with his well earned reputation for activist involvement with numerous issues of injustice, is the exception.

Mr Corbyn, who has been, and continues to be, one of the most principled soft left politicians in the British Parliament, has surprised practically everyone by becoming the front runner to become the Labour Party’s new leader. Yet this cannot be too surprising given that a turn to soft left reformism is occurring in a number of European countries.  Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain are just two other examples of this development. As resistance to neo-liberal austerity motivates the actions of the middle-class and their supporters amongst the politically active, this trend will continue. This process demonstrates the fact that the overwhelming majority of the British middle-classes are still committed to the capitalist mode of production, but have slightly different perspectives on how to manage the system.

These different perspectives are the basis of the current minor differences between the major political party’s in Britain – Labour, Liberal and Conservative. They are also the basis for the 21st century party-political competition for the ‘middle ground’ of voters by these three’one-nation’ political party’s. The ‘middle ground’ being a term to cover the decreasing sections of the electorate who regularly turn out to vote. It is to this middle-ground that the left of the Labour Party, as personified by Mr Corbyn, wishes to appeal and this was revealed by his recent ‘Standing to Deliver’ speech in Glasgow. Echoing many of the policy sentiments if not the actual words of the Syriza leadership, Mr Corbyn, as part of his platform, has produced a ten point list of measures with which he hopes to combat austerity.

THE TEN POINTS.

The measures Mr Corbyn proposes are those he considers will at least provide some of the content of what he characterises as “a new kind of politics: a fairer, kinder Britain based on innovation, decent jobs and decent public services.” It should be apparent from the above formulation that ‘a fairer, kinder Britain, with ‘innovation, decent jobs and decent services’ is not a new kind of political aspiration even though it differs somewhat from Conservative political aspirations. In fact these are  – in essence – the political aspirations pursued by the British Labour Party and its supporters in the immediate post Second World War period. Nevertheless it is worth critically considering the ten points he stands for in some detail. Deliberately vague and abstract as political policies always are they are primarily designed to maximise agreement. The published points are as follows.

1. Growth not austerity – with a national investment bank to help create tomorrow’s jobs and reduce the deficit fairly. Fair taxes for all – let the broadest shoulders bear the biggest burden to balance the books.

Almost every word of this first point could be taken from parts of Syriza’s programme – before their total capitulation to the European financial and political elite. The essence of all bourgeois political positions, left, right and centre, is to propose some form of capitalist economic growth. Yet it is growth that has caused the current economic and financial crisis. The capitalist mode of production has ‘grown’ so much it is no longer sustainable either with regard to the environment it exhausts and pollutes or with regard to employing the mass of workers and dispossessed people it continues to create. Modern capitalist means of production have even destroyed the mass tax base upon which the capitalist state depends for any token semblance of fairness. Since capitalism can only continue to exist on the basis of growth, capitalist forms of growth can only make matters worse – far worse!

2. A lower welfare bill through investment and growth not squeezing the least well-off and cuts to child tax credits.

Point two is directly related to point one and demonstrates the above noted confusion is consistent throughout. A lower welfare bill requires higher levels of employment, which harnessed to the investment needs of capital would create more goods and services which need to be sold in markets already competitively saturated. Even if in some isolated cases (or countries) this could be made to work it would merely put other workers in other countries out of work before or after their industries and governments adopted the same misguided growth strategies. This is not to mention the increasing strain this ‘growth’ would cause on planetary resources, pollution and climate dislocation. Which anticipates point 3. Meanwhile child credits, as with all such ‘subsidies’ are a symptom of ridiculously low wages and unemployment.

3. Action on climate change – for the long-term interest of the planet rather than the short-term interests of corporate profits.

This is another typically vague abstraction with no mention of what action on climate change is to be contemplated let alone implemented.  Yet to anyone not totally hypnotized by the bourgeois point of view, it should be clear by now that the long-term interest of the planet and it human and non-human inhabitants cannot be served by the short-term interests of corporate profits. This crucially important issue cannot be fudged in this way. The contradiction between corporate and financial power and human and planetary welfare cannot be resolved by vague promises of action or reformist political compromises. It really is a case of one or the other: we cannot have both.

4. Public ownership of railways and in the energy sector – privatisation has put profits before people.

Privatisation has certainly put profits before people, but is public ownership (nationalisation by another name) the answer required by the current circumstances? Public ownership does not prevent profits being put before people. Cheaper public ownership transport and energy benefits the profits of the private enterprise sector of society far more than the working classes and the poor. The history of Public Ownership in the UK as elsewhere in these sectors demonstrates this fact as does the existence of a publicly funded road network system – choked up with privatised lorries belching out diesel fumes. Just as importantly nationalised sectors can be de-nationalised (privatised) by government again at some later date – so back to square one for a future generation!

5. Decent homes for all in public and private sectors by 2025 through a big house-building programme and controlling rents.

Decent homes for all remains a meaninglessness abstraction on the basis of the capitalist mode of production. This is because the private sector is linked to finance-capital via the mortgage system, where profits are extracted by land owners, building firms and mortgage providers. This means only those with sufficient surplus income can afford any type of shoddy-built home, let alone ‘decent’ ones. The provision of public sector housing (decent or not) is currently a pipe dream for there is no financial or practical mechanisms for implementing a small programme let alone a large one. Local governments have become the fiefdoms of overpaid executive officers and their political counterparts. The cuts to local government funding also means that rent controls will be inconsistent to say the least.

6. No more illegal wars, a foreign policy that prioritises justice and assistance. Replacing Trident not with a new generation of nuclear weapons but jobs that retain the communities’ skills.

This is another stitching together of meaningless and dangerous abstractions. Is a war which has been legally decided by some ruling elite (including a British elite) something to be advocated and supported? Since when has any war (legally justified or not) NOT been the means by which working people and their families have been decimated on all sides of the conflict? A foreign policy on the basis of capitalist competition for resources and markets simply cannot prioritise ‘justice’. In the history of the capitalist mode of production, it never has and never will. It must prioritise sales and profits!

7. Fully-funded NHS, integrated with social care, with an end to privatisation in health.

The 21st century capitalist state in Britain, as elsewhere, has become so indebted to international finance-capital that it has not the means to fully-fund a National Health Service, let alone provide social care for the young, the disabled or the elderly. To realise such an ambition under the capitalist system would require the capitalist state representatives to declare bankruptcy, repudiate the sovereign debt and start funding these sectors in the manner they need. To do this would require a revolutionary transformation of the way the current political classes view the world and this is not going to happen any time soon. In the absence of this radical solution the best that any of the current political class could offer would be a slowing down of privatisation within the already declining health service.

8. Protection at work – no zero hours contracts, strong collective bargaining to stamp out workplace injustice.

There is already a raft of legislative instruments which are intended to protect workers from the physical and social hazards connected to their occupations, but this does not mean they do not continue to suffer in large numbers from accidents and ill health at work. Most employers are able to circumvent or ignore safety requirements or where something goes wrong blame the victims. This has been the case when previous supposedly ‘left’ Labour Governments have been in power so despite this pius intention, how is it going to be different with Mr Corbyn leading the Labour Party? Workplace injustice is part and parcel of every capitalist enterprise no matter how well it is run. This is because on top of the numerous technical abuses, the worker never receives the full value for the work they do. The profits of a private company are derived from the unpaid surplus-value created by the workforce during every normal working period. How unjust is that?

9. Equality for all – a society that accepts no barriers to everyone’s talents and contribution. An end to scape-goating of migrants.

The first of these aspirations cannot be met in  society based upon different and hierarchical classes. The class-based advantages (or disadvantages) of some sections of a divided society are by and large perpetuated among the offspring of those classes. For the working classes and the poor, there are often insuperable barriers to developing talents and even when developed in  lucky few there are still barriers to employing those talents. The second issue touched upon in this ninth point uses the populist bourgeois designation ‘migrants’. This is a politically convenient designation for along with the associated problem of immigration it places the blame on the victims.

The use of the term ‘migrant’ is already a form of scape-goating for it avoids a full description of their situation. In actual fact there is a full-scale crisis of millions upon millions of dispossessed people throughout the world. These refugees from war-torn, financially or ecologically damaged areas of the world have been dispossessed from their means of making a living and from keeping themselves safe – primarily by the economic, financial or military actions of western capitalist and imperialist governments. So in the medium to long term it is not simply a question of preventing the scape-goating of them but of creating places of safety and a means of earning a living. The present mode of production which causes these problems (and those who support it) cannot do that.

10. A life-long national education service for decent skills and opportunities throughout our lives: universal childcare, abolishing student fees and restoring grants, and funding adult skills training throughout our lives.

Since the inception of popular education in the 19th century it’s ‘national’ purpose and function (read the Parliamentary introduction to the 1844 Education Reform Act.) has been to train the masses in the skills needed by the capitalist mode of production, to school them to accept hierarchical authority and inculcate the ideological assumptions of bourgeois culture. The educational system has never been of or for the working classes and this proposal continues the bourgeois tradition of skills training for the needs of the capitalist mode of production. Yes it is a double irony that students now have to pay in order to become wage or salary slaves to a cancerous system of production, but making it ‘free’ does not alter this primary function.

CONCLUSION.

These ten points are so constructed as to seem obvious aspirations for anyone with a sense of fair play and a degree of antipathy to the injustices of the capitalist system. In this sense they are not the unique insights of Jeremy Corbyn but part of a bourgeois socialist trend. However their generality serves another obvious function and that is to avoid considering the capitalist system as a whole with its class differences, it’s power structures along with the revolutionary implications in order to achieve such positive aspirations. These generic points also serve the function of recruiting the naive activist into supporting the reformist, self-defeating project of trying to save capitalism from its current existential crisis.

It has long been known that some members of the classes which benefit from the capitalist mode of production do not like the fact that the system creates poverty and injustice among sections of the working classes. Accordingly, they genuinely want to alleviate some of the worst symptoms of capitalism, but without altering the causes. This gave rise to what Marx described as bourgeois socialism. He wrote:

“A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society. To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarian improvers of the conditions of the working class…the Socialistic bourgeoisie want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom…..It but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.”

Although much has changed since Marx wrote the above, capital still dominates the modern mode of production and along with it the class structures of privilege and domination which arise upon it. The individuals who now champion the modern Bourgeois Socialist perspective are drawn from the new professional middle classes.  Some of them have (by various means) moved up from the working classes and others have moved down from the ranks of the bourgeoisie proper. Whatever, their origin the individuals in this class generally enjoy certain privileges in terms of status and pay under the current phase of the capitalist mode of production. This means they are the modern counterparts of those who are desirous of redressing social grievances, in order to secure the existence of bourgeois society.

The consistent pro-capitalist position of such individuals has been reinforced by the fact that previous attempts to go beyond capital, such as in the Soviet Union, China, the Eastern bloc and even Cuba have been failures  – and in most instances disastrously so. This together with the uncritical posturing of the contemporary sectarian anti-capitalist left has meant few from this new middle-class have bothered to research the causes of the anti-capitalist failures and revive the original revolutionary-humanist position of Marx and the First International.

Only when all possibilities to save capital from its self-destructive tendencies have failed will individuals from this class take up some responsibilities to ally with a struggling working class to go beyond capital and assist them in a revolutionary-humanist direction. It is for this reason that working people – now and in the future – will need to rely upon their own ranks and not be tempted to join the bourgeois socialists in their present and future attempts to save the capitalist mode of production in order to hang onto their privileges.

Roy Ratcliffe (August 2015)

Posted in Critique, dispossession, Ecological damage., Economics, Marx, neo-liberalism, Politics, Reformism, Revolutionary-Humanism, Sectarianism | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SYRIZA IMPLODES.

Posted on July 19, 2015 by stutteringsteps

True colours.

It surely cannot come as a complete surprise, that the so-called radicals in the leadership roles of the new Greek political party Syriza, rolled over and accepted the almost fascist levels of economic and financial demands made by the European leaders, upon the Greek people. After all, the middle-class, fake-left in Greece, as personified by Tsipras and Varoufakis et al, were absolutely clear on their joint project. It was to maintain Greece as a subordinate sector of global capitalist system as coordinated by the European Union. At the very best they just wanted Greece to be a moderately viable sector of the European financial investment conglomerate. [See ‘Syriza’s Plan for Greece’ on this blog] What has happened is that the true-colours of this opaque milieu have simply come through.

From the outset, they were deficient in plans and lacked the guts to do what was necessary to achieve even this level of reformist outcome. For this reason, their conduct will only appear as a betrayal to those who had (or promoted) illusions in what this section of the political milieu were capable of and intended to implement. In contrast, those who originally voted Syriza into government, knew that something radical was necessary in order to save the further economic rape of Greece by the finance-capital vultures circling them. They hoped Syriza would be as radical as necessary. The vote in the recent referendum indicated that the appetite for wanting some radical resistance to further austerity in Greece had increased to two-thirds of the population.

With this increasing majority of the population behind them the Syriza team decided to throw themselves and the Greek citizens at the mercy of the globalised financial vultures eyeing up the assets of Greece. Except, as was predictable, there is no mercy and no possible compromises with the representatives of a capitalist mode of production – particularly when it is in crisis. The increases in VAT, the pensions cuts, the further privatisations, labour-market reforms and public service cuts agreed by the Syriza team will ensure that the ordinary working people, white-collar and blue, of Greece will suffer further. Perhaps the only truly amazing thing to witness at that fateful Brussels meeting was that the overwhelming Greek citizen ‘no’ vote was so quickly transformed by Syriza’s political elite into a ‘yes’ outcome. They accepted the terms of those who had lost the vote and rejected the views of those who had given them a mandate.  True colours!

Resignations and sackings quickly followed this coup de main and in fact the patched together compromises and alliances which make up the Syriza party is about to come apart as the party implodes. A bitter two-fold lesson is about to be learned by the citizens of Greece. The first lesson is that the right-wing representatives of the capitalist mode of production are merciless in the policies they promote to  protect the system which currently serves them well. The second lesson is that those who ‘appear’ radical are – more often than not – left-wing representatives of the capitalist mode of production. Two sides of the same bourgeois coin. These lessons need to be learned by all the working people of Europe and the rest of the world for the same fate awaits them as the five-fold crisis of the capitalist mode of production continues to mature.

The demise of the reformist ‘left’.

An important part of the current crisis is in the re-emerging role of the bourgeois state as the capitalist system progresses into the 21st century. The post-Second World War state was reconstructed by the then dominant political elite to create something of a compromise between the needs of working people and the needs of the capitalist classes. That compromise was progressively abandoned during the 1970’s,1980’s and continues as the state was (and is) used to discipline working people and further the needs of capital – particularly the finance-sector. The European Economic Community with its free movement of capital and labour, was the logical extension of that process and had built into it the subordination of the powers of nation-states to that of the EEC as a whole – via its institutions and its monetary union.

The nation-states in Europe are now the means by which global capital, finance and industrial elite and their representatives assembled in Europe enforce their global policies upon the people of these territorial entities. The reformist left in Europe have bought into this new transformation and accepted its supposedly civilising mission. That is one reason why the Syriza leadership could not countenance leaving the Euro. This example illustrates how all the left reformists, well meaning or not, now find themselves astride a fundamental contradiction. On the one-hand they wish via national elections to return their respective debt-riddled bourgeois states to a period of compromise between labour and capital, but are prevented by the accumulated power of capital in Europe which requires the very opposite. As one oligarch (Schäuble) commented at a meeting ‘elections make no difference’.

This means that the project of national-based ’left’ reformist politics is now moribund as they can no longer deliver anything which is not in the interests of global capitalism – as interpreted by its European representatives. Only seriously radical, if not revolutionary measures, (and radical will have to become revolutionary) if this crisis for capitalism is not to be increasingly visited upon the working populations of Europe.  The next in line for the same or similar treatment as Greece are the working populations of Spain,  Portugal and Italy. It cannot have been far from the minds of the European elites that if they gave a compromise to Greece, then the Spanish and Portuguese populations would have expected the same. Hence they had an additional reason for being tough on Greece.

It also cannot be surprising that this draconian result for Greece will throw confusion in the direction of the reformist left in Spain and Portugal as well as all the other countries of Europe, for all of them are in debt-crises of varying magnitudes. Even without the EEC, the indebtedness of all the bourgeois nation-states in Europe and elsewhere, would prevent a reformist solution to the crisis of the capitalist mode of production. Such is the hegemony of bourgeois idealism, that revolutionary perspectives will be slow to enter into the calculations of ordinary working people, yet these will be ultimately necessary for any lasting solutions to the economic, social and ecological problems facing humanity. At least we are in a period in which ‘left’ reformism is increasingly displayed as being on its last legs and useless.

Roy Ratcliffe. (July 2015.)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, Economics, Finance, Left Unity, Nationalism, Politics, Reformism, The State | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

PAST and PRESENT LABOUR.

Posted on June 26, 2015 by stutteringsteps

This article is meant as a compliment to the one on Productive and Un-productive Labour and the motive for writing it is essentially the same. That is to say it’s purpose is to strip away all the complex superstructural jargon that accompanies the overwhelming majority of economic commentaries and reveal the underlying socio-eoconomic reality of modern capitalism.  Anyone trying to make sense of the many economic analyses put forward since the 2008 crisis, will invariably get lost in this jargon of so-called economic ‘authenticity’. It is a discourse which seems designed to mystify the reader rather than educate them. For example on the current Greek ‘Odious’ Debt crisis one contribution suggested that;

“..this article describes the crisis as a debt-deflation spiral: to the external debt deflation in the economy’s most important sector, merchant shipping, the internal devaluation policy adds an internal debt deflation and sets off a comprehensive and cumulatively intensifying process of macroeconomic debt deflation.” (The Greek Tragedy and it Solution’. Social Europe Occasional Paper. page 6.)

This example, obscure as it is, is by no means the worst, and unfortunately, this symptom is not restricted to just the professional economists, but to those who wish to popularise the subject. Frequently, as in the above-noted contribution, there is not even a glimpse of the real world of working people and production under the obscuring blanket of superficial super-structural economic terminology. Even on the radical left, where criticism of the capitalist mode of production is regularly encountered, the terms too often used analytically are those uncritically borrowed from a bourgeois economic perspective.

Such borrowing is necessary to some degree to engage with the many contradictions of bourgeois economic ideology on its own terms, but in view of the current existential socio-economic crisis, serious criticism needs also to dig below the surface of these self-serving bourgeois categories. Criticism, from the standpoint of the exploited classes, needs to reveal what remains hidden by the terms commonly used and what fundamentals have been ignored. One such term (and category) which is taken for granted is that designated by the word ‘capital’.

DECONSTRUCTING THE CONCEPT OF CAPITAL.

The term Capital is commonly used to designate all those elements, which under the capitalist mode of production are combined together in order to produce and circulate commodities and services. These discrete, but interdependent, elements are usually designated as money-capital, commodity-capital and fixed-capital. However, if we consider more than just the terms and the sub-categories of these terms, but consider how these elements are themselves created, we find they are all the products of past labour. The money-capital used to purchase and maintain the means of production; to purchase raw materials; and to pay for present labour to work on them, are all products of past labour. That is to say, someone, previously made, the means of production and transported them, someone made or extracted the raw materials and transported them.

Even the physical money, (fiat or metallic) or electronic fiscal entries used to initiate and sustain capitalist production have been created by someone before they were made available to the capitalist producer. In other words, this element also – in quantity as well as quality – is the product of past labour. More of that later. Furthermore, money in whatever form it takes for the vast majority of people, is basically a means of exchanging goods and services.  For most people, it is only a moderate store of value. In many cases it is an unreliable store of value because it can be officially or unofficially devalued. So the first fundamental fact is that money by itself cannot make anything, and in most forms it is not really useful for anything other than exchanging goods and services. Secondly, the regular production of goods and services and their circulation, therefore, is the underlying condition of economic activity and the basis for the historic development of money as a means of exchange.

The extent and frequency of the production of goods and services, and their circulation is also the real indicator of the general well-being of any society.  Mountains of cash, or huge vaults of gold, for example, would be relatively useless if there were no reliable supply of goods and services to be purchased and thus exchanged. So the production and consumption of goods and services is not only the underlying economic foundation of all previous human communities and societies, but it remains so under the capitalist mode of production. Digging below the above-noted economists hypebole and jargon, it is obvious that the production of goods and services is only realised by the application of human labour to the raw materials provided by nature.  This is even so when natural materials are extracted and further modified (by labour) to render them suitable for later production.

In addition, it is a fact that every act of present production presupposes an element of past production. For example, the previous making of a tool with which to produce something else; the previous collection and preparation of raw materials, for further construction; or the preparation of soil for the production of plants. In other words, whether we consider the simple production of previous modes of production or the highly complex forms of capitalist modernity, production is always the application of present labour to the results of past labour. The different modes of production historically developed, do not and cannot remove this fundamental basis of all economic activity. The different historical modes have merely changed the means of bringing these two fundamental elements together.

So stripped of the jargon of economists, the owners or controllers of capital under the capitalist mode of production are revealed as not creating wealth, they merely use their money-capital to bring present labour (now salary or wage-labour) into active relationship to the results of past labour (machinery, raw materials, etc) in order for workers to produce it. To put it another way, the capitalist class do not create wealth, they simply enable wealth to be created by the workers who collectively produce the raw materials, the machines, the tools, the buildings etc., and the final goods and services. Yet problematicaly, the capitalist classes only enable production when it is profitable. They also control the type of production and they disable human production when it’s suits them. This fact alone makes their monopoly of the means of production and exchange an existential problem for working people throughout the world.

Furthermore, when they do condescend to enable the application of the present labour of workers to the past labour of workers for new production, they extract a profit (as interest) for providing that service. That profit is the monetary equivalent of the surplus production (or surplus-value) produced by the workers during their working time. And of course it is the accumulation of successive instalments of profit which then becomes new capital. In fact all capital has arisen as the surplus results of the combination of past labour with present labour during the production process. Once this underlying fact is revealed and understood it becomes clear that the capitalist classes are not only parasitic upon the present labour of the working classes, but also parasitic upon the past labour of the working classes. Their existence as a class is based upon this historic exploitation of successive generations of the working classes. Now by controlling the financial institutions of capitalist society parts of this class can – and do – pressure politicians and others to create, unemployment, low-pay and welfare cuts.

DECONSTRUCTING THE CONCEPT OF FINANCE-CAPITAL.

The historic development of the capitalist mode of production has seen the dominant sectors within it change from merchant-capital, through industrial-capital to the present domination by finance-capital. Yet the source of the profits and accumulation of finance-capital is exactly the same as that of the other branches of capital – the exploitative processes of production. They merely lend their money-capital to the other branches of capital (merchant or industrial) and take a share (by charging interest) in the surplus-production (profits) realised in these two branches.

In fact the finance sector of capital owes its original existence to the surplus money-capital arising from the earlier stages of domination by merchant and industrial-capital domination. Large quantities of aggregated dormant capital finding no suitable or profitable industrial or commercial investment, led to the development of purely financial speculation, the growth of interest-bearing capital sources and the creation of fictitious capital – the three interconnected aspects of finance-capital.

The domination of this branch of capital is clearly revealed by the power its current representatives wield over governments and businesses who have borrowed from this sector. Even pro-capitalistic governments such as the Syriza government in Greece, are being threatened with dire circumstances if they do not follow the dictates of the representatives of global finance-capital. These dictates include introducing more socio-economic austerity for working people and further privatisations in order to eventually pay back the loans and the interest upon them. Yet as was explained earlier, these finance-capitalists have already been parasitic upon the working classes in the past and present and now aim to be doubly so.

Thus when the government bond-holding sector of finance-capital use the interest-bearing capital accumulated from the productive efforts of workers to lend to profligate governments, they can via the political class, progressively impoverish entire countries and their populations. This is what has happened to Greece and most other European countries. The citizens of Greece are currently among those in Europe suffering the most from the machinations of this sector of the finance-capital elite. However, other countries are not too far behind this unfortunate country as pliable Governments in Europe and elsewhere bow to their wishes and institute even more austerity and allow further privatisation of public services and assets.

CONCLUDING REMARKS.

Thus the economic reality of the modern world is as follows; the accumulated results of the past labour of workers (appropriated and transformed into ‘capital’) is being used to impoverish and extract even more resources from the present labour of working people. In other words, the product of the workers own labour in the hands of capitalists confronts them as an alien and hostile exploiting power; first in the form of the industrial or commercial capitalist employer and; second;  in the form of the political representatives of the bond-holding finance-capitalist class.

This financial sector of the capitalist class are quite prepared to ruin not only working people but other capitalists in their ruthless greed as the recent banking and credit default swap scandals revealed. Any sensible government, even one dedicated to capitalism, would refuse to ruin or subordinate the whole capitalist system for the benefit of finance-capital. Like Iceland in the aftermath of the 2008 banking and credit default swaps crisis, such a government would default on some or even all of such politically engendered toxic loans, jail those who had signed up to them, remove the future possibility of this occurring again and heavily ‘regulate’ this sector.

Whilst any government seriously dedicated to working people and the planet would go even further. It would declare the whole capitalist system bankrupt, close it down, refuse to pay all the odious debts, transfer the assets and main means of production to the communities of workers and citizens, arm them for self-defence and start anew in a post-capitalist reconstruction. Such a government would recognise that the two essential prerequisites for wealth still exist. That is to say the products of past labour, the existence of workers eager to work, much of the raw materials necessary for production, and the extensive public assets and resources. In other words the historic task for humanity is to return control of past labour and present labour to those who do the labour, the working populations.

In any severe crisis, these two necessary resources only need putting together with almost any agreed means of exchange to allow the internal economy to start up. Future external trade can be achieved by commodity and service exchange with other economic communities, with any imbalance adjusted by agreed means. Sensibly this process would be a revolutionary reconstruction, dedicated to production for general need, not individual greed, and with a priority to non-polluting production methods and environmentally sensitive consumption.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2015)

[See also the article ‘Productive and Unproductive Labour’ on this blog.]

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, dispossession, Economics, Finance, neo-liberalism | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Capitalism versus the climate! (Book Review.)

Posted on June 7, 2015 by stutteringsteps

Book Review.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING: Capitalism versus the climate!

By Naomi Klein.

This is quite a substantial book, well researched and comprehensive in scope. It provides an extensive review of the multifarious ecological and environmental problems created by the capitalist mode of production. It is well worth the read for this detailed review alone. So don’t get me wrong – as far as it goes – it is a fairly good read. However, it’s sub-title is somewhat misleading and it stops well short of going the whole distance required for this important subject. In fact the author lays the blame for what she correctly describes as an existential climate crisis for humanity, not upon the capitalist mode of production per se, but only upon the  neo-liberal stage capitalism reached during the late 20th century. A more accurate sub-title should perhaps read; ‘Neo-liberal capitalism versus the climate‘. Ms Klein in this book therefore seeks to promote a radical reformist perspective rather than a revolutionary one. So in fact the main title is also misleading for even her radical proposals would not ‘change everything’ – only some things.

It cannot be surprising that since 2008 many intellectuals and writers, who have achieved success and status, not to mention enjoyed considerable perks, under the capitalist mode of production, would want this system to continue, albeit in a modified or more regulated form. The reformist modifications suggested by each of the many authors belatedly finding fault with 21st century capitalism, depends primarily upon their particular concerns or the threats they perceive are directed at their interests. As intellectual agents of reformist change, some wish to regulate the banking system, some to rein in the military-industrial complex and yet others to curtail the polluters of the atmosphere and destroyers of the environment. Ms Klein, the author of this book, belongs to the latter group of would be reformers. During the research for the book she writes;

“I began to see all kinds of ways that climatic change could become a catalyzing force for positive change – how it could be the best argument progressives have ever had to demand the rebuilding and revival of local economies; to reclaim our democracies from corrosive corporate influence..” (Chapter 1.)

The key words to consider here are ‘positive change’, ‘progressives’ and ‘reclaim’, for the choice of these three expressions reveal the reformist political position she has adopted. Thus ‘positive change’ is progressive and doesn’t sound too threatening to the ‘establishment‘,  ‘progressives’ simply want positive change (and who wouldn’t?) and ‘reclaiming’ sounds sensible like re-cycling and of course safe. She makes this reformist position quite clear throughout the book. Her avowed purpose as a would be socio-political  ‘change-agent’ is to make a solid case for the establishment of a mass-movement capable of pressurising politicians to implement seriously radical reforms to the existing neo- liberal capitalist system.

Since the air we breath and the weather we experience effects everyone, rich and poor, old and young, male and female, she reasons that this presents a potential opportunity for an exceptional degree of oppositional unity for those opposed to climate change. The many interconnected climatic emergencies which people now face across the globe she hopes, could therefore be ‘a galvanizing force for humanity’. Thus she also writes;

“If enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is a crisis, worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will become one, and the political class will have to respond, both by making resources available and by bending the free market rules that have proven so pliable when elite interests are in peril.” (Chapter 1.)

Starting a sentence with an idealistic ‘if’ allows any number of imaginative speculations to follow including the one chosen by Ms Klein, but its use in this particular context has little or no practical value. The logic she uses to entice the reader into agreement with her reformist aspiration is also fatally flawed. Even if enough people do as she suggests, the political class do not need to ‘respond’ to a crisis or mass protests in the positive way she imagines. With the backing of the state’s armed forces and the support of the powerful and wealthy, the political class, can resist all but a successful revolutionary overthrow of their regime. They have done so in the distant past, the recent past (global Iraq war protests suppressed and campaigns ignored etc) and have given every indication they will do so in the future.

The severity of the developing climatic crisis – as she so eloquently describes it – is indeed existential, but it is only consistently existential for the poor and powerless. The rich and powerful can (and do) use their wealth and power to escape from or protect themselves from almost any level of threat including all the environmental and climatic effects so far encountered. The linking of environmental activism, with socio-economic justice activism, as she advocates to get others on board, if successful, is almost certain to galvanise the elite into an armed and ruthless protection of the existing (and their preferred) mode of production – capitalism! Failing to mention this probability in my opinion is a dereliction of an intellectual change-agent’s duty  to other activists. More of that later.

The author devotes considerable space (particularly in chapter 6) to describing how the major non-governmental environmental protection agencies over decades have developed cosy relations with major polluters in the mistaken belief that working with them would engender quicker solutions. She efficiently and coherently points out how  inadequate and ineffective this has been from what is actually required to prevent catastrophic climate change. She is similarly scathing in chapter 7 about the mega rich individuals such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, who claim to be socially and environmentally aware and positively active. In chapter 8 ‘geo-engineering’ correctly gets short shrift. In contrast she calls for ‘comprehensive policies and programmes’  to ‘make low-carbon choices easy’. She links this to the need for such policies to be ‘fair’ and adds;

“That means cheap public transport and clean light rail accessible to all; affordable, energy-efficient housing along those transit lines; cities planned for high-density living; bike lanes in which riders aren’t asked to risk their lives to get to work; land management that discourages sprawl and encourages local low-energy forms of agriculture; urban design that clusters essential services such as schools and health care along transit routes and in pedestrian-friendly areas;…” (Chapter 2)

It is here (as elsewhere) that typical middle class patronising of working people comes to the fore. How and where working people (urban and rural) are to live in the future has already been worked out for them in considerable detail. Any future decision-making entitlement working people may feel appropriate after the difficult struggle (admitted by the author) waged by them against polluting capital – has already been usurped – at least in theory! According to Ms Klein, such top down planning policies would;

“…also do a huge amount to reduce inequality, since it is low-income people, often people of colour, who benefit most from improvements in public housing and public transit. And if strong living-wage and local-hire provisions were included in transition plans, they could also benefit most from the jobs building and running these expanded services, whilst becoming g less dependent on jobs in dirty industries that have been disproportionately concentrated in low-income communities of colour.” (ibid)

But also clear from this proposal for what she considers a better, more just society, is that inequalities are to remain but ‘hopefully’ reduced. A separate (and lower) category of working citizen is to continue to exist as ‘people of colour’, but patronisingly helped in the future by state-organised improvements in energy, housing and transit. Wage-labour is to continue, presumably providing services for the better off and dirty jobs are to remain but rewarded by strong living-wage levels – whatever they are. In other words this proposal amounts to no more than a pious wish to return to a previous stage passed through by the capitalist mode of production. It was a stage complete with nationalisation of basic infrastructures such as transit, energy and some climate issues. Indeed, in this chapter, and like many other similar voices since 2008, (ie Spirit of 45) she even has a specific period in mind. She writes;

“The truth is that if we want to live within ecological limits, we would need to return to a lifestyle similar to the one we had in the 1970’s, before consumption levels went crazy in the 1980’s…..In the 1960’s and 1970’s, we enjoyed a healthy and moderate lifestyle, and we need to return to this to keep emissions under control.” (ibid)

I must at this point also flag up the frequent use of the royal ‘we’ addressed to the general reader. The use of this all-inclusive term by writers, social commentators and politicians is more often than not an attempt to gloss over the fact that we are not all in this together, nor are we all equally responsible for pollution and climate crisis. In something of a confessional tone, the author admits she was a prolific user of air miles, one of the most polluting forms of transport. Yet from the number of times in the book that she places herself in some far off research location, it would seem she has not broken this particularly eco-damaging habit.

However, in contrast to successful authors, academics, media stars, politicians, business executives and other privileged people, millions of poor people across the globe contribute very little to pollution or climate change. In addition millions of low-paid working people already, walk, cycle or take the bus, have precious few possessions and rarely, if ever get on a plane. As for the 1960’s and 1970’s chosen by the author, millions in the advanced capitalist countries, let alone those of the ravaged third world, did not have a healthy and moderate lifestyle during that period. Indeed, millions if not billions of men, women and children around the planet, in those decades, were struggling (and frequently failing) to get by on a daily basis.

This rose-tinted myth of an environmentally healthy, peaceful, egalitarian phase of post-2nd world war capitalism to my mind is a product of a narrow, white, middle-class consciousness which, to a greater or lesser extent, reflects and embodies their collective aspirations along with their current socio-economic interests. The ‘good old days’ were only really good for the capitalists, the middle-classes and a few fortunate workers and their offspring who managed to get lucky or get a degree. The strike record of that period, the frequent housing crises and the death rates for the poor paint a very different picture.

Returning to the constant use of ‘we’. Nor, under the capitalist mode of production, are we all equally powerfully placed to analyse what is going on in the world and initiate change. In telling us what we must do and how we must do it, she (and others like her) seek to recruit millions of white and blue-collar workers – needed as massive social-movement foot-soldiers – to her reformist project. Yet it is a project which is firmly wedded to the capitalist mode of production and retains and would maintain an elite class of educated individuals who like to do our thinking for us, staff the state etc., (as a new ‘establishment’) and lead us up the garden path – once again.

This glaring contradiction between who does what in this over-producing, over-consuming world is partially recognised by the author but she fails to follow the logic of her own discoveries and therefore avoids seriously confronting them. As she mentions in chapter 3 the problem of climate change is largely one created by the capitalist and pro-capitalist elite. These parts of society not only control and administer the capitalist mode of production – and own the main means of production – but force the type, tempo and duration of production upon the workers. In doing so they also consume the major portion of its one-sided production benefits. To further emphasise her point she quotes the following opinion;

“…the roughly 500 million of us on the planet are responsible for about half  of all global emissions. That would include the rich in every country of the world, notably in countries like China and India, as well as significant sections of the middle-classes in North America and Europe.” (in Chapter 3)

So if this estimate is only reasonably reliable, the cause of climate alteration, degradation and ecological devastation lies not with the working classes and the poor, but with the rich and relatively affluent such as those who jet around the world satisfying their personal and vocational desires and consuming far more than they need. It is these and the 85 people who she claims control as much wealth as half the population of the world who are causing the social, environmental and climate problems faced by humanity. Without these ever-grasping winners in the capitalist socio-production lottery of birth there would not be a climate problem of such growing magnitude – or maybe not one at all!

So it turns out it is not us that’s the fundamental problem – it’s them! It’s not we that need to change – but them and their mode of production.  And the more enlightened of them (including those who will read this book) know they could enjoy their current privileges better with clean air and less severe weather episodes. But they have a problem – and it is a serious one! They need our help to achieve their desired outcome. Hence the inclusive ‘we’ in all their multifarious outpourings! In chapter 11 she even hopes the global indigenous peoples rights campaigns will be a useful vanguard in the struggle against the ‘extraction’ industries pollution. How is that for chutzpah! Those peoples whose ancestors and environments have suffered most by colonialism and imperialism, need to be recruited to help rescue the environments of those who have gained most!

Such help is only needed because most of their elite advantaged associates, if not in a state of absolute denial, will carry on producing and consuming regardless knowing they can continue to enjoy their privileged status and avoid the worst effects of the existential crisis they are creating.

This much is true; a mass movement of immense proportions indeed would be needed to realise the radical reformist programme she and others are variously advocating. Anything less would fail. Making the ‘polluters pay’, as she suggests, means seriously taking on the ‘establishment’! However, the existing ‘establishments’ in all countries of the world are well entrenched, wealthy and powerful. They will not give up their privileged positions easily. Having obtained their wealth and power from the system as it has currently evolved globally they will defend it with all the ideological and material assets at their disposal. So if, as Naomi Klein claims, an enormous and powerful mass movement is necessary to prevent climate Armageddon and in some way can be created, a searching question needs to be asked. Why should it limit itself to fulfilling a middle-class reformist fantasy of going back to the future and stabilising an economic mode of production which is intrinsically and demonstrably unstable?

Why would such a movement – if it came into being – not make absolutely sure that the climate and socio-economic problems would be solved once and for all by changing the mode of production? True also, that solving the climate and global pollution problem, requires a global solution. Climate change, pollution and ecological destruction does not stop at national borders. But solving this and the glaring and obscene wealth distribution characteristics of the capitalist mode of production around the globe, requires more than further structural adjustments reversing the past and present ones. Humanity and the other natural inhabitants of the planet need more than a new version of the Marshall Plan she mentions, which actually jumped-started the shattered capitalist economies of the 2nd capitalist inspired war in the 1950’s – and led to the present western-inspired global economic and military mess. It is the mode of producing which needs changing.

But of course changes in the mode of production require much more than reforms, they require revolutions. The capitalist mode of production itself only came to dominate societies and ultimately the world, by its advocates overthrowing the representatives of the feudal mode of production. Revolutions are necessary because no amount of persuasion and advocacy is sufficient to convince an entrenched ruling elite that their system is now moribund and it is necessary to move aside and allow an alternative to evolve. In spite of overwhelming climate evidence – as eloquently marshalled by Ms Klein for example – enough of them will cling onto power and privileges to make forcing them aside a necessary stage in a process of economic and social reconstruction. Her one brief mention of Karl Marx, however, shows no understanding of his revolutionary-humanist analysis of the capitalist mode of production, its fundamental contradictions or the historic need for it’s revolutionary transformation.

Of course revolutions do not occur simply as a result of mass reform movements – as the historical evidence indicates. Reforms have to be granted or refused by those in power. The supporters of reforms that are refused have to decide what to do next – give up or take on the powers that have refused them. If the campaigners have not prepared mentally and practically for this possibility then the cause – no matter how important – is most likely lost. If the cause (climate change) is truly an existential crisis for humanity, as the author says – and I agree – then there are revolutionary implications, whether we like it or not!

Yet there can be no revolutionary changes in a mode of production until significant sections of the population become engaged in the process. And before the popular masses, move into direct action, there has to be a sufficiently wide-spread and immediate existential crisis for them. That is definitely not the case yet. But that is not all. There has also to be serious splits in the ruling elites and their supporters, in which the enlightened sections of these elites come to the realisation that reforms are inadequate to solve the many systemic problems stemming from the mode of production.

In other words, significant numbers of those within the elite and beneficiaries who have previously supported the system, need to have reached the recognition that it is not the individuals running the system which need to be changed, but the entire mode of production. When this fracture in the ruling strata occurs these individuals can begin to counter the dominant ideology of capitalism and urge the masses to support this revolutionary post-capitalist project and become a facilitative part of its process. Importantly, after the disastrous post-capitalist/state-capitalist attempts in Soviet  Russia, China and elsewhere, this role for intellectuals does and would include the task of warning against the establishment of, (and refusing to become part of) a new elite.

Clearly in 2015, this stage has not yet been reached, as the book being reviewed here (and a number of others) amply demonstrates. Instead Ms Klein along with many others, wishes to harness a mass movement to save capitalism from itself and rejuvenate it in a pre- neo-/liberal form. They wish to go back in order to go forward.  This is essentially the same position as Syriza in Greece but with the central motivational emphasis being on climate instead of Austerity. But societies only revert to earlier forms after massive catastrophes, not before them.  To make her position absolutely clear, in the concluding chapter she asserts the following;

“Meeting science-based targets will mean forcing some of the most profitable companies on the planet to forfeit trillions of dollars of future earnings by leaving the vast majority of proven fossil fuel reserves in the ground. It will also require coming up with trillions more to pay for zero-carbon, disaster-ready societal transformations. And let us take for granted that we want to do these radical things democratically and without a bloodbath, so violent, vanguardist revolutions don’t have much to offer in the way of road maps.” (Conclusion)

From these seven extracts the core of my criticism can be condensed in the following way. First: An inability or refusal to learn from the revolutionary-humanist ideas of Karl Marx concerning the insurmountable contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Second: This inability or refusal is accompanied by a failure to learn from the past mistakes of the masses who trustingly followed previous middle-class anti-capitalist intellectuals in the mistaken belief that these knew better than themselves what should come next after an existential crisis caused by capitalism. Third: Despite providing examples, there is an insufficient analysis of the utter failures of centuries of reformist struggles which have tried in vain to make capitalism responsive to the needs of the majority of the populations suffering from its exploitative and oppressive form of production.

The capitalist mode of production is intrinsically incapable of being adapted for the benefit of all!

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2015.)

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, Ecological damage., Economics, Marx, neo-liberalism, Politics, Reformism, Revolutionary-Humanism, The State | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

SYRIZA’S PLAN FOR GREECE!

Posted on May 24, 2015 by stutteringsteps

The frequent negotiations between the politicians in Greece’s new government and those of the European Economic Community, have been the cause of numerous comments on the news channels here in Europe. These ‘discussions’ are usually depicted as taking place between sides who are opposed to each other on fundamental principles, yet this is far from the case. There is of course a considerable degree of difference between the two sides, but the difference is over how to save the capitalist mode of production, not whether it is outmoded and how to supersede it.

The main political elite within the EEC (headed by Germany’s Chancellor Merkel) are still firmly wedded to the neo-liberal economic principles which have dominated global capitalist economic thinking over several decades. The new political elite in Greece, headed by Alexis Tsipras and his head-hunted finance minister (Yanis Varoufakis) have correctly rejected much of the self-destructive logic of neo-liberal capitalist economic policies. But not all! In contrast, they prefer the post-2nd World War economic model based upon a short-lived liberal-welfare compromise between the conflicting needs of capital and labour.

In a recent article entitled ‘A Blueprint for Greece’s Recovery’, printed in the internet blog entitled ‘Social Europe’, Yanis Varoufakis once again made clear his views on the economic and political future of Greece. As a member of Syriza, Yanis was recruited by Alexis Tsiparis to be finance advisor and encouraged to implement his plans, when the Party was elected to power.  In this ‘blueprint’ article he presented his perspective for the economic, social and political future of Greek society. This article will consider this ‘blueprint’ perspective from the standpoint of a revolutionary-humanist and anti-capitalist position.

Before going further, it is important to recall an important fact. The economic context for the emergence of Syriza, as a significant political movement, is the most profound crisis of the capitalist mode of production, since the 1930’s. It is only the extraordinary depth and breadth of this renewed systemic crisis which – post 2008 – has jolted the social and political consciousness in Greece, out of its previous familiar routine. And not only Greece. It is only the extreme nature of this five-fold crisis of capitalism which has led to radical developments among citizens of Europe including this most beleaguered country of Greece.

The above-noted ‘blueprint’ article begins with the author stating that the during the months of negotiations between Greece and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) plus the European Union (EU) the non-Greek participants have primarily focussed upon the conditions attached to further liquidity injections. The author argues that a consequence of this fixation has been the failure to consider a vision ‘of how Greece can recover and develop sustainably’. Mr Varoufakis then outlines what he considers the requirements for such a vision of Greek economic recovery. Eg.

“Sustainable recovery requires synergistic reforms that unleash the country’s considerable potential by removing bottlenecks in several areas: productive investment, credit provision, innovation, competition, social security, public administration, the judiciary, the labor market, cultural production, and, last but not least, democratic governance.”

Already we can discern from the terms used, that this vision for Greek recovery is based entirely upon capitalist economic structures; ie ‘productive investment’, ‘credit’, ‘competition’, ‘administration’ by the state, and ‘reforms’ which remove ‘bottlenecks’ in the existing capitalist system. It will come as no surprise then to read the desire to “unclog the flow of bank credit to the healthy parts of the private sector” and “restore investment and credit to levels consistent with economic escape velocity” And as a consequence he considers;

“..Greece will require two new public institutions that work side by side with the private sector and with European institutions: A development bank that harnesses public assets and a “bad bank” that enables the banking system to get out from under their non-performing assets and restore the flow of credit to profitable, export-oriented firms.”

This additional proposed aim of ‘public/private investment initiatives’ for economic recovery would be to direct investment into neglected areas and help the proposed ‘bad bank’ turn a profit. According to Yanis, the resulting rising share performance of such ‘re-capitalised’ banking initiatives would extinguish the states losses caused by the rescue. And, optimistically looking forward he envisions that;

“In a world of ultra-low returns, Greece would be seen as a splendid opportunity, sustaining a steady stream of inward foreign direct investment.”

It is reasonably clear that the Greek recovery envisioned by Mr Varoufakis, and presumably endorsed by other senior members of Syriza, is promoting a sustainable recovery of the capitalist mode of production, with the support of the state and foreign investment. Since the capitalist mode of production is based upon the need for capital accumulation via the appropriation of surplus-value (profit), then ‘sustainable’ in this context means putting the needs of capital first and those of working people, ecology  and environment  second. And according to this Syriza view, capitalist induced economic growth in the past has been frustrated in Greece. For as he writes;

“The barriers to growth in the past were an unholy alliance among oligarchic interests and political parties, scandalous procurement, clientelism, the permanently broken media, overly accommodating banks, weak tax authorities, and a weighed-down, fearful judiciary.”

These ‘barriers’ are not really barriers, but symptoms arising from fundamental contradictions at the heart of the capitalist mode of production. Many of those supplementary symptoms which Yanis lists as ‘barriers’ have been introduced as authentic ‘innovations’ by the capitalist mode of production in its evolution from supremacy by merchant capital, through the ascendancy of industrial-capital to the present phase of domination by finance-capital. As such they cannot be overcome or removed under the system which logically creates them. Even the few successful attempts to reform certain negative aspects of capitalism, sooner or later, merely produce new negative features.

This is evident from the recent post-2nd World War period, which saw a large number of reforms to the capitalist mode of production particularly in the advanced countries of the west. Thinking they were ushering a new era of egalitarian justice, a combination of working-class and enough middle-class politicians in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, thought they were drawing a line between the hungry and precarious 1930’s and a rosy future. They passed a series of Parliamentary, Congressional, or National Assembly reforms to the socio-economic system in a large number of countries, whilst leaving the basis of the capitalist mode of production intact.

However, leaving the basis of a hierarchical mode of production in place has certain inevitable consequences. It means that during its economic recovery or further developmental period, privileged individuals from certain classes once again come to dominate the inherited hierarchical structure.  They, (as their predecessors), and their supporters, have a disproportional power to influence and/or direct the economic and political structure of societies and the direction it takes. They can remove the previous reforms (later seen as restrictions) and following the needs of capital accumulation allow the direction to be dictated by this logic.

Which is exactly what happened, during the periods of Thatcher and Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Blair and their intermediaries and counterparts around the world. And this revolving political door produced by capitals’ systemic ‘crisis and revival’ will continue to happen as long as the capitalist mode of production continues. It has been said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – if not a sign of madness – is at least the result of not sufficiently thinking things through. Or thinking only within the parameters of bourgeois ideology. Yanis Varoufakis and Syriza, from the above and other statements, seem not to have realised this nor two other important factors which are different  than the previous stage of welfare-capitalism.

First, the planets eco-systems have by now been  almost terminally exhausted by the growth of production and consumption created and justified by capitalist interests. There are no techno-capitalist fixes for this existential problem. Further capitalist economic growth is the last thing the planet and its inhabitants need in the short or long term.  Second, the production processes themselves via the competitive struggle between capitalists have been further revolutionised. This has been done to such an extent, that fewer and fewer workers are needed to produce (actually over-produce) commodities and services – along with increasing quantities of refuse and pollution.

As a consequence millions of human beings are surplus to the requirements for profitable investment by capital.  There is no reformist solution to this fundamental contradiction between the 21st century needs of capital and capitalists for capital accumulation, and the 21st century needs of ordinary human beings for healthy environments and reasonable standards of living. The logic of Yanis and Syriza is to try to save the capitalist mode of production from the neo-liberal economic and financial dead-end it has driven itself into, but this is now improbable if not impossible.

Humanity needs the revolutionary transformation of its mode of production, not another few decades of tinkering with the ‘bottlenecks’ created by the system or by the creation of ‘bad-banks’ or even by encouraging ‘a steady stream of inward foreign investment’. Yet not even a hint of awareness of the need for a revolutionary transformation has emerged from this section of the political class!

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2015.)

PS. To confirm that the views expressed in the above article by Mr Yanis Varoufakis are consistently held by him consider the following extracts from a more recent article. They form part of his answer to an accusation contained in the Financial Times, that the new Greek Government was guilty of;

“squandering the trust and goodwill of its eurozone partners.”

“Our government is keen to implement an agenda that includes all of the economic reforms emphasized by European economic think tanks. Moreover, we are uniquely able to maintain the Greek public’s support for a sound economic program.”

“Consider what that means: an independent tax agency; reasonable primary fiscal surpluses forever; a sensible and ambitious privatization program, combined with a development agency that harnesses public assets to create investment flows; genuine pension reform that ensures the social-security system’s long-term sustainability; liberalization of markets for goods and services, etc.”

“So, if our government is willing to embrace the reforms that our partners expect, why have the negotiations not produced an agreement? Where is the sticking point?
The problem is simple: Greece’s creditors insist on even greater austerity for this year and beyond – an approach that would impede recovery, obstruct growth,..”

“The major sticking point, the only deal-breaker, is the creditors’ insistence on even more austerity, even at the expense of the reform agenda that our government is eager to pursue.”

 

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

THE ‘COMFORT-WOMEN’ OF JAPAN.

Posted on May 18, 2015 by stutteringsteps

For some years now there has been a campaign in Japan to publicise the ‘hidden’ history of the existence and treatment of ‘comfort-women’ during the Second World War. These were women who were mainly forced into prostitution to service the sexual desires of Japanese soldiers during that war. Such women were ‘captured’ by (or on behalf of) the Japanese government and herded from place to place as the army advanced or retreated. A few of the women, who were ‘used’ and abused in this fashion are still alive and their stories have been compiled by activist women in Japan.

The use of the term ‘comfort’ itself attempts to hide a reality of forced sex-slavery for some women in the Japanese theatre of operations. The resistance to come clean is already embedded in the term selected to describe this predatory and degrading practice. It cannot be surprising therefore, that the campaign for a retrospective admission and apology for this callous obliteration of women’s rights in the 20th century, has been met with less than enthusiasm by the ‘nationalist’ sentiments of ‘official’ male-stream Japan.  Apparently to some among the Japanese elite, the visiting and discussion of historical crimes against humanity, has little or no contemporary relevance and should be left entirely to the individual study of historians.

Yet it is clear – to those who want to see – that resistance or failure to admitting past wrongs, more often than not, says a great deal about the present. Elites, throughout the globe, like to base themselves upon ‘traditions’ and those traditions are always whitewashed to make them appear healthy and ‘civilised’. Japan is no exception! The admission of former crimes against humanity, not only shakes the moral foundations of these traditions but also raises questions as to what contemporary crimes are also being committed and covered up by these ‘traditional’ values. This revealing possibility was at evident in a recent televised discussion on the subject in the ‘stream’ section of an Aljazeera international broadcast. This discussion, of the plight of ‘comfort women’ with participants drawn from Japan, revealed this reluctance and also its contemporary rationalisation.

From the outset the discussion was couched within a ‘nationalist’ framework with one young male most anxious to defend the political and military integrity of Japan. He claimed that it was not the Japanese military who recruited these women, but the men of the countries annexed by Japan. It was pointed out to him that these men were directly acting on behalf of the Japanese occupying forces. However, this did not inhibit his sophistry and bluster in his increasingly failing defence of Japanese integrity and humanity, during the Second World War. As part of his rationalisation of the use of ‘comfort women’ by the Japanese military and political class, at one point he claimed that such ‘prostitution’ was part of ‘the oldest profession’ .

Such patriarchal assertions completely ignore the fact that to the extent that this claim has any truth within it at all, this merely indicates how long the sexual exploitation of the female half of humanity has been systemic. During the ensuing discussion this young Japanese double-chauvinist kept on attempting to shout the female participants down and continually interrupted the points they were making. This latter behaviour as much as his justifications, more than anything demonstrated that Japanese patriarchal attitudes were still dominant in the 21st century – even among the younger generation of  males of that country.

His one relevant point was to blurt out that other armies – the west included – had also made use of military-supported brothels to satiate the sexual desires of their troops.  However, this observation on the international character of sexual exploitation via patriarchy and patrifocality was not followed up by the organisers of the discussion nor the other participants. This was a pity because the fate of women during warfare is entirely global.  And this brutal treatment is as utterly and horribly relevant in the 21st century as it was in previous centuries. No modern nation-state, or ancient feudal kingdom is bereft of such horrors.

This particularly exploitative and oppressive attitude to women is not a product of nationality, but of patriarchy. The general discriminatory and callous treatment of women – in all countries – merely reaches the ultimate depths of depravity during the obscenities of war. This universal phenomenon reveals much that is deficient in the male section of humanity. The failure by men to confront the ideological foundations of patriarchy and patrifocality, and ‘all’ its practical manifestations is also an indicator of the long journey modern humanity has yet to make to become truly human and truly wise.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2015)

Posted in Critique, dispossession, Feminism, Nationalism, Patriarchy, Politics, The State | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

THE BRITISH ELECTIONS 2015.

Posted on May 9, 2015 by stutteringsteps

In the weeks and months prior to the 2015 elections in Britain, there were at least six variations on the theme of re-energising the capitalist mode of production, within these troubled Islands. Each political party, from the Green Party, through UKIP, the SNP, the Liberal Party, the Labour Party and the Conservatives, presented its programme for saving capitalism from its growing contradictions. Despite on the one hand, growing poverty, wide-spread long-term unemployment, precarious employment and welfare cuts for millions of ordinary citizens, the elections have resulted in a victory for the Conservatives. In other words, a majority of those in Britain who did bother to vote (approximately 60% of those entitled) – whatever their individual motives – in effect have collectively voted for – more of the same.

For the last period of UK Lib/Con government, that ‘same’ has been a rise in zero-hours working, an increase in the need for working families to visit food banks in order to feed their families, increases in basic amenity prices – such as electricity, gas and water, along with welfare cuts. On the other hand the very rich have got very much richer and those with sufficient spare wealth have managed at least to hang onto it or slightly increase it. This may go some way to explain some basic – and perhaps startling – changes in the voting patterns, which are quite unprecedented, if not entirely a surprise.  Perhaps one of the most notable results of this election has been the almost total elimination of the Liberal Democrats in Scotland and England. Liberal Democrats are of course, politically ‘conservatives’ with slightly less enthusiasm than Tory leaders for neo-liberal capitalism.

The second most notable result is the almost total elimination of the Labour Party in Scotland and its severe decline in much of the north of England. The Labour Party has long claimed to be the party of the working classes, but despite this kind of rhetoric, it also has primarily been a party of welfare capitalism. That is to say its leaders have always wished to ‘manage’ the capitalist mode of production in such a way as to protect working people – but only from the worst hardships visited upon them by an unbridled capitalist system! For many years, this meant that until the advent of the Liberal Democrats, there were two main political parties in the business of managing a capitalism which – at that time – was no longer in crisis.  The two were the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. With the later advent of the Liberal Democrats, there were three such parties.

However, the post-war decades of economic growth, in the UK were followed by decades of contraction and since the 1990’s by a decade or two of severe systemic economic and financial crisis. For an extended period of time, the political changes in the UK (as elsewhere) lagged behind the changes in the economic and social situation. Now these belated changes are making themselves felt. Many working people during the Blair period were already disillusioned with the Labour Party and are now increasingly abandoning their traditional voting loyalties. In seeking to protect or further their interests, many white and blue-collar workers are turning to UKIP in England and to the Scottish National Party in Scotland. At the same time a section of the middle-classes who previously saw the Liberal Democrats as representing a middle way between non-Blairite Labour and Conservatives have since the last five years of Con/Lib coalition, changed their minds and returned – perhaps mainly to the Conservatives.

During the previously noted pre-election speeches and documents, leading up to the May 2015 election, not one of the seven main parties in several televised debates, mentioned the crisis nature of the capitalist mode of production. It seems not to have dawned on these political leaders that the system they were competing to ‘lead’ was in almost terminal melt-down – economically, financially, socially, morally and politically. As with all the others on the various televised ‘show‘s, even the so-called ‘radical’ parties such as the Greens, SNP and UKIP, also saw the economic growth of capitalism as the way forward to solve the multiple crises facing the global system and its suffering subjects and economic rejects.  And in terms of rejection, it is also interesting to consider the almost 40% of eligible voters who did not bother to vote.

This last point means that out of every five potential voters, up to two on average did not bother to vote.  In other words, millions of people – amid the current dire crisis in the UK – rejected not only all the parties displaying their pro-capitalist wares, but rejected the entire system of voting for who would rule over them.  Not only that but many millions, who did vote in Scotland, for example, have voted to  opt-out of the current system of British politics.  Add to these those who didn’t vote at all and this gives a measure of the socio-economic crisis facing the UK, but mainly – as yet – lurking beneath the surface.  This election has revealed not only the death of liberalism in its previous social-democratic forms but also the emergence of more radical politics. This is a tendency which will continue – especially as the political representatives of capital, in the form of  the Conservative Party – have manage to get a small overall majority.

This means the political elite solution to the five-fold crisis of Capitalism in the UK (as elsewhere) will be sought by further radical measures of austerity, further redundancies, further welfare cuts, and a further strengthening of the coercive forces of the state. The latter will be deemed necessary because these representatives of capital, realise there will be increasing levels of protest against their coming economic, financial and social policies. The radical right, under the umbrella of the British Conservative Party, will do its utmost to stabilise their capitalist system, by all means available to them. And these means will be considerable, given their direct and indirect control of the state machinery in Britain.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2015)

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IDEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE – 2.

Posted on April 12, 2015 by stutteringsteps

In Ideology and Violence – 1, evidence was presented of the scriptural justifications for violence against the ‘other’ in the cases of the ideologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The ‘other’ meaning those of other religions, no religion and ‘heretics within. In addition to the extracts quoted, readers were referred to a number of further instances of this propensity for violence emanating within the ‘holy’ texts of the three Abrahamic religions. However, as was then noted, religion is not the only form of ideology that is permeated with violence in the name of some imagined ‘higher power’. This second part will consider the ideologies of Nationalism, Fascism and Bolshevism. This is because all three contain justifications for violence, including torture and killing of those designated as opponents or enemies of the ideological systems created by the respective elites and their intellectual apologists.

NATIONALISM.

The concept of a nation and a nation-state is a very recent creation judged on the scale of recorded history. It is only a few hundred years old and even less in its more developed 20th century form. The ideology of nationalism and its practical implementation as a state were both perfected by the bourgeois class and their supporters. They created relatively fixed, (although in some cases temporarily so), territorial boundaries with a centralised administration. Within these boundaries, they could safely base themselves, protect and expand the property they had acquired by the newly developed capitalist mode of production.

Because the capitalist mode of production is intrinsically oppressive and exploitative, protection was needed from both internal and external threats. The external threat was (and still is) from rival capitalist concerns located in other countries that also needed to secure and control markets for their trade in surplus production and for sources of raw material. The internal threat was from their recently dispossessed countrymen whose only form of economic survival was by this time by low-paid (and impermanent) employment offered by the capitalist classes in commerce, industry and agriculture.

It consequently served the interests of this class to have a set of ideas that not only recognised the sanctity of their capitalist form of economic and social production, but included the idea of defending the national bourgeoisie against threats from a variety of sources. Since they could not do this on their own it included ideas that all classes of the nation should join them in defence of their interests (patriotism) and in annexations to further them. One important and illustrative source of this ideological construction by and for the elite is contained in a codified form within the national anthems of most nations. Immediately below are just three extracts from National Anthems, the first from Britain, the second from France and the third from the USA. All three illustrate the main points being made.

1. Britain. “Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, long to reign over us,….Scatter her enemies and make them fall..Thy choicest gifts in store, on her be pleased to pour..May she defend our laws…”

2. France. “Form your battalions. Let’s march, let’s march, Let impure blood, Water our furrows…Sacred love of the fatherland, Lead, support our avenging arms….Under our flags, shall victory, Hurry to thy manly accents, That thy expiring enemies, See thy triumph and our glory.”

3. USA. ” And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country, should leave us no more, Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution. Then conquer we must, when our cause is just.”

These three anthems contain all the core ideological elements of nationalism as interpreted by their own countries intellectuals: the scattering of enemies and blood-letting, the need for all citizens to unite and march to war, enduring the savage battles, killing the enemy, obtaining victory, and pocketing the gifts of conquest. The higher power is the ‘nation’ a complete abstraction. It is notable that the real reason for the fighting and killing within nationalist ideology – defending the privileges of the elite – is omitted. Instead, for the working classes consumption, a surrogate reason for being cannon fodder is inserted such as fighting for a ‘just’ cause or defend one’s home and loved ones. However, what follows should be common knowledge by now.

For centuries nationalist ideology, has been used by the capitalist and pro-capitalist elite, for their own ulterior purposes. They have promoted these ideologies to persuade ordinary working people to overcome their natural humane inclinations and kill, torture and destroy the working people of another country in astronomical numbers. Two world wars (1914 – 1918 and 1939 – 1945) literally killed millions, not to mention all the colonialist wars instigated by European and British capitalists, against rival capitalists and relatively defenceless native communities throughout the world. Even since the end of the Second World War it has been estimated that;

“Britain alone bears ‘direct responsibility’ for the deaths of 4 – 6 million people world-wide since 1945.” (D. Cromwell. ‘Why are we the good guys’ Chapter 3.)

If we add in those deaths as a result of North American and other European nations, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc., the genocidal cull of human beings must be astronomical. And yet as David Cromwell suggests the ideology of nationalism also presents its ruling elites as the ‘good guys’ and all this brutality, if not covered up, is either blamed on someone else or is attributed to ‘unfortunate mistakes’. The power of nationalist ideology to infect and numb any humane characteristics among masses of people, who can then – in one way or another – be involved in demonising, bombing, shooting and torturing other sections of the human family – as occurred in Bosnia etc., is clearly revealed.

FASCISM.

The first thing to understand about Fascism is that it is an extreme example of nationalism in an exaggerated and mutated form. It last fully matured during a period of intense economic and social crisis during the early 20th century. It’s extreme nature came from the fact that instead of the capitalist elite largely controlling the political elite and the working classes (the first via its economic wealth/power and the second via the state) a structural change occured. With Fascism, an armed political elite via the state, controlled both the working classes and the capitalist elite. Under Fascism the armed political elite used the working classes and the state to control the capitalists and they used the capitalists and the state to control the workers. In short it was a political form of totalitarian nationalism, and the ‘higher-power’ is the state.

In this way Fascism, in the mid-20th century created a forced ersatz unity out of the fundamental class conflicts under the capitalist mode of production. These class conflicts had become accentuated due to the depth and breadth of the economic, financial and social crisis of capitalism. In some cases of fascistic totalitarian development, (in Germany for example) substantial capitalist production was directed away from simply exchanging commodities, and was redirected by the political elite into war production. Thus society was increasingly put on a military or militarised footing and its human and material resources were then later used to violently expand the territorial and resource boundaries of the nation so governed.  Instead of predominantly exchanging commodities, the capitalist system was adjusted to predominantly exchange death.

There are many examples of fascist type ideology, some clearly expressed by one of its primary 20th century architects, Adolf Hitler, in his book Mein Kampf. What follows is a particularly informative one, which demonstrates the ideological concept of supposed eternal truths and reclaims an aggressive aspect of ancient elite ideology.

“Man must realise that a fundamental law of necessity reigns throughout the whole realm of Nature and that his existence is subject to the law of eternal struggle and strife. He will then feel that there cannot be a separate law for mankind in a world in which planets and suns follow their orbits, where moons and planets trace their destined paths, where the strong are always the masters of the weak and where those subject to such laws must obey them or be destroyed.” (Hitler Mein Kampf. Chapter 10.)

Hitler’s understanding of the world during that period is revealed and reflected in this part of his polemical rant. We see here that a crude, simplified and ill-informed view of Darwin’s studies as establishing a law of eternal struggle and strife (survival of the fittest) is invoked. This assertion ignored the then known numerous examples of co-operation, beneficial association and symbiosis in the natural world. Hitler demonstrates an arrogant assumption of most elites of that period and later; that the stage of knowledge reached during their lifetime is the pinnacle and end-point of all knowledge. For example, the planetary orbits, popularly thought to be eternal at the time, were invoked to back up his social arguments. We know now, that these astronomical bodies and their motions are not perfect, eternal nor are they unchanging – as with everything else in the universe. Then in the final sentence, we read the resurrection of an ancient elite ideological construct; the weak must obey the strong or – be destroyed.

In such cases Fascism (or nationalism on steroids) became the direct expression of the urgent needs of the capitalist classes to obtain and guarantee, a compliant workforce and territorial expansion. However, in these cases, national leadership did not arise within and rest upon their own bourgeois ranks. As a consequence Fascism had the advantage of being an ideology and practice devoid of any debilitating internal competition and liberal capitalist sentiments – factors which previously inhibited or thwarted its class representatives from dictatorial rule.

Fascist ideology when its advocates finally gained power was then used to justify large-scale violence and killing in the name of order, national unity or some form of alleged superiority – ethnic or racial – as it did in 20th century Germany, Italy and Spain. Fascist logic then followed a trajectory of civil war, conquest and finally global war. This was a case of ideology and violence conspiring to murder by the tens of millions. The involvement of practically the whole of national populations in perpetrating, assisting in, or turning a blind eye to, the most brutal savagery imaginable, is testament to the power of turbo-nationalist ideology (fascism) once it has sufficiently infected a whole people.

BOLSHEVISM.

Like Fascism, Bolshevism managed to attract a large number of followers and supporters, by initially claiming to be interested in practically easing the burdens of those oppressed by the capitalist mode of production. It also falsely claimed to be an updating of the revolutionary-humanist perspective of Karl Marx and many other working class anti-capitalists. Although some of its members and practically all its leaders used some of the ideas of Marx, they did so in a distorted form. At the same time they completely ignored the form and purposes – self-activity and community control of the economic and social processes – of the proposed post-capitalist reconstruction.

There is no question that Bolshevism became a dominant form of ideology among some of the anti-capitalist left during the early period (1917 – 1920) of the Russian revolution in the 20th century. It was the perfected ideology of a patronising political elite who came to control state power on the waves of revolutionary activity in Russia. It was activity propelled by a profound economic, social, military and political crisis of the entire country. Bolshevism at that time was also almost identical with the ideas of its main spokesperson Lenin. Although it underwent significant oligarchic changes under Stalin in the 1930’s, it remained the primary ideological prop of the ruling Soviet elite, until well after his death. In addition to this longevity, well into the 20th century, Leninism and Bolshevism, were accepted by many anti-capitalists, who had broken with Stalin and re-branded themselves as Leninists or Trotskyists.

Bolshevism and its subsequent re-branding as Maxism/Leninism or Trotskyism was (and is) an ideology rationalizing the political rule of a left-wing, supposedly anti-capitalist elite over the rest of society. It was imagined that this form of rule was necessary in order to go beyond capitalism and reshape the mode of production in the interests of the working classes. It was this combination of intention (to go beyond capitalism – ie the aim) with the rigid view of the necessary agency to achieve this (ie the party – the means) that transformed an rudimentary humanistic aspiration into a totalitarian ideology and dogma. This was no accident, as Lenin made clear;

“The dictatorship of the proletariat does not fear any resort to compulsion and to the most severe, decisive and ruthless forms of coercion by the state. The advanced class, the class most oppressed by capitalism, is entitled to use compulsion, because it is doing so in the interests of the working and exploited people.” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 31. Page 497)

There are many such examples of Lenin’s insistence upon harsh measures (including physical violence) against those who opposed the direction he and the Bolsheviks had chosen. The one above is interesting because it closely links a higher-power justification for the violence it is using – or intends to use. It can hardly be surprising then that Lenin’s many followers (and loyal Party members) perpetrated varying levels of violence against others and rationalised it in the same way. So important became these two aspects (the aim and the agency) to the ideology of Bolshevism that both were jointly elevated to a ‘higher cause’ in pursuit of which it was justifiable to torture, maim and kill external and internal critics or opponents of this cause.

This brand of imaginary anti-capitalism considered that the end justified the means – any means! In the end the means chosen (as was actually predicted) distorted and defeated the aim. Essentially the same elitist Bolshevik ideology was adopted by Leon Trotsky and by his followers the Trotskyists. Whilst the many later Trotskyist groups, who adopted this Bolshevik ideology, may not have got round to torture and killing in the name of the ‘true’ vanguard, at least one (to my personal knowledge) resorted to beating and physically abusing opponents both internal and external. So Trotsky, depending on the circumstances, may well have approved of such activities, for in pursuit of his version of post-capitalism when in a position of considerable power in the Soviet Union, he argued;

“The labour state considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where his work is necessary. And not one serious socialist will begin to deny to the labour state the right to lay its hand upon the worker who refuses to execute his labour duty.” (Trotsky. ‘Terrorism and Communism’. Page 153.)

Those masses of people, infected by the ideological virus of Bolshevism, and its intellectual off-spring Stalinism, became so removed from their basic humanity, so sick and depraved that they simply carried out orders to perpetrate violence against critics, or even anticipated such orders. They became enthusiastic freelance perpetrators of all kinds of violence on the basis of the ideology they had by this time absorbed. The modern followers of this ideological tradition may not display all the symptoms of this elitist ideology, but then they have not yet the numbers or opportunities which increasing power and influence might bring. For the moment, their violence is restricted to their polemical distortions and sectarian political activities.

CONCLUSION.

It is not too difficult to conclude from even this brief look at violence at the collective level, that it’s fulfilment necessitates an ideological dimension in order to convince large numbers of people to suppress or suspend their basic humanity and become perpetrators, enablers or applauding bystanders on mass. This is sufficiently true whether the ideology is religious, secular, political, national, tribal or territorial in form. Ideologies not only negate and eliminate the basic universality of the human species, but also invert sound reasoning. They require a fully integrated system of confirmation bias and borrowed thinking to perpetuate them.

Perhaps the habit of forming fixed ideologies stems from the monotheistic past where practically everything important that existed was perceived as being permanent and falling into two opposed categories. However it may have originated, the habit of operating with fixed categories and with dualistic frameworks wrapped up in an ideological package, has been persistent, despite the advances in science and technology. Whilst science and technological understanding, along with personal relationships, advance by contradictions, questioning, scepticism, approximations, failures, serendipity and limited successes – ideology would have us believe otherwise.

Ideologies are also perhaps popular because they save us the trouble of thinking too deeply for ourselves. We just hear or read some bits which seem plausible and then just adopt this ‘borrowed’ package of thinking in the belief those who produce and perfect it know better than us. And ‘belief’ is also a necessary ingredient in the concoction and acceptance of ideologies. Scepticism, criticism, including self-criticism are not only mostly absent within ideologies, but if they are articulated at all, the critics must be marginalised or silenced. This silencing is achieved by all means possible and it can be seen in the content of the seven ideologies considered in Part 1 and Part 2, that the means, include polemical distortion, exclusion, torture, incarceration and assassination.

Of the seven ideologies considered, there is one that currently has the most advantages in promoting violence. This ideology is Islam. The main advantage over the other ideologies is that for devout believers there is no real fear of dying. This ideology promotes the collective belief that those who die in perpetrating violence in the name of Islam, will be transported to a heaven, with everlasting life and be treated as hero’s. This totally unsubstantiated belief is doubly reinforced by the fact that it is a core belief of mainstream Muslims and so it is the ideology of Islam – as a whole – which assists in confirming this belief. A second advantage is that this ideology retains the ambition – even among many moderates – to legitimately rule the communities of the world in a theocratic form of governance.

There is one set of ideas about economic and social life not considered here and these are associated with Anarchism. There are three reasons for this. First of all Anarchism has not as yet had the same global impact of the other seven ideologies considered. Although from time to time, terminal violence has been perpetrated in its name, there is, as far as I am aware, no explicit suggestion or justification for violence against those who are opposed to its ideas. The second reason is that given my definition of ideology in Part 1, Anarchism is not a body of ideas directly reflecting the interests of an elite and justifying the rule of an elite. The third reason is that I currently lack sufficient historical material to fully consider it here.

Some final remarks! First: The vast extent of the natural world provides many examples of individual inter-species and intra-species aggression and even violence within the insect, bird, fish and animal kingdoms. The individuals of one species, among the carnivores, may prey upon other species for food, either collectively or in packs. However, there is only one species that now systematically engages in various forms of collective genocide against members of its own species, eliminating them by the million. That same species – by its most recent technological evolution – is also the only species to systematically destroy the ecology and environment upon which its survival depends. That species is humanity. Uniquely, it is also the only species to have created complex ideas, among which are ideas (ideologies) that encourage them to self-harm on a truly massive scale. Humanity: A species smart enough to get to the moon and back, but – so far – not smart enough to save itself and the planet.

Second: It is well not to imagine that ideologies disappear if they have been sufficiently discredited. If there is still a need for such an ideology among the elite, or those who aspire to elite status, then it will continue in some form or another. In some cases a change of name and the temporary suppression of some more objectionable aspects, can be arranged by those who require its reconstitution. Already ancient Judaic justified violence has become incorporated within 21st century Zionism: Early Christianity has been morphed into Christian Zionism, with renewed violent tendencies. Islamic fundamentalists have again picked up weapons and become the crucifying and be-heading ISIL; Nationalism, morphed into 20th century Fascism.  Within a few decades, Bolshevism mutated into both Stalinism, with its assassinations and Gulags and into Trotskyism with its rampant sectarianism. And in the 21st century Fascism has been re-branded as the ‘Third Position’ and other various radical alternatives to liberal democracy.

Beware of those who peddle ideologies – all ideologies.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2015)

Posted in capitalism, Critique, Fundamentalism, Nationalism, Politics, Religion, Sectarianism, The State | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

IDEOLOGY AND VIOLENCE – 1.

Posted on March 30, 2015 by stutteringsteps

For an individual to resort to violence, (as with an individual act of terror) it is only necessary that some individual becomes so enraged and unhinged by circumstances or by some abnormality that he or she strikes out randomly – or at a chosen target. Any subjective justification or explanation for such actions usually relates to the specific circumstances surrounding the perpetrator or the abnormality afflicting that particular individual.  However, for collective forms of violence, (and acts of terror) something more is needed. There needs to be a shared ideology. In such latter cases, the explanation – and also most frequently the justification – lies within the ideology itself which is accepted by the individuals making up the collective.

At this point it will be useful to provide the reader with my own definition of the term – ideology! This is because the usual dictionary definitions are often limited to the barest abstract outlines. So mine is the following: Ideology; a system or body of ideas, opinions, beliefs and ideals adopted by an elite – religious, political, economic or military – to reflect their material and cultural interests. Where possible (and most frequently it is) this body of ideas is spread widely among the communities this elite influence and/or control. For this reason at least a core set of these, ideas, opinions and beliefs become widely considered as eternal truths among those who adhere to the ideology. In other words, ideology also breeds dogmatism.

It becomes clear from a more comprehensive definition that ideologies can become a form of collective illness which afflicts human groups. This intellectual sickness is most clearly shown in cases where ideologies are expressed in their most fundamental form and where the violence perpetrated in their name is taken to the extreme. Ideologies, like cancer can lie dormant for periods of time before destructively breaking out in orchestrated violence.

Until recently the most universally acknowledged examples of ideologically inspired collective violence in the west are those originating with the Nazi’s in Germany and the Stalinists within the Soviet Union. Both of which justified genocide and torture along with assassinations of friends and foes alike in pursuit of their ideologically inspired beliefs and goals. And both of these examples occurred in the 20th century.  They were not the only 20th century examples of ideologically inspired violence, torture and terror, but merely the ones most universally recognised as such.

The most current, almost universally recognised example of ideologically inspired violence and terror has occurred with the emergence of Islamic violence, particularly as witnessed by the actions of Al Quaida and ISIL. The link between these acts of violence and terror and the ideology that inspires them is made absolutely clear by the fundamentalists themselves in their numerous media statements. Although such justifications are denied as valid by moderate Muslims, and non-Muslim appeasers, the fundamentalists statements can be corroborated or negated by checking the sources they quote from their particular ideological source book – the Qu’ran. This is a task that will be done in a later section. Before that, however, this article will consider some historical examples of the link between ideology and violence along with those previously noted 20th century cases.

HISTORICAL EXAMPLES.

In the ancient pre-Christian Greek and Roman world, ideology and violence had a more secular connection. In pagan city-states of the Greek world the violence associated with slavery gave rise to a relatively basic form of ideology based upon the right of the strongest to dominate and control the weakest. This was further refined in many Greek city-states with development of ideological constructs applicable to the elite such as philanthropoi (ruling in a humane way) and the corresponding philadelphia (love of the despot) as considered appropriate for the slaves and semi-slaves. Such ideological constructs were intended to serve the interests of the slave-owning class and by promoting them to ease their constant fear of slave rebellions and uprisings. For example;

“…it was not we who set the example, for it has always been the law that the weaker should be subject to the stronger.” (Archidamus to the Lacedaemonians in Thucydides ‘The history of the Peloponnesian War’. Chapter 2.)

This is no isolated example but the same sentiment is expressed as a “really plain fact” by Xenophon in book 3 of his Anabasis account of the expedition by Greek mercenaries in their attempt to conquer Persia. Further refinements and additions included the creation of mythologies of ‘noble birth’ and procreative descent from the ‘gods’ that were used to justify and back up elite rule by the sword. The metalergic ideology of Plato’s Republic, with his Gold, Silver and Brass explanations for the then existing class distinctions between rulers, auxiliaries and the workers, was another.

The above pagan examples aside it is only with the development of monotheistic religions that we encounter the most inhumane instances of violence justified by a complex ideology based upon a patriarchal religion. And apart from the brief flirtation with monotheism in Ancient Egypt during the 6th year of the Pharaoh Akhanaton, the first fully developed and textual justification for genocidal violence is contained within the original Jewish bible known as the Tanakh. This is virtually the same document as the Old Testament which it was called when it was later appended to the Christian New Testament.

JUDAISM. (The Tanakh/Old Testament)

From the very first book of the Tanakh/Old Testament (Genesis) the ideology of violence in God’s name leaps out from the pages. This is whether it is driving the people of Shinar off the land in chapter 11, dashing people to pieces in chapter 15 or killing those who sacrifice to an alternative God in chapter 22. But indicative of the ideologically inspired and justified violence of the Tanakh and also of contemporary relevance is the following:

“I will send My terror before thee, and will discomfit all the people to whom you shall come….By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and thou shall inherit the land. And I will set thy border from the Red sea even unto the sea of the Philestines, and from the wilderness unto the river; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land unto your hands; and thou shalt drive them out before thee.” (Exodus chapter 23 v 27, 30, 31.)

Those familiar with the situation in Palestine since the Nakba in 1948 will immediately recognise that the ideology of Zionism incorporates within it at least a core of the violent ideology of Judaism, from which it stems. Those who are aware of the two 21st century blitzkrieg’s upon Gaza by the Jewish state of Israel, will have this perception confirmed. Little by little, the slow genocide by Zionism directed against the Palestinians since 1948 has by various violent means driven them out of the land they once lived upon and the modern Jews of Israel have indeed inherited this conquered land.

It may seem extraordinary that a three thousand-year old ideology created during a nomadic and pastoral period of tribal organisation can have any contemporary relevance, but of course it can. Since ideologies reflect material and cultural interests, if those interests remain essentially the same, the acquisition of land etc., then the ideology, no matter how ancient, can survive more or less intact. It needs only partial modification or compression to put an extra gloss upon it as occurred in the case of Zionism.

The hold of this Judaic/Zionist ideology upon the Jewish people perhaps also explains why so few of them protest against the vicious violence routinely perpetrated in their name, against the Palestinians of the west bank and Gaza. And also why they have consistently refused to agree to a two-state solution in the historic land of Palestine. Their ideology asserts a God-given right to the whole of the land and they don’t intend to stop driving Palestinians out by whatever means they have at their disposal. These means, most of which are violent, include shells, rockets and bombs with lethal mechanical, chemical and radioactive additives.

Of course the Zionists of the Jewish persuasion are not the only ones to use the Old Testament as their sacred justification for violence in God’s name. Christian Zionists as well as Christians in general subscribe to much of the ideology of the Old Testament as well as the New. Biblical ideology has been used by past Christian elites to justify Colonialism, slavery, annexation of land and all that goes with these brutal violations of indigenous peoples.

Parts of this ideology have also served the purpose of reconciling those communities governed by the Christian elites to the division of their societies into classes – the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate…..the Lord God made it so – as a section of a popular English school hymn asserted. Ideologies can be all-embracing, not only justifying physical violence but also rationalising the existence of inequalities, the former having first created the latter. In other words if it still serves at least partially the interests of the ruling elite in justifying the existing class divisions, then such ideology will be retained.

The full extent of the violence advocated within the Tanakh/Old Testament is rarely appreciated, even amongst many of the most devout believers of these two sources of patriarchal ideology. Nor is sufficiently acknowledged in public by the official representatives (Rabbis and Priests) of these closely allied patriarchal ideologies. For this reason I will present one further example and then a list of the chapters and verses for a small variety of others. First, the example:

“And they warred against the Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses; and they slew all the males…And Moses said to them, why have you let all the women live?….Now therefore kill every male among the little ones and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the female children who have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.” (Numbers. 31 verses 7, 15, 17 and 18.)

Again we see that not only is extreme violence justified by the ideology of the Christian and Judaic Yehewah/Jehovah, (in the current manner of Islamic extremists) but more than this follows. Permission is granted by Moses, God’s supposedly earthly representative, to capture young female virgins. Is this patriarchal inclusion in the biblical text not suggestive of immanent or future sexual violence against defenceless young females? I suggest it is. For those still in doubt about the ideological justification of violence which I am suggesting permeates the Tanakh/Old Testament, look up a few of the following – chosen from many. Exodus 22 v 20; Exodus 33 v 27; Leviticus 21 v 9; Jeremiah 48 v 10; Deuteronomy 20 v 10 – 14.

CHRISTIANITY. (Old and New Testament.)

For those convinced of a complete change of attitude with the addition of ‘good news’ New Testament ideology to the Old, read 2 Corinthians 10 v 6 ; 2 Thessalonians 1 v 8 – 9; and Revelation 2 v 22 – 28 and 19 v 20 – 21. Recall too the brutal Crusades, the crushing of the Cathars, the Albigenses, the Lollards, the burning of women as witches and violence against religious heretics such as Copernicus and Giordorno Bruno. Also remember that the Old Testament is still an integral part of Christian ideology. However, it is worth quoting a comment from a historian of Christianity to remove any immediate doubts of prejudice concerning the sectarianism and violence of Christianity even during its earliest period.

“Each party discriminated on the other, but neither denies the barbarous scenes of massacre….The Donatists boasted of their martyrs, and the cruelties of the Catholic party sit on their own admission; they deny not, they proudly vindicate their barbarities – is the vengeance of God to be defrauded of its victims? – and they appeal to the Old Testament to justify, by the examples of Moses, of Phinehas, and of Elijah, the Christian duty of slaying by the thousands, the renegade, or the unbelievers.” (The history of Christianity. by HH Milman Volume 2 page 306.)

This pattern repeated itself during the middle ages with its numerous crusades against Muslims and women healers, the infamous Inquisition, the atrocities of Catholicism during the Protestant reformation, and of course the period of Colonialism in the more recent past. Yes of course most (but not all) Christian and Judaic elites in the 20th and 21st centuries have ceased to use biblical ideology to justify killing innocent men women and children. Perhaps for the majority it is no longer necessary, for they now have a more modern alternative ideology to justify killing – nationalism! National security is now routinely invoked by Christian and Jewish elites to justify the killing and maiming of those who in any way oppose their oppression – or just get in the way. The casualties include innocent community members, (men, women and children), who are conveniently mis-classified as collateral damage.

However, before we consider the connection between the ideology of nationalism and violence we need to examine this connection within the third of the Abrahamic religions – Islam. This is because unlike Judaism and Christianity, with Islam, the direct link between religious life and social life has not been entirely broken. The Protestant reformation broke the almost complete hegemony of Catholic influence over economic and social life within the communities throughout Europe and the west who adopted it. Much later, the development of Jewish Zionism and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 broke much (but again not all) of the direct link between religious life and social life of the majority of Jews.

ISLAM. (The Qur’an.)

However, the imposition of colonial and imperial rule by the advanced capitalist, mainly Protestant countries over Muslim countries, prevented an indigenous solution to the primacy of religion over social life. In such countries the vast majority of workers remained Muslim and many perceived their oppression and exploitation by western capitalism as a direct attack upon them as Muslims rather than as workers. The failure and subsequent lack of a successful, genuine international workers movement left many Muslim workers with an anti-imperialist agenda, but at the mercy of Islamic fundamentalist ideas and also grateful for Muslim-inspired welfare practices. The logic of such Muslim fundamentalism could not but lead to the resurrection of the concept of future Islamic governance in opposition to western puppet regimes.

Such ideas have been around in one form or another for decades, and the establishment in 1979 of an Islamic Shia-influenced theocratic state in Iran gave considerable impetuous to the attempt to achieve such an outcome. However, this was no humane aspiration and since the public outrages committed by Al Qaeda and the establishment of a Sunni directed ISIL, the full implications for secular based human rights have once again become widely known. The return of Islamic fundamentalism in these forms has therefore doubly highlighted the connection between religious ideology and violence within Islam. The origins of which, we shall see,  lie within the Qur’an.

The Qur’an is considered by believers to be the holy word of Allah dictated to Muhammad and later written down. It is this document to which all convinced and practising Muslims, moderate and extreme, are referred as a guide to what is right and wrong and proper living.  It should be at least one of the basis for judging any disputed points between moderate Muslims and extremists. Moderate Muslims have frequently claimed that atrocities such as those perpetrated by Al Queada and ISIL are not a legitimate expression of Islamic ideology whilst the extremists assert they are. Let us see from an example which deals with those who aparently from very early on in the development of Islam refused to accept its dictates.

“Whenever they are called back to idol-worship they plunge into it headlong. If these do not keep their distance from you,, if they neither offer you peace nor cease their hostilities against you, lay hold of them and kill them wherever you find them. Over such men We give you absolute authority.” (Qur’an. Surah 4  91.)

It is obvious that the reader/believer of the Qur’an is left free to decide what constitutes ‘hostilities’. If sufficiently satisfied that certain actions or ideas are ‘hostile’, then wherever they find them – killing is in order for the ‘ true’ believer – because it is written in the Qur’an, which is deemed to be God’s word. There are almost 200 references to punishments in the Qur’an – some of them by burning in fire – there are also 33 instances of instructions to believers to fight and at least 9 advocating killing non-Muslims and apostates. They are too numerous to list but there follows a few more sections for the sceptical to check for themselves. Qur’an: Surah 4 v 55 – 56; Surah 4 v 150; Surah 9 v 73; Surah 98 v 7.

Only those in a state of denial can refuse to see that religious ideology, at least in the three Abrahamic versions considered here, allows its followers – if they feel so inclined – to perpetrate violence against those who are opposed to the ideology of their founding documents. Indeed, examples also abound of this ideology of violence being carried out in practice. However, as noted earlier, religious ideology is not the only form of ideology which bears within it the authorisation of violence against those who disagree or challenge the ideology or its practical application. Part 2 of this article will be published in April and will consider the ideologies of, Nationalism, Fascism and Bolshevism.

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2015.)

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