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.)

Posted in Critique, Fundamentalism, Religion, Sectarianism | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

NAZI’S: A DOUBLE WARNING FROM HISTORY.

Posted on February 22, 2015 by stutteringsteps

An interesting observation was made recently (February 2015) by Yanis Varoufakis, a senior member of the new government of Greece.  In wishing to fulfil the election promises of the Syriza Party to end austerity, Yanis was seeking to influence the elite in Europe into easing the Greek debt burden created by previous governments. In a television interview he pointed out that debt burdens and the humiliation felt by German citizens after the First World War contributed to the rise of Nazism in Germany. He did not hint at the radical measures a left government could take if talks failed, but rather raised the spectre of Fascism. No doubt with an eye to the rise in extreme right-wing parties in Europe, he had made an important point, but only a partially valid one.

In the 1020’s and 1930’s, the last period of severe crisis by capitalism did indeed lead to radicalisations and it did so along apparently opposite ends (left and right) of the European political spectrum. Not surprisingly, a similar phenomenon is reoccurring in the present profound systemic crisis. Syriza itself is part of the leftward trend and is faced with the right-wing Golden Dawn on the streets of Greece and in elections. This pattern of radicalisation is more or less repeated throughout the rest of Europe as both left-wing tendencies and right-wing tendencies are gaining strength and numbers, albeit differentially. It was of course, the extreme right which eventually gained the upper hand, in Germany, Italy, Spain and to some extent in Greece itself – but not without a struggle and not without a defeat for the working classes and the poor.

Germany in particular, probably represented the country where the most radical right-wing solution to the systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production took place. Nevertheless, it must be said that Italy under Mussolini and Spain under Franco, also enabled capitalism to weather this cyclical stagnation phase, turn its inactivity into all out productive/destructive warfare, and by this means eventually lead to a revival once again. The horrors and industrial levels of brutality attendant upon the Second World War are the main sources of the usual bourgeois derived ‘warnings from history’ concerning Nazi and Fascist brutality in general.  Yet in fact saturation area-bombing (incendiaries and high explosives) of civilians and concentration camps (ie Horror) existed on both sides of this capitalist-inspired divide. More draconian still there were; gas chambers and furnaces in Poland on the Axis side along with fire-bombing and nuclear incineration on Germany and Japan by the Allies side.

Predictably perhaps, the usual warnings about these totalitarian solutions to the crises of capital focus mainly upon the end game. As we know it was an end-game in which the state via its political elite on both sides, dictated economic, social and military affairs. A situation of so-called ‘war socialism’ or ‘war fascism’ depending upon the nuanced view taken of these totalitarian developments. Within a very short space of time; industry, management, labour-power deployment, wage levels, profits, production standards, welfare provision, profits, trade unions, were all put under state regulation on both sides of this totalitarian outcome. Furthermore in Germany they tried to solve the crisis by blitzkrieging their way to extra territory and resource acquisition, thereby provoking all-out war.

However, this end game of totalitarianism and total war came after a whole period of unrest and socio-political manoeuvring which led up to it.  It is this process  (only partially hinted at by Yanis Varoufakis) which needs to be considered if humanity is to avoid a repeat or partial repeat of the totalitarian tragedy resulting from the last crisis of the capitalist mode of production. And an important key to understanding how the right-wing in Germany (and to a lesser degree in Italy) came to dominate lies in examining the role of National Socialism (Nazism) and the negative role of the other sections of the ‘socialist’ left – which is the subject of the further paragraphs located under the same title in the black panel above.

R. Ratcliffe February 2015.

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, Economics, Marx, Nationalism, Politics, Sectarianism | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

THE TRANSITIONAL PROGRAMME.

Posted on February 7, 2015 by stutteringsteps

Once recognition of the need to go beyond capital is accepted, it may seem sensible to have a programme of action which acts as a guide toward the fulfilment of such an ambitious project. Many areas of life, for example, are rendered more feasible by breaking down into separate stages the tasks necessary for any planned undertaking. Building a house, designing or re-designing a town centre, growing crops, etc., etc. A list of the applicable areas for such programmatic planning could be almost limitless and for this reason such ideas have entered the realm of common sense even among more simple areas of life – shopping lists for example.  This is probably why it is common among some on the revolutionary left to formulate a programme of action, not simply for limited campaigns, or the year ahead, but for all the supposed stages leading up to a revolutionary transformation of the mode of production.

One such bold programme – The Transitional Programme – has been handed down within the Trotskyist sector of anti-capitalism for decades. It was formulated by its authors, in the ‘belief’ that it could be implemented during the post-Second World War period. It was  clung onto in subsequent years in the hope it could still be made a relevant tool in the periods which were to follow. In both instances this did not happen.  I suggest the Transitional Programme was uncritically accepted by these Trotskyist groups, because it was predominantly a product of their intellectual founder, and perhaps also because common-sense suggested the need for one. But is everyday commonsense, along with a pre-determined programme, sufficient with regard to revolutionary transformations? Later I shall argue it is not. Meanwhile for those unfamiliar with it, a bit of the history of the Transitional Programme follows.

Its origins and purpose.

The Transitional Programme (adopted in 1938), was the result of collaboration between Leon Trotsky and some members of the Socialist Workers Party of North America. It was part of a document entitled ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International’. This document was intended to provide guidelines for a small group of left-wing activists and intellectuals who had broken with the Stalin dominated Communist International along with the Communist Parties of the Soviet Union and elsewhere. It was this small group which founded the Fourth International in the belief that by using their knowledge and these programmed guidelines they would become the international leadership of a future world-wide transition from a capitalist society to a post-capitalist one.

The intended purpose of the Transitional Programme was made clear within the  ‘Death Agony’ document itself.

“It is necessary to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.” (Death Agony etc., page 114)

The patronising conceptual framework of the main originators of this document is clearly revealed in this passage. It is something Trotsky, among others, shared with the general Leninist concept of a Bolshevik type party vanguard.  Put simply it is a concept which essentially sees workers as little better than sheep in need of good and reliable shepherds. Note in this context, that the author assumes the ‘masses’ need ‘help’ in their daily struggles and the type of help they need has already been assumed and anticipated by the author. It is ‘find a bridge’ between their present circumstances and the ‘conquest of power’.  Part of this supposedly helpful bridge is provided by the authors,  in the form of a ‘system of transitional demands’.

Leaving aside the more obvious condescending assumptions within this view we can see that the question of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist mode of production and the construction of an alternative is dependent upon a vanguard of leaders who have carefully thought about it beforehand and reduced its early stages to a system of transitional demands and programmes of development. In other words it is a systems approach to revolution.  That is to say in the same manner as adopted by the Bolsheviks in 1917 Russia, with its five-year plans etc. The decay and collapse of one socio-economic system and its replacement by another, is condensed by the middle-class intellect of Trotsky and his Bolshevised collaborators into a question of presenting a programmatic system for everyone – including themselves – to follow and implement.

These allegedly revolutionary or pre-revolutionary demands included the following; a ‘sliding scale of wages’; a ‘minimum wage’; a ‘sliding scale of working hours’; the ‘right to work’; ‘decent living standards’; ‘abolition of business secrets’; ‘expropriation (nationalisation) of key industries and banks’; ‘nationalisation of land’; ‘a system of state credit’; ‘a scheme of public works’; and ‘workers control of industry’.   The peculiar logic inherent in this ‘programme’ envisioned that in the day to day class struggle to achieve these demands workers would become revolutionary-minded, join revolutionary parties as foot soldiers and eventually seize control of state power. Led of course by the Fourth International members as the workers political, military and economic vanguard. Informing the production of the Transitional Programme was a type of logic inspired more by hope or fantasy than 20th century reality.

However, there was (and is) another pattern of logic flowing from such a programme of demands. Addressing demands to the representatives of capital in control of state power is to accept the status quo of an existing ‘authority’ who need to be persuaded (or forced) to grant those demands. Such demands do not point beyond the system of capital, but logically engender reformist perspectives. Such demands by and for working people, de-facto require an ‘authority’ over society which is capable of granting them. Who would this be? For example, the demand for a sliding scale of wages and a minimum wage also assumes the naturalness of the wages system which for reformists only lacks a bourgeois sense of fair play in the existing capitalist mode of production.  It amounts to a demand (addressed to whom?) to be exploited at a steady rate, rather than a variable one. Such demands are petite bourgeois policy demands, not ones transitional to a post-capitalist mode of production. In fact they are policies, if granted, are only ‘transitional’ to a more ‘liberal‘ form of capitalism.

And this is exactly what occurred after the 2nd World War, without any particular effort by the 4th International or the working class. The fact that the many of these programmatic policy ‘achievement’s’ could be introduced (and were) by the victorious capitalists – without challenging the basis of the capitalist mode of production – seemed to have escaped the reasoning of the originators of this transitional programme. In fact the easy granting of these ‘benefits’ for workers (and a few more in addition) did allow the transition to a new phase of stabilised welfare-state capitalism, which is now in a neo-liberal phase of crisis. This mid-20th century period provided the necessary foundation to further rapid capital accumulation, a strengthening of the capitalist state and an increased bourgeois ideological hold over working peoples understanding.

This ideological hold exists to such an extent that, despite the current systemic crisis of capital, 20th century welfare-state capitalism is seen by the majority of workers and left intellectuals, as something to aspire to and return to. Such programmatic demands upon the capitalist mode of production and their realisation, were in fact the means of saving capitalism from itself. This was achieved by harnessing working people’s energies and commitments to working hard and reforming aspects of it without superseding it. The same phenomena is repeating itself everywhere in the current ‘five-fold’ crisis of the 21st century. ‘People’s Parties’ and ‘Parties of the People’ with their own versions of transitional programmes are the current obsession by most of the left orientated intellectuals and workers who, motivated by a common-sense logic of progress, urge renewed ‘political engagement’ in the bourgeois Parliamentary charade.

I have argued elsewhere on this blog, that there is no progressive way back (or forward) to a new stage of welfare-state capitalism. At its most basic, the current level of automated production requires fewer workers and already under this system, these fewer workers are over-producing commodities, services and global pollution. Fewer employed workers also mean less tax revenue; less taxes pay for fewer ‘benefits’ for those in work and out of work. For decades all capitalist governments have been fiscally bankrupt if not yet legally so. The elite will continue to cast off certain categories of workers, particularly in this public sector.  Short of another mass elimination of human and non-human material, as occurred during the two capitalist inspired world wars of the 20th century, there is no way back and no way forward under the existing mode of production.  The bulk of humanity, may not have yet awakened to the fact that we are faced with the task of revolutionising the mode of production or risk further catastrophic social or ecological events, but these stark alternatives are precisely what face us.

Can revolutions proceed according to a programme?

Any serious study of revolutionary changes in political, social or military affairs, let alone with regard to changes of modes of production, reveals that these processes do not follow pre-planned logical steps or stages. Contradictions, advances, reversals and unintended consequences are just a few of the multifarious factors at work. So too are the ultimate results of dynamic conflicts between participants who are struggling for different outcomes. These are just a few of the many chaotic phenomena which attend such ‘revolutionary’ developments. No amount of planning can predict the course all such unfolding events or be a reliable guide during the events themselves. Indeed, those who operate according to a pre-conceived programme or plan can potentially (and actually) hinder the spontaneous and creative progress involved in any revolutionary transformation.

Of course, this is not to say, that after a revolution it is not possible to look back upon it and draw some generally useful conclusions concerning the stages and processes it went through. However, this intellectual pursuit involves abstracting from the complex details those features which correspond to the conceptual frameworks and preferences of those who study them and describe their findings.  Depending upon the quality of the insights and materials studied, this may or may not offer some important conclusions which may be useful for evaluating future stages of revolutionary transformations. However, such conceptual abstractions and suppositions are certainly not the basis for any detailed programme, transitional or not.  And, significantly in this regard, it is this type of conceptual activity which distinguishes between how workers and intellectuals ‘learn‘, ’know’ and ‘own’ the results

The intellectual, as with the philosopher, works primarily with ideas, his or her own and the ideas of others. The material he or she works upon is primarily drawn from other intellects; academic historians, economists, commentators etc. This material the intellectual works up and formulates a considered opinion on the subject at hand. Yet no matter how detailed and profound such efforts are, they cannot solve the practical problems facing humanity, let alone those emerging in the pressure cooker of revolutionary events. The revolutionary intellectual, as with other intellectuals is  always, to a greater or lesser degree, standing apart from the actual struggles of everyday life. This is the essence of Marx’s observation that ’hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world, the task is to change it‘. And the human agents for this creative change Marx identified were not the intellectuals – of whom he was an outstanding one himself – but the working classes.

This ‘self-activity’ of the working classes, with regard to both their reformist and revolutionary actions Marx not only championed, but repeatedly emphasised throughout his life.  Marx clearly realised that working people ‘learn‘, ‘know’ and ‘own’ the results of their efforts not by the means of intellectual study and conceptual refinement, but by their own practical and collective activity. Learning by experience, including the experience of failure is the practical way the working classes accumulate knowledge and just as importantly it is the way they ‘own’ or ‘disown’ their own results. Given the fact that there is no previously accepted ‘experience’ of a successful post-capitalist society, to base themselves upon, much of the future revolutionary activity of workers will be – by necessity – creative and ’developmental’.

As such the process will require approximations, spontaneous inclinations, changes of tack, creative thinking, re-appraisal, modification and above all persistence.  This is a pattern much like exists in every field of practical endeavour, where many small and medium experiments are necessary to establish the best approximations and where the failures are seen positively as eliminating ineffectual or impractical directions.  Perhaps it goes without saying, but I will say it nonetheless: The workers and others involved in this process will also need to avoid like the plague, the elevation of an intellectual vanguard, or any other vanguard, to positions of power over and above, their own communities. This much has been made clear by every  revolution hitherto undertaken. Once in power, no matter what good intentions may have been previously declared, elites cling onto power and privilege by every means possible.

And in a truly revolutionary transition leading to a change in the mode of production, workers and others would not make policy demands upon a central power standing over them. They would in fact implement these policies themselves directly in negotiation with other workers. They would not demand of ‘authority’ the opening of the books, but seize the books and open them themselves. They would not demand of a ‘higher power’ the expropriation of factories and industries under workers control, they would take over the factories and industries themselves. They would not demand the creation of public works, but begin implementing them. They would not demand decent living standards and housing but begin creating them for themselves. They would not demand the ‘nationalisation of land’ from some distant central body but immediately socialise and communalise it themselves. As long as workers and others are only demanding improvements, they are not engaged in revolutionary transformations, but in reform of existing systems.

So who needs a Transitional Programme?

It should be obvious, by now that those who are in most need of any programme claiming to be revolutionary, are those who wish to direct others on the course they have already decided upon. That is to say those who consider themselves the ‘vanguard’ of the future anti-capitalist revolution, are prone to concocting their own preferred systems approach to this prospect.  Yet while such systems approaches are useful for some tasks, it is the crassest form of idealism, when these approaches are applied to the death agonies of an existing system, and the creation of an alternative out of its disintegration. Yet this top-down systems approach was exactly the method used by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks in Russia after the revolution of October 1917.

Lenin and Trotsky, as with most Bolshevik intellectuals, thought they already knew the ‘true’ pattern of history and what a future society should look like after the present one had served its purpose. Out of this intellectual arrogance they could not countenance, let alone allow, collectives of working people to creatively experiment and choose how to work and co-operate in any post-capitalist reconstruction. According to this Bolshevik derived logic, workers needed to be persuaded to follow the dictates of the planners – state bureaucrats and intellectuals. Or if persuasion failed workers would need to be forced to adhere to the plans and strategies devised by these self-appointed elites.  Predictably this was a strategy which failed completely to end the domination of capital and wage labour.

Famous (or infamous) in this systems approach were the top-down programmes and detailed plans of the Bolshevik dominated Soviet Ogburo and other allied state institutions, for electrification, industrialisation and collective agriculture. The inevitable savage oppressions, failures, mistakes, contradictions and blunders of this period – and many others – did not deter these would-be systems builders from imagining that entire societies can be revolutionised and reconstructed according to a sufficiently well thought out top down intellectually constructed programme. From the Bolshevik perspective, workers and others, during the decay and collapse of the capitalist mode of production, could not be trusted to find their own small and medium sized economic and social solutions (their own bridges) to the challenges they and a new post- capitalist mode of production found themselves confronted with.

Instead, according to this top-down transitional programme type mentality, workers and the rank and file Party Members needed the supposedly sound guidance from the petty-bourgeois intellectuals who had managed to gain executive control of the so-called revolutionary party.  In other words the 1938 Transitional Programme, discussed above, followed exactly the same line of middle-class intellectual reasoning as the Bolshevik elites had tried to make work in the Soviet Union before it finally collapsed.  The final result of these elite-led programmes was a totalitarian form of wage-slavery, which in many ways mirrored the slavery and semi-slavery which had taken place under the worst examples of Colonialism and Fascism.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2015)

Note
Before his assassination in 1940 the most influential figure in the founding of the Fourth International was Leon Trotsky. Trotsky had taken an active and leading part in the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. From October 1917 until his expulsion from Russia by the Stalinists in 1929 he had been appointed by the Bolshevik Central Committee (and/or the Politbureau) to various high positions within the Soviet State.  After Lenin’s death in 1923 Trotsky had become the intellectual mouthpiece of an internal group designated as the  ‘Left Opposition’.

The function of the Left Opposition, (as with the ‘Joint Opposition‘) according to Trotsky, was to seek “..reform in the party, and through it the state.” (Challenge of the Left Opposition. Pathfinder page 100). However, in all such cases, faced with a ruthless and determined ruling elite (in this case headed by Stalin) unsolicited reform was a non-starter. In fact advocating reforms in opposition to a firmly entrenched and armed totalitarian elite was nothing more than the sowing of illusions and an invitation to be silenced or eliminated. Many supporters of the Left Opposition within Soviet Russia realised this and voluntarily (or forcibly) abandoned this project.

This collapse, along with imprisonments, disappearances and banishments of internal Soviet Left Opposition support, left those who remained actively opposed to Stalin and the Soviet bureaucracy with an alternative option. This was to gather as much support as possible and to work to form an alternative organisation.  This was a difficult task and a protracted process but eventually led to the formation of the Fourth International and, as noted above, its most important founding documents – ‘The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International’ and the Transitional Programme.

Note also the complete absence in the Transitional Programme of any species concerns outside of human concerns. Its Anthropocentric focus is complete and unconcerned with life on earth in general. This is because it is based upon 19th and 20th century levels of relative ecological and climate ignorance which only became visibly significant in the mid to late 20th century.

RR

Posted in Anti-Capitalism, capitalism, Critique, Marx, neo-liberalism, Politics, Reformism, The State | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

CONTRADICTIONS IN PARIS.

Posted on January 16, 2015 by stutteringsteps

The majority of those who assembled in Paris in millions on Saturday did so to protest against the two murderous atrocities committed there and to defend free speech. The symbolic phrases which dominated placards and posters was ‘Je Suis Charlie‘. Nevertheless there were others who attended to assert their religious or national identity, to call for social cohesion or national unity. In other words there was a high degree of unity along with a degree of diversity. It was clear that from the immediate aftermath of the assassinations at Charlie Hebdo and the creation of the Je Suis Charlie hashtag, that there would be a huge outpouring of opposition to this outrage.

It was at this stage that the French political elite decided to endorse the idea of a mass rally and to make their emphasis a call for national unity with the bourgeois state against terrorism. This decision was quickly followed by an invitation from the French elite to approximately 50 heads of states to attend the rally and to lead it.  It will not have escaped the political elite in Europe, as elsewhere, that for many years, there has been a growing rift between the ordinary citizens of the many states and the political elites in power. This includes a scant regard for those oppositions currently waiting for the next election.

Contradictions within the political elite.

Call me a cynic but I cannot exclude the possibility that most of these political ‘suits’ who lined up in Paris were far more motivated to attend by a desire to hold on political power, than the future of ‘free speech’. The sight of 40 plus politicians, many of them guilty of recently ordering indiscriminate bombings, targeted assassinations and torture, linking arms across a boulevard at the head of a march for ’free speech’ and against targeted assassinations was positively surreal.  Let us start with their individual and collective hypocrisy concerning ‘free speech’. Not one of them has supported the right to free speech with regard to ‘whistle-blowing’ activists, nor to allow an open publication of their secret deals and other such nefarious activities. Gagging orders, secret diplomacy, black operations are the bedrock of their political careers and elevated positions.

The European political elite also declared they were against terrorism and its targeted or indiscriminate assassinations, yet the state forces they command are guilty of far more of these kinds of acts, than those they rightly condemn. With no embarrassment, they even invited to the rally one head of state, who only recently oversaw both the targeted and indiscriminate murder of thousands of people in the second such Blitzkrieg of Gaza. This is not to mention those outrages committed by the armed forces of Israel within the occupied territories of Palestine. Most of them had recently ordered and/or supported the countless indiscriminate bombings of people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya etc., as well as hundreds of targeted drone strikes on those around the world they wished to silence or destroy.

Not only that but a number of them had already financed, the training and arming of a number of the original Islamic groups, when their Jihad was aimed elsewhere.  The arms and weapons used by these new Islamic terrorists are not manufactured by primitive engineers and blacksmiths originating in the countries of the near east, but are the products of advanced weapons manufacturers – the majority of which – reside in the territories of those politicians linking each others arms in Paris. They displayed no embarrassment about their own citizens possibly being executed by the guns supplied by their own military or arms manufacturers.  Nor the fact that they may be wielding them according to tactics taught by their own countries military experts.

Another contradiction for the elite and their policies of exploitation and social control arose out of the fact that only three well-armed, bloodthirsty and determined people, could bring substantial parts of one of the largest cities in Europe to an absolute locked-down standstill. Literally tens of thousands of the states highly armed bodies of men and women were necessary to track down, isolate and surround two people in one location and one in another.  Despite the eventual success, it became clear to all those citizens in France (and elsewhere)  that the modern state could not adequately protect them from terrorism. And for two good reasons. First, while it was engaged in state terrorism abroad it was effectively creating it at home as well as abroad. This opinion was expressed by many interviewed and by police experts in this field. Second, the sheer logistics and expense of this kind of ‘protection’ was too great to be permanent.  Given the current scale of sovereign debt the current level state-funded anti-terrorism is likely to be reduced.

Finally, let us consider those elite utterances in France and elsewhere of support for the ideals of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity. Not one of them subscribes to equality, except with regard to voting rights. All else, education, housing, wealth, opportunity, freedom of movement, women’s rights are subject to the most extreme forms of inequality in all the countries of those elites assembled in France. Liberty, is hard for working people to find in these same countries, except the liberty to be poor or unemployed. Liberty is also not allowed to those falsely accused by these countries and once incarcerated many of them are brutally tortured as at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.  And of course, Fraternity is practiced only among the elite themselves. The final contradiction I shall mention here is that these very political elites are instituting ’austerity’ for the bulk of their citizens and  obscene ’affluence’ for the rich. Does that represent any commitment to Equality, Liberty and Fraternity?

Contradictions among the ordinary citizens.

When the white-collar, blue-collar and lower middle-classes assembled in their hundreds of thousands in the cold streets and squares of Paris and elsewhere it was not to demonstrate their unity with the political elite. They were there to support the right of ‘Charlie Hebdo’ radicals to speak their humorous and sarcastic truth to power, whether that power was political, religious or sectarian. These citizens, black, brown, white, young old, gay or disabled, marched or stood shoulder to shoulder and displayed no hostility to each other. There was no racism, no religious bigotry, and no expressions of class or political superiority.  They were as one in solidarity against something they clearly held dear.

At bottom it was the right to openly express an opinion and the right to address that opinion to those holding any kind of power. The fact that many among them also mentioned the French revolutionary slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity indicated that they had more than just a standing up against terrorist assassinations in mind. The core of what the majority were expressing was humane and humanist aspirations. Yet, as was the case with those who assembled by the million in Tahir Square in Egypt, unity against a common threat is far easier to achieve than unity for something to transcend a number of common threats.

Faced with the current five-fold crisis of the capitalist mode of production everyone present at that rally and demonstration knew, to a greater or lesser extent, the problems they currently face. For example, in the economic spheres of life, many face unemployment or low wages; within the financial sector, the rip-offs and collapses have eroded even small savings; the steady reduction of public spending has created many pockets of social deprivation and alienation; everyone is faced with the environmental problem of pollution and ecological damages caused by the current mode of production; most of those attending will be aware of the corruption,  fraud, cover-ups, institutional racism and sexism at the heart of the political, military, judicial and civil elites.  This five-fold crisis is the common threat facing not only the French working classes, but all those workers around the world!

Yet given the size and extent of the problems facing them the undoubted temptation of most people will be to struggle as isolated individuals, small groups or to put their trust in those politicians who emerge and offer to put in place, radical but partial or reactionary measures. The temptation to simplify things and isolate some aspect of the crisis for blame, will be hard to resist and this temptation will be massaged and manipulated by those politicians who are already perfecting the new version of the ‘blame game’.  Their task is to find a scapegoat  and put all, or at least a significant part of the blame for the crisis, upon them.  The right-wing, as they have done in the past, will seek that scapegoat from among the ordinary people.

Thus in Europe in the 1930’s the blame was put on Jews and Communists. In the 1970’s and 80’s Europe it was put on the Trade Unions. Now in the 21st century the target for blame is the immigrant – particularly the ordinary Muslim immigrant. This blame game is already having considerable success, in France as in all advanced capitalist countries in Europe and America.  This is another part of the contradictions among the working populations of Europe. Low-paid immigrants were encouraged and recruited by the economic and political elite to compete against indigenous working people and have been offered jobs and housing previously available to the indigenous working people.

In this way there has developed an economic and social reason to be against immigration, but instead of the blame being levelled at the economic and political elite for this state of affairs, the blame is being put on the immigrant. The Islamic terrorists among the Muslim religion are ably assisting this right-wing blame game by their obscene atrocities. Thus the contradictions lying under the January show of unity and solidarity among ordinary people in Paris and elsewhere are many. The challenge, during and after the Paris Rally is the same. Will French white-collar workers turn their backs on blue-collar struggles and vice versa?: will both allow the racists to set upon Muslims and Jews?: will young people let pensioners struggle alone?: will those well housed be indifferent to the homeless? These are the same contradictions that face all the world’s working people.

These cracks in the foundations of bourgeois society can only be papered over for a short period of time before they are either consciously addressed, remedied or deliberately opened up wider. As was the case in Egypt and elsewhere, a lasting unity of the mass of working people, old, young, male, female, able-bodied or disabled can only be achieved by being based upon a programme of ending these economic divisions and social differences.  This is the only way of avoiding the descent into a new form of ‘blaming the victim’ and possible totalitarian despotism. Yet to my knowledge, this type of message did not appear – even in an abbreviated form – on any placard held by any of those attending. Why was this? Whose job was it to at least attempt to introduce an alternative theme of practical unity to that of Nationalism promoted by the political elites in attendance?

Contradictions among the ‘left’.

I suggest the only ones sufficiently equipped to play the role of countering bourgeois ideology within such a rally would be any non-sectarian anti-capitalists and revolutionary- humanists who might exist within France.  The reformist left could not do so, because they think Capitalism can be reformed economically and socially and to do this you need to galvanise the ‘nation’ behind the effort.  They would therefore need the assistance of all classes in pursuit of their illusion of ‘fair’ wages and ‘comfortable’ social conditions within the very system that has destroyed these post-Second World War gains. For this reason, they would probably just blend in with the crowd and offer no alternative to the nationalist ideology pumped out by politicians and mainstream media.

In contrast the sectarian left would no doubt stay away from such a populist gathering as took place in Paris. They would probably see their attendance as an endorsement of the bourgeois nature of the rallies main theme ‘Je Suis Charlie’ instead of an opportunity to appropriately engage with as many energised demonstrators as possible. The opportunity to sensitively engage by leaflet or discussion in order to  point out the many contradictions mentioned in the sections above would doubtless be spurned.  I say this because the sectarian left, routinely stay away from demonstrations or actions called by other sectarian groups. It has happened many times before. There is a pattern among these groups which either boycott actions they do not control or whose leadership they fail to take over.

The rationalisations used by sectarians to avoid engaging with those workers who do not subscribe to an anti-capitalist or ‘politically correct’ perspective in such cases are often cleverly presented, but they amount to the same thing. A distancing of the sect from all those who disagree or do not conform to the sectarian view of practical struggle. The most important point for the sectarian is not what they have in common with working people but what particular point they have which is different. They implicitly or explicitly demand that workers agree with their full ‘programmes’ before they will join them in their mundane political struggles. As Marx noted with regard to one of the typical characteristics they display;

“By their very nature, the sects …are abstentionist, strangers to all genuine action, to politics, to strikes, to coalitions, in brief to any unified movement.” (Marx. ‘The First International and After’.  Penguin p 298.)  

Any vacuum in the realm of ideas left by the revolutionary- humanists and non-sectarian anti-capitalist left in mass movements which emerge will undoubtedly be filled with nationalist and reformist ones.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2015.)

Posted in Critique, Fundamentalism, Marx, Nationalism, Politics, Reformism, Revolutionary-Humanism, Sectarianism, The State | Tagged , , | 2 Comments