FLIGHT MH370! Was a dollar too much?

Posted on April 4, 2014 by stutteringsteps

According to an aeronautical engineer, a dollar an hour is how much it would cost to install technology on every aircraft which would broadcast height, speed, position every hour. By this low-cost means it would have been possible to accurately trace the journey of the missing plane MH370. However, as it is at the moment everyone is guessing. The comment came on one of the many news bulletins on the disappearance of this flight. The engineer added that he couldn’t understand why this has not been done as the technology is available, well-proven and relatively cheap. There is, as I suggest below, an obvious reason.

Meanwhile, the cost to the tax-payer for the aircraft industries penny-pinching is going to be huge. The costs of the weeks of searching for the missing aircraft in the seas south-west of Australia has not as yet been revealed. However, with military and civilian aircraft on continual search patterns and numerous naval ships all heading in that direction, the costs in fuel, wear and tear of equipment, salaries and wages must be astronomical.  As usual these type of costs will be ultimately borne by those who work and pay taxes.

Coincidently in the same week, it was revealed it would have cost just less than a dollar to fix the problems with  thousands of General Motors cars, many of which caused fatal accidents and serious injuries, to drivers and passengers. In this case those investigating this failure to rectify a fault in the US senate were also finding it difficult to understand why it hadn’t been fixed when it was brought to GM’s attention. The costs to the health and well-being to those affected by this preventable and correctable fault – and other similar automobile faults, it must be said – is also difficult to calculate, but must be considerable. However, as in the many cases of such wilful neglect by capitalist concerns the reason why relatively cheap modifications are not installed is not to difficult to ascertain. It is profit.

Production for profit.

It is obvious that services and commodities produced by capital are not primarily produced for the benefit of consumers, but for the profitable return on capital for those who own and/or control it. For this reason it should be obvious that the elements of durability, safety, and reliability which are embodied in these non-luxury capitalist services and commodities, are kept to a calculated minimum.  This minimum is determined by either what the consumer will put up with or those which are enforced by government legal requirements. All other factors, sooner or later,  are trimmed down to ensure the maximum profitability possible, for the least cost. The same goes for the method of producing these commodities or services as well as the final form they take.

For the methods of production and conditions of those who produce for capitalist concerns (the workers) are likewise reduced to the lowest possible costs, with the least possible safety conditions. Speed-ups and lower wages, unhealthy and unsafe working conditions, long hours, zero-hours create faults and accidents of all kinds. These are symptoms of the relentless and ruthless competitive drive for profit. Every aspect of modern living which is controlled by the capitalist mode of production, suffers from the same essential problem. Not just in the cases of aeronautical, automobile, train, and bus transportation, but also capitalist produced food, clothing, energy (and much else) suffers its own catalogue of faults, fatalities and disfigurements.

Even the ecological environment and non-human life forms are forced to suffer the consequences of the capitalist mode of production, which pollutes because this is the cheapest way to be rid of waste. But in this case also, there are those in control of these modes of production, who once they know there are serious problems, make extremely careful calculations. They sit down with their lawyers, accountants and technicians and discuss how much it would cost to put things right and how much it would cost to pay compensation to those effected, if they don’t. If the cost of a remedy is higher than to pay compensation, then the fault – be it to products, services, safety or emissions, will be allowed to continue.  Only when forced by circumstances, legal action or legislation to put things right will most capitalist concerns bother to act.

The tragic disappearance of flight MH370 is just the latest of such tragedies attendant upon this outmoded form of production in the profit-led air-travel industry. Many more will occur even if the much delayed location devices are finally installed for this is not the only shortcoming to modern cost-cutting aviation practices.  In addition, comparable penny-pinching problems will continue in the rest of economic and social life as long as the capitalist mode of production is allowed to continue. Sub-standard commodities, elite lies and deceit, warfare, poverty, ill health, unsafe working practices, pollution, ecological destruction, injustice are all capable of eradication by human ingenuity. But not under the capitalist mode of production and not with hierarchical forms of socio-economic organisation. A dollar more for the plebs will always be too much!

Hierarchy and capital.

In addition to the above areas, the capitalist mode of production distorts humanity and ensures that competition replaces co-operation, that production for profit replaces production for need, and that massive disparities in wealth are created. Yet it was not always so and needn’t always be so in the future.  In this regard, it is undoubtedly true that there will always be a percentage of human beings who are self-serving, greedy and aggressive. However, the creation and continuation of the capitalist mode of production ensures there is a place for them to exercise and spread these anti-social characteristics. In a similar way it is only since the creation of hierarchical forms of economic and social organisation that means have been available for such individuals to rise to the top and exploit the advantages available to them by such elevation.

The future for humanity in general will not change for the better until both these present symptoms of economic and social organisation are transcended and replaced with communal economic and  production and social organisation. Leave a hierarchical system in economic production and communal organisation after such a post-capitalist transformation (as in the Soviet Union, China and elsewhere) and the self-serving minorities in every generation will sooner or later wheedle or strong-arm themselves into it. They will then be able to use what has been conserved and preserved in a hierarchical way to pursue their own selfish aims and objectives and deform or destroy any egalitarian principles and practices created in the transition.

Even those who imagine they would intend to work for the benefit of others are not immune to such self-serving outcomes in hierarchical types of groupings. The partial and mis-information progressively given out by the hierarchy in Malaysia Airlines reveal this much. All positions of power and influence to a greater of lesser degree corrupt the holders of such positions. The history of bourgeois and pre-bourgeois institutions and forms of organisation confirm this assertion.  The same goes for religious, secular – and even anti-capitalist forms of hierarchy. ‘Positions’ of authority are sought and protected by whatever means are available.

The few who have attempted to adhere to more altruistic positions have been compromised, silenced, slandered or squeezed out,  a practice which continues. The current ruthless treatment of ‘concerned’ whistle-blowers is testament to this systemic phenomena. The opposite side of the coin is manifest in ‘cover-ups’, false-flag operations and corporate denials. These symptoms are also universal and will undoubtedly be wielded in abundance as the mystery surrounding the missing plane continues to unfold.

Much of the vast wealth accrued by capital is often utilised to prevent a full accounting of the practices of capital and pro-capital elites. It is used to ‘silence’ internal critics in various ways, or ensure limits are placed on public enquiries or to misrepresent their findings. In addition to current crocodile tears, we can expect such spin-doctoring tactics in any future possible enquiry into the causes of the disappearance of flight MH370, and the utter failure to locate it. More than a casual eye will be kept on limiting any potential damages and compensation. Even though we know the ultimate reason why the passengers of MH370 were not worth a dollar an hour – the quest for profit – there still remains the question of which elites in this case decided they were not.

However, we should not hold our breath. The lack of accountability in the cases of Banking Fraud, unauthorised derivatives selling, surveillance, phone-tapping and deaths in custody, as well as faulty products show how much power the capitalist state and the capital-funded corporate lobbies can exert, to avoid direct culpability and any possible drains on their accumulated wealth. The constant elephant in the room causing these and other multifarious global problems and cover-ups – which everyone in the elite persist in pretending is not there is – the capitalist mode of production. The recent disappearance of flight MH370 is just another tragic example.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2014.)

 

Posted in capitalism, Critique, Economics, Finance | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

CAPITALISM AND FASCISM.

Posted on March 28, 2014 by stutteringsteps

Those who have been led to believe that the western ‘Allied’ countries who fought the Second World War were fighting to end Fascism, must be puzzled by recent events in the Ukraine.  For in the last few months politicians in the West (Europe and the USA) have been silent about the high-profile role of ultra-nationalists, Judeophobes and neo-fascists in the armed uprising which took place in the capital city – Kiev – during February and March 2014.

The same Western elites have also made no public comment upon the extreme right-wing nature of those who have been given seats and appointed to ministries in the re-shuffled Ukraine government. In view of the war against Nazism and Italian Fascism, does this lack of comment or concern from politicians in Europe and the USA not seem surprising? Isn’t anti-Fascism supposed to be part of the political DNA of all classes in Europe and North America?

Worse still in this regard, there is more than a suspicion that funding from western sources was channelled to many of those assembling in the Maidan knowing they would find their way into dubious hands. Was pressure on the Ukraine government to align with Europe’s economic and political motives or resign, more important than human rights? Can it really be possible after the experience of the Second World War, with its blitzkriegs, concentration camps and gas chambers, that western capitalist governments could be neutral or supportive of anti-Semites and right-wing-Fascists no matter how few they are in number?

Can they really remain silent and complicit as once again Jewish people and other non-conforming citizens are being targeted and threatened by right-wing thugs? Can pro-capitalist elites really turn a blind eye to fascistic military dictatorships such as those they once sponsored in South America, and those now installed in Egypt? And isn’t neo-Fascism or authoritarianism and extreme nationalism on the rise everywhere without serious censure by all governing elites of capitalist countries – including Russia?  It seems the answer is an unequivocal – Yes! But to understand this political neutrality, silence or even support – on all sides – we need to consider the cyclical nature of the capitalist mode of production as it passes through its successive economic phases.

Economics ultimately determines politics.

If we recognise that the economic mode of production has an enormous underlying influence upon the actions of individuals and classes certain things follow. It becomes important to understand how this influence impacts upon the political superstructures erected upon this economic base. Needless to say, fluctuations in the economic base, particularly violent ones, will effect to a greater or lesser degree, how the politics and political systems function and how they become modified.

Economic fluctuations and their phases are created by the cyclical pattern of industry, commerce and finance during the functioning of the capitalist mode of production. These phases of the cycle have long been identified as; ’prosperity – overproduction – crisis – stagnation – inactivity – revival – and then back to – prosperity – overproduction – crisis – and round the cycle again.

In periods of prosperity, the preferred political superstructure for capitalists and their system in the advanced countries has been bourgeois democracy. This democratic form of governance enables the various sectors of the capitalist class to compete for privileges and advantages without threatening the class domination of the system as a whole.  This form of governance also gives the illusion to all classes that it is possible to use these overtly democratic forms to change things in line with their own interests.

However, the bourgeois democratic system is designed so that it deliberately does not challenge the private ownership and control of the means of production. Bourgeois democracy to function, requires  a professional cadre of paid politicians who pursue their own career interests before all else. The system is also heavily rigged against the working class and the poor. So the best that can happen for workers in periods of prosperity and pluralist democracy is the temporary achievement of slightly better wages and conditions, along with basic social benefits for those not in employment, through sickness or old age.

However, when the economic phases of over-production and stagnation are entered, things begin to change elsewhere. The phase of over-production means many more goods and services have been produced than can normally be sold at a profit in the available markets. So sooner or later this symptom of overproduction leads to a contraction and often to a prolonged phase of economic stagnation. In the past, relative overproduction crises were offset by creating new markets (originally by colonial expansion) and later by seizing competitors markets (imperialist expansion by warfare) as it was in 1914 and again in 1939.

Since capital always requires labour to create and re-create it, when a period of prolonged and wide-spread stagnation occurs, something serious in this sphere also changes. Workers wages are effectively reduced and many also become unemployed. Workers and others are obliged by circumstances to begin challenging the owners of capital, their political representatives and often the capitalist system as a whole.

In such circumstances bourgeois rule and the democratic forms are challenged and the smooth operation of pro-capitalist governance can be easily disrupted. If civil unrest develops beyond a certain point, the supporters of the capitalist mode of production begin to recognise the need for a ‘scapegoat’ and a more authoritarian form of control. In mainland Europe during the early 20th century, this dual recognition was in a well advanced stage.

So when 20th century Fascism developed in Italy and Germany, it was not the aberration many naively thought at the time –  or since. A totalitarian form of governance was but a logical expression of the political and economic needs of large capital formations and their supporters, particularly in a period of crisis and stagnation. The need was for ever more guaranteed, large-scale sources of cheap labour, cheap raw materials and the guaranteed social form for the realisation of surplus-value and profit.  This authoritarian tendency was given a further impulse because the crisis of over-production and stagnation in the inter-war period had not been overcome. It  was so extreme that a further extended war to obtain further markets and sources of raw materials became necessary for European capital to survive and revive.

Authoritarianism also became necessary because under democratic forms of governance, total war requires the active or at least the passive consent and co-operation of all citizens. Given that workers (the majority of citizens) in a war are used as cannon-fodder, resistance and opposition from this direction is to be expected. Such opposition did arise in Europe particular after the experience of the First World War, along with strong anti-capitalist feelings and organisational developments. This increased level of social ferment created an even wider recognition that only an authoritarian totalitarian political form and the creation of an ‘enemy within’ would be able to physically suppress and eliminate such wide-spread anti-war and anti-capitalist opposition. This was exactly what mainland European Fascism accomplished in mainland Europe between the 1920’s and 1940’s.

But Fascism and authoritarian developments also accomplished more, than killing socialists, communists, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and those with physical or mental handicap. Under totalitarian political forms of capitalism, the state effectively became the employer of all wage-labour and directed it to capitalist industry and public projects on the basis of a grand plan for peace and later for war. It also solved unemployment and provided a ‘higher reason’ to accept savage exploitation and even death – “Deutschland ueber Alles” (the capitalist nation above all else!) became the new fixation – and not only in Germany.

Under these new conditions, the state co-ordinated and streamlined production whilst retaining private ownership of the means of production and the profit motive. Even though Fascism did not succeed in the United Kingdom, nevertheless the politics of the UK were also given an authoritarian make-over with conscription, state control of production and distribution of commodities and labour. On both sides of the Second World War the new needs of large-scale capital ensured that the ‘capitalist-state’ form became for all intents and purposes a ‘state-capitalist’ form.

In other words, in a number of countries during the crisis period of the 20th century, the bourgeois democratic form of national rule no longer completely satisfied either the needs of, nor guaranteed the continuity and development of  large-scale capital and its nationalist supporters. It was under threat from all directions! So to the era of imperialist economic and financial expansion was added in the 20th century a period of capital inspired totalitarian political adaptations complete with military-led competitive ‘total’ wars for resources and markets.

Fascism or Nazism, was merely the term first applied to the European extreme form of nationalist, pro-capital, totalitarian governance. Stalinism became the term applied to a similar totalitarian symptom in the east.  In fact so great was the pressing needs of capital accumulation that all capitalist governments moved more than a step or two in that authoritarian direction – even if some of them were prevented from going the whole way.

Political forms for Capitalist rule in the 21st century.

Although it was a humanitarian disaster of gigantic proportions, the destruction during the second world war did solve the over-production problem. It did so by damaging, destroying or rendering obsolete much of the previous capital accumulation. Machinery, buildings, infrastructure, commodities and men were eliminated – in large quantities – and needed replacing. Although after the war, democratic forms of governance quickly replaced previous totalitarian forms, the newly developed state-capitalist forms in Europe were continued. This was because state support was needed to sustain and promote the post-war development of social and private capital. It was ably assisted by creating large-scale public-service investments and nationalisations.

So within a short time this state-aid for capital reinvestment produced a new phase of capitalist revival and relative prosperity to the cycle. State-led planning was continued in the UK and Europe until the private economic and financial sector was powerful enough to re-assert their interests against the confirmed statists. At this juncture, the economic and financial interests of private capital found their way into the bourgeois political process in the form of neo-liberalism – as it is now known.

However, despite extensive use of credit to absorb the new post-war surplus production the economic cycle once again produced a crisis of relative-overproduction of commodities and the consequent over-production of finance-capital. The financial collapse occurring in 2008, triggering a new phase of prolonged stagnation and the situation is now also compounded by a global sovereign debt crisis.

And yet in this 21st century crisis the needs for capitalist accumulation in the advanced capitalist countries are still essentially the same as they were in the 20th. As long as capitalism exists these needs are;

a) sources of cheap labour, (hence continued immigration from low wage countries and the ability to export of capital to low-wage economies);

b) guaranteed supplies of materials and markets (hence invasions and/or the imposition of IMF conditionalities); and

c) stable supportive governments, (hence military government or the severe erosion of democratic practices).

These fundamental needs for capital mean that progress to authoritarian forms of governance together with an increasingly restricted form of democracy, are continuing  in all parts of the world. And of course, armed skirmishes and sanctions – if not yet all-out global war – are the order of the day. Working people should resist being recruited to one side or the other in such developments.

Yet the problem facing the capitalists choice of a totalitarian solution to the current phase of the capitalist economic cycle in the west and east is also clear. It lies in the almost universal horror of the past practice of Fascism in pursuit of its capital supporting aims. This horror together with the efforts and sacrifices required to defeat it before and after 1939 – 45 simply cannot be ignored even after one generation.

It is unlikely, therefore that 20th century Fascism will be the totalitarian choice for the majority of modern capitalist and pro-capitalist elites.   However, as protests against the system develop further – and they undoubtedly will – this does mean other forms of ultra-nationalism and collectivism will be supported by pro-capitalist elites.  Already bourgeois secular states have enhanced their armed bodies and restricted forms of protest in order to inhibit anti-capitalist developments.

It is no secret that kettling, tear-gas, pepper-spraying, restricted areas, holding pens and even ‘concentration camps’ for demonstrators and other undesirables have re-appeared in the forward plans of the secular capitalist elites in Europe and the US. It is no accident that calls are made by capitalist elites for continued high-levels of arms expenditure – despite austerity and the crisis continue – in all capitalist countries east and west. This latter provides a clue to their recognition of the needs of capital above ordinary people. Yet the resurgence of Islamic and Zionist fundamentalist aspirations for governance also show that authoritarian political trends allied to capitalism and backed by capitalists do not only take a secular form.

Nor should it be overlooked that so-called ‘socialist’ governments can become authoritarian and serve the needs of capital accumulation. They have done in the past under Stalinism, Maoism, National Socialism and under ‘left’ governments such as Labour in the UK. All the leaders of these political tendencies supported and developed social capital (called ‘nationalisation’) to a high degree, before handing it back to the private sector. They can do so again if they are allowed to.

So it would be a step back for working people to put their faith in ‘nationalisation’ or any of these forms of politics – religious or secular – disguised as being for the benefit of all.  Where we allow an elite (left, centre or right) to continue to rule over us we are never – ‘all in it together’! But that is material developed by other articles in this blog and in some yet to come.

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2014.)

 

Posted in capitalism, Critique, Economics, Nationalism, neo-liberalism, The State, Ukraine. | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

CRIMEA EXITS UKRAINE! What’s next?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by stutteringsteps

The referendum vote in Crimea has predictably swung the way of becoming part of the Russian Federation and Russia has signed an agreement to accept this new status. The speed of this development has caught the European and US pro-capitalist elites dozing at their side of this new neo-liberal game of political and military chess. In this new high-stakes game between eastern and western variants of modern capitalism, Russia has so far emerged with more pieces on its side of the board and less of its own captured by the west. Checkmate to Russia!

The western elites were initially happy that some extreme neo-fascist ‘knights’ were on their side and leading the armed charge against pro-Russian equivalents in their parliamentary castle at the Maidan. But this opportunism by the western elites has backfired. Memories of 1940’s Nazi atrocities in the east has driven many citizens of the Ukraine and Crimea away from the regime in Kiev and into the more than welcoming arms of Russia.

This particular outcome was part of the unintended consequences following the ferocious anti-regime struggles at the Maidan. Now as these events unfold, it has become clear that for many workers, potential exploitation by Russia is preferred to guaranteed oppression and exploitation by a government buttressed by neo-fascists and ultra-nationalists. Crimea is the first section of Ukraine to vote for what they consider a safer haven than being left in the clutches of Kiev. However, the internal turmoil and contest is far from over. The citizens of Crimea are not the only ones in Ukraine who are seriously alarmed by the events in Kiev.

Citizens in many other areas of the Ukraine are similarly concerned about a future under the new unstable political regime in the capital city. Already, in the wake of the Crimean vote for separation, the Kiev elite are making serious threats to severely punish any person who advocates a similar path or genuinely opposes the wishes of new governing elite in Kiev. Another chess piece has been moved onto another square.

But this threat can only enhance the already serious existential fears of those who are opposed to the current drift of events in mainland Ukraine. As a consequence of this apprehension and fear, more citizens of Ukraine will probably call for referendums on independence, or for a re-connection and/or protection from Russia. And can Russia be expected to simply stand aside and watch if right-wing pogroms commence against Russian speaking and Russian leaning citizens? I doubt it.

The new Kiev elite know that if the Crimean precedent starts to catch on elsewhere in Ukraine, this would mean the end of their dreams of elite political status. Such a scenario might even lead to their eventual ousting! In view of this the new regime in Kiev will undoubtedly fight desperately to maintain their grip on the rest of Ukraine. Which will only be in the form of another set of inept moves in this game which more and more resembles chess. They are making moves calculated (or miscalculated) to force a draw or in the unlikely hope of an eventual win.

In this internal game of political conquest sacrificing the working class pawns of either side, will be the order of the day. However, they can expect little intellectual, economic or financial help from an already intellectually moribund and financially bankrupt Europe and USA. Excess weapons stocks may be released openly or covertly, but little else will now come their way. The game is certainly not over yet in what is now left of this fragmenting country.

The now re-awakened western elites, bristling with simulated indignation, have also indicated that for them the game hasn’t ended either. They are about to discuss what broader economic sanctions can be added to the travel and financial sanctions already imposed upon certain individuals in Russia and Ukraine. The elites of the west have staked their much massaged reputations upon being skilful and determined international political chess players. For this reason they feel they cannot lose face by recognising they have already too few important pieces on the board. So they will continue to play on by sacrificing more pieces, particularly the working class pawns for which they have little or no concern. It should be clear that any economic or financial sanctions the European and North American elite decide to impose on Russia and Crimea will only seriously hit the working class and the poor in those two countries.

In addition, any economic, financial and travel sanctions will also rebound mainly upon Europe as Russia will undoubtedly seek ways to respond or retaliate. In other words if this tit-for-tat continues, there will be a distinct possibility of some level of trade war. And here again, the consequent rebound will hit the European and US working classes, blue-collar and white along with the poor – far more than it will hit the European and US elite. Trade wars always add another downward twist to any existing economic crisis and the financial, economic and sovereign crisis of the western capitalist governments is already widespread and extreme. Any sanctions and reciprocal actions which quicken the downward spiral of economic stagnation will therefore lead to even more unemployment, poverty and hardship for ordinary people.

And of course any such accelerated economic downturn in Europe will bring forth more demonstrations and civil unrest among the citizens of these countries. It will also lead to an increased questioning of the logic of the capitalist mode of production which periodically collapses economically, financially and morally.

If such trade sanctions emerge and/or escalate and socio-economic conditions continue to deteriorate, then it is likely that in Europe serious splits in the ruling class will start to appear. This is because in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, many within the lower ranks of the ruling elite already regard their bourgeois colleagues as blinded by excessive greed and hampered by insufficient talent. Splits and weaknesses in the ruling elites, if sufficiently deep, are always a harbinger of potential successful uprisings and more pre-revolutionary situations.

It is predictable that actions spurred on by a mixture of greed and incompetence will always have unintended consequences and this likelihood is even greater in periods of compound crises such as the one we are now experiencing. In the 21st century, crises in capitalist inspired economics, finance, military, social and ecological practices are creating intended negative as well as unintended negative consequences in practically every area of human life. Crimea and the Ukraine are just the latest examples of where these consequences have burst to the surface.

They are yet another reminder of an important 21st century question. Can humanity and the planet really afford another 100 years of global control by capital and capitalist elites? Surely, the planet and its inhabitants ought to be spared yet more decades of capitalist inspired wars, poverty, injustice, economic competition and ecological devastation: but will it?

Lets not just hope for but work for another unintended consequence of this multi-level global crisis. It could be that more and more people will come to realise that these multiple destructive symptoms cannot be ended without ending the system which continually creates them. The realisation needs to spread that it is the mode of production based upon capital and profit which is the foundation upon which all these negative symptoms arise – and we need to help spread it. This includes the symptoms of this capitalist mode which created the previous Arab Spring protests and now guess what? Spring is here again and uprisings are now starting in the East.

The 21st century is proving both a problem and a challenge for working people, anti-capitalists and revolutionary-humanists. So shouldn’t we try working together in order to prove we are up to the historic challenge which faces humanity? Which I think should involve the following: The creation of a mode of production based upon; the collective and communal ownership of the means of production (to replace private or state ownership), international economic co-operation based upon need, (to replace international competition based on greed), a guaranteed minimum level of satisfactory economic well-being for everyone, (to replace the super rich and end poverty), non-hierarchical forms of self-governance, (to replace the state and any future elite forms of manipulation).

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2014.)

Posted in Crimea, Ukraine. | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

UKRAINE IMPLODES.

Posted on March 10, 2014 by stutteringsteps

A new Crimean War?

It is a truism that the first casualty of war is the truth. There are already good reasons for asserting that this exists in the current war of words between the Anglo-Saxon coalition of Capitalist governments and those emanating from the former Soviet Union. Indeed, the current spat between the two power bases of east and west provides the most vivid examples of pre-scripted narratives and full-blooded confirmation bias. Participants and commentators alike in this – as yet – war of words, seek, shape and promote evidence which supports their chosen position and ignore or dismiss any evidence (ie disconfirmation bias) which contradicts it.

Also on display by both sides are swelling tides of hypocrisy concerning the sanctity of national territory – as if all large nation-states have not and do not routinely impose their forces on land, sea and air upon less strong peoples. All this outright bias and sickening hypocrisy is to be expected from politicians and officials of either side. It is their well established norm and they have much to gain or much to lose from the outcome to which they are committed if it succeeds or fails. So of course both sides wish people to accept their sanitised or demonised versions and suspend any independent critical abilities. But faced with the introduction of extreme forms of nationalism into the struggle, backing one politically contrived narrative or the other also seems to have rubbed off on many of the commentators on the left.

This may also be because events have moved at such a pace, across such a spectrum, with such intensity and with such polarised views, that it has been difficult to make sense of the turmoil – especially from distance. However, in such circumstances it is wise not to jump on any particular band-wagon and to do the following. 1 attempt to understand the background, 2 peer through the rhetoric, 3 consider the distortions and 4 reject the biased narratives emanating from either sources. In short it is generally wise to adopt a thoroughly sceptical attitude to the conflicting reports we are currently being offered. For they are promoted by those who have a cherished position to sell. The events in the Ukraine are no exception to exercising such caution.

For it is a fact that propaganda and counter-propaganda is now being energetically churned out by well-paid sycophants and regurgitated by naive and eager reporters on either side of this great and ever widening divide. Important as they are, being persuaded to focus on the high profile role of neo-fascists, or on which savage sniper elements shot the 80 plus demonstrators, is to be deflected into merely judging symptoms. And symptoms are not necessarily the best starting points to orient oneself in any struggle – including this. For example; both the earlier Ukraine Government and those far-right elements around the Maidan were sufficiently equipped, eminently capable, consistently devious and certainly motivated enough to do so either separately or concurrently in escalation or retaliation. Totalitarianism, of course, comes in more than one form. Anti-Fascism can even take on fascist-like totalitarian forms as it did under Stalin.

For in addition to the lives already lost, an additional, perhaps larger tragedy in the Ukraine and Crimea has quickly emerged. It is possible to clearly discern the following fact, whilst downplaying its significance: There are currently only two dominant alternatives for ordinary working people to identify with. In the current global economic crisis of the capitalist mode of production, ordinary working class citizens of Ukraine, were and are only being offered an illusory salvation from two competing sources – eastern or western neo-liberal variants of capitalism. Despite the deaths and rapid changes taking place at the time of writing, these two pro-capitalist alternatives still dominate the internal and external discourse.

Working people in the Ukraine and Crimea are being told to choose either a future of being exploited and oppressed by a European-leaning form of neo-liberal capitalism or an oligarchic form of essentially the same profit-led, finance-dominated economic system under the leadership of Russia. This is a choice which for many citizens may already be based upon deciding which is the lesser of two evils. And to enforce this catch 22 type choice they are being pressured to choose a side quickly and prepare for a possible civil-war – or worse. And if the situation does get worse workers in uniform or out will be encouraged to fight and possibly kill each other to resolve the issue. Not of course to resolve it for their own advantage but a resolution satisfactory to one pro-capitalist elite or the other.

The underlying economic crisis.

It is well to understand the developments in the Ukraine in its broader context, for there are lessons to be learned from this latest outbreak of civil unrest. Ukraine is just another example of one of the crippling effects of the current multilayered crisis of the capitalist system. This state is simply another weak link in the rusting Global capitalist economic chain which is steadily disintegrating in one country after another. The critical social fracture in this particular case also came courtesy of Ukraine’s sovereign debt crisis. Faced with a unsolvable pattern of state debt, the governing elite of the Ukraine were offered financial bailouts from both Europe and Russia. The initial European package came with the usual IMF loan strings and had negative implications for the existing high degree of economic dependency upon Russia.

For this reason, and as yet possibly undisclosed others, the European offer was rejected by the then ruling elite and an alternative one from Russia accepted. It became clear from this that one set of elites in Ukraine was relatively content with continuing to lean economically and politically on Russia whilst another set wanted closer ties with the European economic community and its political elite. This basic bifurcation was the economic and financial origin of the socio-political fracture which now zig-zags across the Ukraine and Crimea. The population of both these territories are being actively recruited to one side or another as pawns in an existential struggle between pro-capitalist elites for economic, financial and political domination.

Yet neither of the two alternatives offer a fundamental solution to the needs of the working class in Ukraine or Crimea. Loan guarantees or aid from either the European or Russian side will need re-paying by workers, (the ultimate source of all human created wealth) and loan guarantees from either source will not create jobs. At best these will be used to pay off debts already racked up by earlier elites. Either way the financiers, bankers and politicians will continue to cream off their salaries, fees and profits from any loans or aid from any source.

The current crisis of capitalism means that huge negative alterations to the lives of working people are the fate awaiting the working class – globally. In every state of the world workers are facing unemployment, low pay, reduced pensions, benefits and services and these will occur in Ukraine with a European connection or with a Russian connection. Under capitalism a competitive race to the bottom faces all workers as wages and conditions are lowered. The situation in Greece or Spain offers one mirror to a future for workers under the present system, Egypt, Syria and Libya another.

Of course certain elites will benefit hugely from one quasi-imperialist connection or the other, but not the ordinary citizens of the Ukraine. In Europe, large-capital has squeezed out the small businesses, and large-capital has reduced employment by automation and computerisation. Public-sector employment is reducing everywhere as tax revenues shrink and as state-debts escalate toward default levels.

The modern Russian sphere of influence is part and parcel of this global capitalist downturn and crisis. In a crisis, both eastern and western economic powers desperately need territory, resources and markets just as much – as they did prior to the first and second world wars. It is the capitalist mode of production and the elites of both geo-political alternatives in this stand-off which are the real enemy of the workers in Ukraine and Crimea – not each other or the ethnic groups among them.

As previous articles suggested [‘Fundamentalism’ and ‘The importance of Theory’] there is as yet no acceptable and viable alternative to the capitalist mode of production. Because of this lack it will seem to masses of workers that there is no serious alternative but to choose one or other of the offers of bailout from Russia or Europe.  Sadly, at the moment this is undoubtedly the case, but I suggest because of this lack, the radical and revolutionary left should not be drawn into collusion with propaganda and illusions promoted by the elites of either side.

The lessons for the anti-capitalist left.

From this and other examples, I suggest it is clear that there is a need to struggle against nationalism, ultra-nationalism (ie neo-fascism) and religious fundamentalism, but not by endorsing one version of neo-liberal capitalism against another. The crisis nature of capitalism and case for going beyond it still needs to be made amid the most confusing and polarised circumstances, particularly when the ultra-right (secular or religious) is active within them. Additionally, the reasons why the previous failed attempts to go beyond capital went so disastrously wrong also need explaining whenever a chance arises.

In such difficult and complex situations it is not surprising that reports emerge which indicate that much of the anti-capitalist left have been dismayed at the events in the Ukraine, particularly after the deployment of Russian troops outside their bases in Crimea. One report indicated that some class and political differences were abandoned and; “Wide layers were seized by nationalism, Ukrainian or Russian.” And further that;

“Among socialists and anarchists there is a very pessimistic mood. Twenty five years of socialist propaganda from a wide range of left groups and ideas seems to have gone nowhere, disappeared like a puff of smoke.”

(See http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/crimea-not-ours-or-yours and http://avtonomia.net/2014/03/02/)

It is abundantly clear from the struggle in the Ukraine and the Crimea (and from many other 21st century uprisings) that the anti-capitalist project as yet has been marginalised or dismissed outright by the masses of people currently engaged in various stages of their struggles. An important lesson to learn from this, I suggest, is the following. Without a revival of the legitimacy of a post-capitalist project, the left in general and the anti-capitalist left in particular, the divisive story of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Syria and now Ukraine will be repeated.

That is to say without a substantial movement based upon a real solid anti-capitalist foundation, then religion, nationalism and sectarianism will continue to be the default ideologies able to attract people to a variety of dissident pro-capitalist elites – whenever the contradictions of capitalist mode of production reach a crisis point. So in order to create an alternative outcome a solid working-class anti-capitalist foundation certain things will be needed. Among other things there is a need for a clear, comprehensive and honest exposition and substantiation of the following.

1. That for the safety of the planet and the masses of people, it is historically necessary and possible to go beyond economic and social domination by capital. [See ‘Defending Public Services’ and; ‘Workers and others in the 21st century’.]

2. That the mistakes and failures of previous attempts to go beyond capital (Soviet Union, China etc.) can be remedied and corrected. [See ‘Marxists versus Marx’ and; ‘The Riddle of History Solved.‘]

3. That religion and nationalism along with their extreme manifestations, – fundamentalism and fascism – offer no positive way forward. [See ‘Religion versus Women’s Rights’ and Religion is politics’.]

Well founded understandings such as those are necessary, because although the capitalist mode of production is internally crisis prone and subject to the most severe forms of multiple crises, it has always managed to survive them. It is not enough that the system collapses around many of our ears, because it will never collapse completely. For the creation of a post-capitalist society it is necessary that a class movement organises to ensure that when the opportunity arises and the systems supporters are divided and weakened, this movement will be strong enough and knowledgeable enough to play a key role in creating the transition.

It is obvious, I hope, that a strong non-sectarian anti-capitalist movement facilitating the evolution and acquisition of such knowledge and strength would be of considerable advantage to workers and others in any revolutionary developments. It should also be obvious that without a well informed and strong working-class, the bourgeois elements, nationalist and liberal-democratic will be able to divide and disrupt any oppositional movement and set one group of workers against another. This they have done in the past and are doing in the present. Furthermore, building upon and amplifying such divisions, they are eminently capable of solving their economic and political crises militarily by engaging in wars – as they did twice in the 20th century.

Yet another important lesson, related to the above point, has been demonstrated in the events of the Ukraine as it was in Egypt and the Maghreb. In this maturing crisis of the capitalist mode of production, it is not too difficult for large well organised citizen uprisings to eventually topple a government and even prevail against the most determined and brutal state elites with their armed bodies of men. However, whilst that is necessary, it is woefully insufficient to create any serious positive changes to the situation for most working people let alone any alterations to the mode of production. That much should have been made clear by the many uprisings in the 21st century.

Toppling a government is of little use if the huge numbers doing so have no real common purpose for their combined struggle – except opposition to the powers that be. Mere opposition is insufficient. In such circumstances, as soon as the governing elite is ousted divisions among the citizens open up (and are deliberately fomented), as in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and now Ukraine. From that crucial point on, if a positive programme of measures expressing and addressing the real socio-economic needs of the people is absent, a scramble for sectarian or partisan power takes place. In such ill-defined and unprepared circumstances, new elites are promoted and the whole mess of corruption and exploitation starts up again.

As argued in the two articles ‘Fundamentalism’ and ‘The importance of Theory’ and again here, the challenge for anti-capitalists in the 21st century is not to succumb to pessimism nor to tail-end nationalist causes. Just because no one is really listening to us at the moment does not mean we no positive role to play. We need to explain to those in struggle, the meaning and logic of what they are struggling for, particularly when that logic is informed by nationalistic or liberal-democratic illusions. At the same time we need to prepare ourselves to be capable of substantiating and publicising the three crucial tasks noted above.

In undertaking these tasks we also need to provide a practical example of non-sectarian communication and conduct between ourselves and in our interventions in the present and future struggles. As I have written a number of times; ‘If the working class is to unite to overthrow capital it will have to challenge and overcome, national, religious, age, gender, cultural, handicap and sexual orientation prejudices. How stupid must we anti-capitalists seem to most workers if we keep suggesting this to them but cannot overcome our own – often petty – sectarian differences.’

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2014.)

Posted in capitalism, Nationalism, neo-liberalism, Politics, Ukraine. | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

THE IMPORTANCE OF THEORY.

Posted on February 27, 2014 by stutteringsteps

Introduction.

A previous post [‘Fundamentalism’] noted that whilst the numerous current popular upsurges throughout the world are mainly targeted against the neo-liberal capitalist system, its western elites and their numerous puppet regimes, they are not taking on an explicitly anti-capitalist form. Indeed, in many places there has been expressed a desire to return to forms of governance based upon ancient religious foundations. Whilst the general content of these struggles continues to be dissatisfaction over basic economic needs such as jobs, housing, health, food and water etc., the perceived means of achieving these have not generally been seen as involving a change to the capitalist mode of production. In the current world-wide battle of ideas, anti-capitalist ones have been largely overlooked or deliberately ignored.

As a consequence, achieving these 21st century economic aspirations is predominantly seen by participants in the modern uprisings, continued sectarian killings and quasi-civil wars, as only requiring a change in forms of governance. The most extreme examples of such struggles have been in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and now the Ukraine. Only slightly lesser extreme examples are everywhere. The changes envisaged by such determined anti-regime activists leave the capitalist mode of production intact and instead focus upon one or two alternatives. Either one of creating a ‘truly’ representative democracy or alternatively establishing a ‘strong’ theological autocracy. However, such sectarian religious and divisive political ideologies cannot even partially create the necessary unity or the circumstances for realising such a minimalist political aspiration.

Considering the undeniable fact that the 20th and 21st century neo-liberal phase of the capitalist mode of production has ruthlessly dispossessed further millions from former subsistence agriculture and craft production in even more regions of the world, this conceptual disconnect between the base and superstructure; between politics and the mode of production, is quite remarkable. For these large-scale neo-liberal capitalist-inspired dispossessions continue to cause huge socio-economic problems in developed as well as less capitalistically developed countries. From a revolutionary-humanist, anti-capitalist perspective, trying to fulfil the basic economic, ecological and social needs of the mass of people on the basis of politics and religion, is to struggle against the symptoms and not the cause. Thus making a difficult task impossible.

It perhaps should be obvious to millions by now that a change in the global mode of production is actually what is needed. But clearly it is not! It should be obvious to left economists and politicians that renewed economic competition between capitalist countries for markets and resources can now only lead to lower wages, more over-production, further ecological damage and even more armed confrontations. But again it is obviously not! By now it should also be obvious among anti-capitalists, that only a non-sectarian revolutionary-humanist anti-capitalist perspective has a hope of offering the necessary basis for uniting working people, from different countries and different traditions. Yet this too is not generally recognised! In fact only a few individuals among the anti-capitalist left are articulating such a non-sectarian perspective and even less are actually operating in such a manner.

That large-scale and obvious wide-spread effects and defects of the capitalist mode of production have not resulted in a massive turn to revolutionary anti-capitalist ideas and practices, but to various religious fundamentalisms and nostalgia for an idealised authentic petite–bourgeois democracy, should be cause for considerable concern. Importantly, the dominance of these two tendencies needs both explanation and resolution. But of course, any serious explanation requires serious study and evaluation. In our field of study it requires a development of anti-capitalist and revolutionary-humanist theory. Among the anti-capitalist left the case for critical study, including self-critical study, should not need to be made, but given all the above noted problems, and some to follow, I suggest it does.

The general – and obvious – importance of theory.

If things are as they first appear to perception and common sense then there would be no need for science nor any form of critical study of the world and its constituent parts. There would be no need for complicated reasoning, evaluation and therefore no real need for theory. Simple common-sense observation would suffice to guide us through our lives. However, one of the lessons we often painfully learn first hand is that things are not always what they seem – and this lesson does not apply just to ex-partners, con-men, telesales personnel and politicians, but to many other areas of life. [So for this reason bear with me until I get to the main points of this section.]

Our eyes, ears, touch and common sense do not always reveal the world as it really is. In everyday life, for the main part, common sense and our unaided senses are sufficient, but the more serious the situation or need gets the more superficial our common-sense opinions can become. Consequently, the modern world is full of branches of science, (medical, metallurgical, electrical, biological, geological, astronomical, mechanical, anthropological, meteorological, etc.) in which common-sense and unaided sensory perception are insufficient. Instruments and theories have become a necessary part of these areas of modern life upon – which to a greater or lesser degree – we all depend.

Point 1. It took decades of intense study of economics and history by many individuals before an adequate theoretical understanding of the capitalist mode of production was achieved. The common-sense of most capitalists held one view (its the best economic system ever.); most bourgeois theorists held another (its a system of efficiently producing goods), whilst the common-sense views of workers varied. Very few people actually understood its contradictions, nor that it was just the latest form of social production, and one with dire consequences for humanity and the planet.

It took a decade or so of economic study by one person, Karl Marx, to minutely examine the workings of the then relatively new mode of production and expose what was hidden beneath the various common sense views and within the bourgeois prejudiced theoretical ones. What was not perceived by the unaided senses allied to common sense ideas, was exactly how workers were robbed of the full value of what they created by the wages system (the mechanism of surplus-value extraction) and that the system periodically created more goods than could be sold at a profit – the phenomena of relative over-production crises.

Point 2. We would not think much of a doctor, electrician, engineer, weather forecaster, astronomer, etc., who had not bothered to study the theoretical and practical applications of his or her area of expertise and had not kept up-to-date with the latest discoveries and evaluations appropriate to this field. We would feel even less confidence in someone claiming to be a leader in his or her particular field if they too relied upon common-sense and unaided observations supplemented by a meagre smattering of almost 100 year old ideas and practices. Would any sensible working person be advised to trust them? In that case; Why should those active in revolutionary-humanism and anti-capitalism be treated any differently by working people?

Besides, one of the many important changes the capitalist mode of production has gone through are the broad economic categories of modern life. There are now more white-collar workers than blue. Another is that practically all working people in the advanced countries and in many less advanced, can read and write. Furthermore, the once large class of small businesses in production, distribution and sales, along with their owners and siblings have all but disappeared. These changes have now led in the advanced capitalist countries and in some less advanced, to a massive relative over-production of university educated, white-collar workers.

Literally hundreds of thousands of trained lawyers, teachers, social workers, doctors, engineers, mathematicians, biologists, chemists, and other disciplines in the 21st century are having their aspirations frustrated. The world-wide production of such job-requiring and seeking categories has far exceeded the vacancies capitalists have available. Increasingly, frustrated educated young people will be both angry and deeply concerned with their futures. With nothing to lose, for they have had to work hard without gaining anything but a paper certificate, they are likely to be in the forefront of coming struggles for something to change.

Point 3. The present and future activists among them are unlikely to be attracted to an anti-capitalist movement, split into warring factions and whose grasp of their own area of concern is fragmentary, contradictory and based predominantly on wishful thinking allied to little more than a smattering of commonsense.

Theoretical problems facing the anti-capitalist left.

There is a further closely related fact facing the anti-capitalist project. After several severe, world-scale crises of the capitalist mode of production and two capitalist inspired world-wars, there is still no positive example of a large-scale alternative to the capitalist mode of production. Despite fortuitous circumstances, only several disastrous attempts have taken place. This lack of a positive example is also in need of explaining. Why they have all failed, is not something which can be answered by a few quotations and some commonsense. And in turn this failure raises yet another related issue. From within the anti-capitalist left, there is no clear, comprehensive and convincing explanation of why previous attempts at a large-scale post-capitalist economic system turned out to be disastrous failures. Critical observers are left to draw their own conclusions as to why this is so.

It is a fact that not one attempt at post-capitalist construction has produced a humane and egalitarian social and economic system, for even a short time. Nor one in which the workers escaped wage-slavery and savage exploitation. Yet all we have from the past defenders of such attempts are various, often puerile, excuses. This notable absence of a convincing explanation also needs explaining. Self-critical and evaluative explanations for these previous failures cannot be expected from the bourgeois and petite bourgeois intelligentsia, nor their analogues in the academic and political spheres of neo-liberal capitalism. Such thoroughness must be motivated and articulated from within the revolutionary-humanist and anti-capitalist movement itself. So far this has not been the case and for this reason the bourgeois condemnation of the post-capitalist project dominates common-sense thinking.

Unfortunately, the sectarian fragmentation of this traditional milieu and its partisan nature has prevented such a wide-spread, comprehensive analysis and self-critical evaluation. There is a veritable wide-spread vacuum in this regard. In place of this necessary work, the intellects and literary efforts of this anti-capitalist milieu (Stalinist, Leninist, Trotskist and Maoist) has been dominated by confirmation biased evidence and mainly directed at self-justification of their own and their name-sakes efforts, ideas and reputation. To this self-serving output has been added an internal and external atmosphere of sectarian point-scoring, character-assassination and frequent sabotage – aimed at rival anti-capitalist sects.

Since Bolshevism (Leninist, Stalinist or Trotskyist varieties) and Maoism began to dominate 20th century anti-capitalism, the intellectual output of those who accepted this model have reduced the problems of humanity to the relationship between themselves (the so-called vanguard) and the masses. In very few instances has this self-appointed sectarian elite recognised the need for a critical attitude to itself. In their criticisms of the capitalist world and of other anti-capitalists, Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists and Maoists have for decades demonstrated a completely uncritical attitude to their own tradition of elitism, patriarchy, sectarianism and dogmatism. As a result these characteristics persist. What else can be expected?

This state of affairs has in turn led to further fragmentations, disgust and the haemorrhaging of individuals from these groups. Obvious too, has been a distancing from these sectarian theoretical polemics and the groups which conduct them, by many individuals wishing to work for an alternative society. All these factors should lead directly to a realisation that attention to critical evaluation (or an increased attention to up-dated anti-capitalist theory) is a necessary requirement for those proposing that a post-capitalist socio-economic form is both necessary and possible. Otherwise why should anyone listen?

In my view we are well overdue for a permanent revolution in this particular regard. To constructively engage with workers influenced by education, religion or petite-bourgeois notions of democracy, the anti-capitalist movement will need to change and become a non-sectarian revolutionary-humanist movement. It will need to display these non-patriarchal and humanist characteristics in its everyday practice and do so consistently over a very long period of time. It will also need to be self-critical and armed with sufficient knowledge to convince others that all its members know what they are talking about when they offer to play a facilitative role in the coming struggles.

My own view is that we need more updated theory of the self-critical and evaluative kind and not less. Less of the self-serving sectarian kind of course. Further anyone within the anti-capitalist milieu who suggests or implies that theory (critical and self-critical) is not important or belittles its pursuit in contrast to practical activism not only contradicts Marx, but to my mind attempts to undermine the crucial interaction and balance between reflective thinking and purposeful acting.

The current and past left pattern of a sectarian elite (elected or not) producing the ‘paper’ and the ‘party line’ and a rank and file rushing around distributing ‘it’ is outmoded and needs discarding. A final word from Marx on how we should play a critical, evaluative, non-sectarian and facilitative role with regard those who may not as yet agree with us.

“..we do not confront the world in a doctrinaire way with a new principle: Here is the truth, kneel down before it! We develop new principles for the world out of the world’s own principles. We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it doesn’t want to……The reform of consciousness consists only…..in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions.” (Marx to Ruge, September 1843)

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2013.)

Posted in Critique, Revolutionary-Humanism, Revolutionary-Humanist theory, Sectarianism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SANDBAGS AND SEWAGE.

Posted on February 14, 2014 by stutteringsteps

Over the last month large sections of the UK have been inundated by sea and river water and the production and allocation of sandbags has practically dominated the main news outlets. Are there enough?; are they in the right place?; who is responsible for supplying them?; who else can be filmed helping to place them? These were questions repeatedly asked. Not one newscaster, reporter. politician or local official has ever asked the most obvious question. Why is this 18th century form of technology (absorbent sand often in a porous sack) the main and practically the only last-ditch defence available to working and middle-class people in 21st century Britain? Is that really all the elite think they deserve? It is clearly the cheapest possible form of defence and one which cannot really prevent flood damage even though it may – in some circumstances – slow the ingress of water into houses and buildings.

In addition there seems to have been a conspiracy to hide incompetence behind one or other of two mantra’s.  First ‘no one could have predicted this’ or second; ‘no one could have predicted it would be so bad’. Both rationalisations are of course nonsense. Floods of great magnitude have visited UK shores on a number of previous occasions. One as recently as 2007 and yet another in 2012. In addition, climate scientists have long predicted that due to global warming, such severe weather conditions creating storms and floods, are not just a possibility – but a probability. And anyone or any group who does not adequately prepare for some drastic event which has happened before, remains a distinct possibility and is now also an increasing probability are either fools or people who just do not care. In an advanced tax-collecting capitalist country, such as the UK, those who control the way tax-payers money is spent are exactly those who are responsible for such flood defences – and are selectively offering very little else except – sandbags!.

Unfortunately we cannot excuse government officials and politicians on the basis that they are fools, although that may be the case for a few individuals among them. This is because they are very good and looking ahead and preparing for future eventualities. In their preparations for future wars a constant concern of theirs is to update the latest in the expensive technology of warfare. Preparations for resisting future civil unrest against the system they uphold are also a constant focus for their attention and are well advanced, legally and materially. Indeed, where it effects them directly, they are also far-sighted with regard to flood defences. The ‘high-tech’ Thames Barrier system, protecting the city of London, costing the equivalent of billions in today’s devalued currency, was started 40 years ago – in the 1970’s. No reliance on a few low-cost sandbags for them. How far-sighted was that project for the protection of the politicians, the wealthy and privileged?

Of course anyone who has penetrated the smoke and mirrors of pro-capitalist ideology will have not been taken in by the clichés and common-sense rationalisations oozing out of the mouths of television news anchors, officials, politicians and reporters. They will have correctly identified all the faked patronising sincerity emanating from these directions – as just another load of verbal sewage. However, that is not the only form of muck they will have to deal with.

The next serious problem those communities now flooded will have to deal with is the effect of raw sewage. This is because yet another area of serious neglect are the existing sewage and urban drainage systems. These sewage and water supply systems, built by the Victorians with far fewer urban citizens in mind than the current populations of villages, towns and cities, are also crumbling and inadequate. Consequently, when floods occur, raw sewage is backed up and rises along with the flood water, to be soaked up by house bricks, carpets, furniture, fields, and of course sandbags.

The barely effective semi-porous sandbag defences will of course like sponges absorb the contaminated water and their surfaces, along with many other items, will become a serious viral and bacteriological health hazard to be disposed of – even when the water has gone. If, there is a subsequent outbreak of disease, among the young and the old as a consequence of the neglect of real substantial flood and sea defences along rivers and coastal areas (and it is by no means impossible), then this will present problems for the health services. It is to be hoped that such an outcome does not materialise for obvious reasons. Already stretched and in serious staffing, cultural ethos and infection difficulties, the UK health service is another system operating close to a disastrous collapse of its ability to maintain acceptable modern standards. Isn’t that something else that politicians and officials have been warned in advance about by medical staff?

It should be obvious that the previous neo-liberal governments of Labour and Tory and now ConDem elites – over decades – have sacrificed all those previous useful and necessary public services, either by neglect or by continued privatisation. Relatively efficient and cheap utilities and services have been replaced by expensive and inefficient private operated ones. Countless roads, bridges, schools and hospital buildings (also surviving remnants of previous periods of history) are in an appalling condition for an advanced country. And it has also been known for decades and now proved again that sea and river defences – everywhere – are woefully neglected and extremely inadequate. However, nothing better can be expected of an economic and political system which rewards the owners of capital, the obscenely rich and famous and is based upon the profit-motive, for it has now gone too far to correct itself.

The UK elite as with many other advanced capitalist countries elites has neither. the inclination nor the ability to correct their past and present neglect. Other capitalist countries, Holland for example, have in the past looked ahead and spent tax-payer money on high-quality and large-scale flood defence systems. Iceland, recently prosecuted corrupt and self-serving Bankers and refused to honour the debts they had incurred. Not so the UK, European and North American elites. These are hand in glove with the financial elite and their corrupt system. So much so that they have ramped up the sovereign debt to such a level, that even in the unlikely event that they eventually develop a conscience, they could no longer afford to repair or re-instate all the long neglected and damaged infrastructures that now exist. Not even an uprising could accomplish that.

The recent and past destructive flood and storm events in the UK and the USA – symptoms of the growing ecological and environmental crisis – arrive at a time when public finances in these countries have been squandered upon huge costly aggressive armed forces, invading other countries and in patching up the self-ruined financial system in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. So until enough people decide enough is enough and start to campaign against the capitalist mode of production and all it entails, high-tech solutions and astronomical bonuses, self-interested patronising officials and politicians will continue to exist on the one-hand; whilst low wages, zero-hours, poor facilities and services on the other will continue for the rest of us. And until such time, those who live near a river or the sea, will more than likely continue to get spades full of sham sympathy, along with further deposits of sandbags and sewage.

Roy Ratcliffe (February 2014)

Posted in capitalism, Critique, Ecological damage., neo-liberalism, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

FUNDAMENTALISM.

Posted on February 6, 2014 by stutteringsteps

In practically every part of the world, dissatisfaction with the existing neo-liberal regimes and the economic system they uphold, is being displayed. From the advanced capitalist countries, to the less-advanced ex-colonised countries, people across the globe are up in arms both metaphorically and literally. Mass opposition to the systemic economic and social inequalities that the capitalist mode of production has inaugurated, is producing not only large-scale demonstrations and uprisings, but also armed groups. Many of the latter are prepared to fight and die in order to bring about changes to the way countries and communities are governed. In all this upheaval, there is an almost universal recognition that the present mode of existence for the ordinary citizens of the world is in dire need of change.

There is however, no agreed vision of what form those changes should take. Indeed, even in the most ‘advanced’ capitalist countries, the most potentially militant visions of what form of economic production and governance should replace the existing neo-liberal capitalist ones are currently not anti-capitalist ones. For in Europe and North America, the ascendant dissident views are in fact to be found among the category known as religious ‘fundamentalisms’. As the unfolding 20th and 21st century economic and social crisis has steadily increased competition for jobs and resources among members of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist communities, there has been among them, a resurgence of religious identities and fundamentalist views on how to combat the oppressive symptoms caused by capitalism.

Since they presently dominate the news, the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa are useful as examples. These have been dominated by movements and armed groups dedicated exclusively to replacing the existing political, often pro-secular regimes. Not, however, with anti-capitalist forms of self-governance, but with Islamic fundamentalist ones. Of course, the current proliferation of such armed groups killing in the name of their sectarian version of God rest predominantly upon the often hopeless and alienating socio-economic situations they face individually and collectively. Nevertheless, the current form their struggle most often takes against these situations, is mediated and justified by previously developed fundamentalist religious ideas.

For example, after directly observing the mid-twentieth century socio-economic situation in North America, an influential thinker within the early development of the Muslim Brotherhood movement commented on western capitalist policies;

“..any objectives other than the immediate utilitarian ones are by-passed and any human element other than ego is not recognised. Where the whole of life is dominated by such materialism, there is no scope for laws beyond provisions for labour and production. The result is class struggle which becomes inevitable and visibly evident.” (Savyid Qutb ‘Islam and Universal Peace. Quoted in ‘Fundamentalisms Observed’ by Marty and Appleby.)

Similar views are currently expressed across a wide geographical and cultural range of peoples, from Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Burma, Congo, Nigeria. and Turkey, just to mention a few. In the more advanced capitalist countries, particularly in the United States of America, the injustices and exploitation gave rise to the black separatist movement of the Nation of Islam, a resurgence of Christian Zionism, and many other forms of Protestant fundamentalism.

All of these fundamentalist religious trends, articulated by the Bakkers, Farrakhan‘s, Vasil’ev‘s, Bonnke‘s, Kook‘s, Savakar‘s, Bodhiraksa‘s, and many, many others of the fundamentalist world, are deeply critical of the contingent immorality and injustice introduced by the capitalist mode of production. But none of them draw anti-capitalist conclusions. They all see many of the social, cutural and political symptoms, but their ideologies prevent them from examining the economic causes. On the continents of South America and Africa, religious fundamentalism (Protestant and Catholic) has also been the most successful ideological development in mobilising opposition to the dominant elites and their economic, military and political inter-connection with the dominant Anglo-Saxon sources of neo-liberal capital.

In each of these multifarious movements there is a clear identification of the way the present capitalist mode of production dominates the whole of life and creates societies focussed upon the acquisition of money and the advancement of corrupt elites. It also creates new class divisions and class struggles around labour and production. But the solution envisaged by Qutb and others such as Al- Banna, to this historic capitalist-introduced problem, was for the oppressed to struggle for a return to the fundamentals of Islam.

This particular Islamic thinker (Qutb) was imprisoned and cruelly tortured by the government of Nasser and began to articulate the beginnings of a militant resurgence of Islam. One requiring the identification of unbelievers and the complete allegiance of believers to Islam. It was only a short step from such mid-twentieth century militant scholarly interpretations of Islam for later followers to obtain weapons and attempt to enforce their will upon communities – which they did! This is a trend which now stretches across continents from Africa to Asia.

But as indicated earlier, a return to religious fundamental forms of governance in order to escape the wealth inequalities, corruption and injustices of capitalism is not restricted to the middle eastern and Asian ex-colonised countries. In North America and Europe many of those most oppressed by the system of capitalism are also not turning to anti-capitalist analysis, proposals and activism, but to religious forms of identity with publicised hopes for a return to religious forms of communal governance.

In North America in particular, the fundamentalist tap-root dates back almost to the origins of capitalisms domination of the United States. However, the last huge capitalist crisis in the 1930’s led to a massive upsurge in protestant Bible studies (Bible Colleges and Radio stations) which was further strengthened or ‘born again’ as opposition grew in response to post Second World War economic, cultural and social developments. The legacy of this development is ever present in the 21st century.

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the former Soviet Union, the anti-capitalist viewpoint has all but died out completely and now Orthodox Christianity and Islam compete for ascendancy as the supposed standard bearers of humane conduct for their disenchanted and disinherited citizens. A glaring litmus test of the domination of this reactionary pro-religious trend in modern Russia was supplied by the substantial and orchestrated demonstrations against Pussy Riot activists (Katia – Masha and Nadia) who peaceably gyrated in front of the alter in ‘Christ the Saviour’ church. In the former land of so-called ‘Marxism’, the Orthodox Church and the Russian State eagerly collaborated in the persecution of female activists simply demonstrating against patriarchy and the Patriarch.

All these late 20th and early 21st century retrograde developments across the globe should be cause for considerable concern among anti-capitalists and revolutionary-humanists. For, despite, the current world-wide capitalist crisis, the project for a post-capitalist society is further removed from working class and mass social consciousness than it has been at any time since its articulation in the form of ‘socialism’ in 17th and 18th centuries.

And of course, the palpable failures of state socialism and state communism in their various guises from their social democratic forms in Europe and the middle east, to the Communist regimes of the former Soviet Union along with its satellite countries and China have turned countless workers away from such so-called anti-capitalist alternatives to capitalism.

This suggests that a considerable task of sustained endurance faces us. We need to convince those few who are willing to listen, of the following.

1. That it is necessary and possible to go beyond economic and social domination by capital. [See ‘Defending Public Services’ and; ‘Workers and others in the 21st century’.]

2. That the mistakes and failures of previous attempts to go beyond can be remedied and corrected. [See ‘Marxists versus Marx’ and; ‘The Riddle of History Solved.’]

3. That religion and religious fundamentalism offer no way forward because;

a) Religion does not seriously challenge or seek to go beyond the capitalist mode of production or patriarchal domination.

b) Religious fundamentalisms are a recipe for direct sectarian competition and warfare among people over territory and resources.

c) Religious fundamentalism puts governance of communities into the hands of an elite who believe in the existence of invisible entities and continued elite male domination.

[See ‘Religion versus women’s rights’ and; ‘Killing in the name of God’]

For all the above reasons religion cannot be treated as a harmless personal issue to be defended or even championed, as some on the left, out of misguided political correctness, have done. Religion and religious fundamentalism are a public issue and the first (religion) is a solid foundation for the second – fundamentalism! Furthermore, religion is based upon a dangerous illusion, that an invisible male super-entity, has opinions and rules which only a male elite can decipher or interpret.

For when these religious fundamentalists become radicalised and equip themselves with guns and bombs they become a serious existential threat to increasing numbers of communities throughout the world. With millions, if not billions of practicing and subscribing members, these religious fundamentalists have fertile recruiting grounds among those who share their ideology and who are suffering from hardship and exploitation.

So as I suggest the promotion of a modern version of post-capitalism represents a lengthy and difficult task. It is a task which is not helped by those anti-capitalists who think the solution is to shun theory and dive into practice hoping that crisis-driven activism supported by selected passages or programmes from the writings of Lenin and Trotsky will solve a multitude of problems and convince millions to sign up to the anti-capitalist project. Given the current proliferation of fundamentalism and sectionalism among the working classess, much more is needed.

Indeed, the sectarian nature (subtle or blatant) of much of the current anti-capitalist left also stands in the way. For this mirrors in a miniscule way the sectarian nature of religious fundamentalism. They simply replace absolute belief in an inerrant god and their scriptures with absolute belief in one or other versions of an inerrant Leninist or Trotskyist type vanguard along with its basic programme – and they also often shun all those who fail to sufficiently agree.

Given the scale of the problem, it may or may not be the case that many failures of religious motivated change will need to occur before masses of people are again driven by circumstances to consider alternative and more radical non-sectarian, inclusive revolutionary movements. However, the above noted tasks retain their validity whatever the outcome of the current multi-dimensional crisis. These tasks will require modern revolutionary-humanists and non-sectarian anti-capitalists to critically re-visit all the theories we have inherited and flush out all the distortions and deviations they have accumulated over the last 100 years. The working classes, white-collar and blue, indeed have the numbers, however, as Marx, noted;

“…but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge.” (Marx ‘Inaugural Address of the Working Man’s International Association.)

Needless to say that ‘unity of combination’ also requires an end to sectarianism among the anti-capitalist left and sectionalism among the working class. And ‘knowledge’ in the modern context – as in the past – requires an absence of dogma along with a critical and self-critical comprehension of the past and present practices of us anti-capitalist activists. Contrary to the modern distaste for theoretical effort among some activists, there is, I suggest, an urgent need for much more of it. The latter is a theme which will be developed in the next post on this blog.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2014.)

Posted in capitalism, Fundamentalism, Marx, neo-liberalism, Patriarchy, Religion, Sectarianism | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

DISPOSSESSION! (Part 2.)

Posted on January 21, 2014 by stutteringsteps

5. Colonialism/Imperialism. (Dispossession spreads across the planet.)

The colonialist and imperialist stages of capital accumulation merely extended the theatre of operations for the dispossession of people from their lands and means of subsistence and/or production. Building upon the previous merchant-capitalist networks, the development of navigation and in particular the opening up of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, sea lanes in the 14th and 15th centuries, introduced new lands and new resources to the dubious embraces of the capitalist classes throughout Europe. Traditional merchant trading was soon supplemented or accompanied by armed invasion and theft of resources, from Africa, North and South America, and Asia. Naval sorties of this kind were followed by ‘planted’ colonies in many resource-rich parts of the world thus ensuring new markets and supplies.

Much of the dispossession taking place at this time was masked or mediated by religious pretensions and hypocrisy. Religious missionaries and religious-minded entrepreneurs were often at the forefront of colonial dispossession and oppression. They and religious-minded investors frequently helped to rationalise European dispossessions of foreign peoples by claiming to be motivated by ‘saving’ the miss-named ‘heathens’ for god and educating away their alleged ignorance. In this way indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their tribal lands, their means of production, the results of their own labour and – as in ancient times – frequently dispossessed of their lives.

In this colonialist expansion phase of European dispossession, the capitalist classes were still divided along city and nationalist lines. Each national aggregate of capital sought to expand its sphere of influence by trading monopolies and/or armed wars against rival groups of capitalists. Conflicts of interest, primarily among European capitals, took the form of skirmishes and battles both on sea and land. In the early period, the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, French and English aggregate capitals battled as each sought to expand its control and dispossession of colonial resources. Importantly, since labour is necessary to create wealth, where wage-labour could not be obtained the previously noted slave-labour was introduced.

Much later this constantly simmering war of competing capitalist inspired dispossessions – and colonialist/anti-imperialist uprisings against them – was elevated to world shattering levels as two world wars for economic and financial domination took place. The first and second world wars of the 20th century took place between two groups of capitalist nations over which group would be able to overwhelmingly dominate the world’s resources and markets. Using the ideology of nationalism, the bourgeois and petite-bourgeois elites of all sides were able to persuade or compel the dispossessed workers of their own countries to join armies, navies and air-forces in order dispossess the other sides capitalists of their markets and the other sides workers of their labour and their lives. [See ‘Humanity, Class and Nation’]

6. Compensatory reforms. (Voting rights, trade union rights and welfare benefits.)

After the Second World War, working populations in the advanced countries, were able to obtain some forms of compensation for their continued dispossession of independent means of subsistence. In addition to the previously won right to form trade unions and the right to vote, these compensations took the form of obtaining above average wages, welfare benefits such as improved pensions, sick pay, unemployment benefits and non-profit-making services. These compensatory reforms for a time ameliorated the worst of the earlier savage exploitation at the hands of their respective capitalist classes.

Unemployment became an integral part of the capitalist mode of production as it cycled through its boom and bust periods. However, as capitalism further developed its efficiency and technological proficiency, unemployment for large numbers of workers became a permanent condition of their lives. The result was indeed, a ‘reserve army of labour’ as Marx characterised it. For this reason in the late 20th century whole generations became dependent upon unemployment, housing and other benefits for long periods of time. Time enough for some of them to adjust – however reluctantly – to the organised charity of life on the dole.

Dispossessed of independent means of subsistence and with no places at the capitalist work-benches, offices or fields these unfortunate members of the working classes first became an object of pity and numerous state educational interventions. Later, they were perceived as, and transformed into, an unwelcome burden upon the state. Like the ancient ‘sturdy beggars’ before them, these modern victims of the earlier capitalist inspired dispossession of independent means of existence and now the long-term victims of capitalisms reduced need for labour were (and still are) being blamed for their own hopeless and helpless condition.

When a victim of the capitalist system is successfully blamed for their own situation and the wider and longer picture of historical dispossessions remains unknown, then further dispossession cannot be far away and it wasn’t. It came in the form of neo-liberalism.

7. Neo-Liberalism. (The dispossession of working class benefits and reforms.)

For a brief period in Europe and America, after the second-world-war, wages increased, welfare benefits were sufficient to survive and profits for capital reasonably high. However, it was not long before the system, from the capitalist point of view, was not functioning well enough. In some industries, profits began falling, company taxation and individual wealth taxation had increased and they became dissatisfied with their levels of surplus-value dispossession and accumulation. After many incoherent attempts to curb wages and increase productivity (both being attempts to increase the level of dispossession of surplus-labour/value from working people) a new elite policy emerged which has become known as neo-liberalism.

One barrier to increased working class dispossession in the 20th century was the organised labour movement. Once neo-liberal representatives gained sufficient power, organised labour was attacked by the neo-liberals both frontally, by industrial confrontation and by legislation using the state. Trade union resistance was further weakened by capital exporting jobs and importing cheap labour. Neo-liberal political representatives also passed legislation to lessen the tax burden upon the capitalists and the most wealthy, whilst increasing it for the working population by additional means such as value-added tax. But that was not the end of it!

Other neo-liberal targets for dispossession were the accumulated resources of the various nation-states. In many parts of the world, advanced and less advanced, nation-states had provided certain infrastructures and resources out of general taxation. Water, electricity, gas, transport, postal services, telephone communications, roads, bridges, tourist sites and certain industries, had became large-scale important resources. For the neo-liberals, these public service industries offered the tantalising potential of a further period dispossession. Dispossession of the state – via the state – became the project for the financial elite! A case of the bond-holders seeking to inherit the earth.

Of course this secondary dispossession of compensatory benefits could not be described as such. Instead it was (and is) packaged and sold to the public as increasing efficiency by privatisation. Privatisation of state assets amounts to the following. Dispossessing white-collar workers of their once relatively secure occupations, salaries and pensions in public services such as health, education, welfare, social and local government services. It involved dispossessing workers of their access to relatively cheap electricity, gas, water, post, phone-calls, train and bus fares. Neo-liberal work is currently under way to dispossess working people of the health and welfare benefits granted as post-war compensations for their historic loss.

Calling these various mechanisms of increased exploitation and oppression by their real names – dispossessions – articulates what everyone who is effected by these measures realises. Today if one or more of the waged or salaried working class are made redundant they have been dispossessed of a job – and all that implies. If anyone is cleared off their land or kicked out of their house they have been dispossessed of means of production and/or shelter. If a communal area has been polluted by capitalist industry or commerce (by oil or chemical spills or fracking for example) that community has been dispossessed of a normal or clean environment. If anyone has had their pension reduced, they have been dispossessed of security in old age.

If anyone through no fault of their own cannot afford enough, heating or food they have been dispossessed of these necessities. If savings from working have been reduced by fraud or inflation some people have been dispossessed of some saved up value. If someone has been discriminated in any way they have been dispossessed of their basic human rights. If students have studied and qualified for a recognised career and there are too few openings they have been effectively dispossessed of their time, energy and commitment. If anyone has been harassed, abused – or worse – they have been dispossessed of their fundamental rights as a human being. If anyone has been tortured or killed by a nations neo-liberal or military elite using extra-judicial means, they have been dispossessed of their human rights.

8. Repossession. (Taking back what was taken from us – all.)

The political classes will undoubtedly point to one compensatory reform which as yet remains intact at least in the west. The right to vote for who will continue to administer the systematic dispossession of humanity is one to which they (left, right and centre) tenaciously cling. This is not surprising. After all, it keeps them in well-paid jobs. But, despite their never-ending ‘pie in the sky’ promises, it has become almost universally clear, that putting a tick on a piece of paper and placing it in a box to be counted every few years has never resulted in ending or reversing the numerous dispossessions which have been perpetrated against humanity.

Indeed, politics itself is a form of dispossession and can be easily be used as such – as is evident in all parts of the world. Politics is an organised way of dispossessing the right for everyone to have an effective and ongoing say in how their communities and resources are organised and utilised. Politics assumes a powerful elite will give the time and resources to govern societies and this ensures they will be able to use their power and influence to manipulate economic and social life as they see fit. Politics, historically and contemporarily is part of the problem of dispossession, not part of the solution for re-possession.

Another form of politics promising a reversal of previous dispossessions, but failing, was the emergence in the 20th century of Leninist, Stalinist and Maoist political parties. In all these cases, where they succeeded in gaining power a ‘left’ political elite merely substituted itself for an aristocratic or capitalist elite and dispossession of working people continued. In Russia, China or the eastern bloc, working people were not allowed to repossess the means of production, the system of wage-labour was continued (administered by the state) and in Russia a system of gulag slavery introduced for those who bothered to complain loud enough. The ‘party’ and its officials dispossessed individual and communal control of all aspects of human life. Their rule was backed up by means of police and military force. [See ‘Marxists versus Marx’]

It should be obvious, that the capitalist mode of production – including the state-capitalist form – has continued nearly all of the historic dispossessions of previous modes of production as well as developing its own unique forms of accelerated globalised dispossession. It is also clear, that in any of its forms, the capitalist mode of production, which is based upon such dispossessions, is simultaneously abusing not only the human populations of the world, but the non-human life of the planet and the environment.

The profit-motive of wealth accumulation – for the benefit and under the control of the minority capitalist classes – drives production to such a competitive frenzy of relative and now approaching absolute over-production, that it causes, economic, financial, moral, ecological and social crises of vast proportions. The 21st century neo-liberal mantra of more competition, more production is a recipe for further wars and ecological disasters. There is a pressing need for the dispossessed – the majority – to not only communally re-possess the means of production but to collectively re-possess their localities along with their full humanity.

The period of elite class-led – so-called – civilisation began with dispossession at their very socio-economic core and they have continued to the present day with this same patriarchal and class corruption. In contrast, real human-led civilisation will need to begin with re-possession of the communal means of production – industrial and agricultural. Repossession of communal and former tribal lands. Repossession of full human and communal rights for women, children, black, white, old, gay, infirm and disabled. Repossession of homes, public spaces, public buildings and public services, turning them all into worker and/or community-led egalitarian co-operatives with no hierarchy and instant re-call for any elected positions. Re-possession – in full – is the historic revolutionary-humanist task facing suffering humanity.

Such universal repossessions will be no easy undertaking, but these full aims need to be articulated for them ever to be discussed and considered. Presentation of the full extent of dispossession and the need for full repossession I suggest is the task of those who consider themselves committed to going beyond capital. The OCCUPY movement was (and is) a step in that direction. It is an embryonic recognition of the extent of dispossession, but future occupations brought about by response to the crisis should be re-defined as revolutionary repossessions, not simply identified as tactical forms of protest within a system of large-scale dispossessions.

Perhaps, the full and more modern implications of the famous call ‘workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains’ should be the following – ‘dispossessed of the world unite – there is a world to win and a planet to preserve.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2014.)

Posted in capitalism, dispossession, neo-liberalism, Reformism | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

DISPOSSESSION! (Part 1.)

Posted on January 13, 2014 by stutteringsteps

If there is one word that, when its concept is seriously considered, can take us to the root of all systems of exploitation and oppression – that word is ‘dispossession’! And this concept covers the most recent form of large-scale dispossession – the capitalist mode of production. The dispossession of any independent means of production and the constant dispossession of surplus-value, from working populations lies at the historical origin of the accumulation of capital and continues at the heart of the capitalist mode of production down to the present day. The capitalistic forms will be dealt with in a later section, but meanwhile there are pre-capitalist forms to consider. For wealth accumulation by dispossession goes well back into historical times and was already evident from the onset of ancient civilisations.

The conquest and control of large areas of land and sea resources, by the leaders of ancient empires such as Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, etc., required to a greater or lesser degree, dispossessing the original users (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists or agriculturalists) of the full use and benefit of these resources. The tributes and quotas extracted from the productive activities of conquered peoples, along with elite directives on when, where and what kind of production should take place, required varying levels of control. Varying levels of dispossession of the basic human rights for working populations over their means of production and their surpluses therefore occurred. But even before such ancient forms of ‘imperial’ dispossession, the previous onset of patriarchy, had already dispossessed women from control of their own lives.

1. Patriarchy. (the dispossession of female productive and re-productive rights.)

By the time the so-called civilisations of the ancient world had developed and spread, the dispossession of a woman’s right to choose her own partner, the dispossession of a females right to produce and retain (or dispose) of her own surplus-product, had already taken place. This historic dispossession committed against the female half of the species, included the dispossession of the human product of her own pro-creational labour – the child – in name and ownership. In the ‘civilised’ world of antiquity, women along with children became the almost total possessions of men to do with as they sought fit – and they did. Regarded as property, women and children were (and often still are) treated as carefully or as brutally as the male owner’s mood dictated.

This ‘original’ dispossession of female rights (along with children, land and the rights of pagans) required an appropriate systematic ideology to justify it. Conveniently, three dominant forms of this patriarchal ideology emerged in the religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. That these three religions are based upon this dispossession of women’s (and others) basic human rights is exemplified not only by their respective scriptural texts which justify it, but by the practices of the 21st century religious adherents who still implement them, either non-violently with civility or violently with acrimony. The refusal to implement equal pay, conditions and representation for women being an example of the former and shootings, acid attacks, and hacking limbs off women, being examples of the latter.

2. Slavery. (the dispossession of all rights.)

Before, or around the same historical period as the dispossession of women‘s basic human rights, ancient forms of slavery emerged. Human beings rounded up and processed as slaves were dispossessed of practically every human entitlement to which they were accustomed within their previous forms of production. Once captured and taken into slavery, how a person lived, where they lived, where they worked, how they worked was determined not by negotiating with other community or tribal members but by the dictat of the slave owner. It was a process which frequently resulted in them being worked to death.

In part 2 of this article dispossession of colonial lands and colonial peoples by the European capitalist powers will be considered but here it can be noted that slavery played an important part in the accumulation of wealth under the capitalist mode of production as it did under the more ancient modes of production. The whole motive of ancient slavery and semi-slavery – as with modern – was to dispossess human beings of their basic human rights to produce and reproduce for themselves and their families. Control of their productive capacity was forcibly taken away from them in order to dispossess them of as much surplus-product or surplus-value as could be wrung out of them.

Despite 19th century campaigns against slavery under the capitalist mode of production, slavery and semi-slavery still occurs in the 21st century. Campaigns in the UK and elsewhere have indicated slave and near slave conditions exist for adults and children in India and other parts of Asia. The Australian and Scottish Governments have been prompted to criminalise modern forms of slavery, presumably for good reason. Trafficking of women into forms of sexual and domestic slavery exists in Europe, the UK and in the United States of America. In 2013, the world football Association (FIFA) has had to be shamed into looking into slave labour conscripted in constructing buildings for the 2022 World Cup.

Wealth accumulation by utilising slave-labour pre-dated capital-accumulation by wage-labour, but capitalists in the 21st century still like to take advantage of it when and where they can. This form of dispossession of economic and social rights has lasted as long as the dispossession of women of their right to all forms of self-determination within whatever stage the modes of production have reached. Such ancient inhuman dispossessions have been, and where they still exist, continue to be, cast a dark shadow on the development of the human species. The full repossession of human rights and the permanent ending of such ancient dispossessions remains a task facing humanity. However, these two forms of dispossession – patriarchy and slavery – are not the only ones in the historical record.

3. Feudalism. (The semi- dispossession of the agricultural populations.)

The feudal system throughout Europe and elsewhere after the fall of the Roman Empire, was based upon an armed elite seizing large tracts of land (the main means of production) and thus dispossessing or continuing the dispossession of the rural population from direct use of these means. This feudal mode of production included forcing agricultural workers to part with a variable percentage of their production (a tithe, or tenth or twentieth) and/or enforcing a number of days/weeks work to be done for the conquering lord or baron. In this way the labouring population were dispossessed of their surplus-labour along with other social freedoms.

A later form of this feudal mode of production – in certain places – transmuted the percentage of product dispossession into a monetary form of payment which became a form of rent. However, these different forms are of less importance here than the fact that dispossession of the means of production and the dispossession of the workers surplus production continued. It continued whether by surplus-product which the feudal landholder obtained directly or indirectly after it being converted to a monetary payment. In many places and during certain stages, the agricultural population were also dispossessed of any freedom to leave the district or the employment category assigned to them.

It is also said that in many places during the feudal period that females were further dispossessed of any local or patriarchal restricted choice of male sexual partner if the lord of the manor wished to possess her this way himself. This dispossession of women’s rights merely being an elite male asserting superior claim against a lower class male. Nevertheless, all these various regional and time differences oscillating around the feudal form of dispossession and appropriation were the basis of wealth accumulation during that long period – often referred to as the dark ages.

Dark or not, this feudal form of dispossession for wealth accumulation by an elite, continued its onward march until after centuries it was fully superseded in Europe by another mode – the capitalist mode of production.

4. Capitalism. (Dispossession of ‘means’ from agricultural and craft workers.)

The full economic dispossession of the agricultural worker in the transformation of wealth from its landed form to its capitalist form in England is briefly covered by Karl Marx in Das Capital, at the end of Volume 1 (ie Part 8). Marx described this dispossession of rural communities as ’so-called primitive accumulation’, meaning it was a primitive stage for the development of the industrial phase of the capitalist mode of production. Marx noted that;

“The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system, can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production…..men are suddenly and forcibly torn from their means of subsistence, and hurled as free and ‘unattached’ proletarians on the labour market.” (Capital. Volume 1, chapter 26.)

Clearing the ‘commons’ of people, clearing and demolishing farms, towns and villages was the form such capitalist inspired dispossessions took and they did so at an increasing pace.

“History has drawn a curtain over those days of exile and suffering, when cottages were pulled down as if by an invaders hand and families that had lived for centuries in their dales or on their small farms and commons were driven before the torrent. Ancient possessions and ancient families disappeared.” (JL and B Hammond. ‘The Village Labourer’. Guild Books. Volume 1. page 100. )

Even after this initial dispossession of the bulk of working people from any independent means of subsistence and production, capitalists could only accumulate wealth if they continued the dispossession of surplus-labour and/or surplus-value. However, the capitalist mode of surplus-value extraction was obtained by a completely different means. In short the wages system was fully developed. Capitalist accumulation takes place when the money-value of the wages paid to workers does not equal the money-value of what they produce. The difference, the unpaid surplus-labour created by workers during their employment, is confiscated and later banked by the employers of capital as surplus-value or in accounting terms – gross profit. This new combination of active, dispossessed labour harnessed to the new industrialised means of production created vast monetary and material wealth for the emerging capitalist classes.

Capitalism grew up in similar but not identical fashions throughout Europe, but this growth of capital initially took place within the confines of previously defined national entities. During the early industrial phase, an important fact became abundantly clear. Such was the productivity of this new mode of production, that it not only created vast wealth for the capitalist class, but also massively over-produced goods. Industrialised production methods also needed a constant supply of huge amounts of raw materials. It became obvious to the controllers and beneficiaries of the new mode of production that in order to continue their wealth accumulation they constantly needed new markets and new sources of raw materials. Having exhausted their own and nearby territories, new geographical arenas of dispossession were urgently needed – and in the voyages of discovery of the 14th and 15th centuries many were found.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2014)

(The Colonial, Imperial and Neo-liberal dispossessions will be dealt with in ‘Dispossessions Part 2, the next posting – in a weeks time. This second part will also consider from a revolutionary-humanist position, the all-round need for the repossession of all that has previously been dispossessed.)

Posted in capitalism, Critique, dispossession, Economics, Marx, Patriarchy, Revolutionary-Humanism | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

HUMANITY, CLASS AND NATIONALISM.

Posted on December 31, 2013 by stutteringsteps

A short discussion on nationalism took place recently on the ‘Commune’ blog (see blog roll – useful links – below right) which was sparked off by a much needed critical look at the bid for Scottish independence by Barry Biddulph and how it was being addressed by some parts of the Scottish left. The comments on the article raised some interesting issues and it is these issues and the starting points for some of them which prompted me to write this article. It seemed to me that what was missing in a number of the comments, given the restricted space, was an insufficient recognition of the fundamental economic basis from which most of the anti-capitalists who follow in the revolutionary-humanist tradition of Karl Marx, start. So to continue the discussion begun by Barry and also with newer anti-capitalists in mind, l will sketch out this humanist basis, before re-engaging with the issues of Class and Nationalism.

HUMANITY.

Since its origins in the distant pre-historical past, humanity has collectively provided what they needed from the worked-up materials and processes provided by nature. They have done so in various forms (or modes) of social production and re-production. From hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and agriculturalists, humanity has over millions of years, formed communal groupings corresponding to their mode of production – as they variously thought suitable. Production and re-production are the economic and biological foundations upon which all of human species life is built. It is not upon politics, but productive and re-productive relationships, therefore, that all subsequent revolutionary-humanist analyses are founded. However, it is not production in the abstract, but production in its capitalist mode – and not as it once was but – as it has developed in the 20th and 21st centuries. This is the basis for any further sensible anti-capitalist analysis and needs to be always kept in mind.

The capitalist mode of industrialised production is merely the latest historical form of human social production to emerge out of the previous feudal one. It is a social mode of production which has progressively torn the means of humanities production away from the bulk of society and at the same time concentrated, revolutionised and increased the complexity of these means of production. The organisation of these means of production has also contrived to place them under the control of an elite. This concentration of societies means of production in the hands of an elite minority – who only stir it into action in order to further increase their wealth – creates widespread problems for both the bulk of the worlds populations and for the ecological conditions of the entire world.

The most obvious problems are large-scale unemployment, low-pay and poverty along with large-scale pollution, ecological damage, detrimental climatic changes and increasing extinctions for the non-human inhabitants of the planet. There are of course, numerous other serious social problems which spawn multitudes of charitable and campaigning organisations. The capitalist mode of social production is in serious, existential conflict with the needs of the bulk of humanity and with the welfare of the planet.

Yet the capitalist mode of social production is tremendously beneficial to the minority who own and/or control it. The capitalist class, their beneficiaries and supporters have no incentive to seriously reform their system, let alone change it for some other form of social production. Even under the present dire economic and financial crisis, they are greedily milking the system for as much wealth as they can wring out of it, irrespective of the effects upon the environment or the lives of billions of people. This war-torn 21st century reality is the modern foundation of the revolutionary-humanist position with regard to all other questions facing not only the working classes but all humanity.

Which brings us to a closer look at class. Since the past and present ruling capitalist and pro-capitalists classes have no incentive to change the system which supports them so regally, the question of who might be both capable and oppressed enough to initiate the much needed and now urgent need for change was long ago addressed to the working class.

CLASS.

Marx, in an earlier period, rejected suggestions made by many socialists that it would be an enlightened bourgeois or petite bourgeois who would seriously challenge the capitalist mode of production in order to transform it. He did so for very good reasons. When he further identified the working class as the potential agents of the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist mode of production, he did not do so from any romanticised or idealised view of working class abilities or organisational inventiveness. Indeed, he often referred to the practical and theoretical challenges they would need to face and frequently commented upon how they faced them.

He drew his conclusion about their potential role from his analysis of capital and because their situation, unlike that of the middle-classes, forced them to struggle against capitalist forms from day to day necessity. Further, this necessity to struggle could become generalised and thus revolutionary during any large-scale economic or socio-economic crisis. This was the basis of his comment in the ‘German Ideology’ that a revolution was necessary not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown except by way of revolution but because only in a revolution can the class overthrowing it succeed in ridding itself of the ‘muck of ages’.

So when we discuss the working classes it is not some totally abstract, imaginary or ideal class we need to have in our minds, but the actual classes in their 21st century economic and political interconnections – warts and all – and dominated as they are by the capitalist mode of production. For these modern discussions we cannot automatically rely upon any past studies or the generalisations about the working classes arising from these studies. Some things have very definitely changed. [See ‘Workers and others in the 21st Century’ for a brief contribution on these changes.] We need also to consider how the past and present changes in economic and political experiences are reflected in their frequently contradictory and shifting understanding of their own positions within the present mode of production.

Due to their position within capitalism, the ideas of the working classes are often based upon a generalised notion of ‘common sense’ in which appearances are often taken for reality. In addition, everyday bread and butter, leisure and family issues, are what demand their constant attention leaving little time for anything beyond keeping their heads afloat, so to speak. For this reason they are largely unaware of the historic nature of the task only they have the potential to fulfil. Instead, they usually operate with ideas and solutions promoted by the class which dominates the economic, social and political landscapes of societies. These bourgeois ideas and values are rendered into seemingly logical sequences and taught to the subordinate classes via formal and informal education along with media publicity as being ‘naturally’ produced elements of understanding. They are promoted as – universal for all – rather than socially constructed understandings with a particular built-in ruling class bias.

As noted, but it is important to stress, immediate class interests tend to focus thinking and ideas narrowly within these supposedly ‘natural’ class and national boundaries. Struggles and opinions are concentrated around how these class interests are to be preserved and protected. This is no less true of the working classes, than of the middle and capitalist and pro-capitalist classes. If there is a general and wide-spread acceptance among all classes that the capitalist mode of production – despite its problems – is the best possible (and as yet there is such wide-spread acceptance and/or resignation), then struggles to preserve and protect existing class positions and interests are consequently narrowly defined and narrowly adopted.

Trade Unionism within the working class reflects this bourgeois ideological assumption, that work (wage-slavery) under the capitalist system, is a ‘natural’ part of human life and that there is no preferable alternative, short of winning the lottery. Therefore everyday common-sense dictates that the task of organised workers is to protect the jobs and conditions of their respective locations within the capitalist created economic divisions of labour. This involves struggles, often severe and even violent, against individual capitalist concerns and occasionally pro-capitalist governments, but never against the entire capitalist mode of production itself. This cannot be surprising. The modern working classes are a product of the 21st century capitalist mode of production with all that entails, economically, socially and educationally.

Revolutionary anti-capitalist ideas and the role of the working classes in an alternative potential future for humanity arose out of their combined struggles, a careful and sustained critical examination of the capitalist mode of production and the direction it was already taking. However, such revolutionary ideas have so far failed to take a fertile root within working class communities or consistently surface within working class struggles. These ideas more often than not have to be taken to those day to day struggles but it must be said that they are rarely taken there in forms suitable for united action.

Over the past decades certain anti-capitalist ideas, not without serious sectarian and patriarchal distortions, have been promoted among workers but usually by what amount to pernicious self-appointed sects, who frequently did more harm than good. They saw their role as ‘leading’ the working classes, rather than facilitating workers self-activity and knowledge. Where they succeeded in getting workers to trust their sectarian vanguardism during 20th century revolutionary challenges to the capitalist system, they have left a trail of unmitigated disasters. These disastrous examples also act, and have been deliberately used by pro-capitalists, as a barrier to workers envisioning any post-capitalist alternative.

I suggest that what has been largely missing in the past and still missing in the present is the facilitative role of non-sectarian workers and their supporters among the working classes. A movement is needed whose members have not only reached an overall understanding that the capitalist mode of production is the problem facing humanity but which also consistently promotes the message that workers need to prepare themselves for the revolutionary-humanist tasks which are posed by the competitive and destructive anarchy of capitalism. And it has to be said in this regard, that an important task for the working classes in the modern era, is the need to rise above narrow class-based, trade union, nationalistic and other self-serving struggles constructed to remain within the capitalist mode of production.

There needs to be a clear and consistent recognition that working class struggle is a universal struggle; that its future lies in not seeking just to right the particularly savage wrong inflicted against its own members – wage slavery, poverty, exploitation etc., – but to right a universal wrong inflicted by capitalism against all suffering humanity and the planet. In the present struggles there is need to recognise that the most important task is the practical and intellectual preparation for struggle against the whole present system. The future target is to become fully-rounded human beings. It is not simply to become better-paid, overworked (or more patronisingly discarded) wage-slave appendages of an economic system, which rewards a tiny minority and in the process creates devastation among people and the planet.

In a serious collapse of the capitalist mode of production more and more people will be faced with attempting to understand the economic and political contradictions and complexities of capitalism. Common-sense will only take us so far. Abstract, rote-learned slogans are unlikely to get us nearer to solving difficult problems. As in every other part of life complex situations require complex understanding and whether they like it or not more and more activists will need to seek up-dated theory as much as up-dated theory needs to seek out activists. Meanwhile there is a continuing need and responsibility to criticise any and every bourgeois generalisation or rationalisation which seeks to appeal to commonly understood ‘sense’ in order to once again shepherd workers down certain ideological cul-de-sac’s. For they will do so in order to render workers divided and powerless to change the world other than in directions economically and politically advantageous to a bourgeois or petite-bourgeois ruling elite. As Marx long ago noted in a letter to F. Bolte;

“Where the working class is not yet far enough advanced in its organisation to undertake a decisive campaign against the collective power, ie. the political power of the ruling classes, it must at any rate be trained for this by constant agitation against this power and by a hostile attitude toward the policies of the ruling classes. Otherwise it remains a plaything in their hands.” (November 23 1871.)

Not every view or opinion that Marx wrote over 100 years ago is transferable to the modern period, but many things are. Of course, considerable care needs to be taken in utilising his views to strengthen a point of view. However, the above paragraph concerning the need to argue for the working class not to become a ‘plaything in the hands’ of the ruling classes, I suggest is one of the many instances which indicates Marx’s well researched opinions are well worthy of study. One such method of becoming playthings in the hands of the ruling classes is to succumb to a bourgeois or petite-bourgeois struggle for regional and national ‘independence’ and encourage the consequent enmeshment of workers in any re-emergence of nationalist sentiments.

And of course having a shared human and class experience does validate a considered criticism being made by working class activists. This is particularly so when other human beings and/or members of the working class are judged to be in danger of making a mistake or becoming ‘playthings’ in the hands of the ruling classes – as they indeed became during the two-world wars of the 20th century. For this reason considered criticism becomes something of a duty! Which brings us to a criticism of nationalism.

NATIONALISM.

The bourgeois mode of production based upon the domination of capital long ago broke out of the national boundaries created by themselves or their fore-runners. The periods of colonialism and imperialism were driven by a capitalist economic imperative which found that production and consumption needs could not be met from within a single national boundary. Markets for mass-produced surplus products and sources of raw materials for production had to be forcibly obtained throughout the known world in order to keep the system going. No atrocity or outrage was too much for the captains and barons of industry and commerce to contemplate in pursuit of profit, nor too unthinkable to order their military equivalents to commit. It is, as we know, a process, which is still going on today but now using 21st century technically advanced arms and equipment.

Today the economic and financial system overseen and controlled by capital and its elite agents, is truly global. Energy, media, finance, petro-chemicals, pharmaceuticals, air and sea transportation, metals, minerals etc., are all controlled by internationalised infrastructure links and international capital. All major local and localised means of production have been destroyed. Production of essentials along with many non-essentials is on such a scale that it is production which can only be met by an extensive world market. There can no longer be a capitalist economy – in one country – let alone a post-capitalist one.

Economically now, and at least for the foreseeable future, the world is one of inter-reliant, integrated production and consumption – albeit one in need of down-scaling. Only in terms of politics, religion and class is the world still irreconcilably divided. Religion and politics have for centuries been the ideologies which militarised ruling elites have adopted, promoted and enforced in order to divide and thus manage their exploitation of the masses. Nationalism is just another such ideology but one of more recent origin.

The national boundary and the ideology attached to this unit of land appropriation was kept alive in the 20th and 21st centuries, merely as a base of operations for some of the human agents of capital and as a means of influencing and controlling the human agents of production – the working classes – via the nation-state. This ideological construct based upon a mixture of ink (or pencil-drawn) and geographical boundaries, exists only for people and not for capital and has been advantageous in preventing international working class unity. Indeed, it has been extremely useful over a few centuries now, for dragging workers into fighting each other as foot-soldiers and cannon-fodder during the competitive antagonisms of various national based concentrations of capital.

It has been accurately said in discussions and comments that Marx once supported a nationalist struggle but this fact simply cannot be used to support a modern left adaptation to this petite bourgeois strategy. Marx, it should be remembered, saw the capitalist mode of production as terribly destructive, but as also creating the conditions for the emancipation of labour, both in terms of the rapid creation of a working class and in the creation of advanced social means of production. Both developments being necessary to allow the future advance of collective humanity beyond domination by capital.

This was the social and economic basis for his very limited – and time specific – tactical support for such struggles in the 19th century. Additionally, in a previous period, support for working-class tactical involvement in bourgeois national struggles could, under certain circumstances, create conditions conducive to workers self-organisation and self-activity. Even then, bearing in mind the anti-capitalist perspective this anti-colonialist or anti-imperialist involvement would only be as a tactic – not a strategy. Can it be so in the 21st century?

We know in the recent historical past patriotism and nationalism have been used to conduct colonialist and imperialist wars including two world wars between rival concentrations of capital. An alliance of nationalistic German, Italian and Japanese capital on one side and an alliance of nationalistic British and American capital and Soviet state-capitalism on the other – all defending or extending the respective ‘fatherlands’. The number of working class lives lost by persuading them that their primary identity was national and that their patriotic duty was to kill, torture and destroy the rival capitalist countries workers, has been astronomical. In the two nationalist and capitalist inspired wars it is estimated that sixty-four million died – most of them working class. We know also that along with religion and racism, nationalism has been used to internally divide the working classes of each country and to make solidarity with their capitalists trump the solidarity among themselves. The track record of the influence of nationalist ideology upon working people is overwhelmingly grim if not downright catastrophic.

How could it be otherwise? The theory of nationalism and the practice of nationists is to unite people around an elite and the physical appropriation of a territory delineated around borders secured only by force. Under the capitalist mode of production a ‘nation’ whether large or small, can only be composed of classes in which the most wealthy and powerful class are able to dictate or dominate the public discourses and the national form of legitimate organisation – including the decision to make war on other workers. Nationalism, which as we have seen can only be political nationalism under the 21st century capitalist mode of production, requires an alliance between workers and the bourgeois or petite-bourgeois elements in which the bourgeois elements exercise political power. At best some token worker representatives are accepted as left cover. In other words, nothing substantial changes and certainly for the workers – nothing for the better.

Political nationalism and its human advocates can no longer use it to develop the means of production. That is now an international technological and constructional process dominated by multi-national and trans-national organisations. Political nationalism and its advocates cannot increase the numbers of workers for there are already more workers than capitalism needs to profitably supply the world market with its goods and services. It is estimated that since the 1970’s neo-liberal capitalist expansion, approximately an additional 2 billion rural people world-wide have been propelled into the proletariat by being dispossessed of their previous forms of partial economic self-sufficiency.

In addition, in the 21st century, no nation-state can fund its current levels of expenditure, let alone increase the benefits to workers and non-workers because they are all in fiscal crisis. They are all teetering on the brink of financial melt-down and collapse. All national political elites must therefore cut their own and their supporters share of the annual surplus-value created or that portion currently going to welfare recipients. No bourgeois or petite-bourgeois elite can do the former without turning in on itself and self-destructing. An extremely unlikely scenario in any nation, large or small.

Instead, attacks upon the workers and others will be the logical and circumstance-determined steps after a short national ‘independence’ honeymoon period where any misguided alliance between a self-serving bourgeois or petite-bourgeois political class and working people takes place. Such a tactic will not allow workers to weather out the coming economic and financial storms for like real storms these also recognise no artificial national barriers. For all these reasons it would only be in exceptional circumstances that in the 21st century, revolutionary anti-capitalists would support or vote for such efforts at nationalistic political independence.

One such possible exception is the case of Palestine. Palestinian workers would doubtless be marginally better off politically and economically under the rule of their own indigenous pro-capitalist elites, than under the Fascistic-style occupation of their territory by the Zionist controlled state of Israel. Although given the revelations of the ‘Palestine Papers’ and other events – even that is debateable. It is also conceivable that Palestinian capitalists could for a time update and expand the local means of production and more jobs would be created. Palestinian workers would then at least be freed of Zionist restriction and free to defend themselves on just the one front rather than on two.

But can a case be made for Scotland being an exception? I doubt it. Scottish workers are not under military curfew, with severe restrictions in movement, and cut offs of electricity and water supply. Their houses and orchards are not being bulldozed to the ground by the foreign occupier. Nor are their children locked up and tortured for throwing stones at occupying military forces. Scottish students do not have to negotiate checkpoint after checkpoint, along with sick and injured people, both of whom may or may not be allowed to get to college or hospital. Scottish trade unionists are not locked up, tortured or assassinated.

The destruction of Scottish rural life has already made a Scottish proletariat and a large reserve army of labour out of the Highland clearances of the 19th century. Scottish capital is already as free to develop production as any other national capital can be within the neo-liberal regime of global capital. In addition there will be no change in the political form under independence for Scotland and therefore no advantage for Scottish workers. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask, as Barry Biddulph did; what tactical benefit does such an accommodation to bourgeois nationalism create and how in the 21st century can it contribute in any positive way to an anti-capitalist strategy? I too genuinely await enlightenment on that question.

So what is the possible if not probable motive force of some of the left support for Scottish Independence? I suggest its origins lie in the fact that there is a severe economic crisis occurring during a period of extreme weakness of working class organisation. If the working classes were collectively strong enough their representatives would be told to pursue their own agenda not hitch a ride on dubious bandwagons created for them. This weakness at the moment restricts the possibilities for class-wide defensive or offensive action against the capitalist system, creating a problem. [see ‘Crisis! So what else can we do?‘]

In such circumstances an impatient political left might be tempted to accept an invitation to sign-up for opportunist alliances with, or support for, other political forces wanting limited elite forms of change. But this would be an electoral alliance in the forlorn hope of advancing or defending the disappearing, boom-period, reformist programme temporarily granted to workers. To my understanding, exceptions apart, left involvement in such ’nationalist’ independence struggles are not only a sign of this periods working class weakness but also of a ‘left’ which has abandoned the struggle to revolutionise society and has settled for political manoeuvring in the hope of gaining a few additional crumbs for a tiny section of the exploited and oppressed.

Roy Ratcliffe (January 2014.)

Posted in Economics, Nationalism, neo-liberalism, Palestine, Politics, Reformism, Revolutionary-Humanism | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment