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

THE STATE: FOR OR AGAINST?

Posted on December 3, 2013 by stutteringsteps

Examining the entire spectrum of the ‘left’ reveals a multitude of sectarian differences of ideas and organisation but they are linked by one common thread of unity. That link is with regard to the continued existence of the state. From the liberal left, through to the radical left all these, except perhaps the anarchist left and revolutionary-humanists, accept the existence of the state in one form or another. Some may advocate a more democratic form of state, others a more pluralist state, some perhaps an egalitarian state and yet others – a workers state. The state, or rather the modern welfare state – with some modifications and adjustments (radical or otherwise) – is the model which a majority of the current left cannot see beyond. This is despite the fact that human beings and their communities for thousands, if not millions of years, have managed their affairs without being regulated by an institution called the state. There was life before the state and there can and will be life after the state has been finally abolished.

Indeed, the modern capitalist state is relatively new. The welfare state is an even more recent invention. Before that, apart from the city-states of the militarised Greek and Roman world, which were very different institutions, people in the main sorted themselves out in their local communities. Despite the physical domination of feudal overlords and burdened by a plethora of Priestly tithes, there was a large degree of local self-reliance and self-governance. It was only later with the breakdown of feudal local and kinship ties effected by the domination of capital that the state in its proper sense developed. The state as now constituted could not exist without the development of the bourgeoisie mode of production and the division of society into classes, based upon their relationship to the means of production. A state is only necessary where there are irreconcilable class differences and under the capitalist mode of production there are such irreconcilable differences. The social organisation of the capitalist mode of production therefore forms the basis of modern ‘civil society, with its private ownership of the means of production and this in turn constitutes the economic and social basis of the state. As Marx noted;

“To this modern private property corresponds the modern state , which, purchased gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation, has fallen entirely into their hands, through the national debt, and its existence has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit which the owners of property, the bourgeoisie, extend to it…..it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeoisie are compelled to adopt both for internal and external purposes, for their mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” (Marx. German Ideology. In Marx Engels Collected Works Volume 5 page 90.)

Yet despite this clear analysis of the function and purpose of the modern state, – the internal and external guarantee of capitalist property and interests – much of the left cannot resist placing requests and demands upon the current state to rectify all the inconveniences and oppressions attending the bourgeois capitalist mode of production. It seems that because the modern state in the last 100 years, has taken on elements of public service and welfare provision, the left has blindly accepted its continued existence. Many of them now seriously look to it – under alternative politicians – to correct all that is evidently wrong with capitalism. This is despite the fact that under alternative politicians, left, right and centre, the state is still demonstrably the organ of bourgeois rule and cannot and will not go beyond capital. Even under the so-called revolutionary anti-capitalists of the Bolsheviks, the state was viewed as ‘the’ most important and necessary element of liberation for the ‘oppressed’. And look what happened there!

It is interesting in this regard, that on the question of the state some 21st century pro-capitalists have gone much further than most of the ‘left’ in questioning the fundamental nature of the state and the need for its continued existence. This has been fluently, if only partially, expressed in a recent book with the title ‘Life after the State‘ by Dominic Frisby. This pro-capitalist book provides and substantiates a whole litany of the failings of the bourgeois state. Chapter after chapter lists in substantial detail the self-serving nature of state governance, its utter failure to sort out the mess it has itself created and its expensive interference in the lives and well being of ordinary people. In its analysis of the shortcomings and oppressive nature of the state it shames many contributions from the left. In the next section I shall highlight just a selection of the many criticisms levelled at the state by this particular pro-capitalist author.

Life under the State.

In the prologue to the above referenced book, the author presents a long abbreviated list of the social problems we have witnessed which have been orchestrated by the modern state. What follows is just a short selection from that list to give a flavour.

“…a financial crisis that almost brought down the entire global banking system. Youth unemployment in Greece at 62.5%, Spain at 57%, Portugal at 43%, Italy at 40% and an EU average of 24%…..36 million people across the globe taking part in 3,000 protests against the war in the Middle East – and the UK and US governments ignoring them and going ahead with it anyway…..The UK currently owes..just under £1.2 trillion. That’s almost £40,000 per working person…..President Barack Obama has overseen an administration that, in its first term, increased the national debt by 60%, adding $6 trillion, on top of the $5trillion Bush added in his two terms.” (‘Life after the State’. Dominic Frisby. Prologue.)

The list of offences produced by this author and committed by the state could well appear in any radical left publication. Indeed, these parts of his book could outshine many recent so-called revolutionary ‘left’ contributions on the question. In the chapter which follows the prologue, the author discusses the demise of the city of Glasgow and goes on to quote at length from the historian A.J.P Taylor’s book ‘English History 1914 – 45.’ It is worth considering a short extract from this long quotation for it emphasises from a bourgeois point of view the recent nature of the state.

“Until August 1914 a sensible, law abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state beyond the post office and the policeman….The Englishman paid taxes on a modest scale…All this was changed by the impact of the Great War….The state established a hold over its citizens which, although relaxed in peacetime, was never to be removed and which after the Second World War was again to increase.” (AJP Taylor. quoted in Frisby chapter 1.)

The progressive hold over its citizens was achieved through the mechanisms of state imposed regulations and restrictions over citizens movements, increased taxation, compulsory military enlistment, food regulations, news censorship and an ever increasing list of does and don’ts. All these regulations, restrictions, militarisations and even the few benefits come at a considerable cost. In this regard this author relies upon a Conservative MP’s research to suggest that ‘$36 of every $100 dollars an America earns now goes to support the US government. In Europe £46 of every British workers; 59 euros out of every 100 for French and German workers. The author further estimates that since 1900 the resources collected by the state from its citizens has increased by a magnitude of 30 to 40 and asks the rhetorical but pertinent question; have the services provided by the state risen this much?

Before considering this question of the ‘state’ further it is worth pointing out that the radical bourgeois viewpoint presented by this author, has typically missed the most important point about the capitalist mode of production and the reason for the state. It is that the main ‘means’ of production have been appropriated by a certain elite class and that elite plus its supporters control the state. Although at another point he describes himself as a socialist (so did Hitler and Mussolini for a time) he clearly is a champion of capitalism, and this is reflected by the authors he chooses to include in his research and those he does not. The main omission given his discussion of economics is that of Karl Marx. He does mention Adam Smith, but this disclosure only exposes his failure to understand the origin of profit. For example he asserts that; “Profit need not necessarily entail exploitation.” Yet Smith was clear upon the origin of profit derived from the surplus-labour provided free by workers – and which as developed by Marx – clearly revealed they are forced by circumstances to work beyond the time required to replace their wages.

Profit does indeed entail exploitation – in two ways. Capitalists exploit both the workers lack of their own means of production and exploit the difference between the labour-time they are required to work for a wage and the productivity of that labour during that period. He could have avoided that glaring mistake had he read Marx on the question or even if he had fully understood Adam Smith’s analysis of productive and unproductive labour in book 2 chapter 3 of ‘An enquiry into …Wealth of Nations’. His additional failure is to understand the importance of the restriction that the private ownership of the means of production, its size and complexity, creates to the exchange of commodities, leads him to superficial conclusions.

Yet on the question of the state he is largely correct. Also missing from his attention, therefore, is an understanding of the consequent commodification of labour-power at the beck and call of capital. All this unfortunate lack of knowledge, leads him to posit the current problems with the capitalist mode of production as being because of ’crony-capitalism’ which has increased the barriers to ‘self-interested’ ‘greedy’ ‘free’ exchange. Like others among the radicalised bourgeoisie he is in a form of denial. Powerful capitalists rigging the system IS the system of capitalism – there is no other – and there never was!

This ‘greed is good’ philosophy is prompted by his understanding of aspects of human nature as they have developed under the capitalist mode of production. He takes the culture developed under the domination of capital as the ‘natural’ one valid for all time. Instead of recognising the limited historical nature of capitalism, and the values it promotes he assumes that capitalism is based upon what he claims is ‘Natural Law’. So even when he ventures into positive remarks about altruism and co-operation he cannot let go of his bourgeois prejudice of the need for a ‘free market’ which is itself a self-imposed illusion for there has never been a ‘free market’ under the capitalist mode of production. The term was merely invented to assert the freedom of capital to rig or distort the market when and where it could when it was advantageous to do so – which it has always done. His idealised illusions about the capitalist mode of production abound throughout the book and in a good example he asserts;

“But capitalism in its most ideal form does not necessarily exalt material gain above spiritual success. It exalts peaceful co-operation between producers and suppliers without coercion, theft and rent-seeking.” (ibid chapter 3.)

At no time does this idealised vision of capitalism match the history or the present reality of capitalist mode of production in any part of the world. This idealised belief system even clouds his judgement on practical observations. At another point he asserts that because of the natural greedy desire to exchange goods ‘wonderful things get done‘ when, “Detroit assembly-line workers get up at the crack of dawn to produce the car that you enjoy.” Such simplified and idealised abstractions ignore the harsh reality of assembly-line work and how people are forced by circumstances to work on mechanised assembly lines.

It also ignores the fact that when profitability is reduced car-production in Detroit and elsewhere disappears to countries where other workers robbed of their own means of production and livelihood are pressed into wage-slavery. Detroit was reduced to practically a ghost town by the capitalist ownership and control of the means of production in pursuit of their ‘greedy’ desire to exchange at a profit. He argues, “Evil though the word may be to some, profit – not planning – is what makes the economic eco-system function.” Of course it is profit which makes much of the present economic eco-system function, but there are other serious alternatives as demonstrated by the public sector and other non-profit projects.

Returning to the question of the state it becomes evident that we need to consider two conflicting but popular viewpoints which have emerged in relationship to the growth of the state. This is crucial now that the state, as it is presently constituted, is unsustainable due to the massive imbalance between its expenditure and income. The current systemic ‘fiscal crises’ of all states upholding the capitalist mode of production, requires a serious consideration – for they are all about to fiscally implode. On a smaller scale even the city-state institutions of the advanced capitalist world, particularly in the USA, are beginning to collapse under the weight of their misnamed ‘public’ debt.

Two conflicting views of the state and an alternative.

So at the level of mainstream ‘popular’ left and right discourse there appear to be two main views of the state which conflict. The first viewpoint is held by those who see the state as essentially ‘good’ and support the need to strengthen it – particularly in areas of direct or indirect interest to them. The second is those who view the state as essentially ‘bad’ and wish to downsize it or remove it altogether in areas that are of direct or indirect concern for them. The interesting thing about this divergence in opinion regarding the state is the way this is currently reflected in politics.

The left in general favour the strengthening of the state particularly in its ability to tax and regulate capital, prohibit speculation, penalise misconduct and prevent corruption. In addition the left – again in general – favour the strengthening and use of the states powers to re-distribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Even the anti-capitalist revolutionary left often have this perspective as their main operating paradigm in the daily class struggles that take place within the capitalist mode of production. This much was in evidence by the Socialist Resistance support for the Left Party Platform at the UK’s Left Unity Conference in November 2013. This and other campaigns are initiated or joined by the ‘left’ urging the state to defend this or that, to increase or decrease one thing or another. This is despite the fact that the state, supported by the capitalist classes is the most oppressive force in the lives of ordinary working people. This is a huge contradiction which remains unresolved by the left reformists.

Economically, the state officials along with capitalists extract every portion of value and surplus-value they can wring out of the working classes by keeping wages low, taxes (income and purchase taxation) for those who cannot dodge them – high. Politically, the state inhibits the freedom of the organised working classes to organise, demonstrate and strike against the exploitation experienced by workers. The state colludes with capital in the exploitation of its own workforce and those of foreign lands. The state severely controls and regulates the movement of its non-elite citizens, whilst internationalising the elite. It institutes wars in which working-class soldiers and working-class non-combatants are slaughtered indiscriminately, whilst capitalists make profits out of destruction and subsequent re-construction. It allows large capital to disrupt working class communities and appropriate spaces and resources utilised by local people. Unquestionably, the state is an organ of oppression and exploitation.

But the state under capitalism – powerful as it is – is collapsing from its own internal contradictions. It is the institutional organ of the dominant economic and financial interests in their human personifications. The elite who control and influence it have used it to pursue their interests and this pursuit has led them to undermine the very thing which supports their rule. They have used the state to create huge, costly and unproductive military capabilities, to allow themselves the freedom to move their production to the cheapest location and avoid taxes, to award themselves lucrative state contracts and grant themselves huge tax-breaks. These state ‘benefits’ to capital have created a massive system of state insolvency and despite the current expensive loans they take on, all current capitalist states are heading for collapse and bankruptcy. Remember the £1.2 trillion UK debt and the $11 trillion US noted above? The present captains of industry, commerce, finance and politics, are sinking their own battleship – which in view of this and other things deserves to go down.

But in contrast to the anarcho-capitalists who with regard to the state, also think that way, much of the current left – as the traditional Labour Movement before them – wish to captain the rusting, top-heavy hulk themselves. Some have recently formed a new party to do just that. If successful, they will urge the workers to continue to patch up the boilers, keep the engine room running, staff the pumps in the bilge, scrub the decks, cook the on-board meals and do all the other menial jobs which keep this rotting vessel afloat. To demonstrate their bourgeois liberal aspirations, they are properly insisting that when they become captains of the rotting hulk there will be just as many women as men employed in the exploitative positions on this class-divided, elite-controlled journey to what they elastically classify as – socialism. For they have no plans to end exploitation – merely to even it out – whilst navigating their imaginary course to future parliamentary elections. Meanwhile, the course currently plotted by those who will definitely not give up the vessel easily is leading toward the fiscal and ecological iceberg which will finally send the capitalist mode of production to its graveyard.

Revolutionary-humanists on the other hand will continue to advocate that the crew will eventually be compelled by developing circumstances to recognise that they will have to rebel and dismantle the state, replacing it with self-regulating, self-governing egalitarian, humanist, ecologically-minded productive communities. The fact that the present state employs workers does not mean that these workers in education, health etc., will cease to have employment under a post-capitalist stateless mode of production. They will simply be responsible to their respective communities rather than some distant axe-wielding state official or local delegated elite boss. So in activist campaigns why not argue for this from the outset?.

If this perspective seems idealistic, then be comforted (or discomforted) by the fact that the state cannot continue in its present form – anyway! Many of these jobs are already going and more will follow! Change is going to happen – one way or another! If the evidence for this is, or becomes, compelling, then it just requires the rest of us to decide what kind of change is preferable. In such situations I am often guided by the following saying; it is better to struggle for something you want and not get it, than to struggle for something you do not want and get it. And of course, there is more chance of getting what we want if we struggle for that, than if we struggle for some dubious elite-driven alternative which by definition envisions their control of a ‘state’.

Roy Ratcliffe (December 2013.)

Posted in Critique, Egypt, Finance, Marx, Reformism, The State | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

PRINCIPLES OF CO-OPERATION.

Posted on November 12, 2013 by stutteringsteps

Self-defeating forms of co-operation.

The recent announcement by the Co-operative Bank in the UK, that in future it is to be dominated by the interests and investment strategy of a hedge-fund conglomerate, cannot entirely be a surprise. This bank has been dominated for decades by the investment approaches common to all banking and finance-capital enterprises. Like the wholesale side of the British co-operative movement before it, the Co-op Bank in had long ago almost totally surrendered to the capitalist mode of production. Its total capitulation came in 2009 when its oligarchic management, decided to ‘expand’ its influence by first purchasing Britannia Building Society and then in 2012, encouraged by the UK’s Con/Dem government ministers, Lloyds Banking Group.

This final speculative gamble that the purchase of Lloyds would enable a quick-fix for the banks previous self-created balance sheet weakness, was the final blow in its independence. Instead of gaining branches and staff it will instead now lose both. To save the bank from its own self-inflicted debt problems, the Co-op Group leaders are poised to cede control of the bank’s equity, to a group of Hedge-funds with the ruthless US ‘terminator’ Aurelius-fund leading the way. Thus the type of bank (a co-operative) which is supposed to be only responsible to its ‘members’ and customers, is now to become responsible to those finance-capital vultures which circle every country looking for victims to plunder. The rescue plan has granted these predators a 70% stake in the business in exchange for £1 billion to save it from bankruptcy.

According to the Financial Times Newspaper, one of the MPs who questioned the Co-operative Banks executives during a Treasury select committee, said the following;

“Isn’t it the truth that what was in vogue was the same irresponsible risk taking that (Fred) Goodwin (former head of RBS) and others did in other banks? You and your colleagues had exactly the same mentality.” (Financial Times. November 8.)

Indeed, they did have essentially the same mentality. It cannot have escaped our notice that essentially the same thing has happened to the many ‘mutual’ institutions such as building societies. Under their executives these have all previously gone the same ‘privatised’ way and are now owned by ‘shareholders and not members! All these non-private organisational forms were originally set up in opposition to the cut-throat and ruthless practices of the private sector product and service provisions that put profit first. For this reason, they were more often than not painstakingly set up by ordinary working people – who refused to put profit before product quality, good working conditions and above average pay. These organisations were intended to be radically different, than private capitalist ones.

Clearly the idea and practice of co-operation (and mutualism) is either a complete waste of time or the principles adopted by these particular types of mutualism and co-operation were at odds with what is really needed. If these ideas are to have a long-term benefit to those working people who first supported these alternatives to capitalism, any contradictions in them need to be removed. Indeed there was a debate – of sorts – over this exact problem in the 19th century. Back then ‘co-operative societies’ were seen by many working people and their supporters as a revolutionary alternative to the dominant capitalist mode of production. Some, such as Robert Owen (of New Lanark fame), even thought that well-managed co-operative projects would prevent the desire and need for a working class revolution. Of employees and members of successful co-operatives, Owen noted;

“They will therefore have every motive not to interfere with the honours and privileges of the existing higher orders, but to remain well satisfied with their own station in life.” (Robert Owen. ‘Report to the County of Lanark’ Part 3.)

For bourgeois ‘socialists’ and liberals co-operation was never meant to supersede the capitalist mode of production, but was seen as allowing a small degree of freedom from it for a select few. In contrast, many working people promoting co-operation saw it as a long-term solution to achieving decent wages, better conditions of employment, along with improved quality of food, clothing and other products for their consumption. And indeed for a short time – for many workers – it did exactly that. But under capitalism such partial and dubious forms of co-operation, despite such high hopes re-created all the problems introduced by the domination of the capitalist mode of production and almost all have abandoned the original form.

Marx on co-operation.

Marx had once been accused of being against co-operation. He was not. He was only critical of some of the forms this was taking. He noted in a 1851 letter to co-operators, that it had become the custom to cry down any individual whose vision was not identical to others. He went on to write that those who advocate a principle in a different way were too often ‘denounced as an enemy, instead of being recognised as a friend’ …. Interestingly, with regard to the 21st century ‘left’ that particular custom still prevails as many of us know from direct experience. On the contrary, wrote Marx in the same letter;

“I am its sincere, though humble advocate, and, from that very reason, feel bound to warn the people against what I conceive to be the suicidal tendency of our associative efforts as conducted now….I contend that co-operation as now developed must result in failure to the majority of those concerned, and that it is merely perpetuating the evils which it professes to remove.” (Letter to the advocates of the co-operative principle. Marx Collected Works Volume 3 page 573.)

We can see as was noted in the section above that the majority of such co-operative efforts have failed and have indeed during their life-times perpetuated most of the evils they were intended to remove . Marx based his criticism of the co-operative models then being followed under four general headings. 1. They were still based upon capital and the wages system (ie they continued wage-slavery). 2. Under the capitalist mode of production small co-operative capital cannot compete with accumulated private capital. 3. They perpetuated profiteering and competition with other workers (dividend sharing schemes). 4. While they last co-operatives often re-create an aristocracy of labour. In short they maintained, wage-labour, capital, profit and managerial hierarchy.

‘Why do the rich smile on it? Marx rhetorically asks in this letter. Because ‘they know in the long run it is harmless to them’, he replies. Under the capitalist mode of production, co-operation starting off small and energised by many enthusiastic and willing hands could initially succeed. In such small local forms it was (and is) largely ignored by capitalists, particularly big-capital. However, soon as they grow large they can be under-sold, boycotted and competitively undermined resources-wise by large private capital. This was the eventual fate of Robert Owens cotton mill in New Lanark and the heirs of the Rochdale Pioneers. Alternatively, they become hierarchical, speculatively corrupt and prey to the capitalist inspired Hedge-Fund’s as indicated by the case of the UK’s Co-operative Bank.

Marx, from his thorough understanding of the capitalist system, was able to warn co-operative movements that;

“Believe me! You are digging the grave of co-operation, while you think you are fashioning its cradle.”(Marx. ibid)

Capitalism is built on and exploits co-operation.

Any form of social life, requires co-operation, either voluntary or coerced. The means of production, whether in agriculture, industry or transport, require the integrated co-operation of large numbers of workers, as producers and consumers. So to do other areas of life, such as education, health, social services or communications. Co-operation was indispensable to ancient modes of production and it is essential to the modern capitalist ones. But of course the form of society created depends upon what form of co-operation and to what purpose. The capitalist mode of production requires the high-intensity ‘forced’ co-operation of the workplace in pursuit of profit for the few. That is its essential form and also its primary purpose.

Capitalist forms of co-operation are suicidal, for humanity and the planet. The capitalist mode of production by its pollution and intensity of exploitation is literally digging the graves of millions of workers and making grave-yards out of much of the planet. Because capitalist means of production are harnessed to the need to create profits decisions are made by the few in charge of these means. They decide on what to produce, how to produce it, and where to produce it. These decisions are all taken irrespective of the negative effects on workers conditions and pay and irrespective of any disastrous effects upon the climate or environment. And it is the generally enforced working practices, conditions and pay of the capitalist sector which undermine any form of alternative within the capitalist mode.

Co-operatives implementing above average wages, salaries and working conditions, will on balance have higher costs than any rival privatised outlets. These higher costs will in general create higher prices, for commodities and services. Poor pay and unemployment among the bulk of the employed population – a systemic characteristic under capitalism – mean this bulk (and many others) will choose to shop at the cheapest possible outlets. In this way even initially successful co-operative projects invariably stagnate or atrophy. In response to this capitalist induced inevitability, the often hierarchical organisational structures of co-operatives allow the management elite to make their own decisions in attempting to reverse this decline.

The process of managing a co-operatives decline and the vain hope of correcting it inevitably leads to programmes of cost cutting and speculative dealings, both of which sound the death knell for the better wages and any socially aware principles, they had in the first place. It is for these reasons than co-operation, whilst the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, is unlikely to succeed, beyond a certain point, before it starts to resemble any other capitalist enterprise. However, even under the capitalist mode of production that certain point can be extended. There was, and is, an alternative model. Although it was ignored, Marx suggested an alternative model which dispensed with share-holder dividend (profit distribution) and competitive expansion simply for market share.

Self-affirming forms of co-operation.

This further extract, from the above-noted letter to co-operators, is a lengthy one, but it is well worth taking the trouble to read, for it explains how many of the pit-falls of ill-considered co-operative projects can be overcome.

“A co-operative association is formed: after payment of its working charges (including labour in production or distribution), it finds itself at the end of the year with a surplus in hand; instead of dividing this surplus among the members, it employs it to purchase land or machinery, which it lets out to other bodies of working men, on the associative principle. The rent paid for the land or the machinery and the surplus of each concern beyond the working charges, is again to be applied to the further purchases of machinery and land, on the same terms and under the same conditions and so on, continually extending the power, strength and resources of the association. This is co-operation. It is co-operation, because it establishes a community of interest – the success of each ‘branch’ furthers the success of every other and of the whole collectively. There can be no conflicting interests – no rivalry – no competition – for the greater success of each undertaking, the more the stability and permanence of the whole is ensured. It makes the interest of each and all to see co-operative associations spread and multiply. This I repeat emphatically, this is real co-operation.” (Marx. Marx Engels. Collected Works. Pub Lawrence & Wishart. Volume 11 page 587/8, emphasis in the original.)

The full voluntary co-operation necessary to create an alternative mode of production to replace the present decadent profit-orientated one can only come after those who wish to prevent such a development are removed from positions of power. At that revolutionary juncture, positions of power will need to be removed from socio-economic forms of organisation and governance. Positions of power will need to be replaced by workers self-governance and international co-operation with other workers structured in such a way to balance well-being for the whole of humanity with ecological and environmental sustainability. In other words, the creation of an international community of interest.

In the meantime Marx’s proposal could be used by those who under 21s century austerity measures are faced with trying to keep open those necessary productive and welfare activities which are currently faced by closures and bankruptcies. Set up co-operatives by all means but ensure that their principles are not infected with bourgeois assumptions of elite control, competitive undermining of others and the exploitative use of surplus-labour. Co-operation is the way forward for humanity, but co-operation freed from the profit motive, freed from its elite hierarchies and freed from its local and national focus and bias. That is the aspiration and target for real co-operation.

Roy Ratcliffe (November 2013.)

Posted in co-operation, Critique, Economics, Marx | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

RE-BUILDING CLASS SOLIDARITY.

Posted on October 24, 2013 by stutteringsteps

Capitalist production creates divisions.

It was the development and eventual domination of the capitalist mode of production, that created the modern working classes. Before this could happen, ordinary people had to be torn from their previous links to their means of production, as peasants, cottagers and craftsmen. Once removed from any ability to directly earn their own living, working people were forced to work for another new class of owners – the capitalist class. The previous age-long dominant class divisions and antagonisms between rural workers and land-owning aristocrats were transformed into the modern ones; between the capitalist class and the working class.

As the early capitalist countries developed, the modern working class quickly became the overwhelming majority of the population. In the so-called ‘advanced’ countries the overwhelming majority of communities are now working class communities. In addition, the overwhelming majority of citizens of mixed class communities are also working class. But they are now working class communities subject to the profit-based whims and vicissitudes of the new capitalist class. It is a class which has gained control of the dominant means of production and sustenance and has developed them for its own needs and purposes.

Previous forms of voluntary co-operation between working people was reduced to non-work time and their work-time became the forced co-operation to a elite-imposed production plan. Production was now determined not by what was needed by societies but what made the best profits for capitalist investors. Under the competitive struggle for market share and profit, capitalist forms of manufacture almost from their beginnings required absolute control and discipline within the production process. Part of that control was the creation of hierarchical divisions of labour amongst the working classes. As Marx summed it up;

“Manufacture proper not only subjects the previously independent workman to the discipline and command of capital, but, in addition, creates a hierarchic gradation of the workmen themselves.” (Capital Volume 1, Chapter 14 section 5.)

Since the early development of capitalism, the labouring masses have been progressively divided hierarchically within enterprises, between enterprises and within society at large. Work-based economic divisions are consequently considerable and extremely widespread. The existence of substantial pay and condition differentials among and between skilled (blue-collar and white), semi-skilled, unskilled and unemployed, has always created problematic divisions between these sections of the working class. As a consequence, this continuous development of division-of-labour gradations within the capitalist mode of production has created problems for the unity and solidarity of the working class.

Even within the narrow boundaries of nation-states, these industrial, commercial and public service work-place divisions have consequently led to the development of widely differing working class experiences, standards of living, interests and motivations. Additionally, layered within (or on top) of these capitalist inspired economic divisions among working people, are also pre-capitalist divisions of age, race/ethnicity, gender and religion – all of which are again in resurgence. All these actual socio-economic divisions are practical ones reinforced by daily, weekly and yearly experience and have been consolidated over long periods of time and often along generational employment traditions.

In particular, the late 20th century globalised development of the capitalist mode of production has seen a progressive decline of work-place proximity and shared identity of interests particularly among the European and North American working classes. During the post-2nd World War period, the proportional reduction of productive to unproductive labour (industry/commerce relative to public service employment) in these countries has further removed common work-place experiences and shared interests from the experience of large numbers of working people. In addition, unemployment – a unique creation of the capitalist mode of production – has created a considerable percentage of working people who may have little or no contact with each other or with supportive groups of employed workers.

The resulting ideas springing from all these real historic and contemporary divisions create well formed patterns of behavioural indifference, competition and lead to varying degrees of ideological antagonism. These patterns form one crucially important element of working class experience and consciousness. So to expect ideas which are derived from this solid material base to simply evaporate in response to alternative ideas hurled at them by the ‘left‘, or anyone else for that matter, is naive and unrealistic. The recognition and acknowledgement of this material fact, however, is not a reason to suggest that challenging these divisive ideas should be abandoned.

Instead, such recognition should guard against idealistic expectations based upon a superficial understanding, derived from a combination of ‘left’ impatience, rote-learned abstract slogans and wishful thinking. The days are long gone when thousands of employees staffed individual, mines, mills, factories, docks, railways, and numerous public services and shared similar oppressive experiences. Even then class solidarity was not easily sustained. It is the above noted modern ‘real-time’ divisions arising from the capitalist mode of production – along with numerous betrayals and previous working class defeats – which have led to a serious erosion of solidarity among the working class and among working communities.

The effects of economic divisions on class solidarity.

The past historical experience of class-struggles clearly confirms that if sectional or sectoral actions and the resulting consciousness are not overcome, then many the resulting struggles can be lost simply because of this failure. The most glaring examples of this problem of sectional de-composition have been witnessed in action when semi-skilled workers and management have kept production going and broken a strike by skilled workers who have decided to strike to protect their own privileged positions or differential pay status.

This problem and similar examples of failures occurred in Mining, Engineering, Printing and Dock-work etc., during the late 20th century in most advanced capitalist countries in Europe and North America. There are numerous such examples. Failures of militant actions due to the wider social decomposition of working class communities have also occurred. Strikes of workers in one sector of industry, commerce or public service has seriously damaged the lives of workers, their families in another sector of industry, commerce, or in working class society at large. This internal class alienation has resulted in consolidating the existing de-composition of solidarity.

In the 20th and 21st centuries, the separation and breakdown of working class shared experience and the consequent atrophy of ideas of solidarity has gone even further. Unemployed, homeless, handicapped, blue-collar, white-collar, private sector, public sector workers, are just a few of the presently established and currently entrenched material divisions between sections of working people to be overcome. To repeatedly call for sectional advantage or discrete sector defensive actions, as the Trade Union movement invariably did in the past, was always a de-facto acceptance and entrenchment of this capitalist created socio-economic de-composition.

These sectional and sectoral calls were also the result of a failure to recognise and challenge the tragic work-place and social-wide consequences of this de-composition. To continue to make such discrete sector defence calls in face of the present fundamental crisis of the whole capitalist system is doubly tragic and doubly misguided. So too are the equally misguided calls by some on the so-called revolutionary left for a General Strike. Such premature ‘vanguardist’ calls also fail to adequately recognise the reality of the current de-composed condition of the working class and the need to overcome it in practice and in theory.

A systemic crisis of capitalism changes circumstances.

And of course, this reversal is possible. The past experience of strikes and other large-scale oppositions (uprisings and revolutions) to the capitalist mode of production, suggests that with some effort – and under the right conditions – this material de-composition of working class identity, experience and solidarity can be overcome. For if we are to accept the following proposition; ‘that the ideas people hold reflect to a greater or lesser extent, the material circumstances of their lives’; then certain things follow.

It follows that for the vast majority of people only a radically changed set of material circumstances will consistently effect and challenge the basis of the present ideas they hold. Interestingly and importantly, those changed circumstances have started and are increasing week by week as the global economic and fiscal crisis continues to unfold.

Unemployment, zero-hours and low-pay; austerity, banking frauds and financial crises – along with health and other cut-backs – effect all sections of the working class. So too do increased prices for energy and other essential services. White-collar as well as blue-collar workers are also increasingly threatened by the unfolding circumstances of global warfare, pollution, ecological destruction and climate change. The material circumstances of working peoples lives are very definitely changing. However, a word of caution is due.

These changing material circumstances – ‘the maturing material conditions’ frequently outlined by Marx – will not immediately or automatically create the conditions for a re-composition of working class solidarity and class-consciousness. That re-composition needs to be experienced and be worked for by activists and those among the working-class communities who are ahead of the curve – so to speak. And this re-engagement with class-wide solidarity will not necessarily take place in the arenas of previous institutionalised forms or take on the appearance of previous types of organised struggle. The 21st century Occupy and UK Uncut responses, are examples of the emergence of new forms of opposition, struggle and solidarity.

The re-composition of working class solidarity.

For some time to come trade union and existing ‘left’ consciousness may deflect, hamper or even stand in the way of such a reorganization and re-alignment of working class forms of organisation and community solidarity. For these reasons, overcoming divisions and a resurgence of working-class practical solidarity are far more likely to begin in non-traditional arenas, where people have already no relative privileges to defend, because they have already lost everything – job, income, homes, individual freedom, citizenship, etc. To some extent this has already begun, particularly in countries which are ahead of the UK and the USA in the downward spiral of austerity attacks upon the working classes.

In response to the current pattern of capitalist cost-cutting and state-imposed austerity, working-class community action and consciousness has arisen in many places in Europe and elsewhere. These are actions which have begun to overcome the previous divisions among the working class. Community campaigns to keep schools, hospitals and other resources open and functioning are ways in which skilled workers, unskilled workers, unemployed, senior citizens, youth and other community activists come together and in a common project or projects overcome their previous separations structured by capitalist inspired status and pay. Anti-eviction and squatting campaigns are other such collective experiences having a similar potential. For example, a comment from Italy notes that a demonstration became an occupation when diverse groups came together. And;

“A careful insight on the demonstration can read through these diversities. There were house squatters in big numbers. It was not only concerning the recurring cycles of the housing squats in Rome, but something bigger and different. A visible trace of it is given by the huge attendance of migrants, as concerned protagonists of the march, and the diffusion that the housing issue acquired on territories it had never been present in. Thus, the occupation became a concrete and even necessary answer to a more and more questioned – or even denied by the crisis- material need. Then there was a robust presence of the youth proletariat and of those social strata deprived of income and opportunities that have dearly paid the costs of the crisis.” (‘It all began with a siege’ at ,http://www.infoaut.org )

All these types of community-based campaigns can and will become practical arenas, for the working out and challenging of sexist, racist, ageist, and elitist ideas and practices. But they will also be the arenas for challenging another form of negative de-composition – the past de-composition and present sectarian divisions of the anti-capitalist revolutionary left.

The challenge for the anti-capitalist left.

We should ask ourselves whether another attempt at unity among a broad left is a positive step forward or just creating another arena for further sterile sectarian wrangles. I suggest it is not a fragile ‘left-unity’ which is the most important factor in the coming struggles but campaigning for and assisting a class-based unity. A re-composed solidarity and self-activity among working people will be indispensable to the success of any defensive campaigns and if successful this will point to a positive way forward. The past and present left-sectarian practices, based upon male-biased, elitist vanguard ideas, will have to be resisted and challenged in such class and community-based campaigns. If workers unite and transcend their differences, the only thing they will lose – are their chains!

At the same time, if anti-capitalists can give up their sectarian characteristics the only thing they will lose will be their sectarian isolation and ability to bog-down any coming struggles. If they will reject sectarianism completely they will cease to be a problem and can become a facilitative part of the process of re-creating class solidarity and self-activity. So far (ie 100 years of left sectarianism) they have proved themselves incapable of leading themselves out of the ruts of their sectarian traditions and hopefully will – sooner or later – be faced with the task of learning from a reality of resurgent class-wide solidarity and struggle rather than hoping to train workers to follow them in pursuing self-defeating sectarian traditions.

The contradictions and antagonisms built into the capitalist mode of production have once again reached a crisis level and are creating the conditions and the potential way forward for a radical re-composition of working-class communal solidarity and self-activity. The anti-capitalist left can help or hinder this process. The realisation of a practical re-composition of working class solidarity will render our working communities fit to play a leading part among the revolutionary-humanist forces needed to create a new non-oppressive post-capitalist mode of production. Or as Marx succinctly phrased it;

“By the maturing the material conditions and the combination on a social scale of the processes of production, it matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with the elements for the formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one.” (Marx Capital Vol 1 page 503.)

[See also ‘Left Unity: A contribution to the debate.’  plus ‘Uprisings and Revolutions’ – 1. and ‘Uprisings and Revolutions – 2]

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2013)

Posted in Critique, Left Unity, Marx, Politics, Revolutionary-Humanism, Sectarianism | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Left Unity: A contribution to the debate.

Posted on October 18, 2013 by stutteringsteps

In Europe and the USA it is undeniable that there is a growing animosity to the socio-economic domination of banking capital and to the severity of the austerity programmes proposed by all mainstream political parties. As yet this animosity is predictably being directed at and toward the political process and toward existing political parties rather than the capitalist system in its entirety. The present ‘crisis’ – as yet – is not generally understood to be caused by a fundamental underlying fracture in the capitalist mode of production. In particular this current growing anger and frustration is providing the basis for numerous initiatives aimed at creating new political parties and new defensive movements.

In the UK and Europe it has given rise to the ambition to reverse the current trends of global capital and return nations to a situation of working class well-being and dignity by creating a political party with a clear programme of ‘reforms’. This view has been underwritten and complimented in the UK by Ken Loach’s film ‘The Spirit of 45’. It is the contention of this contribution to the pre-conference debate over ‘Left Unity’, that under the 21st century capitalist mode of production, this approach amounts to wishful thinking. It is a hoped for ambition which can only be sustained as long as people ignore both the systemic nature of the current economic crisis and the previous political experience of ‘left’ reformism in Europe and the west.

a) The economic basis for Reforms under Capital.

The economic origins of ‘progressive’ reforms in the advanced capitalist countries lies not in the willingness of the capitalist class to reduce their share of surplus-value extraction, but in the colonialist and imperialist stages of their mode of production. By intensively exploiting native peoples and resources in many areas of the world, the capitalist elites of Europe and the west were able to extract enough surplus-value and profits to satisfy themselves and allow moderately good wages, salaries and conditions to be granted to their workers. But nevertheless, these concessions were not given willingly.

In fact these capitalist and pro-capitalist elites had to be pressurised throughout the 19th century by trade union and other organised social movements to concede better wages and conditions. Pressure also had to be exerted to allow a greater level of public services to be delivered to their citizens. This gradual (and uneven) process was interrupted in the early 20th century by a massive economic and financial crisis which peaked before the onset of the Second World War. Progress in this regard, resumed and accelerated after that second capital-led tragic annihilation of human and material resources. Indeed, the destruction of human and material resources caused by the six years of total war (1939-45), was precisely the economic basis for a revival of the capitalist system and the pursuit of reforms.

A shortage of workers (over 6 million killed), a massive destruction of infrastructure and productive capacity (cities, industries, railways, roads and docks all flattened) meant almost full employment and steadily increasing wages for working people. This post-fascist war regeneration and modernisation of UK and European capitalism in turn necessitated and allowed a rapid expansion of public services in communication, education, health, social security etc. In other words, the material basis of the much vaunted ‘spirit of 45’ arose out of the ashes of 20th century industrial-scale extermination and annihilation. Such universal material devastation does not exist in the 21st century.

For these reasons proposals to regain such ‘reforms’ and temporary privileges granted to the workers in the advanced countries after 1945, needs to include the above understanding along with the following. Reforms – benefiting workers in advanced countries – always relied upon the ‘forced’ existence of cheap raw materials and low-paid foreign labour. In other words, under the domination of capital, reforms such as above average pay, unemployment benefits, sick pay, quality health care, adequate pensions, required and still requires low wages and abysmal conditions for foreign labour. Hence the 20th and 21st century support of the pro-capitalist elite for many authoritarian regimes which guarantee these two essential elements of production. Writing of this period, A Hoogvelt noted;

“Today authoritarian and repressive regimes in many successfully industrialising Third World countries perform a function in relation to the world capitalist centres comparable with that of the feudal overlords and slave owners of a century ago: they make available to the overseas investor both a docile, stable and unorganised work-force and the monopolistic rights to the use of land and natural resources; it is their political presence and their political domination which permit the capitalist production of commodities in the overseas countries….” (A.M.M Hoogvelt. ’The Third World in Global Development’. Macmillan. p 178.)

In the 21st century this situation has continued exponentially as the recent exposures concerning the deaths of garment, footwear, construction, chemical and other workers in the non-advanced countries, demonstrate. Note also the current treatment of workers in Quatar on World Cup preparation projects. So placing reformist demands upon capitalists and their governments in Europe, and the USA etc., for improvements in social welfare in the 21st century is to effectively turn a blind eye to the following fact. If – and as stated above it is a big IF – they are successful, then to pay for them, the capitalist classes will use their financial power to further increase the exploitation of third world peoples and their environments.

In the advanced countries a 21st century reformist agenda, divorced from a commitment to eliminate the rule of capital is reactionary not only with regard to working people but also with regard to the entire global environment. But it is also reactionary in another way. A reformist agenda pre-supposes there will be a power standing above working people which will grant these reforms and improved conditions and also guarantee them. In other words a programme of reforms aimed at modifying capitalism to benefit workers and the poor, requires a powerful and expensive state apparatus to carry out these modifications. It also requires a privileged politically trained class which will govern and administer them. Now isn’t that exactly the political basis that existed in 1945 and after?

b) The political basis of reforms under Capitalism.

The previously noted systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production occurred in the early 20th century and exploded financially in and around the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The rise of European Fascism in the 1930’s was one of the responses to the resulting economic, financial and political dislocations and collapse in Europe during that period. The ‘Great Depression’ and the ‘New Deal’ in the USA was an alternative. The outbreak of war was another. The experience of ‘one-nation’ class collaboration and many essential egalitarian measures during this war led to the return of a kind of ‘left unity’ Labour government in the UK and left-liberal governments in Europe. In the UK, the British version of the ‘new deal’, was the introduction of nationalisations of essential services and the adoption of the Beveredge proposals. The ‘Spirit of 45’ had taken on a physical form.

In 1945, therefore, the strongest possible political basis for left reformism was achieved by the election of a well organised and well-funded Labour Party. It was truly a party of ‘left-unity’ which achieved control of Parliament with a substantial majority and huge programme of reforms. In future, the state would ‘protect’ the vulnerable, extract taxes and supply services to those in need. All seemed rosy to those wearing the mental equivalent of rose-tinted spectacles. But was it? Of course not! The capitalist mode of production was still in place and still dominant. Pro-capitalists still dominated the main means of production and staffed government institutions. Nevertheless the illusion that Parliament is ‘the’ source of power in society continued to be successfully promoted and dominate social thinking. The real source of capitalist power and influence – control of; the means of production, financial institutions, state organs of repression and governance – were ignored.

Ignored also was the facile commitment of the fist-thumping left unity socialists within the Labour Party and labour movement to the cause of the working class. As soon as the system of capital needed assistance, enough of the ‘left unity’ members of the Labour Party quickly sided with the needs of capital. Wage controls and Trade Union restrictions were introduced by these so-called ‘left’ guardians of the working class and the welfare state. And the traditional well-oiled revolving political door of alternative Tory and Labour governments commenced. Through numerous stages these ‘left’ and ‘right’ alternating guardians of the existing economic and political ‘system‘ in the UK and Europe, whittled away at every post-war gain achieved by the working classes. The final chapters in this process continue today under the assertion that ‘we are all in this together’ and the need for ‘austerity’.

So what’s new? Well we have now arrived at another systemic crisis of capitalism, in which the serious, life-threatening financial, fiscal, political, ecological, social and political aspects are symptoms of a new period of relative over-production and fiscal crisis. There is now not too little production – but too much! That’s certainly new! Industrial, commercial and financial over-capacity is practically everywhere. Production has been progressively transferred to countries with low pay and low-paid workers have been recruited by capital in the advanced countries. The results are low pay, zero hours and high levels of unemployment – therefore low purchasing power! That’s fairly recent but not new! But now consumer credit is also close to being maxed-out! So for these reasons a further boom is out of the question and without a boom, under capitalism, there cannot even be temporary concessions or partial reforms to benefit the majority.

c) Further irresolvable contradictions.

On top of this, the level of production and consumption achieved during the 20th century is causing catastrophic levels of pollution, ecological destruction and climate change. Any further boom periods financially engineered by pro-capitalists will merely further accelerate this one-way track to the destruction of many sections of humanity. Capital is now causing not only relative levels of over-production, but in terms of resource depletion and pollution, it is rapidly approaching absolute over-production. Any serious movement in support of working people and future humanity cannot focus on domestic reforms whilst ignoring the global effects of the present profit-based system upon the environmental, climatic and ecological welfare of other sections of the working class. But again – that is not all!

Built upon the foundations of the capitalist mode of production the funding of the state organs – governance, military and welfare – the present sources of reforms and benefits, can no longer be sustained in its present form. There is a wide-spread fiscal insolvency crisis looming – as the recent shutdowns in the USA have indicated! And it is not only the USA which face this close to terminal problem!. Under the continued domination of capital – all of the above sectors will need to be reduced considerably. Some more than others – depending upon the views of respective governments and the support these have from their respective mainstream ‘establishments‘.

Yet if the averaged out Left Unity ambition is to be elected and create working class reforms against the continuing dominant interests of capital the ‘state’ will need to remain in existence. It will need to be large, strong and expensive to maintain. It will require a huge tax burden! Even in the most favourable circumstances, therefore, an irreconcilable contradiction exists. For if this ‘Left-Unity’ coalition ever gained political power – it will not be funded by the capitalist bond-holders, its tax base will continue to be too small and there will still be no sustainable prospect for capitalist inspired growth. So how and where will this powerful pro-worker Left Unity governed ‘state’ get its financial resources from?

d) In conclusion.

The ruling pro-capitalist elite and the capitalist class itself have no material reason for subscribing to a renewed spirit of 45. If they had, they would have already done so in the aftermath of the 2008 financial collapse and in view of the current devastating effects of austerity. Only the threat of revolutionary transformations would induce each countries ‘establishments’ to consider such reforms as those implemented in 1945 and after. And if the threat of revolution does not fully materialise would not any future ‘spirit’ of general welfare soon evaporate away – again? Irrespective of this, however, the economic, social and political base for the development of a renewed reformist politics does not presently exist and it is unlikely to develop in the foreseeable future. The present crisis is one concerning the fundamental basis of the entire capitalist mode of production itself. No amount of wrestling with secondary symptoms or its superstructures will solve this problem.

In my view any political party or movement advocating future reformist possibilities will be naively misleading those people who choose to believe its proposals. Well before such a political party or movement could get near to parliamentary ascendancy with even a half decent reformist programme the pro-capitalist establishment would unleash its dogs of class war upon it – which it is already preparing and will do in any case – as anger and resentment increase. For this reason the energies, commitment and resources of anti-capitalists are best allocated to arguing and organising for local community self-reliance and defence. In other words work towards a revolutionary-humanist – Class Unity! Funding and working for a reformist-based, populist, egotistical and therefore inherently unreliable ‘Left Unity’ has been done before and utterly failed – lets not be fooled into doing it again!

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2013.)

Posted in Critique, Economics, Left Unity, neo-liberalism | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

USA: GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN – AGAIN!

Posted on October 6, 2013 by stutteringsteps

The closing of some US government facilities during early October 2013 and the sending home of government workers reveals a number of things about bourgeois democracy and the capitalist mode of production. The most obvious thing is that the elite members of the political class cannot even agree on how to save the economic and political system from its own internal contradictions. Their self-interested posturing and bickering – as they jostle to keep their places at the states luxurious feeding trough – make them appear ridiculous. And indeed, their disagreements are something of a phoney war, for the real war is against the US working people (white-collar and blue) and the poor. It is not the first time this shut-down spectacle has happened in the USA – and it will not be the last.

Despite the much publicised delegate tomfoolery in the media and the organs of government, the underlying problem at the moment is not to be found in the White House, Congress or Senate, but in the profound crisis of the capitalist mode of production. This political ‘theatre of the absurd’ in the US is only one symptomatic aspect of the developing crisis and is likely to be repeated elsewhere. The 21st century capitalist system world-wide faces a structural crisis covering at least the following five broad areas – economic, financial, moral, ecological and fiscal. In the US, it is disagreement over the growing fiscal crisis and the ‘Affordable Care Act’ (Obama-care) which is currently energising the tempers of the political elite, but these aspects of the crisis are themselves only symptoms of something more profound.

a) The neo-liberal fiscal crisis.

The fact that state expenditure in the US (as elsewhere) exceeds state income – an issue soon to be debated by the political elite in all advanced capitalist countries – is merely a fundamental symptom of the latest neo-liberal crisis phase of capitalism. In all capitalist countries, a shrinking tax base and increasing state expenditure has long been causing a discrepancy in the accounting books of nation states. This discrepancy has now reached astronomical crisis levels, particularly in the US and Europe. The export of production away from these previously high waged economies, has reduced government tax receipts from employment and profits. Late 20th and early 21st century tax reductions for the wealthy has also added to the negative side of this sovereign accounting imbalance.

At the same time as this reduction in income, governments in the west have continued to incrementally increase their expenditures on arms production and their delivery systems. Technological sophistication in warfare has developed at a rapid pace and this has certainly been taken to the most extreme forms by the military industrial complex in the USA. Modern armies, navies and air forces – required to ensure capitalist control of markets and essential raw materials – now come at an enormous cost. This burden, together with the costs of supporting those citizens made redundant, retired or unable to find employment, has been met by years of excessive government borrowing. The US alone now needs a borrowing ceiling of over $17 trillion to continue to ‘balance’ the federal books.

The interest payments alone on such enormous debts are an unnecessary and suffocating burden upon the citizens of the country, but more than that, these and the actual loan repayments are unsustainable. Western governments are for all intents and purposes – bankrupt, but for the moment still allowed to continue functioning because there is no other outside power to close them down. The rest of the finance sector is being kept afloat by the $85 billion per month bond-buying activity in the US and similar measures in Europe. So once again it is the case that one part of the capitalist mode of production – the financial sector – has the rest of society in a complete strangle-hold. Or as Obama put it;

“Ultimately, what matters is: What do the people buying Treasury Bills think” (October 2013)

In another words relatively small group among the financial elite in this sector – big-banks and bond-holders – currently have a firm grip upon the finances of private individuals, most of industry and national governments.

b) The domination of Finance-capital.

In addition the representatives of finance and big-business now dominate much of government and determine, if not actually dictate, what should happen to the rest of us. What they have decided to do is use their positions and influence to extract their accumulated pounds of flesh – interest and loan repayments – from the bodies of most of the rest of us. Particularly vulnerable in this respect are those who are least able to avoid their vampire-like attentions. The draining of the life-blood of communities has already begun by the current austerity measures, increased prices, lower wages and pensions and far fewer benefits. Their mantra includes an appeal for smaller and less expensive government, but the reductions in state expenditure will be predominantly targeted at those state institutions which benefit the low-paid and poor.

They and their political representatives, ’left’ and ‘right’ wing will still force the rest of us to fund world-class armies, navies and air-forces, which they need for their world dominance of markets and materials, and which the rest of us do not. They will continue to demand that we fund their bloated salaries and expenses, even while they shut-down and furlough the lower paid government workers and posture and prattle about the welfare of the ‘country’. They will still wield the publicly-funded armed bodies of men to prevent opposition and protest against their vampire coven. They will still try to hood-wink us into dreaming about some future ‘pie in the sky’ delivered by further stimulated economic growth, when it is clear that unprecedented 20th and 21st century economic growth has caused the still unresolved economic crisis in the first place.

c) An uncontrollable fetish for growth.

Not only that, but these unprecedented levels of economic production and growth are already causing disastrous climatic changes, dangerous levels of pollution, irreparable ecological destruction and large-scale resource depletion. Further economic growth under the present unequal and profit-driven mode of production is a recipe for future wholesale disasters ‘cooked-up’ by those are prepared to turn a blind-eye. In contrast, the planet and the bulk of its inhabitants would benefit from scaled-back and equalised economic activity along with a drastically reduced – or better still – totally eliminated arms production. Of course none of this can happen as long as the present system continues, for those who produce for profit have an insatiable appetite for the monetary form of wealth.

And of course monetary wealth can only be accumulated by the incessant creation and sale of commodities which contain more value than they cost to produce. However, the very motivation for production and circulation under the capitalist mode which is to create profits for those who own capital, stands in the way of further production. When there is more production than can be profitably sold there is a crisis of relative overproduction. That is to say more commodities and services are created than can be sold at a profit. When this occurs, production is scaled back, workers are put on short time or are made redundant and this represents even less demand for the existing goods and services.

That is the fundamental economic basis of the current crisis in all spheres of the capitalist system. The recent flooding of the financial markets by government printed money has created some wishful-thinking optimism amongst many pundits and economic ‘experts’. As this money makes its way around the various money-making merry-go-rounds and registers its activity on various statistical tables, it appears that there is increased economic activity, when it is only increased financial activity. Also given the size of the world economy there will always be some level of continuing economic activity, particularly for basic essentials. There will also be some new start-up economic activity as well as some collapses. Yet crunch all these numbers together (as some are doing) and it is easy to fool oneself that things are generally improving – when in fact they are not.

d) Barriers to further growth.

     1. Steadily reducing purchasing power.

Unemployment, part-time working, money inflation during crises of relative overproduction, all operate to further reduce the amount of commodities and services which the bulk of the population can consume. Simply looking at the employment figures as do many politicians and economists is insufficient. Job figures may be rising but if the new jobs are low paid, zero-hour and part time then they do not make up for the purchasing power of full-time well-paid jobs which are generally being destroyed in the private and public sectors.

     2. Lower workforce participation.

Another current factor is the growing numbers of citizens who have now absented themselves from the job market but are not classified among the unemployed figures, because they are retired, early retired, students, domestic and black economy workers. All of these citizens are victims of the overproduction downturn and resulting credit-derived financial collapse. Their purchasing power has been further reduced and so there is less available for other than necessary purchases.

      3. Deleveraging.

The banking and finance sectors are the ones who utilise ‘leveraging’ (borrowing against assets) to the greatest degree, in order to increase their profitable investments, however, they are not the only ones. The finance sector stimulation of credit has meant that ordinary people as well as small and medium businesses have been able to borrow to an unprecedented degree over many years. The level of personal and business debt has increased by many times since the post-2nd World War period and over far a wider range of people.

The financial collapse of 2008 has meant that many ordinary people have fell victim to essentially the same problem – taking on more debt than they could continue to service particularly under the new conditions. This has meant that vast numbers of people are no longer taking on new loans to purchase goods and some of their current purchasing power is being used to pay down previous debt levels. The combined effects of this personal and business de-leveraging means a reduction in the amounts of cash which can be used for purchasing non-essential existing production in general and new production in particular.

e) The ‘wisdom’ of bourgeois pundits.

The recent scaling down of expected (estimated) growth figures by the US Federal Reserve is a recognition of this complex problem and it is why they have also continued with the above noted $85 billion per month bond-buying programme in the USA and a similar ECB programme in Europe. However, what these vested interests have in common is that they all – as elite beneficiaries of the existing system – cannot envisage any fundamental alteration to the current situation. Whether the economy shrinks or grows their positions in the elite and relative wealth advantages are protected, so why should they?

Only a few of the bourgeois elite have realised that the current programmes for printing money and releasing it into the finance sector is simply fuelling another set of asset bubbles which sooner or later will collapse as the housing market did in 2008. Fewer still recognise that the complex economic circuits of production and consumption under the capitalist mode are so contradictory and connected to the social, environmental and financial sectors that they are manifesting themselves in numerous secondary symptoms, such as the banking crises, sovereign debt crisis, permanent and precarious unemployment, social poverty, environmental catastrophes and political atrophy.

When the next collapse occurs there will be even more bankruptcies and shut-downs of local businesses and local government services as well as more national government collapses, this time prior to or in the wake of social and political unrest. Meanwhile the current elite will continue to prey upon our communities with economic and military means as long as the majority of us allow them to do so. This is because the current systemic crisis cannot be corrected without either a savage war against the standards of living of the majority of people – on the one hand, or a revolutionary change in the mode of production – on the other.

[See also; ‘The five-fold crisis of Capitalism’ , ‘Austerity: Its another word for War.’ or ‘Workers and others in the 21st century’.

Roy Ratcliffe (October 2013.)

Posted in Critique, Economics, Finance, neo-liberalism | Tagged , | 3 Comments

KILLING IN THE NAME OF GOD!

Posted on September 25, 2013 by stutteringsteps

The recent events in Kenya, in which as yet an unknown number of shoppers have been summarily executed, demonstrates once again that the urge to kill in the name of religion and god is on the increase. When those shoppers who were identified by the fundamentalist al-Shabaab sect, as good Muslims were set free and others who were not executed, a situation reminiscent of the middle-ages was played out. That is to say that when the opportunity arose, armed groups belonging to one religious sect were visibly and openly intent on physically harming or eliminating those who in some way represented a different way of life – or in some cases just a different interpretation of religious ideology.

In the middle-ages fundamentalist Puritans persecuted and executed Catholic fundamentalists, whilst Catholic fundamentalists did the same to non-conforming communities, whether they were Cathars or Muslims. The systematic, imprisonment, torture and burning of all obvious heretics, including females specialising in folk medicine, preceded the more ambitious military invasions of foreign lands and conquest of wealth by Catholic, Islamic and Protestant elites. Killing in the name of God is as old as the invention of a monotheistic God. In all such cases, the tenets of the religious texts – which each religious denomination inherited from the ancient past – were utilised to justify, theft of land, resources and discriminating slaughter. In the 21st century, religious fundamentalism is once again on the increase and once again its tap-roots are to be found embodied in religious ideologies and their supposedly god-given patriarchal texts.

For groups of people to overcome any natural and socially reinforced inhibitions about systematically killing other human beings there needs to be a shared ideology – a higher cause – both to bind them together and which rationalises and justifies their inhuman practices. Angry, frustrated, oppressed, unemployed people etc. – of which under the present mode of production there are many – generally respond by one of the following; individual criminality, black economic activity, political activism or even suicide. They do not usually form armed groups and set about systematically torturing and assassinating others. Frustration, oppression, discrimination, injustice, unemployment and lack of opportunity are by themselves insufficient for such organised and orchestrated acts of savagery.

In addition, human beings are not born with such inclinations or self-justifying ideologies, these have to be socially learned and socially reinforced. The male-dominated religions, particularly the Abrahamic religions have had centuries to perfect the methods of convincing people of the existence of an invisible and all-powerful ‘male’ entity who authorises their elite existence and has provided textual guidance to this effect. This ideological saturation of the human intellect begins at childhood. The childhood trust of children for the adults in their lives is systematically abused as fantasy ‘stories’ (fairies, goblins, Father Xmas etc.) are asserted as being ‘true’ until most of these concoctions fall apart at the internally contradictory narrative seams. The exception to the ignominious collapse of this ubiquitous fantasy parade in childhood is with regard to God – and for good reason.

The ideology of a male God and god-given authority in hierarchical societies is extremely useful to the elites who govern societies and communities for they can and do use this ideology to support their patriarchal rule. Hence Aristocratic, political, military and religious elites have always had a vested interest in promoting and perpetuating such ancient and unscientific fictions. Their jobs depended upon it. Indeed, they still do! The 21st century jobs, status and actions of all the worlds elite rulers depend almost entirely upon the rest of us believing one version or other of these un-enlightened two-thousand year old fictional creations. Hence religion, politics and military might are everywhere hand in hand if not actually hand in glove.

Even so-called secular leaders in the west are keen to project – and be protected by – an image of their sincere (or insincere) belief in an unknowable, unseen, male super-being who wrote or dictated some ancient, cobbled together instructions for how communities should live and be governed. Regular attendance at church, chapel, cathedral, mosque, synagogue by ‘leaders’ of nations – before, during or after ordering wars or massacres – are publicised as visual indicators of their sincerity, reliability and acceptability. But this obscene charade only continues because much of the world’s population has not yet thrown off their initial child-like trust in these self-serving religious fictions delivered to them during their infancy and later kept alive by peer group habit and ‘official’ social pressure.

In this way all ‘believers’ unwittingly perpetuate the very ideological and textual foundations of a brutal form of patriarchy upon which the fundamentalists who shoot and kill in the name of god depend for their unity and justifications. To repeat what was mentioned briefly above. To get together with other like-minded individuals in order to systematically kill requires not just anger, frustration or injustice, but an existing and unifying ideology. And these pre-requisites come ready made in the form of religious ideology and the so-called sacred texts. Christian Fundamentalists and Christian Zionists, Jewish Zionists, and Islamic fundamentalists, who all in one way or another, support and/or fund the killing of those not belonging to their own sect – all use their supposedly god-given religious texts as foundations for their inhuman actions.

When pro-abortion doctors and feminist activists set up abortion clinics the Christian fundamentalists who kill have no compunction in killing those who operate them. Why? Because by reading their so-called ‘authorised’ scriptures they find passages which allow and justify such actions. When Jewish Zionists kill or order the mass killing of Palestinians, they are guided by their fully authorised scriptures which among numerous bloodthirsty verses states that god gave them the land on which Palestinians have lived for generations. When Islamists shoot schoolgirls wishing to be educated or others who wish to vaccinate children, they undoubtedly could quote the Qur’an or an appropriate Hadith to justify this or that action. All these fundamentalist activists are doing actions suggested and authorised by their antique scriptures.

When on Saturday 21st September 2013 the al-Shabaab fighters lined people up in the Nairobi Westgate Shopping Mall before letting them go or assassinating them there and then – you can be sure they had been previously guided by the groups religious leader or Imam. The fact that the questions they asked in order to decide how to process their victims unequivocally demonstrates the fact of their absolute religious motivation. The questions they asked were religious ones to establish whether the shoppers were Muslim or not. If it is true that one of the killers said; “We are not monsters” and “The Muslim faith is not a bad one.”, then they were merely expressing what many uncritical Muslims would also take for granted. Yet the teaching of this faith – as with Christianity and Judaism – has not eradicated the desire, the actual practice and textual justification for killing in the name of god.

For this reason I suggest it is inadequate and insufficient for believers to distance themselves from such acts yet not distance themselves from their respective ‘authorised’ histories and texts which clearly justify such acts. A climate of self-criticism and radical re-thinking of their religious beliefs needs to be encouraged among all ‘believers’ if the world is to progress, beyond the current degenerative slide into religious, tribal and sectarian violence. In order to encourage critical reflection and to avoid such a regression it is insufficient for those on the left to ‘tolerate’ religious belief in an ill-thought out effort at ‘political correctness’, or in some muddled ‘moral equivalence’ posture or simply in order to the gain electoral votes from constituents who are religious.

This is because ‘liberal’ do-gooding neutrality or even lukewarm support for such patriarchal religious belief systems, not only leaves open the door for a further erosion of women’s rights – bad enough in itself – but much else is at stake. Religious beliefs of this kind are not only antiquated, childish and mistaken but are extremely dangerous. They have been so in the past and are again proving to be so in the present.

The re-assertion of religious forms of governance is a retrograde step in the progress of humanity, which has become internationally co-operative in economic terms and needs to be so in social terms. Such dysfunctional beliefs need serious and sustained challenge from all humanist inspired activists. It needs to be recognised that a section of the new generation of activist youth have embraced Islamism rather than anti-capitalism. Their vision of the future is for servile women along with continued capitalist exploitation rather than of equal partners under a post-capitalist egalitarian system.

Only such a serious challenge can hope to erode the present hold of fundamentalist ideologies on growing numbers of the youth of today and safeguard future generations from this sectarian dead end. This is because many of the recruits to Islamic jihad are quite rightly disgusted with the capitalist/imperialist and state-capitalist (communist) modes of production but mistakenly seek a better life under a future Islamic caliphate. This is an imaginary project which is as unrealistic, self-defeating and inhumane as one desiring an apartheid Jews-only state stretching from the Euphrates to the Nile, or one requiring indifference to this world whilst awaiting some fictional ‘rapture’ and the supposed ’gathering’ of the Christian elect. A consistent onslaught against such fictional projections and sectarian violence is necessary as well as broad-based non-sectarian community self-defence measures.

For the immediate future, the material frustrations, inequalities and injustices which are now universal due to the universality of the capitalist mode of production will remain. These can only be eradicated by a revolutionary transformation of this now reactionary and self-destructive mode of production. However, an economic transformation of this scale and magnitude cannot come about in the 21st century unless a majority of humanity are able to elevate the status of their humanity above that of their present religious or party political beliefs.

The sloughing off or at least a significant reduction in the importance of reactionary religious and political ideologies, is a necessary part of the process facing humanity in order to move on and not to be driven backwards. This transcendence will be necessary in order to overthrow the capitalist mode of production and end its persistent and uncontrollable economic, political, military and ecological destruction. Meanwhile there is an ideological battle for revolutionary-humanists to attend to. Killing in any form is a practice devised by insecure elites, not by humane communities of equality and justice. Killing in the name of God belongs where it was first advocated two millennia ago and should now be relegated to the antique section of the dustbin of history.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2013)

[See also Religion versus Women’s rights’ ; ‘Religion is Politics ; Patriarchy and Terror ; and ‘Woolwich: Elites in Denial’.

Posted in Patriarchy, Religion, Sectarianism | Tagged , | 1 Comment

EGYPT: THE JUNTA HELPS STRANGLE GAZA.

Posted on September 20, 2013 by stutteringsteps

The reactionary nature of the Military Junta in Egypt has already been amply demonstrated by its savage treatment of those who protest against its arbitrary rule. Arrests, detentions and brutal treatment of oppositionists and news reporters has been attested and well documented by activists and various human-rights organisations. Crimes against humanity are being committed daily upon internationals and the citizens of Egypt. But there are also another set of victims as a result of this summers seizure of power by the elite members of the Egyptian military. These are the citizens of Gaza.

It is internationally recognised that the Zionist state of Israel has committed various large-scale atrocities against the ‘locked-in’ inhabitants of Gaza. Over the past few years there have been numerous Israeli military incursions into Gaza using weapons which have caused mass destruction of infrastructure and human life. The object of such indiscriminate brutality is to terrorise the people of Gaza into officially recognising the state of Israel and accepting any future fate the Zionist elite and its supporters wish to dish out to them.

But even without such intermittent savagery and destruction, there has been a virtual uninterrupted siege by Israel upon Gaza for many years. The Zionist and pro-Zionist political and military elite of Israel have for decades locked in the citizens of Gaza and subjected them to a calculated restriction in human rights for food, water, homes, health care and education. Gaza has for many years been the world’s largest prison in which the Israeli guards, periodically enter fully armed and savagely beat up on the inhabitants.

The one feeble corridor of relief in this unremitting and inhuman siege has been through the underground tunnels to Egypt along with restricted access to the Rafah border crossing. However, since the seizure of power by the US backed military elite in Egypt, that meagre corridor has been further restricted – this time on the orders of the Egyptian Military Junta. In the past, over 300 tunnels and the Rafah crossing allowed a tiny fraction of the much needed commodities and materials to be transported into Gaza. In addition the Rafah crossing – when opened – allowed a few students and some medical services such as doctors to come and go.

However, since June 2013 even this feeble flow has practically ceased. Tunnels have been recently destroyed and the Rafah crossing has been closed for an extended period – by none other than the Egyptian military forces. This has had the effect of further tightening the economic and social noose around the necks of the people of Gaza. It amounts to a collusion with Israel in the virtual garrotting of the citizens Gaza. The class-nature of the military and political elite currently in power in Egypt is in this way demonstrated to be essentially the same as the military and political elite in Israel and elsewhere.

The capitalist inspired military-industrial complex in the US and Europe along with its elite controllers and beneficiaries stretches its tentacles across national boundaries and by the use of lucrative inducements, bribes and rewards it smoothes over any religious or national differences. So Muslim elites, Jewish elites and Christian elites can unite – not only to distribute the spoils of their continual exploitation – but also to prevent any opposition to their parasitic existence. This collusion is clearly revealed by the many formal and informal liaisons between these respective elites at the diplomatic and military levels.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, the reason proffered by the Egyptian military elite for all their ruthlessness is very much the same as the rationale of Israel, the US and Europe – it is part of the ‘war against terror’. Yet it should be obvious by now that the biggest and most prolific sources of terror are those orchestrated by the state officials and their armed bodies of men. This is despite the fact that military orchestrated terror is the principle begetter of revengeful terror among increasing numbers of those effected by their repeated bombings, assassinations and invasions.

When the Egyptian army officers recently ordered the bulldozing and blowing up of houses on the Egyptian side of the border and when the Egyptian navy officers recently authorised firing on Gaza fishermen another tightening of the screw took place. Not only will hardship be increased for the people of Gaza, but so too will anger and frustration. These actions will undoubtedly cause more individuals in Gaza and Egypt to become desperate enough to try to hit back. For the capitalistic political and military elites this self-fulfilling cycle is useful, because the more terrorists they provoke in this way – the more need it appears there is for their services. In actual fact, the capitalist and pro-capitalist military and political elites are part of the problem not part of any solution.

Only an anti-capitalist revolution with a core of humanist values can break humanity out of the present capitalist inspired cycle of economic collapse, war, poverty, injustice, climate change and ecological destruction currently being visited upon many communities throughout the world. Until that holistic recognition gains universal acceptance and creates its own wide-spread international activism there is still the need to protest against the most horrific examples of brutality inflicted upon our human community. In that context the plight of the Palestinians in the West Bank and particularly in Gaza urgently need our support.

See also International Campaign to #OpenRafahBorder

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2013.) ;

Posted in Arab Spring, Critique, Egypt, Palestine | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

UPRISINGS AND REVOLUTIONS – 2.

Posted on September 6, 2013 by stutteringsteps

In Uprisings and Revolutions – 1, I attempted to condense my own research on the development of uprisings and revolutionary processes along with the general stages they pass through on their way to either defeat or success. That research was prompted by a growing realisation that, despite our frequent use of the word, many of us on the revolutionary anti-capitalist left, had no clear understanding of the processes or stages involved in such epoch-making socio-economic changes. It now appears that there is also only a vague understanding of the socio-economic content of such changes. Hence this second article.

The above noted encounters also convinced me that the majority of those classifying themselves as revolutionary anti-capitalists were, to a greater or lesser extent, also sectarian dogmatists. Their lack of understanding of ‘revolution’ was therefore only one of the characteristics of their sectarianism. Namely the characteristic of operating by means of idealised abstractions and being satisfied by logical deductions – irrespective of whether these deductions corresponded to the actual events considered – or not. A characteristic which continues in the 21st century. [See Sectarianism Parts, 1, 2, and 3.]

The sectarian view of unfolding reality is always adjusted to make sure – as far as possible – that their dogma (often misrepresented as principles) prestige and self-esteem remains untarnished. Since reality is always complex it is possible for sectarians to select from it so as to confirm their pre-existing views. Rarely are their views seriously questioned or checked to establish whether they still correspond to reality as it unfolds. In other words an ideological method of reasoning is adopted. This involves  separating ideas from the material foundations upon which they arise and then transforming them into superior ideas that the sectarian considers are the most ‘advanced’.

Reading recent articles and statements by some revolutionary anti-capitalists of the situation in Egypt and Syria, it has become obvious that this mode of operations still characterises much of the left. Since real ‘revolutionary transformations are infrequent events and there have been none since the early 20th century, it has become too easy to operate using such abstractions derived from previous ones. Some on the left have witnessed the mass uprisings in the ‘Arab Spring’ countries and based primarily upon the large numbers involved, have drawn the conclusion that actual revolutions have taken place.

This then becomes a serious problem. Having classified them as such everything else they describe about the situation in these countries flows logically from that primary (and as we shall see mistaken) assertion. Any serious or temporary fluctuations in the struggle between the contending political formations in these countries of uprising must then be dualistically interpreted as ‘revolutionary’ or ‘counter-revolutionary’ without any regard to their specific content – or even lack of it. Their reliance on second-hand abstract formulations allow them to mistake the ‘form’ – initial mass uprisings – as being sufficient ‘content’ in itself to make it a revolution.

Distinguishing form from content.

Yet a study of historical cases, suggests there is a marked difference between an uprising which is predominantly motivated by being against something and one which is also clearly motivated for something. If it is only against something, then an uprising is unlikely to attract and sustain sufficient numbers to support it. Any absent, undeveloped or counter-productive content of an uprising does not bode well for its future success. Even if the uprising obtains popular support and succeeds in temporarily defeating the object against which it is directed, without a some kind of positive alternative and future focussing and unifying perspective, it can immediately begin to flounder and become, aimless, bogged down, or subverted.

All three of these possible effects have been clearly demonstrated by the 21st century uprisings in the Middle East and the Nagreb. In Tunisia the massively popular uprising against Ben Ali, became bogged down and subverted into sectarian electoral politics. In Egypt, the protests against the Mubarak regime, also became deflected (or subverted) into sectarian political channels and is now almost back to before (Tahir) square one with arbitrary military rule dominating Egyptian society. In Libya the popular uprising against Gaddafi, was also subverted and after the sadistic bombing by Europe and the USA, has become bogged down in sectarian, internal and regional conflict.

In Syria, the initial uprising against Assad has also become subverted and bogged down in what amounts to a tri-party civil war between government, secularists and Islamists for control of the state – or at least a break-away slice of it. And in this case again – as with Libya – with the neo-liberal west once more poised to dump its surplus weapons production on innocent and guilty alike. In Bahrain protest was brutally crushed and elsewhere in the region protests were bought off with force and huge tranches of accumulated petrochemical super-profits.

In each of these cases there was little or no systematic development of a positive content to the popularity of the uprisings even though the potential for this content was visible from the outset. The young graduate, who set fire to himself in Tunisia, which provided the spark to set the Arab Spring ablaze, epitomised the growing regional dissatisfaction in the economic and social conditions of the bulk of their respective populations. In Egypt it was the slogan ‘peace, bread and justice’ which summed up – albeit in an abstract form – the real potential revolutionary content of the uprising there and elsewhere.

Yet in these two countries this positive and potential revolutionary content does not appear to have been developed into a consistent, wide-spread and high-profile message with practical measures and suggestions attached to it. Nor does such a perspective appear to have materialised in any other of the countries involved in the Arab Spring Uprisings. This initial unifying ember among the tinder of resentment and anger seems to have been neglected, rather than being fanned into a roaring blaze. There has been no modern widespread unifying slogan transcending differences of class, politics, religion and region, such as – ‘Peace, Bread and Land’ – that emerged in 20th century Russia. Nor is there any positive vision of a future post-capitalist form of economic and social reconstruction.

A revolutionary content is essential.

Yet a positive content is required for all successful revolutions. It is true that the English revolution of 1641 – 50, was highly motivated by anger against the king continually exercising his dictatorial prerogative. However, anger with the king was not what sustained participants through the years and harsh winters of the English civil war. The Parliamentary leaders and their followers were also motivated by their desire to pursue freedom to sustain and develop bourgeois economic relations as well as religious alternatives to the existing dominant ones. Another socio-economic form had been proven to be possible and worth fighting for. The same (or very similar) can be said of the motivations behind the French Revolution and the American Revolution of the 18th century. That is to say economic reasons underpinned all the religious, moral, legalistic and political rhetoric the contending parties articulated.

It is also true, to some extent of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the 1930’s Maoist Revolution in China – before both became fatally transformed into totalitarian forms of state-capitalism. What sustains an uprising beyond its initial flash-point and the consequent short-lived momentum of being against this or that ’system’, is an evolving idea (its growing revolutionary content) of what life should be – and could now be – and what is needed to transcend the underlying cause of the popular unrest. Indeed, both types of motivation (for and against) can coexist, but if an angry uprising is to be transformed into a determined revolutionary movement then sooner or later, there needs to be a clear and popular understanding of what the positive aspects of the protests are and what they are aimed at achieving.

It is clear that in the growing systemic crisis of the capitalist mode of production, there is a rising tide of anger and frustration against capitalism. Every country in the world is dominated by the neo-liberal phase of capitalism and consequently in every country there is visible large-scale, structural unemployment, insitutionalised poverty alongside obscene levels of wealth and plenty. At the same time there is awareness of wide-spread corruption at every level of government and civil society institutions – including the financial sectors. Paralleled with these obscenities are catastrophic levels of atmospheric, land and ocean pollution. Yet the machinery, technology and scientific know-how exists for sustainable production which could ensure a satisfactory level of well-being for everyone on the planet.

Finally, there is increasing oppression by the elite controllers of capitalist states against their own citizens as well as those of other countries. The world is awash with capitalist produced armaments being used to fight over the capitalist produced conditions of poverty, exploitation and oppression. In the 21st century, there are multiple reasons to be against the capitalist mode of production and potentially astronomical numbers of people wanting something different from the current unsustainable corruption and chaos from the domination of capital. The potential for revolution is therefore global. But here is the rub. There is also a huge crisis on the left and not just in terms of its extraordinarily low numbers. There is now a dearth of unified, inclusive anti-capitalist ideas and associated economic system vision to replace the present out-dated and self-destructive one. There is no positive example of a large-scale alternative. This possibility was negated by the vanguard elitism of a previous generation of anti-capitalists.

Revolutions Betrayed.

So it cannot be surprising that – as yet in the 21st century – there is no positive and clear content to the existing and any future uprisings against the system. Given the outcomes of previous attempts by anti-capitalists to transcend the capitalist mode of production, the anti-capitalist project has been rejected by all but a few. On the one hand, the numerous examples of reformist ‘socialist’ experiments in Britain and Europe, have only succeeded in maintaining the capitalist mode of production with a few patronising charitable ‘benefit systems’ for capitalisms human rejects – now after several decades to be taken away. During that period of Social Democracy the rich got richer, the poor got poorer and the capitalists successfully corrupted the so-called ‘representatives’ of the working and oppressed classes. Labour and Democratic Socialist reformism, metaphorically and literally has proved a dead end – particularly in their support for wars.

On the other hand, the ‘communist’ examples of Russia, China, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, North Korea etc., stand as massive negative examples of what can become of the lives and welfare of those who followed the 20th century ideas and practices of those who classed themselves as ‘communists’. This has proved itself yet another tragic and brutal cul-de-sac rather than a positive way forward. Truly revolutions – betrayed. These two generic examples of what a post-capitalist society would look like – epitomised by 1945 Britain on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other – offer no convincing or appealing potential ‘content’ to any present or future uprisings in the middle east, Europe, North America or elsewhere. To pretend otherwise or ignore this glaringly obvious fact is to emulate an ostrich.

We now have a capitalist system again in world-wide terminal melt-down and, as noted, not even a partial vision of what could positively transcend it to enthuse the majority of earths humanity – who sooner or later will be compelled to rise up against it! But for what?. Indeed, there is not even an attempt to come up with an accepted version of what form a post-capitalist mode of production might take among those few remaining elements within the Leninist and Trotskyist anti-capitalist tradition. Split into competing sects and bogged down in sterile polemics over whom has the ‘correct’ understanding of Leninism or Trotskyism, there is nothing but confusion and dogmatic pettiness among much of this section of the anti-capitalist left.

Worse still, having classified the uprising of 2011 in Egypt as a revolution, many such self-certified revolutionaries have now had to classify the recent military coup as a ‘counter-revolution’, when in fact it is just a re-imposition of a naked military rule. The military had never left the economic, political or financial seats of power in business or the state. They had merely assumed a posture of tolerance, donned a form of democratic camouflage and retreated slightly into the background. The reality is that despite the sacrifices made in Egypt, there has never been a revolution. And any potential revolutionary content has been sidelined by a focus on politics and political outcomes. Have some on the left contributed to this focus on political solutions? You bet.

A 21st century content-less and vision-less ‘left‘?

Indeed, there has never been a full development of the uprisings, based upon their original socio-economic motives, which started in 2011. There was no general recognition among those who assembled in Tahir square to protest, that changes in who governs the system would be insufficient to solve the problems of food, housing and justice, facing the population now or in the future. If there where any voices which articulated this aspiration and warned of the danger of illusions in bourgeois democracy, they were drowned out by those who thought differently. Otherwise, the masses would not have been deflected for so long into the sterile cul-de-sac of bourgeois electoral politics or into internecine, self-defeating sectarian violence .

Does this lack of understanding and consequent mistaken classification really matter or is it just being unnecessarily pedantic to point out this dismal fact? I suggest it does matter. I further suggest careful analysis and accurate classification is a pre-requisite for those active in relationship to large-scale uprisings and civil-disorders. If those who count themselves as revolutionaries do not understand revolutionary processes and make such fundamental mistakes it is likely that they will misunderstand many other things – and worse still – pass these misunderstandings onto others. This is exactly what many are currently doing.

A similar confusion arises over the difference between a civil-war and a revolution. The fact that in both cases (civil-war and revolution) citizens of the same state are struggling violently against each other for some particular outcome, does not exhaust the question for revolutionary anti-capitalists. A civil war can be a contest between one party or faction and another – over control of the state – under the existing mode of production. In this case the contest is over who has power to govern. The form may be a militarised civil-war but the content is political. These are not revolutions in the sense revolutionary-humanists and other anti-capitalists define them.

The necessary content of anti-capitalist revolutions.

Since the time of Marx and other anti-capitalists, a revolution requires a different purpose and content for the struggle against the ruling capitalist and pro-capitalist elite. Uprisings, demonstrations, petitions and changes in government personnel will not solve the basic problems for the bulk of humanity. Due to the degenerate nature of the capitalist system, modern revolutions are required to be epoch changing and radically alter the present mode of production. The task is not to replace one entrenched ruling elite with another by means of an uprising or even a civil-war, but to change the entire mode of economic production and along with it the mode of social relationships. The means of struggle for this end may initially take the form of a civil uprising and possible/probable civil war between the states elites, their supporters and the majority of the population, but the content – and even the form – is indisputably different.

In other words the ‘form’ and ‘content’ of an anti-capitalist revolution is a protracted struggle to overcome the existing dominant ideas and economic practices along with the ruling class who control these ideas and practices and transform the entire mode of production. This includes eliminating the class structure and transforming the form of governance of populations into self-governing communities, jointly controlling the means of production and producing for ecologically sustainable human needs. The ‘form’ of a revolutionary movement to achieve this as a consequence needs also to match the content. The revolutionary form needs to be fully participative, truly democratic and inclusive, non-sectarian, and inspired by revolutionary-humanist values.

In contrast the ‘content’ of a non-revolutionary civil war has a more politically limited purpose and a more political form. To achieve its purpose ‘civil-war’ only requires charismatic leaders and an obedient and energetic led in both the political and military arena’s. There are of course other, more nuanced, differences also between a civil-war and a revolution but the above is an important and fundamental difference. It is interesting in this regard, that the pro-capitalist elite in Europe and North America have colluded in the description of the Arab Spring uprisings as revolutions.

Knowing that revolutions are legitimate – their predecessors having come to power by these means – the pro-capitalist elites in the west and elsewhere can then adopt a somewhat positive attitude toward these. Effectively saying; ‘you’ve had your revolution so now get back to work and we will help you to re-construct your politics, infrastructures and economies to get them back on their feet’. Colludion with this terminological confusion, by the left therefore, serves the neo-liberal capitalist elite well. However, elite and media false characterisations of reality and potential are not the only problem. So too is the sloppy thinking by some on the left, for it means there is no serious voice to contradict this naive or deliberately engineered neo-liberal misperception.

How to avoid being part of the problem.

Those on the left who automatically classify large-scale uprisings and vicious civil-wars as revolutions also sow confusion amongst themselves and the working class. To avoid this they should seriously study past revolutions and uprisings. If they do not the workers and oppressed can be ‘led’ by them into thinking that they have done enough if they have massed in uprisings and offered themselves as martyrs for an imagined revolution, which has brought them nothing. Disillusionment can then set in when their misdirected efforts and huge sacrifices produce little or no positive results.

Alternatively, they can be sucked into the ranks of those who are engaged in a civil-war struggle thinking it a revolution and become naive shock troops drawn behind one or other competing faction in a struggle for control of an existing country or state. For example, thousands of working people who thought themselves ‘socialists’ in the 20th century, fell for this and joined the Bolsheviks in Russia and the National Socialists in Germany. Look where it got them! They became the exploited wage slaves of totalitarian states. Others calling themselves ‘communists’ stood aside in the struggles against the Nazis – thinking their time would come. It did in Hitlers concentration camps. There are countless other examples of the left being part of the problem and not part of the solution.

In the complex, shifting, confusing events which swirl around any large-scale civil unrest, it is important that those engaged in support of the anti-capitalist perspective are clear about what ‘content’ is present, absent or what pseudo-content is being projected into those struggles to deflect them into dead ends. In the context of an uprising or potential civil-war, the anti-capitalist ‘content’ of any struggle – if it does not dominate spontaneously – needs to be introduced by the revolutionary anti-capitalists. Even huge events are not potentially revolutionary if they do not gain such a content or produce one in the developing process.

Even if any ‘revolutionary’ content is drowned out by more powerful voices then it still needs to be persistently promoted and become a pole of attraction for those engaged in the struggle at whatever level they entered it. And who is to do this if not the revolutionary anti-capitalists, if they are not to become part of the problem? It is clear that in the case of the Arab Spring uprisings and those demonstrations now occurring in Europe, the real revolutionary content is socio-economic and not political. The focus should be on this socio-economic content, together with the non-sectarian self-activity of the workers and oppressed. It should not be on the construction and conduct of formal politics involving political parties and bourgeois elections.

Attempts to obscure, deflect or subvert that socio-economic content in favour of a political content, can only aid the cause of the ruling elites and those reactionary forces which have an elitist agenda. Any failure by the anti-capitalist left to leave out the full implications of the capitalist mode of production and its current five-fold crisis, is to assist the reactionary elements within society and to misdirect the efforts of those struggling against this or that aspect of oppression or exploitation. Any clinging onto dogma, any failure to admit mistakes, any continued use of outmoded and discredited organisational forms and any defence of half understood abstractions by the left will be a barrier which workers and the oppressed will need – sooner or later – to pass round or dismantle and climb over.

Roy Ratcliffe (September 2013)

Posted in Arab Spring, Critique, Egypt, neo-liberalism, Sectarianism | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments