ELITE COVER-UPS & CLAMP-DOWNS.

Posted on May 23, 2024 by stutteringsteps

It becomes possible to recognise how serious a general crisis has become when the hierarchical ‘establishment‘ elites of such societies can no longer successfully ‘cover up’ crimes against humanity and must therefore either deny they are occuring or clamp down heavily on those trying to hold the elite accountable for their actions or inactions. Four out of the many such cover-ups and clamp downs in the last several decades have been running concurrently this last six months or so. In the US, the UK, Europe and elsewhere the first three are a) the Covid Pandemic debacle and cover-up’s; b) the UK Infected blood purchase and subsequent cover-up’s; and c) again in the UK the Post Office production of false accounting evidence, cover up and convictions against UK Post Office personnel.

These three have all been serious crimes by the establishment elite against the humanity of their own citizens in terms of their health, livelihoods and even of life itself. These actions and inactions were all initially denied and anyone challenging the official cover-up narratives were vilified and silenced before eventually the criminality of the ‘establishment’ became impossible to deny. Each of these long running incompetences caused serious loss of life, health and income and were malignly ‘covered-up’ or whistleblowers clamped down upon for very class-based elite purposes. The purposes were in order to try to mask the fact that the ruling elite establishments in politics, business, finance and public administration, are not only substantially incompetent but also morally deficient. They felt the cover-ups were necessary because the two characteristics of competence and upright morality are their chief – and only – claims that justify their elite status and pay.

The fourth current issue now exposing the true character of the international elite is the long-term denial and cover-up of the crimes against humanity occurring in the Occupied Territories of West Bank and Gaza in Palestine. The elite establishments of the US, UK, Europe and elsewhere have for decades obscured the savagery of occupation or justified their support for Israel’s ongoing colonial style war of dispossesion of the people of Palestine. Typical of all colonial elites the Jewish elites in Israel have long blamed their victims in Palestine for any brutal resistance to the brutal Jewish occupation and dispossession of their lands, buildings and water aquifers. Of course the unnecessary brutality of one side does not justify the unnecessary brutality of the other side. But in the case of Palestinian resistance to armed occupation by the Israeli armed forces, the west long ago decided to apply double standards.

So now Palestinian resistance to Jewish occupation is judged by the Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel differently than European resistance to the German occupation of European countries was in 1939 – 45. And differently than Asian resistance to Japan was during the Japanese occupation of Asian countries. Palestinian resistance to Israeli armed occupation is also judged differently than Ukrainian resistance to the armed occupations of parts of Ukraine by Russian troops. In the minds of the international elites their judgement of actions by other countries elites largely depends upon which team of colonisers and exploiters they are allied with.

The Israeli elite are clearly on the side of team NATO headed by the US, UK and Europe; whereas the Palestinian elite and the people of Palestine are not. NATO is an unequal alliance of mainly western pro-capitalist elites who have combined their armed forces to ensure that their own pecunary interests, along with economic, financial or mineral exploitation rights around the globe are protected from seizure by rival countries and from the previous indigenous exercisers of those rights. Israel has long been ‘team NATO’s’ crucial middle eastern armed outpost. Added to this elite collaboration of western based capitalists and pro-capitalist elites there are also three other fear factors motivating continued western elite support for Israel.

From the perspective of the various financial and political elites within NATO those three factors are fear of the removal of financial backing, removal of political voting power by the Jewish diaspora and the fear of being labelled anti-semitic. All of these human factors when sufficiently motivated can be used to effect the election results, the careers and status of those employed in politics, media and education. Since the end of the Second World War in 1945, the memory of the Nazi inspired genocidal holocaust and murderous blitzkrieg against what its elites considered were lesser human beings, has resulted in the provision of legal and moral constraints. In an attempt to prevent further crimes against humanity the populations once de-humanised by Nazi categories have been given the protection of a law and a moral obligation for other peoples to treat them as equals. These measures were introduced as attempts to prevent further severe crimes against humanity, later described as genocide.

The statutes against crimes against humanity and genocide, were embodied in the founding principles of the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice and are now being activated against Israel and Hamas, by South African elites and others. Furthermore, as a result of the Nazi holocaust against them, the Jewish people in particular were also accorded a considerable degree of sympathy and a general humanitarian resolve to end future prejudice against Jewish people. Therefore In the immediate aftermath of that Second World War, the expression ‘never again’ became a generic sentiment expressed against any future attempt at annihilating an entire people, but it also became a particular focus in relationship to the often tragic history of the Jewish people.

Sadly, the generic aspect of that sentiment has been overlooked to such an extent that in fact in 2024 a form of genocide is happening once again. This time the most hideous crimes possible against a section of humanity are being perpetrated by a country populated almost entirely by Jewish people and which classifies itself as the ‘Jewish’ State of Israel. Of course, because mass killing (genocide) against humanity is so unnatural for a species and is so universally obnoxious, that no perpetrator of genocide ever admits to perpetrating it. The Nuremberg trials of the Nazi hierarchy demonstrated this tendency of denial emphatically. Some Nazi elites claimed they were only engaged in legitimate (!) acts of war, others that they were simply following orders. It cannot be expected therefore, that the Jewish elites in political and military control of Israel will admit to carrying out a genocidal extermination of the people of Palestine in Gaza or elsewhere. True to form, they too are vigourously denying it and claiming what they are doing is just another legitimate form of warfare.

Furthermore, the machinations of the capitalist dominated hierarchical mode of production have also placed the non-Israeli western elites belonging to NATO in the centre of an obvious massive scandal and contradiction. They have now placed themselves between, on the one hand, a legal and moral code against genocide which they agreed to be bound by; and on the other hand, the fact that an ally of theirs, Israel, is openly and repeatedly perpetrating multiple acts of genocide. Stupidly they have dug themselves further into a deep quagmire of their own making by parroting the same puerile tactic of denial as Israel and the Jews who support their elite have. To openly deny what practically everyone has clearly witnessed on their Television screens since October 7th 2023, is further evidence of their immorality and professional incompetence. Only intellectually or morally impaired people can attempt to deny what is clearly obvious to anyone not blinded by self-interested prejudice.

Unlike other previous genocidal type war activities by the western elites, this time it has been impossible to effectively cover it up. By assassinating journalists, media people and removing crime scene evidence, particularly in Gaza, attempts have been made by the Jewish military to eliminate or at least reduce incriminating evidence. This tactic alongside a strategy of obviously false claims concerning the war guilt of the men, women and children of Gaza’s civilian population has only made the genocidal intent and execution more obvious. In addition the arms and high explosive bombs supplied to Israel by the elite supporters within the NATO alliance has also further sunk these European and Western elites into the mire they have created by becoming active accessories to the perpetrators of the crime of genocide. Arrest warrants have now been applied for those in the leadership positions of Israel and Hamas and whether they will be granted and served remains to be seen.

The guilty elites in question may be powerful enough and wield enough influence currently to avoid the legal consequences of their obvious guilt, but they are not influential enough to avoid the moral condemnation of current and future generations. It must be an uncomfortable fact for them to consider that nearly eighty years after the Nazi holocaust perpetrated in Germany, the German people as a whole have only just begun to overcome the ignominy and guilt cast upon them by a previous generations complicity in the attempted extermination of the Jews throughout Nazi occupied Europe. Make no mistake about it, that long term example of global damage to the reputation of the German people for conducting or endorsing by silence severe crimes against humanity is a precursor of what is yet to come. The overwhelming Jewish support in Israel and elsewhere for the actual and attempted extermination of the entire Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank will mean that the Jews of Israel and their international supporters will also carry the deep and damaging stain of this latest crime against humanity – for at least another generation – and perhaps even more.

In the history of humanity and its recurrent ancient and medieval religious wars instigated by Christian elites, Muslim elites and Jewish elites, and particularly those infamously highlighted in European history as the numerous Crusades have lived on in infamy for almost a thousand years. The genocidal war of a powerfully armed Jewish State with bunker-busting bombs dropped upon the homes and schools of the non-combattant Palestinian citizens of Gaza and the West Bank in the 21st century will stand out just as starkly in the subsequent modern history of the human species. This blitzkrieg on Gaza, along with the Covid death toll, the infected blood scandal and the UK post office persecutions will also be blights upon the character of all those in the elite and those who supported them, who did not uphold the ancient humanist golden rule of; ‘do not do to others and their loved ones, what you would not want done to yourself and your loved ones.

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2024.)

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ONE STEP FORWARD; THREE STEPS BACK?

Posted on May 14, 2024 by stutteringsteps

In the current context of global economic, financial, social and military dystopia it is not surprising that every few months there are some groups in the world trying to make sense of what is happening to the planet it’s people and its environment. I have previously drawn attention to a number of such proposals in earlier articles on this blog. This months selection is no different in this regard and I present examples published this month (May 2024) emanating from Sweden, Malasia and Argentina. In a short article I am not able to delve deeply into these three positions concerning the current and future crises they seek to address, so I have selected extracts which I consider represent the essence of these positions

Extracts from a Swedish Democratic Left Political Party Campaign.

“There are three key priorities for this campaign: the climate transition, securing good and safe jobs, and the cost of living crisis. In some respects, the EU is more progressive on climate than the right-wing Swedish government, which is now dismantling years of climate policies, but the neoliberal dogma that prevails at the EU level prevents state aid measures to deliver the large investments needed for the green transition. EU member states must be allowed to make huge investments for a just transition, creating jobs and a better life for many people, and the EU must stop subsidising the fossil industry.” (Hanna Gedin (Left Party, Sweden.)

And:

“As the left we’re still looking for a better strategy, and we need to prioritise better than we have ever done before. People must be able to better understand what we stand for. So, we are trying to focus on very concrete things in people’s lives, like pensions, like the fact the government is cutting the public sector and health, those kinds of things. We are also seeing growing inequalities in Sweden, with more and more people no longer covered by social security and standing in line for food. The lines keep growing, as people can’t afford to buy food. This is not a new thing in Sweden, but it’s been aggravated a lot.” (Ibid)

I have highlighted in italics those sentences which to my assessment indicate the level of thinking and understanding of the person heading up the initiative they are promoting. This first example indicates a membership of an established political (Parliamentary) section of the modern European Bourgeois democratic order. In the first extract there is a wish for the individual bourgeois state elites to deliver huge investments for a green transition of production to create a better life for many people. In the second extract the author reveals they are focussing on concrete things such as pensions, maintaining the public sector whilst extending social security and are concerned that the traditional food poverty in Sweden is getting worse. To my mind it is a step backward and wishful thinking to imagine that a bourgeois system which, in a very rich country like Sweden still has food poverty, is going to make great, let alone huge investments for a just transition from what is (and has been) occuring for the last five or six decades.

Extracts from an article by the Socialist Party of Malaysia.

“But we have come to see that Gramsci’s analysis of society speaks to our predicament. Gramsci said that the ideology of the ruling class becomes dominant ideology of the entire society. He termed it the hegemonic ideology of society. People make decision based on the ideology perpetuated by the ruling class.” ((Dana) Langaswaran, from the Socialist Party of Malaysia)  


And;


“This is because of the model of development adopted in Malaysia. Malaysia relies on foreign direct investments to create jobs. We compete with Thailand, Vietnam and Philippines. All these countries try to be as business friendly as possible. And all of us are keeping the cost of labour as low as possible to attract investments. That is why real median wage of factory workers only went up 1.4 times over 50 years in a country whose GDP increased 24 fold.” (ibid)


And;


“Another way of sharing the wealth of society is by subsidizing public services like transport and health care as well as implementing social protection schemes like universal old age pension. But our government says that they cannot expand the social safety net because the government deficit is too big. (ibid)

Now it is a long time since I sat down and gave the works of Gramsci a good examination, but I do not remember reading anything about the specific ecological, climate and pollution crises which we now face and require solutions for. However, the extract which follows from that Gramsci perspective, suggests that re-examining his ideas would be a waste of my time. The second extract reveals that the authors political Party is part of a collective system which competes with other countries to keep wages low and workers in relative – if not absolute poverty. The third extract reveals that in the midst of a multiple symptom crisis, the ambition for the future of Malasia by the Malasian Socialist Party is for the state to subsidise public transport and health and implement a pension scheme.

To me, this is a further example of a step back to outdated thinking whilst reality is being carried forward into a radically new set of circumstances. These ‘aims’ were once all laudible (but failed) 20th century reformist ambitions concerned with improving working class lives in the ex colonies. However, those socialist authors formulating them then had no knowledge that it is the life of multiple key species and lives of working humanity – as a whole – which is now being negatively impacted by capitalism. Consequently, it is no longer a reform of the worst aspects of the current capitalist system in each country which is needed but a revolutionary transition of the whole international system of mass society human living. We now have an increasingly fragile, climate, ecological and environmental situation – everywhere! Local solutions need to be globally and ecologically capable of being integrated.

From the the organisers of an Eco-Socialist Meeting in Argentina.

“The global ecological and geomorphological system has been altered for the first time in history. The main geomorphological force behind this is the current capitalist mode of production, distribution, and consumption, which is based on “endless” growth and accumulation. This affects not only the features and characteristics of the Earth’s rivers, seas, and oceans, but also the scale, diversity, and complexity of the planet’s biodiversity.” (Maria Elena Saludas. On 2024 International Eco-Socialist Meeting.)


“Creating these alternative worlds that prioritise social, ecological, and climate justice is a challenge that inspires and motivates us as we observe anti-capitalist movements taking place globally. To revolutionise every aspect, dissidents, workers, youth, women, indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, peasants, and scientists are resisting and battling. They denounce the obscene accumulation of capital and the defence of the rights of a small minority that appropriates and destroys our common goods.” (ibid)


“The context is becoming more complex by the day, with the advance of an extreme right that aims to destroy the rights won over years of struggle by workers, trade unions, and feminist, social, environmental, and human rights organizations that have fought—and continue to fight—for more democracy and popular sovereignty in the face of dictatorships and neoliberal projects. However, this whole scenario also invites us to build possible horizons based on socio-political and ecological struggles from below and to the left.” (ibid)


The first extract has clearly identified the problem facing the bio-diversity of life on earth in general as well as humanity in particular, but it does not identify the type of alternative worlds they hope to create. And the type and content of future human social forms is crucially important given that the vanguardist left statists (admirers of Lenin, Stalin and Mao) are once again promoting the idea that another alternative world to a neo-liberal capitalist one is possible and preferable. In these latter cases it would be some form of vanguard party-led, state-capitalist one, which would also be a step backward. The second extract suggests the alternative worlds should prioritise the ‘just’ concerns of the human species. No other species in the inter-connected and inter-dependent web of life on earth are referenced to be prioritised in this particular ‘eco-socialist’ perspective.

In the third extract the exclusively anthropocentric human focus continues. Moreover, the rights won by years of struggle by workers, trade unionists and others, where not necessarily ecologically sound ones. I know that from experience! As a shop steward and activist in industry and on numerous social issues for 40 years I was for much of it (in the UK and elsewhere) campaigning for the right of working people to democratically enjoy an ever increasing share of the annual surplus-value we created by the industrial and mechanized appropriation of organic and inorganic nature.

As an aircraft engineer, trade union and social activist I was for a long time largely unaware that the product of our mass producing working lives (civilian aircraft) for tourism and long-distant trade were seriously undermining, global air quality and ruining indigenous peoples occupation of pristine examples of nature when their coastal villages were being converted to holiday destinations. Even a marginal level of ignorance can be a form of relative bliss, but eventually overcoming ecological and climate ignorance became a choice we could make and it remains so. A lack of ecological and limited economic knowledge in the mid-twentieth century was understandable and perhaps forgivable, but that is no longer the case. This ommision also represents a step back to earlier paradigms of thinking.


It may seem disrespectful to bluntly point out such shortcomings in other peoples good intended proposals for social improvement, and I take no pleasure in doing so. I wish it were not necessary. However, as the saying goes; the way to hell is paved with good intentions’ and climate change and pollution are currently making life a modern hell for many humans and many other species. If we do not critically appraise every suggestion for change from the basis of the most comprehensive understanding we have concerning life on earth, then in a sense we become part of the problem, not part of the solution. So with this in mind, there is also a common but mistaken myth that also needs confronting. It is one promoted and sustained by all those in the 21st century who have not understood the way that hierarchical mass society systems have always functioned economically. 

The myth of Consumer Demand.

The elite classes currently in control  of the latest capital dominated mass societies also promote the same convenient and self-serving myth-driven assumption. It is an assumption that consumer demand is what ultimately triggers and motivates commodity production. This myth conveniently serves to obscure the real dynamic behind the motive for ever greater production and consumption. It does so whilst implying that the problem of resource extraction is mainly the consumers fault for demanding more.  Based on this self-serving narrative, capitalist producers are just innocently following and dutifully fulfilling consumer demand. This narrative effects the way the current climate and ecological crises are framed. Based upon that assumption, therefore, if people wish to save the planet from climate change and ecological destruction then the solution is to reduce consumer demand, by voluntary or compulsory restrictions on consumption.

The above assumption however, does not reflect the reality of hierarchical mass societies in their Ancient,  Feudal or modern Capitalist forms. Apart from basic survival needs, the masses have never initiated a demand for ever more things to be produced and be consumed. Slaves, Peasants and early Wage Slaves had no means or opportunities to demand anything other than living wages from their owners, controllers or employers. Any serious study of ancient empires and city states, will reveal that the demand for ever more production and consumption has come overwhelmingly from the ruling elites – ancient, medieval  or modern. The process of gaining pillage, conquest, tribute, taxes (and now profits) from the resources of their own or other communities have always been initiated by the wealth and power hungry elites within hierarchical mass societies from ancient to modern times. 

In the modern era, the whole ethos of the owners of capital in capitalist dominated economic systems is  to invest ‘their’ capital in production in order to produce commodities or services for sale which will return the value of the original investment together with a proportion of surplus-value known as profit or delivered in the form of interest on capital. Where such capital investments are successful in this regard, they are continually repeated and where they are not successful new avenues of capital investment for production are frantically sought by the owners or controllers of capital in order to not interrupt the annual profitable investment cycles they desire. It is in this way that capitalism constantly initiates profitable production and then finds ways to create a demand for its finished results so that the production can be sold and the investment strategy become successful.

This is why investors put so much effort and expense into high cost advertisement, influencers and sales promotions.  So in general it is not consumers who constantly demand ever more new products or ever more production, but the owners of  capital that search for ever new forms of production to invest their capital in. This now also includes so-called green investments. The investment logic of the individual and corporate capitalists involves a never ending compulsive stimulation (direct or indirect) of production and consumption of the planets material resources. It is obvious that all private or public investment in any form of production requires new sources of inorganic and organic raw materials and energy to manufacture them. It is equally obvious that new raw materials and energy for new mass production can only come from the one  existing – already exhausted and polluted – planet.  Continual investment = continual extraction = continual pollution, climate change and species loss!

The quantitative and qualitative difference in the modern era is that the elites in control of the capitalist mode of production have in a couple of centuries, vastly increased the number of elites and middle-class high-earning consumers and globalised the capitalist system of exploitation of inorganic material and organic species. Furthermore it is clear from historical evidence that successful hierarchical mass societies are presumed by their elites to be ‘logical’, ‘natural’ or at least ‘preferable’ to other forms of social organisation. Therefore, those elites socialised within them cannot see why they should even question ‘their’ system let alone wish to socially revolutionise it. They therefore focus on attempts to deny, downplay, ignore or if absolutely necessary, marginally tweak any inconvenient symptoms that emerge, until eventually the system  collapses due to its own internal contradictions.

The internal contradictions within hierarchical mass societies are of course class based social contradictions,  which are  unresolvable without changing the hierarchical socio-economic system.   No amount of technical changes or scientific discoveries can remove social contradictions even if some changes may serve to postpone or extend the period of eventual collapse. Capitalist elites are no different to ancient and medieval elites in this regard and as long as they now exist off the above average proceeds of capital investments which produce the necessary surplus-value to convert into interest, profit, rents or super-salaries, they will fiercely defend their ideological narratives and political rationalisations whilst steadfastly  maintaining their system by force – as they are now doing globally – against campus activists, liberation struggles and working class resistance to poverty and unemployment.

This is why it is important not to be drawn into superficially plausible ideas (intellectual cul-de-sacs) that are  based not upon the real causes of  the problems the human species (and other species) face, but which are based upon myths, techno-fantasies or on a culture of ‘entitlement to consume’ whatever the capitalists decide to produce. Once the real world economic system of hierarchical mass societies harnessed to the capitalist mode of production is actually fully understood the focus of the prevention of pollution, climate change, ecological destruction and poverty etc., radically changes.  It becomes clear that it is the system of capitalism and its owners which needs to be permanently restricted from constantly investing in production and consumption. That is the only way to  prevent their preferred economic system from committing a form of socio-economic ecocide and homocide.

Therefore, I suggest that any modern social or ecological proposal, such as those noted above, which does not have as its theoretical and practical goal, the openly stated aim of transcending the capitalist mode of production and overcoming the short-sighted, anthropocentric self-obsession of the human species, has remained stuck in the past. Climate research has taken important steps forward in the 21st century but it seems many on the left are still stuck in the past or due to naive illusions (or listening to elite promoted delusions), have simply retreated to more familiar levels of past understanding.  

Roy Ratcliffe (May 2024)

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RESISTANCE & REVOLUTION. (Part 3.)

Posted on April 28, 2024 by stutteringsteps

In part 1 of this series, I suggested that for any revolutionary transformation to fully occur it is not enough for its advocates to be against the existing socio-economic system either in writing or speech. Socio-economic transitions simply cannot be wished or talked into existence. In order to realistically anticipate a transition to another socio-economic system there must already exist an alternative way of living and producing that has been successfully established and been developed. At that earlier point I used the example of the bourgeois civil wars occuring in Europe between the ruling aristocratic elites of the Feudal agricultural system and the rising elite capitalist based bourgeoisie. The former were parasitic upon a long established subsistence mode of agricultural production, whereas the latter were parasitic upon the commercial and industrial system of commodity production already developed and consolidated.

Under the capitalist mode, production was primarily undertaken for sale and exchange rather than for direct consumption. The key point being made in part 1, and again now, is that the bourgeois ‘mode of production’ developed and established itself by many practical examples within the existing Feudal agricultural system. In other words, the revolution in the mode of production had already occurred prior to the transfer of political and governing power to its commercial, economic and financial elites. The aristocratic elite in charge of the Feudal systems would not allow a peaceful transfer of political power in favour of the bourgeoisie and so a series of European and colonial civil wars took place which eventually resolved the problem of political governance in favour of the bourgeoisie.

Whilst civil wars are not inevitable in such socio-economic transitions, they are highly probable because the historical pattern of evidence indicates that established political and economic elites do not voluntarily give up either their privileged positions or the control they have over any existing mode of production. Substantive change in the governance of hierarchical societies is nearly always resisted by the ‘establishment’. Bourgeois resistance to change occured within the 19th century capitalist economic system when an alternative non-profit socio-economic system developed. It was based partly upon economic cooperation in the manufacture of cotton materials. In this case, the bourgeoisie, conducted an economic, political and financial war against the new mode. Most famously in the UK, the Manchester cotton based bourgeoisie organised a successful boycott campaign restricting supplies of raw cotton going to the alternative Owenite cooperative factory at New Lanark.

Therefore this alternative model soon collapsed in the UK, re-located in the USA before finally being terminated there. These setbacks were not the only weaknesses of this particular model of cooperation as that particular  version was a top-down model organised and controlled by Robert Owen, a member of the elite, who was also driven by a religious and moral agenda. Consequently, the only extensive non-religious worker cooperative model remaining in the 20th and 21st centuries was in Mondragon in the Basque region of Northern Spain. However, the early cooperative model, although severely limited in many ways, was extremely successful for a limited period of the mid 20th century in the UK and elsewhere. In the UK there were numerous cooperatively run Farms, Industries, Shops, Banks, and Training Colleges.

Marx, commented upon many of these substantially deficient 19th century models of cooperative working and suggested to their advocates that “…you are digging the grave of cooperation, while you think you are fashioning its cradle.” Nevertheless, he also suggested the means by which cooperative ways of working and living could become part of a revolutionary transition (within the capitalist system) from capitalist forms of production to post capitalist forms. He wrote;

“A cooperative association is formed; after payment of it’s 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 applied to the further purchase 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 cooperation. It is cooperation, because it establishes a community of interest – the success of each branch furthers the success of every other and of the whole collectively” (Marx Engels. Collected Works. Vol. 11, page 587)

Although intellectually, the above excerpt is completely located within the dominant anthropocentric viewpoint of that 19th and 20th century period, it does indicate how an alternative mode of producing and living could begin within an existing mode of production dominated by capital.  But of course revolutions in living and producing only actually begin by human beings starting to organise and sustain their lives in this revolutionary way. Unlike Resistance, Revolutions in modes of production do not begin by simply writing and talking about them.

Furtheremore, such revolutionary initiatives only become an example for others to follow, when they demonstrate their ability and suitability for sustaining the different model. Until such successful transitions happen, talk of revolution is just ‘pie in the sky’ hogwash. As noted elsewhere, Marx was a product of his time and its knowledge base. He and others had only begun to question the negative role of the capitalist mode of production on a few fundamental non-human aspects of life on earth.

A greater knowledge and understanding of the evolutionary past, present and future of life on earth – as a whole – and the dependence of all species upon the ecologically integrated system of nature, had yet to emerge. At that period in the 19th and 20th centuries, the main concern was with the existence of particular problematic human social forms and their political superstructures. Nevertheless, from the late 20th and 21st centuries due to evidence from practical ecologically based studies, a more Gaia-centric understanding of life on earth has arisen. This new ‘enlightenment’ understanding now indicates that humanity needs to solve more than just the unfair, unequal and genocidal relationships between members of the human species. Humanity also needs to revolutionise the current relationship between it’s own species survival and the survival of rest of the life on earth species.

A Gaia-centric  perspective views life on earth as an integrated, interdependent and interlocked system, which needs all its parts to function so that each species can survive. We now know that before anything else ‘life on earth’ depends upon each species of life being able to transistion through its own particular evolutionary determined process of Nutrition, Metabolosm, Growth, Reproduction + Ageing and Death.  Nevertheless,  during this process each species contributes essential mineral, liquid, protein, carbohydrate resources to the eco-system and thus ensures the (N-M-G-R + A-D) processes of all other species. That is to say that all life on earth fundamentally depends upon completing its sequential process which includes obtaining appropriate Nutrition (N) containing a balance of inorganic and organic material and processes. For example, the whole process  includes all those life-forms that replenish the air and water, and produce protein, fats, sugars and minerals present in the food and natural habitats – that all life needs to survive.

The empirical evidence which is derived from the sciences of biology and nutrition confirms in detail, the truism that an army marches on its stomach and much more. The fact is that any human community only continues to exist optimately by it’s own daily intake of adequately balanced nutrition. Moreover, the largest (organic) part of nutrition (N) for each species is composed of both the product of, and the bodily substance of, one or more other life forms on planet earth. The continuous supply of original inorganic and organic material needs to be digested and Metabolised (M) by the microorganisms and cells of each organism and the results of this process circulated around the cells of each organism in the form of energy supply and the releasing of essential particles and vital minerals.

So clearly it is not politics or social organisation which directly energises and motivates these biological and social processes of life on earth, but the absorbtion of energy and minerals, directly from inorganic matter and organic life itself. The biological foundation on which all human politics, social organisation and culture is erected is the whole of the interconnected and interdependent inorganic and organic web of life on earth. It is this fundamental bio-chemical process, which allows each organism to Grow (G) and Reproduce (R) (each at it’s own rhythm and pace), before eventually Ageing (A) and Dying (D). As already indicated, these processes – which are essential to all life forms – can be intellectually shortened as in the following abbreviation (N-M-G-R + A-D), but the actual phases of each species cannot be shortened or altered in the real world without dire inter-species consequences.

Consequently, this non-human global inter-dependent reality cannot be ignored when considering any future human socio-economic activity. In the past, this absolute dependence of humanity on all the other complex, inter-connected and inter-dependent species of life on earth, for the air we breath, the food we eat, the clothes we wear and many of materials we build and manufacture with, was mostly unknown. For generations, nature was generally seen philosophically and practically as something other than humanity; as a necessary but essentially different realm of existence to the human species on planet earth.

To the religious anthropocentric mind-set a creator God had magically created both man and and the rest of nature, including the complete separation between the two spheres. To the secular anthropocentric mind-set, it appeared that ‘evolution’ had created men and the rest of nature and that the two categories evolved differently creating and perpetuating this separation between them. So even from a secular perspective, the human species was viewed as having evolved from within nature but secular anthropocentric arrogance, particularly in its philosophically honed guise, considered humanity had qualitatively separated itself from nature. In elite intellectual circles it was imagined that nature was ‘determined’, by natural laws, whilst men were self-determined and ‘free’.

Both these anthropocentric tendencies, (religious and secular) mistakenly considered humanity was no longer limited or constrained by the same material boundaries as the rest of nature. The dominant anthropocentric mind-set considered that ‘intelligent’ Science and ‘sophisticated’ Philosophy would overcome any natural physical boundaries or any biological limitations. From an anthropocentric mind-set, the human species and its thinking was imagined to be the pinnacle of the evolution of life on earth. Thus the most outrageous modern anthropocentric forms of philosophical arrogance appear in the writings of the 18th, 19th and 20th century philosophers. For example;

“… the being of nature does not correspond to its concept; its existing actuality therefore has no truth; …” nature is a representation of the idea,” (Hegel. ‘The Philosophy of Nature’. Proposition 193)

Of course the term nature is an abstraction and therefore it is a general concept – not a real thing – and so the use of the term does logically correspond to itself. But of course the actuality of life forms which are included within the concept of ‘nature’, once carefully examined do have a reality corresponding to at least a high degree of relative truth. However, any non-obsequious study of Hegel will reveal that Hegel was a thorough idealist and thought that God had created man and nature and that the real evolutionary developed organisms within nature were physical manifestations of Gods perfect idea. I contend that undue regard for philosophy in general has sown much mischief among human populations, the reason why (and the dangers) are summed up below by another philosopher, Herbert Marcuse.

“Philosophy had never ceased to claim the right to guide man’s efforts towards a rationally mastery of nature and society or to base this claim upon the fact that philosophy elaborated the highest and most general concepts for knowing the world” (Herbert Marcuse ‘Reason and Revolution’. Chapter 2)

And;

” ..the conquest of nature is practically complete..” (Herbert Marcuse. ‘Eros and Civilisation” Introduction.)

Think about the above (often repeated) assertions such as; Philosophy, (incidentally, an almost complete male preserve) “…claims the right to guide efforts toward a mastery of nature (and claims to have) “the highest concepts for knowing the world.” There is no need to make any further case against the arrogance and limitations of most of the 20th century anthropocentric understandings of the real relationship between humanity and the rest of life on earth, than those made by its intellectuals, influencers and politicians from their own words. It was not until the mid-20th century, that the ecological balance of the interdependent network of life on earth was anywhere near fully understood even by a minority.

Until the late 20th and early 21st centuries, looking after nature was at best a moral problem rather than an existential necessity for all life on earth – including humanity. Thinking about nature was conceived as rather like having the choice between a planned garden or an abandoned allotment. Now more and more of the above-noted inter-dependencies are becoming firmly established, if not yet consistently broadcast, widely disseminated, or sufficiently accepted. Therefore, much of humanity is in either a form of ignorant bliss or in opiate type denial with regard to themselves and life on earth. Consequently, it is an essential task to continue to draw attention to the connections between human activity and the increasing loss of key species, such as soil microorganisms (including fungi), insect and animal pollinators of plants along with plants and algae as photosynthetic oxygen producers and food chain sustainers.

Eventually, this existential reliance of humanity on life on earth – as a whole – will become more commonly understood. But meanwhile the problem and its solution should also become part of any future intelligently discussed and organised human society as a fundamental part of revolutionising its mode of living and producing. Humanity needs to balance it’s own nutritional (N) and habitat needs in such a manageable and proportional way that it does not by overproduction, over-consumption and over pollution destroy the key life support species needed to supply the general and particular forms of nourishment (N) either as air, water, or food based photosynthetic life forms.

A socio-economic revolution in the 21st century and beyond as its consistant priority would need to ensure that future human societies do not undermine the general ecological balance of all the life forms that the planetary system has evolved with. The continued viability of the whole planetary system of life on earth depends upon overcoming the past and present anthropocentric level of human understanding, particularly within the thinking of those advocating a revolutionary change in the existing mode of production. Sufficient evidence has already been accumulated to indicate that particular care should be taken to protect the following – often taken for granted and under-valued life forms – which we most depend upon are nurtured and protected.

For example, plants (large and small) and of course oceanic algae, all of which absorb the carbon dioxide other life forms exhale and using the suns energy emissions transform this gas into oxygen. These bio-chemical transformations are vital to all aerobic dependent life forms. Furthermore, land and sea based plants also provide the base-line food sources for all life on earth. Thus plants in their tiniest and largest forms are key organic life support systems for all other species of life on earth. But of course, given the interdependent essence of nature plants cannot do this on their own, they also depend upon soil microorganisms and fungi to allow optimum root absorbtion of vital inorganic and organic material and its effective metabolic processing.

Plants also rely upon other animals and insects as well as wind dispersal for their reproduction (R) processes by means of pollination. And, of course, understanding the importance of these microorganisms to living plants, is not the only concern necessary for the maintenance of life on earth. That is because many varied life forms also dispose of the dead and decaying bodies (using them as sources of nutition) of life forms – all of which will eventually leave a residue of inanimate organic and inorganic material. The dynamic balance of production and consumption created by and during the evolution of the (N-M-G-R + A -D) processes of life on earth has been achieved over millions of years by drawing energy from the continuous orbital revolutions of the earth around the sun.

Although based upon an ‘on-the-surface’ understanding, each species during its function of living is essentially doing it’s own thing, by being both a consumer of organic material while they live and a donator of organic material when later they die (either by predation or after ageing) they are collectively assuring the continual recycling of much of the organic and inorganic material produced by each species and its re-absorbtion into new forms of life. The vast biological system of ‘life on earth’ by it’s very ‘nature’ cleans up after itself and re-uses everything it can. The global results of this inter-connected and inter-dependent network – until the onset of the industrial revolution in Europe – has not only sustained the vast number of species of life on earth, but maintained them in a dynamic but ‘natural’ ecological balance.

Any revolutionary individual or movement of individuals, who put the welfare of the human species first, or defines it’s own welfare according to Anthropocene ideological assumptions, is not a revolutionary movement at all. It is in fact, if not in name, a reactionary single species movement. If in future, humanity is to cease damaging and destroying this essential ecological balance of nature, which after all is the material foundation of all life on earth – including humanities own – the revolutionary changes to be made need to be Gaia focussed. Humanities relationship to nature (life on earth as a whole) can no longer be addressed primarily by issues of how human societies are to be governed or structured.

Thus, any mode of human living, collectively producing and consuming (N) should know how not to detrimentally destabilise that inter-connected and interdependent balance of all those multifarious life forms essential to that balance. The form of human existence, like the existence of all other life forms, needs to achieve a balanced place within the entire web of life on earth. Therefore, it is not simply a different political elite or a different form of elite governance or a different social form of continuing mass production and consumption that needs to be addressed and revolutionised. It is the entire mode of living, producing and consuming which needs to be transformed.

For those who haven’t turned the 19th century Revolutionary-Humanist perspectives of Marx into a universally applicable sectarian dogma, his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ are still relevant, particularly the 11th.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (Theses on Feuerbach.)

Waiting for (and encouraging other activists to wait for) the masses, to assemble under the banner of some male-led revolutionary sect with 19th and 20th century levels of anthropocentric understanding amounts to intellectually justified procrastination and is reactionary to boot. It is repeating the same old pattern of leaders-in-waiting expecting the masses to be dutifully led by a self-appointed clique who have adopted the tiered hierarchical mass society model in embryo and need the masses to fund them and carry them and their ideas onward and upward socially and economically.

Besides that process has been repeatedly tried in many countries, during the 20th century in Russia and China and beyond on a large scale and in mini and micro Trotskyist, Leninist, Maoist sects on a small scale. The combined evidence of all these misguided attempts indicate that the results and traditions of this vanguardist model are not worth conserving or repeating. The species task for humanity is to create consistent social and economic conditions of cooperation among themselves – as a species – in order to re-establish and maintain an integrated balance of their own species with the rest of the species of life on earth. The exceptions to the hierarchical mass society  patterns, such as Mondragon and the Kurdish Peshmerga groups in Kurdistan, are of course few and far between. Nevertheless, resistance to hierarchical mass society living and producing will continue whether the hierarchy adopts liberal, capitalist, fascist, or communist ideologies with which to fool the masses.

That is because the form itself is an oppressive, exploitative, divisive and ecologically destructive dead end – for all life on earth. Those really concerned with revolutionary transitions from current hierarchical mass society formations dominated by capital, should begin by initiating self-determining egalitarian, Gaia-centered community alternatives ASAP. Such alternatives would be not only an actual act of defence and Resistance to the death agonies imposed by elites upon our human and other species communities, but where successful, would have Revolutionary potential. Even by success on a small scale, such alternatives will speak far louder than any number of carefully considered revolutionary sounding rhetorical  pronouncements.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024)

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RESISTANCE & REVOLUTION. (Part 2)

Posted on April 22, 2024 by stutteringsteps

Resistance & Revolution in the 21st Century.

The human centred bourgeois ideological constructions, noted in (Part 1), have for generations been intellectually integrated into a set of largely unchallenged assumptions based upon the social domination of the ancient hierarchical mass society structure of human living. Consequently, the aim common to most of these left, right and centre proposals for revolutionary transitions is the need to ‘save human civilisation’ from it’s current self-destructive trajectory’, whatever they think that trajectory is. However, this is exactly the same abstract purpose as understood by the liberal bourgeoisie.

In other words it is the ‘content’ of hierarchical mass society forms they disagree upon and wish to change, not the form itself. In the name of ‘civilisation’ (i.e. the current hierarchical mass society form) the liberals  think and profess they have been saving humanity for multiple generations from the barbarity of so-called ‘ignorance’ and primitive backwardness and (for more recent decades) by the ‘progress’ of industry and science. If 20th and 21st century genocide, industrialised warfare and ecological destruction is a result of enlightenment and progress, then perhaps a little nostalgia for pre-civilised life on earth would not be so irrational as at first it may seem.

It turns out that for a century or so the elites in control of hierarchical mass societies have been destroying life on earth (human, insect, animal and natural plant material), in every possible nook and cranny for their own self-gratification. And of course classifying that as civilised behaviour. Civilisation is of course the bourgeois term used to describe the ancient, middle and latest advanced hierarchical mass societies based upon elite directed production and consumption. So one unanswered question in all such ‘saving civilisation’ proposals for revolutionary change is what is deemed worth saving and for whom is it to be saved?

But even before that question can be adequately dealt with, another missing aspect of most left liberal fantasies concerning revolution is the fact there are the two necessary dimensions to human existence (the biologically determined economic dimension and the socio-biologically determined organisational dimension) mentioned in part 1. And again, whilst these two aspects; ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ are linked, they are not achieved in the same manner.

Most anti-capitalist thinking concerning any future human society to the capitalist dominated hierarchical mass society form, therefore, is still based upon a hierarchical mass society model but imagined to be differently governed. The only slight difference is that the left version of saving human ‘civilisation’ is to be organised on the basis of the ideas of a progressive elite and managed by elected or appointed representatives of the class from which this progressive elite emerges. In essence this new idea of a progressive elite is not so new. It is just a repetition of the old bourgeois idea of a progressive elite, leading humanity torward to an elite determined future.

Here again we have parts of the revolutionary left uncritically accepting the bourgeois ideas of general material progress and the continuation of class distinctions. They envision a class of politically educated rulers, a class of institutionally educated bureaucrats and a class of ‘trained’ workers. This is why this type of idea of revolution arises primarily among the dissident thinking classes, who assume their ideas are necessary to determine what happens in future once  implemented at a practical level. Therefore, if they produce clever or logical sounding ideas and put them out there, this will enable discontented people to implement them and change the miserable reality of their lives.

Therefore for several generations, most ‘revolutionary’ thinkers have formed themselves into groups to spread their ideas and even invite workers to pay to read their ideas, by selling them magazines, papers and now blog subscriptions to fund their own existence. That is how any class of intellectuals continues to exist within bourgeois societies. They sell their ability to think and eloquently express those thoughts in literature and to talk about them in front of paying (in some way) audiences whilst convincing themselves they are doing it for the benefit of mankind. The ‘revolutionary’ intellectuals are no different in this regard and within their organisations they invariably replicate the traditional hierarchical mass society system in miniature.

They soon (often immediately) choose a leader (elected or appointed), select a managerial support group (editoral staff or central committee) and rectuit an almost endless supply of discontented worker/followers to appeal to for funds and other forms of support such as providing free labour. If such ‘sects’ become relatively successful, they invariably institute all the typical infrastructure of hierarchical mass societies, such as paid staff, appointment and promotion procedures, competitive jockeying for staff positions, resorting to disciplinary and expulsion procedures, when challenged. So even whilst advocating a revolutionary transition to a different form of living and working they, like the elites they oppose, are actively conserving the ancient form of hierarchical mass society living and working.

The above paragraph outlines why the social reality of Soviet Russia, under the Leninists, Trotskyists and Stalinists, and Communist China under Mao and his successors (and other similar so-called revolutionary transitions) so closely resembled all other hierarchical mass society forms – including the ones designated as Fascist! The fact that the leaders are designated differently as Fuhrer”s, Commisars, or Ministers, matters little to how the system functions. This is also why simply advocating the elimination of the third defining characteristics of hierarchical mass societies (elite wealth accumulation) does not solve the problems associated with hierachical mass societies.

Nor would it solve the destruction of the ‘natural’ foundations of all life on earth – including humanity! In the modern context, even a policy of levelling down the rich and eliminating the incentive for wealth accumulation and profit, the existence of nine billion human beings continually consuming organic and inorganic nature inorganic would still be existentially problematic. Such numbers, producing and consuming at even a moderate level on a finite planet with a rapidly diminishing number of ‘key’ species supporting the rest, does not represent a solution for life on earth in general, but a continuation of the same old anthropocentric problem.

The above noted intellectual limitations imposed by this combination of lived experience within hierarchical mass societies and its inherited ideological assumptions has prevented many anti-capitalists and those who class themselves as ‘socialists’ from understanding how human social reality has unfolded with regard to the socio-economic and bio-chemical aspects of the evolution of all life on earth. Marx summed up this intellectual tendency amongst the 19th century left-leaning middle classes when he wrote;

“The act of transforming society was reduced to the cerebral activity of their own criticism.”

And;

“They forget, however, that they are opposing nothing but phrases to these phrases, and they are in no way combatting the real existing world when they are combatting solely the phrases of this world.” (Marx. In Marx/Engels Collected Works Volume 5 page 30)

Life on earth, including human life, is essentially practical even in the case of the modern social domination of an intellectually employed labour force. The cycle of Nutrition, Cell-Metabolism, Body Growth, Species Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) are all physical processes – for all forms of life on earth! They are certainly not the result of intellectual processes even though they are now more comprehensively understood by intellectual means. Indeed, thought itself is dependent upon the practical implementation of the (N-M-G-R + A – D) processes of living and producing. It is not ‘I think therefore I am’, but ‘I am (at a stage were) I can think. Also in reality only practical circumstances and, techniques can actually be revolutionised.

Therefore, any reference to socio-economic revolutions should primarily refer to a practical reorganisation of living and producing – not a reorganisation of people’s thoughts. To start a genuinely revolutionary process on the revolutionary left it is necessary to radically change what is being done by the revolutionary left – in practice – not in theoretical formulations! Simply carrying on as before and just talking and writing about what others (usually the workers or ‘the people’) should be doing in future is not revolutionary but conservative. In the 21st century, revolutionary phrase-mongering is an anthropocentric indulgence and essentially an act of conserving existing class distinctions and hierarchical assumptions of leaders and led; of a modern version of shepherds and sheep.

In particular, anthropocentric focussed intellects tend to ignore the biological reality concealed or conceptually obscured by the abstraction ‘modes of production’ and therefore they ignore or downplay the revolutionary changes needed to the  organization and purpose of production and consumption which are currently negatively affecting the biological processes required for life on earth to continue as previously. It should now be an absolutely taken for granted fact that the bio-chemical processes of life on earth pre-date the formation of hierarchical mass societies and politics, by millions if not billions of years, but even so, the practical implications of this evolutionary fact are still being insufficiently considered.

The implications of such a perspective, however, are becoming clear. They are that any future ecologically balanced forms of human society would need to recognised (now from accumulated experience) the importance of two essential changes to production and consumption. 1. The need to stop and reverse the current profit-led, ecological destruction of life on earth by human productive  activity; and 2. To begin to reintroduce and replant or allow a repopulation of most of the already depleted forests, insect, animal, bird and sea life habitats and their inter-connected species.

To do that humanity will need to reject and reverse three past and current practically based elite assumptions and practices: 1, that we are not one species but made up of superior and inferior sub-divisions comprised of nations, religions or races; 2, that competition for sources of life support between human communities is not natural; and 3, That the concept of rich and poor is not a naturally determined outcome of biological evolution, but a continuing elite determined socially intended outcome. At root, these are practical 21st century issues which any genuine revolutionary activists should be discussing, resolving and implementing themselves whilst aiming to encourage others – by their practical example – to do the same.

Any proposals not including the essence of the last sentence of the previous paragraph is not revolutionary in any long or short-term term sense. Simply talking and writing about overthowing capitalist based mass society hierarchies and/or modifying the social composition of governing elites or removing class, gender, and ethnic divisions and prejudices, are only phrases and in any case these phrases only address anthropocentric concerns. These latter (original 20th century revolutionary perspectives) were drawn up by previous generations on the basic assumptions that all the above noted overthrows, modifications and removals could be achieved on a planet that would be relatively stable climatically, ecologically and socially.

The real world evidence for such assumptions, plus a further one that in an existential crisis, a majority of humanity could be relied upon to be rational – no longer exists! Those 20th century assumptions are no longer valid, even if they may have appeared to be still relevant in the late 20th century thinking of many of us anti-capitalist activists at that time. The globalisation of the capitalist mode of production and its associated bourgeois assumptions has introduced a level of socially determined irrationality among most of the human species.

It is now the case that far too many now consider competition, self-indulgent consumption and a high degree of narcissistic exceptionalism is the essential ‘natural’ essence of the human species. Thus such socialised ‘entitlement’ expectations are currently so embedded within the psychology of many mass society individuals that an endless supply of globalised commodities and experiences are not just longed for, but demanded and genocidally fought for by sections of humanity – even against the interests of other human beings – and against the survival needs of all other non-favoured life forms.

For the success of any future revolutionary movement, practical experience will need to have convinced a critical mass of citizens to reject entitlement exceptionalism among humanity in general. Moreover,  the practical rejection of such aspirations will be every bit as important as a defeat of the ruling elites who control the current capital dominated hierarchical mass society nations. Indeed, the practical ‘life on earth’ basis of a hoped for universal entitlement to conspicuously consume is disappearing fast. The  profit-based investments by the upper and middle-classes, is exhausting and deforming,  more and more of the natural inorganic and organic resources of planet earth. But despite this vivid backdrop of existential threats to life on earth, the current political reality is that entrenched elites, organising, campaigning and engaging in genocidal levels of mass killing is proving a more obtainable objective than the long term organised resistance to such outcomes.

Currently, where opposition to such entrenched elites actually develops, it more often takes the form of sectarian militarised groups, which as noted, replicate the male dominated anthropocentric social forms manifested by those elites they are actually opposed to. Civil wars then become wars between competing elite-led movements for the purpose of capturing power over economic, financial and social resources, rather than revolutions seeking the liberation of life on earth from oppression and exploitation. Whilst in general, the implications of understanding that the bio-chemical maintenance and reproduction of life on earth – as a whole – is essential for the future of all life on earth, the practical means of ensuring that outcome are not at all clear.

However, it is possible to say that the problems facing all the species of life on earth (including the human species) will not be solved by elite fantasies of how hierarchical mass societies can be continued, reformed and anthropocentrically governed politically, socially or economically. The historical evidence on previous ‘civilisations’ (sic) suggests, that despite warnings,  some things (including human societies) have to overwhelmingly collapse from their own internal contradictions, before enough time and space becomes available for the survivors of the collapse to initiate alternative ways of living and producing which cannot  then be effectively obstructed.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024)

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RESISTANCE & REVOLUTION. (Part 1)

Posted on April 15, 2024 by stutteringsteps

Resistance and Revolution in the 21st Century.

Resistance within hierarchical mass societies has taken many forms and has been almost continuous since the first emergence of this form of human aggregation several thousand years ago. Resistance, individual or collective, occurs because these hierarchical social forms are oppressive, exploitative and alienating. However, although there is occasionally a direct link between resistance and the outbreak of revolution, those links and occurances are few and far between. Nevertheless, some people seem to think that repeated high levels of resistance will automatically lead to revolution. This, however, is not how the two symptoms interact. This is because increased resistance is merely a quantitative development, whereas revolution is a distinctly qualitative development. No matter how violently or widely expressed, resistance breaks out among the victims of oppression their decision is only motivated to act against some of the oppressive or exploitative actions inflicted against them. By merely resisting they do not necessarily act against the entire system of oppression. In such cases of collective resistance, there comes a point in which one side modifies its position and backs down. On the one hand, the elite side will often cease or ease their oppression, or are replaced by a different set of elites, or on the other the resisters are appeased or defeated and the oppresive system carries on. Even resilant resistance is countered by reformist promises.


Revolutions, on the other hand see resisters go beyond a stage of progressive or intermittant resistance to any mass exploitation and oppression and become transformed into forming movements for a completely different way of living and working. A revolution to change a mode of production, therefore, becomes a struggle for and against an entire system of living and producing not just immediate acts of oppression. This is why throughout history, revolutions are both infrequent and different to the everyday class struggles within hierarchical mass societies. First of all activists who decide to take part in revolutionary struggles, whether these are successful or not, have to arrive at a practical realisation that the existing way of producing and living – as a whole -should not be allowed to continue any longer. Yet even that experience and its ideological expression, is still not enough to initiate an actual process of revolution. Secondly, and of crucial importance, there must already exist an alternative way of living and producing that has successfully materialised and been substantially developed. Unless these two elements are present, all talk of revolution is just fantasy. Although intellectually it can appear to certain individuals, that it is new ideas that can change old realities, in fact collectively the process is invariably in the opposite sequence. The ideas of large communities about how to live and produce generally only change from directly experiencing the existence of new productive realities. New forms of large-scale community living are not a result of direct exposure to new ideas, but to new ways of being.

This material relationship between reality and ideas at the social level is demonstrably clear from the case of the production and dissemination of ideas of socio-economic revolution. The concept of revolution has been used descriptively and rhetorically many times on the left and right particularly during the 20th century but without any notable changes in the ideas of the masses concerning a rejection of the dominant mode of production. Over a number of generations, the resistance of the working classes has peaked and troughed and yet questioning the system as a whole, has remained the exclusive intellectual pursuit of only a tiny minority. The mass uprisings and resistance shown by sufferers of oppression and exploitation prior to the so-called 20th century fascist and socialist revolutions in Russia, Germany, Italy, Spain, China and elsewhere were not revolutionary with regard to the hierarchical systems of exploitation and oppression. These uprisings and resistances did not result in an end to the form of exploitation of the masses, nor put an end to the existence of an exploitative ruling/governing elite. In the end the energy of the working class resistance and uprisings only served to back one side or the other of contending or competing ruling elites, who, when victorious retained the existing class based system of hierarchical mass society living and producing.

So from a revolutionary-humanist perspective, all these so-called ‘revolutions’ have been misnamed. They were not actually socio-economic revolutions, for in essence, the resistance of the masses quickly came under the influence and direction of the radical actions and ideas of disident political elites. In the 20th century, these elites, supported by the masses, managed to replace the previous ruling elites by the means of engaging in extreme levels of civil war. These 20th century resistances to the exploitation of the capitalist mode of production, by being manipulated into focussing on replacing the type of ideology espoused by various elites, left the three essential structures of all hierarchical mass societies firmly in place. The capitalist mode of production (i.e. mode of living and producing) became merely the latest iteration of the general hierarchical mass society form. These essential socio-economic aspects of the capitalist domination of the hierarchical mass society form are 1, the existence of wage labour; 2, the separation of control/ownership of the results of past labour (now designated as capital) from the working producers of it; and 3, the existence of an elite with the protection of a militarily force to keep the labour of working people under a direct or indirect form of elite control.

In all the 20th century so-called revolutions, this elite control continued to be exercised over the ‘duration’, the ‘purpose’ and the ‘distribution’ of the results produced by the main means of economic activity. In actual fact the main ‘means’ of production in the 20th century had been previously changed from subsistence production based on agriculture to commodity production based upon commecial trade and manufacture. People were already living by engaging with this new (capitalist’) mode when the political power of its main representatives had later been consolidated by the bourgeois political revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The class representing the new mode of production (the commercial bourgeoisie) had successfully existed by means of their trade for many decades during the late middle ages, before they were eventually challenged in civil wars, by the aristocratic establishment within the fuedal system to remain subordinate. Later still, the dominant means of production based upon ‘commercial capital’ had changed from agriculturally based technologies to industrial based technologies and the conditions of working labour had changed from land based tied labour to waged labour freed from all direct connections with the land. In other words, the means and part of the mode of production had already been changed technologically and socially, but the rest of the mode of production remained essentially the same. This general mode of production and living was based upon the three great classes of all hierarchical mass societies.

Basically, there remained a class of ‘rulers’, a class of ‘managers’ and a class of ‘workers’. Of course, lots of changes had occurred in the technology of production and in the social lives of the working classes, but the essence of the hiearchical mass society mode of production had been retained. Therefore, the fundamental problems and tensions arising from the two human devised triads remained. The first (human) triad comprised of a) the ‘ruling elite’, the social ‘managers’ and the workers (living labour) who produce. The second (economic) triad comprised of b) the ‘duration’ of production, the ‘purpose’ of production and the ”distribution’ of the results of production, were also retained, in the transition to capitalism from feudalism. But note also these two historic social and economic triads were also retained under the 20th century ‘socialist’, ‘communist, fascist and social democratic liberal regimes. Consequently, the Neo-liberalist stage of capitalism in the 21st century still contains all the defining problems facing previous generations of working people but it has also become clear that the capitalist mode dominating human production now causes existential problems for the whole of humanity and the rest of the species of life on earth. The economic, financial and political elites within the first social triad (the ruling classes), determine the purpose, the duration and the distribution of production, which ensures not only the relative and absolute impoverishment of many millions of humans but the relative and absolute degradation of other essential forms of life on earth. The managerial/bureacratic levels of hierarchical mass societies, ensure the elite wishes are fulfilled, and the workers are compelled by various incentives and punishments to fulfil them.

This system and the lack (as yet) of any viable and acceptable alternative mode of production is why the idea of revolution, partially or completely muddled or not, does not resonate with or become seriously considered by most of those oppressed and exploited within hierarchical mass societies. Since the marginalisation and undermining of the cooperative way of working and living, in the 20th century, there is simply nothing better, than liberal capitalism actually on offer. Until there is a practical example of a co operative way of living and working whilst protecting and nurturing the rest of life on earth, the idea of a revolutionary transition away from liberal capitalism will remain moribund. However, this does not mean that the idea of revolution will not continue to be raised among certain segments of society. Not only genuinely mistaken concepts of revolution will continue to appear, but also novel variations will emerge promoted by those wishing to replace existing elite structures with their own preferred elite cohort of ideologists. The latter are frequently quick to recognise that in a crisis, they need to sound radical enough to be taken seriously by people in desperate straits. This happens in any deepening social and economic crisis. Karl Marx, when he studied the Paris Commune uprising response of working people in 1871 noted the emergence of such people who in every serious struggle whether with good or bad intentions, are often;

“without insight…hamper the full development of every previous revolution.” (Marx. ‘Class Struggles in France’. page 84.)

Meanwhile, imprecise uses of the concept of revolution and differing motives for using it really hamper understanding and need to be rectified, particularly in the 21st century when the implications of human production and overproduction can no longer be considered from a purely or exclusively human standpoint. Human productive activity can no longer be intellectually and economically separated from the needs of the rest of life on earth (i.e. nature!). The current human mode of production increasingly threatens the very life-support foundations for all life on earth. Climate, air and water quality, sources of nutrition etc., are being altered by human production in ways that can no longer be corrected by natural levels of biological reproduction of the essential key species maintaining the evolutionary processes of life in general. So I suggest that in periods of 21st century crisis, the idea of revolution is of little use if it remains abstract and without any real clarity as to what is intended and how it is to be established and how it is to socially evolve. Indeed, the concept of revolution has again also been more recently used in terms of advocating a transition from the existing capitalist domination to a post-capitalist socio-economic system of so-called ‘de-growth’.

However, the concept of ‘de-growth’ in contrast to continuous capitalist growth may sound radical to some, but it still offers little overall clarity of content and form within such proposals for revolutionary change in the 21st century. The left alternative of green growth instead of polluting petro-chemical growth is no less dualistically framed as well as vague. This general level of confusion and abstraction is understandable and entirely predictable for obvious reasons. Most so-called revolutionary thinkers have evolved within an intellectual paradigm predominantly determined by the direct experience of the bourgeois mode of hierarchical mass society socio-economic production. The current socio-economic base of humanity has given rise to a narrow range of ideological assumptions and political structures focussed entirely on the exagerated needs of an elite-led humanity. Take a further ‘left’ anthropocentric example; such as the concept of ‘sustainable development’ This roughly translates to mean “development that meets the human needs of the present without compromising the ability of future human generations to meet their own needs.” ‘Yet what are the human needs of the present’?

In reality, the first existential requirement for humanity, arises from the biologically determined need for balanced nutrition (N), clean water, clean oxygenated air and reasonably stable climatic conditions, so that photosynthetic produced food and oxygen sources will be functioning and abundantly available for all life on earth. For humanity, their own needs are precisely these unreferenced and unmentioned biologically determined needs, which in order to be met, are absolutely dependent upon the existence of a whole interconnected and interdependent network (or web) of species life on earth. In the 21st century, any revolutionary perspective for the future of humanity, which does not include the needs of other life-forms essential to all existence, alongside it’s own needs, is not potentially revolutionary, but potentially reactionary. This is because the existing hierarchical mass society form of human aggregates which is currently ‘glossed’ as ‘civilisation’, is already deeply reactionary. It is genocidally destroying humanities species unity and damaging the complex interdependent foundation upon which the human species has evolved and which it needs to survive in any future form of social aggregation. The overwhelming experience of living in the bourgeois form of meeting these two needs, (by mass economic production and mass biological reproduction) has resulted in an anthropocentric paradigm of thinking by most citizens and also by many anti-capitalists. This closed paradigm of thinking needs to be not only resisted but also revolutionised.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024).

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Appologies to subscribers and viewers.

Posted on April 2, 2024 by stutteringsteps

I offer apologies to subscribers to this blog and viewers of an earlier version of the latest post Marx and life on Earth. The internet connection was interrupted and resulted in a jumbled article. I have since rectified (hopefully) this internet created fault and republished the article on the blog. I cannot retrieve the email versions but can advise you visit the blog http://www.critical-mass.net for the corrected version. Regards,

Roy

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MARX & LIFE ON EARTH (Part 2)

Posted on April 2, 2024 by stutteringsteps


The general cultural and educational level promoted within modern hierarchical mass societies, ensures that an anthropocentric viewpoint dominates the thinking of the vast majority of humanity. At its most basic level the ideology generated by the capitalist mode of production views the planet from a perspective of bourgeois property ownership. From the feudal elite perspective, the local land (and everything living on it) was ‘their” land obtained by conquest and inheritance. By a similar process, from the bourgeois elite perspective, the entire planet is effectively ‘their’ planet and most of it has by now been obtained by purchase and deed of transfer. This cultural concept of human beings owning land and nature has permeated all classes of society until it is no longer generally questioned and has taken the ideological form of taken for granted Anthropocentrism. Humanity in general now views the planet (and everything on it) as ‘our’ planet and the only question frequently raised is the unfair allocation of portions of it to individuals by means of their accumulated monetary wealth.


Furthermore, according to bourgeois law, the owner can legally do whatever they want with their property. If a capitalist individual or consortium buys a forest, then cutting it down and planting a mono crop is currently their legal right and entirely their own ‘business’. If another consortium of capitalists purchase the land and means to process sewage, then that is ‘their’ business and they can discharge it in rivers and seas in any treated or untreated condition they choose. Indeed, in general, the global capitalist elites are still acting 24/7 in accordance with this bourgeois intellectually constructed paradigm of individuals of one species owning and effectively controlling the rest of life on earth. This practice of ownership rights over the natural world is so culturally embedded that no serious challenges to that ‘basic right’ come from any other sections of humanity. Yet it is common knowledge that the establishment of ‘life on earth’ has been an evolutionary process continuing over billions of years, in which the planetary resources throughout evolution have been shared among millions of species life-forms. However, particularly in the last two centuries or so, humanity has produced an elite with a colossal level of wealth and arrogance, combined with a wilful ecological ignorance.


Since the Industrial Revolution the capitalist orientated bourgeoisie have begun to feel entitled to do whatever they want to other members of their own species (genocidally eliminate them and/or enslave them) and to do whatever they want to the rest of the planetary species of life (tear down forests, chemically assassinate insects, pollute air, land and seas). This characteristic of allowing individuals to undermine or destroy the earths life support system is an indictment of the low level of intelligence and wisdom of both the global elite and their millions of middle-class supporters in academia, media, entertainment, education, science, politics and government. For as opportunistic individuals the latter groups either turn a welcoming or blind eye to such activities and to their own more nuanced but nonetheless conspicuous consumption and pollution. To the firmly entrenched Anthropocene man (and woman) their particular section of the human species is all that really matters, and the rest of life on earth, apart from favoured pets, zoos and wild-life conservation parks, has to just get out the way or otherwise they will be pushed out of the way or eliminated in one way or another.


Placing humans first, clearly represents a commonly held anthropocentric viewpoint concerning life on earth and it is one, which has been a dominant view in religion and secular politics since the formation of hierarchical mass societies. Nevertheless, in actual fact, both in pre-historic, historic and biological terms, nature (life on earth) came before multi-cellular species of life and multi-cellular and multiple species of life came before a branch of the hominid species evolved to be human. Indeed, the so-called higher sentient species of which humans claim to be the most important, still absolutely depend upon the prior and continued existence of a whole network of visible and invisible inter-dependent life forms providing the oxygenated air, and the basic food and habitat chains on which the sentient beings rely to survive and reproduce. The real world came before the ideas about the real world and the human species ultimately remained (and still remains) more dependent upon biology than upon sociology. As noted in part 1, we are natural beings. The material foundations of our social existence are biological and ecological not intellectual. And whilst the human species depends absolutely upon ‘life on earth’ (nature) for its continued existence, life on earth in general does not depend upon the existence of human species, for its continued existence.


My own researches for a new study I am completing indicate to me that for thousands of years life on earth has been studied from the perspective of the human species; but the human species has rarely (if ever) been seriously studied from the perspective of life on earth. The intellectual reversal of the real status of humanity as natural human beings I consider is something of a historically based narcissistic exceptionalism spun out of the human ability to think and imagine itself as something above and beyond nature and unattached to natural parameters. However, that intellectually created virtual world was constructed prior to gaining a more modern level of understanding which fully recognises the dependence of humanity upon life on earth (or nature) – in all its manifold interdependent forms.
Marx, got as close as was possible duing the 19th century to understanding the reliance of humanity upon the totality of ‘nature’ but the interdependence of life on earth was not adequately understood or revealed then (or now) by the generic use of the term ‘nature’.

The continued repetition of the abstract concept ‘nature’ does not reveal anything of the inter-connected, inter-dependent and intricate web of life on earth. In actual fact the billions of life forms on earth and their interdependent life cycles that make up ‘nature’ is effectively obscured by never getting further than repeatedly using that convenient abstraction. It has taken almost two futher centuries of scientific research since Marx conducted his studies, to arrive at a more accurate understanding of the ecological interdependence of life on earth and humanities absolute dependence upon it at the cellular and microorganism level of sophistication and miniscule size. So whilst it is true that at one point Marx considered the Russian village subsistance commune might offer an alternative to the multiple alienations of capitalist based hierarchical mass societies, this 19th century suggestion of his needs to be treated with caution. For even when he wrote;

“..if the Russian intelligentsia (l’intelligence russe) concentrates all the living forces of the country to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune, the latter will soon develop as a regenerating element of Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist regime.” (Marx correspondence)


We cannot assume that the words “concentrating all the living forces to ensure the unfettered rise of the rural commune” represents a definitive break by Marx with the idea of a future  mass society form. How could it? The real biological and ecological evidence upon which to base such a complete reversal of anthropocentric exceptionalist thinking was almost completely missing in the late 19th century. Marx was, (as we all are), a product of the stage of socio-economic development then reached by the evolution of human life on earth. At the point in the trajectory of hierarchical mass society history that Marx was living through, the glaring negative affects of human productive activity upon life in general was restricted to particular parts of Europe and North America. In any case such dust-bowl, Aral Sea shrinking and river polluting, mass society effects seemed to be based upon callous or neglectful aberrations to the system of production. These rubbish dumps and discarded waste materials did not at the time manifest themselves as the general systemic affects globally generated by the entire profit based and turbo-charged hierarchical mass society system itself.


In fact even now, two centuries, later, this systemic pollution by so-called rogue producers ‘neglect’ and disregard for the environment is still the ‘common sense’ default understanding of millions of people – including large numbers of those intellectuals who claim to be influenced by Marx. Yet, the hierarchical mass society system by it’s original design and continuing purpose, is as a short term exploitative system of production, particularly in its latest capital dominated form. It is a form of human social organisation in which, since ancient Babylon and Egypt an elite have exploited and oppress the majority and nature, on the basis of a fiction that they are better, or considered more deserving, than the rest of life on earth and their own citizens.

However, the dire consequences for life on earth, as a whole, are gradually emerging from realising the effects of how the human species produces and reproduces itself biologically, socially and economically. The realisation is slowly dawning of how blatantly out of sync the human species is with how the biologically based system of life on earth has reproduced itself for billions of years. Yet this realization is still restricted to a few and of course in the life-time of Marx the climate changing, eco-destroying possibility of profit based production and consumption had not become a probability and so was not a defining issue. The most vitally important issue then was the alienating relationships between the human species within and between class based hierarchical mass societies. Therefore, when Marx wote;

“Only when the real, individual man re-absorbs in himself, the abstract citizen, and an individual human being – has become a species being in his everyday life, in his particular work, and in his particular situation….only then will human emancipation have been accomplished.”(Marx. Collected Works Volume 3, page 168.)

We need to acknowledge that this statement – as radical as it was in the 19th century – is now insufficient and needs a 21st century makeover and a crucial addition. This could be done by re-phrasing the first sentence and inserting the following clause (in bold) after the words “particular situation’; i.e. “…to ensure it’s own species well-being does not detrimentally affect the present and future well-being of all the other inter-dependent species of life on earth,” will human emancipation have been accomplished’. So that the essence of the above revolutionary-humanist perspective formulated by Marx in 1870 would now read;

“Only when real individual human beings think and act as species beings in their everyday life and organise their energies and abilities in a genuinely voluntary collective way to ensure their own well-being does not detrimentally affect the present and future well-being of all the other inter-dependent species of life on earth, will human emancipation have been accomplished and humanity have realised an evolutionary balanced potential.” (RR)

Hence, whilst I am convinced that Marx regularly needs defending from the negative distortions of his many detractors, (and I have done so repeatedly during my adult life) he should not be transformed into some now dead ancient guru whose ideas must be defended at all costs or positively distorted in order to make all his ideas seem relevant to the new set of circumstances, now facing humanity. Pursuing such a strategy is not a scientifically based attitude but a semi-religiously based one. Marx’s research ought not to be routinely ignored and then bought out to be used like a compass when anti-capitalists feel lost in unfamiliar intellectual territory. His Revolutionary-Humanist criticism needs to be understood, but also refreshed and replenished by reliable and confirmable new evidence. Sadly, some modern followers of Marx have become trapped in a post-Marx, dogmatic paradigm of ‘Marxism’ where the “masters” theories must be occasionally dipped into, mined for ‘gems’, dug out and dogmatically followed, regardless of unfolding reality.

Some of his current followers seem to think that a guru-like Marx gave us the absolute socio-economic truth about human life on earth, when in fact he was limited by circumstances and limited himself to providing important relative truths concerning the capitalist mode of production and its wider social and political manifestations. That itself was innovative, groundbreaking and valuable at the time and remains so. Nevertheless, the relative economic truth about the capitalist mode of production and its alienating social life that he provided was relative to the evidence he acquired during his life by his reading of history and economics and by the combined experience he had accumulated during his life time in the advanced capitalist countries of Europe. 

Sadly, the revolutionary programme and praxis Marx proposed in the ‘Theses on Feurebach’ and elsewhere, never got further than the dead ends that the Bolsheviks and Maoists took it. While the reformist left became the reformist centre and the post second world war generations of anti-capitalists became bogged down in sectarian squabbling and point scoring against each other rather than promoting a collective analysis of the egocentric and anthropocentric (Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, Maoist) vanguard model they were still promoting. However, in the meantime, planetary reality and the capitalist mode of production has substantially changed both qualitatively and quantitatively and so too must our ideas.

The experience of the Russian, Chinese and Cuban Communist Revolutions indicated that the hierarchical mass society model, even when controlled by those who were convinced they were following the ‘revolutionary’ ideas of Marx (or Engels) still remained hierarchical, still retained wage slavery and still treated nature as resources to be consumed indiscriminately and bought and sold as expendable commodities. Marx clearly knew the importance of some aspects of nature, (“land, the first condition of our existence” as he noted in ‘Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy’ ) as did many others, but he and his generation did not know the full extent of it, or the importance of the whole interdependent web of species life on earth needed by the human as well as by all other species. The planetary biosphere, including its air, water and land and all that lived within it and on it, was in previous generations considered to have a lasting – even eternal – stability, resource-wise.

For generations it appeared beyond the ability of human beings to disturb that life – supporting biosphere stability by anything they did or didn’t do. Indeed, that is still often the default position of the present day millions who base their denials of climate change and ecological extinctions on exactly that eternal type supposition. This is also the case with regard to those many humans who have a favourite species they wish to conserve but do not understand that the iconic Whales, Tigers or Pandas they favour also need the oxygen and food, provided by the mature plants and algae which are being destroyed or depleted by humanities ever increasing production and consumption – now on automated robotic steroids. Saving such iconic species requires saving all the planets species, particularly those at the base of supplying all the air we (and they) breath and the food chains we are all part of, such as the billions of insect larvae and plant seeds.

I suggest we revolutionary anti-capitalists and revolutionary-humanists need to free ourselves from the ideological confines experienced by and imposed upon our teachers – even the great ones – and begin working things out for ourselves. We need to commence and continue our own research and base it on the latest verifiable forms of evidence available to us. This evidence is much greater than was available to previous generations, we ignore it at the cost of seeing no further and perhaps understanding even less than our previous generations. The human brain is an amazing organ which is capable of examining evidence in detail in order to separate fact from fiction.  However, unfortunately the human brain is just as amazing at being used to invent evidence or distort it in order to turn elite preferred fictions into politically popularised facts. Consequently the task is to focus on the former and minimise the latter. In this regard Marx practiced what he once advocated in a letter to Arnold Ruge in 1843.

“I am speaking of a ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing, ruthless in two senses: The criticism must not be afraid of it’s own conclusions, nor of conflict with the powers that be.” (Marx)

Marx included in the category of ‘the powers that be’ those of the religious, political, economic and social elites, their tame media supporters and even those he classified as ‘dogmatists’ and ‘crass socialists’ among the liberals, lefts and anti-capitalist sectarians. I suggest that the above quote is one of the many suggestions by Marx that remains entirely relevant and one which is well worth adopting however, uncomfortable it makes others feel.

Roy Ratcliffe (April 2024)

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MARX & LIFE ON EARTH. (Part 1.)

Posted on March 29, 2024 by stutteringsteps

The continuing multiple crises of the capitalist mode of production continues to produce ideas about how to solve them by one means or another. Many of the means advocated are those which envisage a stage of human social evolution which goes beyond the present system of unlimited growth and unlimited consumption. Among those ideas currently being revived as offering solutions to the ecological aspects of the crises within the capitalist mode of production are those connected with Karl Marx and Lenin. I have covered the ideas and practical measures of Lenin and his loyal disciple Stalin in considerable detail in Revolutionary-Humanism and the Anti-Capitalist Struggle and this can be downloaded from the file ‘free downloads’ under the banner photo. I have covered the contributions Karl Marx has made in five previous articles ‘Understanding Marx’ also available on this blog and I offer another assessment of Marx’s contribution in the remainder of this article, and in a part 2 to follow.

When we consider Marx, we should remember a few important historical factors. First, he wrote in the 19th century and we are now well in to the 21st century. Second, as brilliant as his economic and social analysis is, we should understand that he initially assumed that the hierarchical  mass society form of human social aggregation would continue to be essential for humanity and the rest of life on earth. His admiration for the collective feats of civic and industrial engineering in the modern bourgeois period of hierarchical mass societies, and his admiration for the art and philosophy of the ancient Greek period of hierarchical mass societies, are just too firmly asserted and frequently repeated to deny. Spanning over ten thousand years in Europe, in which different modes of production progressed from the asiatic despotic regimes to the medieval fuedal kingship rulers and through to the modern industrial and financial capitalist hierarchies, it does seem that the success of the human species in its hierarchical mass society form – in every field of endeavour – was something spectacular.

Taking a one-sided, on the surface view of history, this could appear to be the case, even when taking into account its numerous destructive and exploitative sides such as frequent wars, slavery, racism and mysogeny. Moeover, in the 19th century it seemed logical to practically everyone on the left, who seriously thought about it, that ‘the material conditions of life’ (described as ‘Civic Society’ by Hegel and others), that the human species would continue to dominate nature from within mass society aggregates, but in a more humane and collectively equal way. These ‘material conditions of life’ which Marx began to study during his stay in Paris, were the starting point and the basis of his materialist conception of history. Thus when Marx wrote;

“In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society – the real foundation, on which rise legal and political super structures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness.” (Marx. Preface to ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’.)

We should not confuse the ‘relationships’ he refers to (ie those relationships between human beings) with the relationships between the human species and other species of life on earth (or nature in general). Whilst the above extract is an accurate material starting point and logical sequence for studying the capitalist mode of production, it is notable that this study is deliberately focussed predominantly  upon the existence of human productive relations exclusively within human communities. Marx, during his life time was operating within an existing intellectual paradigm of socio-economic study based almost entirely upon an anthropocentric understanding of life on earth. So when Marx goes on to note that ‘the mode of production determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life’, we should not assume it is ‘life on earth’ in general that he is focussed upon. His focus clearly remains primarily upon the ‘civic life’ of the human species within hierarchical mass societies as dominated by capital.

The conflict between the ‘material forces of production’ with the ‘existing relations of production’ that he then goes on to deal with are not the escalating conflicts and contradictions between humanity and the rest of life on earth. They are not concerns about ecological balance between the billions of evolved species but upon the sociological balance between humans. The contradictions he is motivated to explore and expose are those occuring entirely within the social evolution of human species during it’s post hunter-gatherer phase of social organisation. Humanities biological evolution, like the slow bio-chemical evolution of all other species, had reached a stage of relative refinement intellectually identified by the classification of humans as Homo sapien. When Marx formulated the following excerpt concerning the working class, this single species focus becomes clear.

“The community from which the worker is isolated by his own labour is life itself, physical and mental life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, human nature…The disastrous isolation from this essential nature is incomparably more universal, more intolerable, more dreadful, and more contradictory, than isolation from the political community. Hence to the ‘abolition’ of this isolation…” (Marx. Collected Works Volume 3 page 205.)

This community he refers to is unequivically the human community; this ‘life’ he is considering is human life within human societies; the isolation from this “essential nature” he is referencing is not nature, or life in general, but the specific communal nature of humanity before human socialised alienation took place within hierarchical mass societies. In the contradictions between the ‘general interests’ and the ‘private interests’ that Marx also refers to later are not the contradictions between the general interests of life on earth as a whole and the private interests of individual humans, but between the general interests of human communities and the private interests of individuals within them. Even when in the first volume of of his unrivaled in depth analysis of the capital mode of production he writes;

“Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth — the soil and the labourer.” (Marx. Capital Volume 1 chapter 15.)

It is only the sapping of the soil and the labourer – which Marx describes as the original sources or wealth – that he identifies. Why is this sapping of life on earth so limited by Marx?  I suggest it is because at the time he wrote it the soil and human labour were the only commonly understood supportive aspects of nature which he and others recognised as being sapped by elite directed human activity. But of course both of these factors, including ‘wealth’ are exclusively or primarily human anthropocentric concerns. Humanity likes to flatter itself that it is the key stone species of life on earth and that perspective permiated all classes of humanity. Indeed, the human species and their internal social relationships remained Marx’s primary focus throughout his life, with only occasional side-bar type references to the other species if life on earth.

“…life involves before everything else eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things…..Therefore, in any interpretation of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental fact in all its implications and to accord it it’s due importance…The production of life, both of ones own in labour and of fresh life in procreation, now appears as a double relationship: on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a social relationship. By social we understand the cooperation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. ” (Marx. ‘The German Ideology’. Section 1 History.)

In these and other such references by Marx, we can see how close he came to grasping the relative importance of life on earth (nature) in general as sources of nutrition and habitation, to humanity but the discovery of the absolute importance of bacteria to digestion, to T cells for immunity, to plant cell photosynthesis for food chains was largely unknown. A resort to Engels who outlived Marx fares no better as in the preface to ‘The origin of the Family, Private property and the State’ Engels goes no further than the 1844 manuscripts and the ‘German Ideology’ stating that; “..the determining factor in history, is in the final instance, the production and reproduction of immediate life”. The production and reproduction of immediate life is actually the determining factor of all life on earth, not just in the history of the human species. But the detailed inter-dependent connections beteeen life cycles on the planet were not being referenced, because at the time they were not fully understood.

A more detailed understanding had to await the invention of electron scanning microscopes and much else, before anthropocentric assumptions about nature (life on earth) could be questioned and these historically determined ideas superceded by life on earth based understandings. The problems that human productive activity poses to life on earth in general is a 20th and 21st century phenomenon. Even in debates between Marx and the anarchists, for example, these discussions were never primarily over the mass society form itself and its relationship to nature but only about the existence of a hierarchical alienating structure within human societies. Only later in his life did Marx return to his earlier concepts regarding nature in the 1844 manuscripts and begin to doubt the common anthropocentric assumption concerning the inevitability of future hierarchical mass societies. For example;

“Man is directly a ‘natural being’. As a natural being he is on the one hand endowed with ‘ natural powers, vital powers – he is an active natural being, a limited creature, like animals and plants…But man is not merely a natural human being he is a human natural being…therefore he he is a species being, and has to confirm and manifest himself as such both in his being and in his knowing.” (Marx 1844 Manuscripts. Emphasis added. RR.)

Yet even in this case of repeated stress on ‘natural’, it is in the qualifying clause of; “not merely a natural human being, he is a human natural being”that reveals anthropocentric tendencies.  It is  in the later sentence where Marx indicates a reversal of the actual real life presidence between ‘nature’ and ‘human’, between a natural human being and a ‘human’ natural being. That subtle, but notable linguistic juxtaposition blurs an important biological difference between life on earth as a whole (which is the foundation of all past, present and future human societies) and life in human societies in particular. Even in the 21st century most of the human species are continuing to put their own species (and nations) first and the rest of humanity and nature into various tiers or levels below them. Anthropocentric ideological assumptions even permeate the modern ecological perspective as the following example indicates. A panel of scientists collaborating with the Stockholm Resiliance Centre concluded;

“…..that Earth is now well outside the safe operating space for humanity.”

Despite the pressing dangers to the entire life on earth system, in the 20th and 21st centuries, the focus of even the more radical intelligentsia in the 21st century is still firmly on creating a ‘safe operating space’ for the human species. I suggest that if continued obsession with ‘self’ is an indicator of an individual level of serious psychological imbalance, then any continued obsession with our own single species out of the billions of other species of ‘life on earth’ that we rely upon  is a serious form of psycho-social imbalance.

Roy Ratcliffe (March 2024)

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MORE CLUTCHING AT STRAWS.

Posted on March 12, 2024 by stutteringsteps

The recent US helicopter or aircraft pallet ‘bombing’ of Gaza with some paltry bundles of aid, and the latest panic stricken idea of building a temporary floating port off Gaza has nothing to do with saving what is left of the people of Palestine. As proof of this the US geriatric self-professed Zionist president and his team of elite advisors have openly declared they are going to carry on sending bombs, rockets and other military supplies to enable the Israeli government to finish the Genocidal job they and the other Zionist authoritarian citizens started back in October 2023.

That is no secret. The openly declared long term aim of Zionism is not a secret either, it has always been its mission to entirely eliminate the Palestinian people from the land of Palestine by whatever tactical means they could get away with. The current tactic is a second Nakba in the form of a Gaza genocide. The long term aim of the US led Genocidal Alliance of European national elites is no secret either, it has always been to ally with and support a strong military state within the Middle East to ensure the economic, financial and resource interests of the western Anglo-Saxon elites are protected throughout the region.

All the rest of the current token gestures and diplomatic circus acts are part of pure political janus-faced theatre events unfolding in various scenes and Acts. Act 1, was the rush to give Israel everything it needed to execute the bombing, shelling and military invasion of Gaza. We are now witnessing Act 2 in which the level of atrocities carried on by the Jewish version of fascism in Act 1, were so extreme that the pretense of the national elites forming the Genocide Alliance of being representatives of enlightened democratic humanity was exposed as totally false.

The political elite actors of the US and European Genocidal Alliance understand they are playing their parts on a global stage in front of a fully engaged global audience, large numbers of whom are no longer fooled by the crocodile tears and the rehearsed vocal sincerity of economic, financial, political and military elites in western European countries. So their current performances in Act 2 of the sequel ‘Return of the Genocide’ part X, these elites are hoping to save face and save their economic interests by clutching at straws. The straws are the dropping of some plane loads of resource filled pallets and announcing a plan to drip feed maritime aid supplies to the people remaining alive in Gaza.

However, the fact that the elite sponsored Genocide Alliance members are still doing nothing to prevent the Israeli’s from getting on with their Zionist inspired ‘final solution’, reveals their complete insincerity. The straws will only convince those few who absolutely wish to be convinced. Furthermore, another developing situation reveals what is mainly motivating this slight change of tack, by Biden et al. The fact is that the US led financial and military power block also have their pro-capitalist rivals in the form of an alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS). This is China dominated trading group who wish to supplant the Western Capitalist NATO Alliance as an alternative source of major economic partners.

Some countries already dissatisfied with the Western Alliance led by the US, Britain and Europe will be invited to join. The list of those already applying to join BRICS is interesting in regard to the current situation in Gaza and the corresponding antics of the US, UK and European political elite. They latest recruits to BRICS are; Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Most of the ordinary citizens of these countries have held massive demonstrations against Israel’s conduct toward Gaza and the West Bank and are critical of those who support Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. Since the capitalist mode of production is based upon world trade of buying and selling products and services, the attitude of BRICS country citizens over which countries goods, they will prefer to buy and whose countries they choose to visit will be crucial.

The probable creation of a formal or even an informal boycott of the goods and services of Israel and the NATO countries, is worrying the elites these countries. If in any Act 3 or Act 4, of this current theatre of the absurd and depravity, the citizens of BRICS countries begin to seriously boycott Israel and the west, this will mean a substantial loss of trade and subsequent profits. Taxes from trade and on profits is one of the guaranteed income sources from which the political and military hardware and elite salaries are funded. This global background of competition in economic production reveals that their change of tack is not a moral change of heart by the US led Genocide Alliance. It is simply the naked economic and financial concern of the current US, UK and European elites to maintain future profitable relationships. Consequently, they suddenly wish to appear not as heartless as they have been and as they really are.

Of course this feeble theatrical charade by Biden, Cameron, Macron and others will not save the US, UK and European elite from being substantially tainted with being members of the Israeli Genocidal Alliance Support Group. Their enthusiasm for Israeli Zionism has been too obvious and too consistent. Plus, they were already deeply mired in structural, financial, economic and political problems in their countries before Israel and its citizens commenced their own further rapid descent into inhumanity and notoriety. The US, UK and European support for Israel will merely help to deepen and extend the economic and social decent of these countries further. The elites in these Israeli support countries will have to turn the malice and indifference they have openly shown to the plight of the citizens of Gaza and the West Bank onto their own citizens.

The successive stages of the class war of managing austerity and social decay conducted by US, UK and European elites against their own citizens, will be intensified. The other victims of the current political theatricals and increased military spending are the rapidly increasing species extinctions, the rapidly changing climate stability and predictability, the continuing pollution of rivers, lakes, seas and air and the inevitable export of more novel viruses and pathogens disturbed from their usual animal and insect hosts. By evolutionary adaptation these zoonotic viruses will become strong enough to overcome the immune defences of present and future generations of humanity.

While the real crisis facing humanity is the current economic systems war against nature, the political crisis facing the elite classes is resulting in their concern to expand arms production and commodity production and increase their war against nature and humanity in general. The political and religious elites everywhere are clutching at straws in order to survive in positions of power and influence within their respective national or denominational communities. Meanwhile outside of the superficial theatres of religion and politics, life on earth, is increasingly facing potentially existential situations, of which these elites have little or no interest in understanding,  appreciating or saving.

Both areas of elite promoted ideology, politics and religion, were founded during the ancient hierarchical mass society developments some several thousand years ago and have consistently failed to recognise that changes in reality require a corresponding change in thinking and behaving. Hierarchical mass societies are producing and consuming more of the planets resources than the planets life forms can reproduce them. A forest can be felled for resource materials, in much less than a quarter of generation, but the volume of oxygen a forest can produce can only be replaced by a replacement forest which can take at least a generation to produce the same volume. The same goes for Oceanic Algae and plankton, these life forms and the benefits they provide can be damaged and depleted in much less than a generation, but cannot be replaced in anything like as quick a time.

Other key species such as insects and soil micro-organisms can be seriously depleted in less than one generation also  but again,  the role they play in plant based food production cannot be replaced as easily. Humanity, is now living beyond its means, and its means are not politics or religion but the continual species reproduction of the interconnected, interdependent, bio-chemical processes of life on earth – as a whole. The inhuman drama of political instigated wars, genocides and diplomacy are no less distractions than all current dramatic performances, but in real life these hierarchical performances will be never ending until the hierarchical mass society system that creates them is ended.

The hominid species culminating in Homo sapiens has existed for millions of years yet our species has only been playing politics and killing each other and all life forms for several thousand years. But in that relatively short  time it has built up the capacity to not only undermine the climate and ecological balance of the planet, but to undermine it’s own existence. Humanity led by hierachical mass society elites is, on a more huge and complex scale, doing the equivalent of collectively sitting half way along the branch off a mature tree and sawing the branch away at a point nearer the trunk than humanity is situated.

Metaphorically speaking, it is time to stop sawing and reflect on what our daily and yearly productive efforts are currently doing to the whole of planetary life and what will be the obvious outcome if we do not stop. To keep on letting the political and religious elites determine what we thinking and how we are producing and consuming is to invite more of the same and we know what more of the same leads to. It leads to politically created austerity, global financial crashes, globalised pandemics, globalised wars, the latest genocide in Gaza and possibly more to come and of course more of the elite political theatrical posturings.

Roy Ratcliffe ( March 2024)

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A MESSAGE FROM ROJAVA.

Posted on March 7, 2024 by stutteringsteps

To all women in resistance worldwide

updated on 

The women’s movement Kongra Star from Rojava has written a message to women worldwide who are in resistance on the occasion of March 8:

Above all, we greet all women who are resisting on the occasion of the 8th of March, International Women’s Day. This day, on which women all over the world take to the streets, is an achievement of women on their long path of revolutionary struggle. It is also a historical legacy left to us by the great sacrifices that women have made to date.

In the name of Clara Zetkin, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexander Kollantai, Leyla Qasim, Sakine Cansiz, Şirin Elem Holi, Mina Keshwar, Berta Caceres and Marielle Franco we commemorate all the women who sacrificed their lives for the struggle for freedom. We also pay tribute to the resistance and struggle of all activists and revolutionaries who are in prison for rebelling against oppressive and dictatorial regimes. We greet all women around the world on the 8th of March, which we celebrate here in North and East Syria under the motto “With the free will of women we end the policy of genocide, occupation and isolation”.

The past year, which has been characterized by wars and attacks on women and the rights they have gained, also clearly shows the necessity and importance of a strong resistance and struggle against patriarchy and the capitalist modernity that comes along with it. We have witnessed the outbreak of wars on a regional and global scale that have led to war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, feminicide and various forms of oppression, for example in Kurdistan, Palestine, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Balochistan, Latin America, Ukraine, Mayanmar and many other places. We are also witnessing a shift to the right and fascism on a global scale, especially in Western countries. These wars and developments are the result of a patriarchal, male-dominated mentality that is primarily directed against women and the fight for freedom.

We saw this once again with the targeted killing of our female comrades last month. Our comrade Zelal Zagros, who was in Kerkuk to network with women’s organizations, was the target of an armed attack by the Turkish secret service. Şehid Sorxwin and Şehid Azadî, two members of the women’s defense unit YPJ who played an important role in the fight against ISIS, were killed in a drone attack. Additionally, a special war is being waged through which attempts are being made to appropriate women’s struggles or rob them of their content and integrate them into the ruling capitalist system. This concerns concepts such as feminist foreign policy or the fact that the slogan Jin Jiyan Azadî is shouted by right-wing politicians, but the actual content, meaning and origin of the slogan is ignored or criminalized.

But despite all of these attacks, the tireless resistance of women could not be broken. The legacy of millennia of resistance continues and women are at the forefront fighting for their freedom and the freedom of their society. We are convinced that women are the only force that can defeat nationalism, fascism, patriarchy, colonialism and all forms of oppression. Therefore, it is urgent that we women unite in a common strategy and lead a global freedom struggle against the global imperialist war. The activities of all anti-systemic forces and social movements that are developing under the leadership of women must not be considered separately. This force must flow together and become a force for change like a waterfall. We are convinced that the 21st century will be the century of women’s freedom. And we can achieve this by building a democratic world women’s confederalism, because together we are strong.

As a women’s movement in Rojava and North and East Syria, the place where we started a women’s revolution 12 years ago and where we are still living and defending it every day, we send this message to all women worldwide who are in resistance. We stand with the Palestinian and Jewish women fighting against genocidal and feminicidal policies, we stand with the women fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan, against the Sharia regime in Iran, against the fascist regime of Erdoğan in Turkey, against the oppression in Baluchistan, against fundamentalist forces and states in the Middle East, we stand with the women fighting against the rise of right-wing politics, fascism and oppression in the heart of capitalism.

We salute all women who are resisting in the mountains, in the streets, in the factories, in every field and everywhere else, turning every place into the color of freedom. We call to unite and strengthen our common struggle and to turn the 8th of March protests into a worldwide women’s revolution.

Jin Jiyan Azadî

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