Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 7

“In his Letters from Geneva, Saint-Simon lays down the proposition that “all men ought to work”. In the same work he also recognised that the Reign of Terror was the reign of the propertyless masses.

“See,” he calls out to them, “what happened in France at the time when your comrades held sway there; they brought about a famine.”

But to recognise the French Revolution as a class struggle (and not simply as one between nobility, bourgeoisie, and those without any property, was, in the year 1802, a discovery of the greatest genius.” (p 332)

At the time of Saint-Simon, “the propertyless” was mostly the petty bourgeoisie and urban proletariat. The petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry overwhelmingly predominated over the industrial proletariat, as, indeed, was the case in Russia in 1917, as Lenin describes in “Left-wing Childishness”. Today, however, the industrial proletariat forms the majority in all developed economies. It constitutes around 70% of the population, but that means that around 30% is still constituted by the petty-bourgeoisie, and its size has grown by 50% since he 1980's.  With the working-class bereft of any Marxist leadership, it has, as social-democracy, inevitably, failed, led to the advance of the petty-bourgeoisie. It is reactionary, even compared to the bourgeoisie, but its numbers, and appeal to simplistic solutions, based on lies, and a focus only on what it is against, has consolidated it electorally, and enabled it to draw behind it the other backward social layers of society.

Brexit has not yet led to “famine”, as Saint-Simon described in relation to France, or as occurred under Stalin, Mao and others, but it has led to a significant deterioration in Britain's economy, with a consequent effect on its poorest, who are the biggest contingent of those that voted for it. As the petty-bourgeois nationalists, be it Farage, Badenoch or Starmer continue to cling to their Brexitism, in the face of that reality, the more they resort to Bonapartism and authoritarianism. If Burnham fails to break with Brexitism, he will be led down the same path, and his support for reactionary policies such as regionalism, already place him on that path.

In the US, the same is seen with Trump, the global figurehead of that petty-bourgeois nationalism. Despite the huge advantages of the US economy, and its continued inertial force, Trump's idiotic policies of economic nationalism, protectionism, tariffs and so on, are creating a similar chaos in the US. Only the capitalist state is mitigating its effects, and slowing the progress of that chaos.

Engels continues.

“In 1816, he declared that politics was the science of production, and foretold the complete absorption of politics by economics. Although the knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo, what is already very plainly expressed is the transition from political rule over men to the administration of things and the guidance of the processes of production — that is to say, the “abolition of the state”, about which there has recently been so much noise.” (p 332-3)

As Engels set out in The Origin, the state only arises as a consequence of class society. In all previous society, there are bodies comprising the whole of the society or clan. Even with the AMP, the body that, eventually, becomes the state, after a very long period of time, begins not as a state, but, merely, as an administrative, bureaucratic, technocratic body serving the interests of the whole society. The state arises only at that point at which the productive forces have sufficiently developed that a section of society can separate itself into a separate class or caste, whose ownership or control over the means of production gives them a qualitatively different share in the distribution of society's output, and, also, enables them to utilise it, to employ its own bodies of armed men to guarantee its continued position in that regard. Often, these are people it recruits from outside the given society to fulfil that function.

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 21

Considered from the perspective of industrial capital as an abstraction, all of these different standards, rules, regulations and so on are irrational, but industrial capital, like everything else in the world, does not exist as an abstraction, but as a reality. That reality is one in which industrial capital developed within the context of the nation state, and each of those nation states created their own standards, rules, regulations, laws and so on, in order to protect and advance the interests of industrial capital, not in the abstract, but in the concrete reality of that state.

Britain adopted the standard gauge for railways in the 19th century, as noted earlier. One of the reasons for adopting it, rather than the broad gauge used by Brunel, was that the Stephensons had built more engines and track, using their standard gauge, and so were able to convince parliament to adopt it, even though there are numerous reasons for thinking that the broad gauge was technically superior. A similar thing occurred with the adoption of VHS as the standard for video recorders, even though Betamax was technically superior. As the leading industrial power, in the 19th century, Britain exported locomotives across the world, as well as building railways in its colonial Empire. In so doing, it created the same standards used for production in Britain, and so gave its own manufacturers an immediate advantage. Had motor vehicles been developed earlier, most of the world would drive on the left side of the road and have right-hand drive cars, as in Britain, rather than left hand drive cars, as in the US, where, from the start, most of them were produced.

In the post-war era, although the first programmable, electronic computer was built in Britain, and used at Bletchley Park to decrypt German codes, it was the US, which dominated the global market for mainframe computers. The number of these computers in operation was tiny, compared to the number of computers produced and used today. They were nearly all used by governments or large corporations. Countries like Britain, therefore, subsidised and protected their own small mainframe computer companies like ICL. But, ICL was never going to be able to dominate the global mainframe computer market, in the way that IBM did, because the limited size of the UK market meant it did not have the scale of production enjoyed by IBM. Had Britain been part of the EU, in the 1950's, it might have been able to help create a European mainframe computer industry of a size that could have competed with the US, but it wasn't.

Moreover, the US developed its computer industry in large part to assist in its military capability. The computers controlled missiles and so on. Given that the US produced the majority of the weapons systems used by NATO, and deployed in Europe, it ensured that it was those US computer standards that were adopted. In the 1980's, when the microchip revolution took place, it was, then, the US which dominated the market for personal computers. Even when other countries, and companies produced personal computers, they quickly had to be sold as being “IBM compatible”. Similarly, the operating system used on those “IBM Compatible”, PC's had to be Microsoft's DOS, a factor which enabled Microsoft to dominate the global software market.

This is also seen, in relation to the Internet, and global communications systems. The difference is that the US, in the 1980's and after, having shifted a large part of the production of hardware to other parts of the world (mostly Asia), content that 90% of the value of the end product came from the skilled complex labour, embodied in the intellectual property, retained in the US, opened itself up to the possibility that having become the dominant producers of the hardware, companies in these other regions would, also, develop their own firmware, and software. They would, inevitably, develop their own standards and protocols. As the world's largest market for almost everything, China has a huge advantage in that regard. The Chinese state, as the centralised planner of the economy, has a massive advantage in being able to pursue that course.

The EU, developed its own Atomic Energy Industry, to be able to compete with the US, and belatedly, the EU has been prompted by the regime of Trump, to begin separating itself from the US domination of the Internet and technology.  The EU Parliament has already banned use of several US platforms for its MEP's and staff, and has developed EU alternative systems.

Amazingly, even in the 21st century, the railways continue to play a significant role in that respect. China has developed its high speed trains linking up the vast expanses of the country. But, as part of its “Belt and Road” strategy, it has provided the capital for railways to be constructed across Asia. The real significance of railways has always been in relation to the movement of freight, particularly bulk freight. Over short, local distances, railways are too rigid to be useful means of passenger transport. They lost out, prior to car ownership, to buses, which could provide flexible routes. But, buses too are too rigid, compared to private motor cars. Over longer, inter-city, journeys, trains are less rigid but, as families bought cars, and as companies provided company cars for their representatives, and as motorways were developed, trains could not compete. Only on much bigger land masses could high speed trains compete, over even larger distances, for passenger traffic, and there, they initially faced the already established airlines.

Railways, like canals, are significant as a means of, effectively moving bulk freight, particularly over large distances, and that is what China has done, spreading out from China itself, into Eurasia, and across to the Middle East and Europe. Last year, it sent a freight train from China to London. As I have set out before, Eurasia is a rational economic entity, just as is the EU. Trade within these two entities, inevitably increases, and drives towards, the adoption of common rules, standards, laws, regulations and so politico-economic integration and centralisation. But, the fact that the EU and Eurasian bloc share a common land mass, also means that trade between these blocs, will also increase, relative to with the US etc.

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SNNS 52

 

Northern Soul Classics - SWIM - Bobby Freeman

 

SNNS 51

 

SNNS 50

 

Northern Soul Classics - I Just Can't Forget That Boy - Little Rena Scott