A Tale Of Contradictions - Part 1

Multiple Bifurcations

Charles Dickens began his “A Tale of Two Cities”, set in the context of the French Revolution, with not only one of the longest opening sentences in literature, but with what appeared to be a contradictory statement - “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In fact, looking around the world at the moment, it seems an appropriate description. As I said in a post a while ago, I think the best description would be one of multiple bifurcations. But, all of the contradictions mean that, for policy makers, its rather like a game of Wack-A-Mole; each time they respond to one, it simply leads to another popping up somewhere else.

The revolutionary class in the current epoch is the working-class. Objectively, the most progressive force over the last 60 years has been Imperialism. Imperialism is a social relation based on global capitalism, and the states, classes, and organisations subsumed within it. The historic mission of the working-class is the liberation of humanity by the overthrow of Capitalism. For, at least, the last 100 years, the working-class, and dominant sections of Imperialism have shared, in practice, a common Social-Democratic ideology. Social-Democracy can paper over the cracks of the contradictory interests of the bourgeoisie, and proletariat; it cannot provide a solution to the problems of either class. In addition to these contradictions, and arising out of the same material basis there exists a whole series of further contradictions. As I wrote, in my blog Creationists On The March, the other day, it is surely ironic that in the world's most technological country, the US, there are so many millions of people mired in medieval mysticism, of one kind or another.

Imperialism 1

I have been intending for some time to write a new theory of Imperialism, updating the work I began in the 1980's. The basic outline of that theory, which I formulated back then, was that rather than Imperialism being a decaying stage of Capitalism, it has demonstrated itself to be, rather its most dynamic, most productive, and, therefore, its most revolutionary and progressive stage. For a long time, Marxists, based themselves on the theory of Imperialism developed by Lenin. Lenin's theory seemed to describe the situation at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the imperialist wars of the time, wars, which had been predicted twenty years earlier by Engels, on the basis of the dynamic of Capitalist competition, and the grab for Colonial markets. But, Lenin's theory mistook one dying form of Imperialism – Colonialism – which was in fact, a remnant of the old Feudal regimes, for the new vibrant form of Imperialism, based on multinational, industrial Capital, and its need to settle everywhere, and to turn the world into its own image, including all of the attendant attributes of a modern bourgeois society, needed for efficient capital accumulation.

The old form of Imperialism – Colonialism – simply exported the existing feudal regimes to foreign territories. Landlords collected rents and taxes, whilst the Mercantilists, the merchants and financiers who had developed in a symbiotic relation with the landlords at home, acted to make profits by unequal exchange, and usury. And sitting on top of such an economy sat the same kind of feudal, bureaucratic State that had been suitable for the feudal regime at home. Such an imperialism was reactionary, and incapable of bringing any development to those territories over which it had writ. It provided no dynamic towards productive development. On the contrary, just as Landlordism in Britain had been a disincentive for Capitalist farmers to invest in their land – because the landlord simply raised the rent, and claimed ownership at the end of the lease not only of his land, but also the investment made on it – so too, it was in the Colonies. The merchants and financiers were not interested in productive investment, other than marginally in coastal regions where they might establish their own plantations or mines, but only in buying from the existing producers at low prices, and selling manufactures to them at high prices, a process that could only act to drain potential Capital, rather than lead to its accumulation. Marx, in his analysis of India points to the introduction of railways and other aspects of an industrialised economy. This is true, and reflects the growing significance of the industrial bourgeoisie in the second half of the 19th century. But, the railways were in large part a necessary means of ensuring rule over such a vast country, by the British. Some recent studies have suggested that, although, some British citizens employed by the Raj, as well as the Merchants, and financiers who made made large profits from their activities, did very well, there was an actual flow of funds from Britain, to India, out of the British Treasury, to finance the running costs of the Colonial State, and the large army stationed there. Given that, increasingly, the taxes paid into the treasury came from the growing profits of industrial Capital, they would look to a more efficient system than this.

An unfortunate fact, which the defenders of the Leninist theory of Imperialism had to account for, was that as opposed to the majority of investment going to the Colonies and Neo-Colonies, in fact, it went to other developed Capitalist economies. There was a good reason for that. Large-scale industrial Capitalism had grown beyond the stage of making profits simply on the back of the employment of cheap labour, or by sharp business practices. In fact, as Engels points out, it had disdained such an approach as early as the last quarter of the 19th Century, and saw action to prevent such practices as an effective means of consolidating its position as against its smaller competitors who could only make profits by such means.

“The fact is, those tricks do not pay any longer in a large market, where time is money, and where a certain standard of commercial morality is unavoidably developed, purely as a means of saving time and trouble. And it is the same with the relation between the manufacturer and his “hands.”...

And in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill [2] was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages.”

Preface to the English Edition of “The Condition of the Working Class in England

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