A Reply To Jlowrie

As promised last week, I set out, here, a reply to the comments of Jlowrie on Michael Roberts' Blog that I was unable to present there. Roberts has since put forward a lame defence of his decision to block comments stating that it was due to some people posting comments that were very long – obviously aimed at me – and that others had posted attacks on others that went way beyond what could be accepted as fairness. I say its lame, because a long comment that I had posted was published some considerable time before, whilst the comments that were blocked were short. Moreover, I have never resorted to any kind of abuse of other posters; even in relation to trolls, my policy is to deliberately just ignore them, to the point of scrolling past anything they write. Yet, even after some of my comments had been blocked, I notice that Roberts was still posting comments by the very trolls he was referring to. 

So I am led to believe that this is a lame defence that is simply convenient, because it means that Roberts does not have to defend his ridiculous claim that, without containment, COVID19 deaths in Sweden were set to rise to around 61,000, and its per capita mortality rate was going to surge beyond that in Britain. In fact, what has happened? The total number of deaths in Sweden is just 3,040. That is only half the number Roberts claimed that Swedish deaths were going to reach even with containment! The number of deaths on the last day for which data is available, May 7th, is just 11. On the previous day, the number was 21, on the day before that 32. In other words, a look at the curve for Sweden shows that it has more or less flattened. That is consistent with the fact that scientists believe that Sweden has achieved, more or less, herd immunity for its population in Stockholm, so that the number of new infections, and from there the number of additional deaths, should decline rapidly. 

Compare that with Britain, where Roberts claimed that, because of its policy of lockdown, the figures would improve relative to Sweden. More than six weeks into a lockdown that was supposed to start to see the number of deaths start falling after just three weeks, what, in fact, do we see? We see deaths of 30,600, and the real figure is probably around 40,000. Its curve is far from flattening.  Given that the UK population is 6.5 times bigger than Sweden that is equal to 4707 deaths there, or 50% more than the actual figure, showing that, far from the per capita mortality rate in Britain being better, it is, in fact, worse. Moreover, whilst the number of new deaths in Sweden is down to near single figures, and has been down to low double figures for some time, this also compares favourably with Britain. In Britain, the last day's figure showed 539 new deaths. That is equal to 83 deaths in Sweden, or nearly 8 times the actual figure for Sweden! No wonder Roberts does not want to defend his mortality predictions that have been as off beam as his annual predictions that the next recession was just around the corner. 

Anyway, back to Jlowrie. 

This discussion flowed from a comment by fredtorssander, which I will be dealing with in another post. It started from a point I had made that reactionaries were using COVID19 to bolster arguments against free movement, against globalisation, and so on. Fred commented that he was “very fond of nationalist left proletarian (and peasant) revolutions that win and go on defending their nation and their revolution.” In response, I said it depended on your definitions of left, proletarian and winning. For me none of these regimes are socialist. Indeed, the term is an oxymoron when applied to a single country, let alone a backward, small country, like, for example, Cuba, because Socialism, as understood by a Marxist, is something that can only be created as an international system, and, at the very least, requires a significant number of advanced economies for it to be successful. 

I pointed to the nature of the Cuban dictatorship, and its oppression of Cuban workers, and its opponents, as well as to the Vietnamese regime, which under Ho Chi Minh murdered thousands of Vietnamese Trotskyists. In China, Mao's Great Leap Forward led to the deaths of millions of Chinese peasants. To this JLowrie complains that “Boffy doffs his Marxist scientific hat and dons his Trotskyist ideological hat.” But, nothing could be further from the truth. 

The fact that I pointed to the murder of thousands of Vietnamese Trotskyists by Ho, in 1945, just after he had also brutally crushed the workers rising in Saigon, does not at all mean that I was giving a free pass to Lenin and Trotsky for the actions they undertook in Russia. Indeed, I have written plenty about that in the past. However, there is a difference between the actions of Trotsky as Commissar of War attempting to instil military discipline, in conditions of an all-out civil war, and the actions of Ho in simply murdering thousands of Trotskyists as an act of political expediency to remove political opponents!  The two things are completely different.  the actions of Ho are in the same vein as the actions of the Chinese Stalinists who in the name of the Popular Front with the Kuomintang led to the deaths of thousands of Chinese communists, or more closely with the actions of the Spanish Stalinists, who in the name of their Popular Front with the Spanish bourgeoisie, murdered thousands of Spanish Trotskyists and POUMISTS.

And, whilst I would be the first to criticise Lenin and Trotsky for some of the actions they undertook, which themselves flowed from having to undertake a proletarian revolution in conditions where there was no material basis for such a revolution, I would point out that a) that decision was made on the grounds of believing that the world revolution was at hand, and b) that in the absence of such a revolution in Russia, the country would be carved up in the same way that China had been. They rightly saw the relations between Kerensky and Kornilov as opening the door to reaction. Moreover, the Bolsheviks had opened the door to the Left SR's to join them in government, and they responded by attempting to assassinate Lenin, that kind of thing can have an impact on your attitude towards how you deal with opponents! 

J says that unlike Lenin and Trotsky, who would have been unlikely to have led the Bolsheviks to electoral victory, it was the likelihood of Ho being elected President that led the US to invade. I could, of course, point to the fact that it was the likelihood of the Vietnamese Trotskyists forming a majority that led Ho to align with the Vietnamese bourgeoisie against them, and against Vietnamese workers.  That US invasion, of course, was 20 years after Ho had murdered those thousands of Trotskyists, and suppressed the workers rising in Saigon, as part of his Stalinist Popular Frontist strategy. But, it also does not tell us anything about the reactionary nature of Ho's regime. Hitler also won a plurality of votes in Germany! Donald Trump won the Presidential election in the US, what does any of this have to do with whether those elected are reactionary or not? 

J continues, 

“Has Boffy studied the Cuban election system? How can Boffy call it a dictatorship? It is certainly not a democracy, but it is a far nearer to it than anything envisaged by Trotsky”, 

which rather than being an argument is simple whataboutery. If a country is not a democracy then what is it if not a dictatorship? Moreover, J gives far too much importance to formal institutions and rules. The USSR had by far the most democratic constitution in the world – on paper. It didn't change the fact that it was a brutal dictatorship. The banning of opposition parties in Cuba, the restrictions of free speech, the imprisonment of opponents, not in the middle of a civil war, but 60 years after the revolution, tell any sensible person enough about the nature of this regime. 

In a subsequent comment, J responds to a troll “Anti-capital” who also posts comments using a range of sock puppets. He's probably the same troll that has stalked me across the internet for more than a decade using various persona such as The Sentinel, BCFG, DFTM, SIOB to name just a few, some of which have also made their appearance on Roberts' Blog.  I go out of my way to avoid losing any brain cells reading any of the crap he writes. He is one of those people who Michael Roberts I assume had listed as engaging in unfair attacks on others. From J's, comments, I take it that “Anti-capital” and his sock puppets had ridiculously attacked me as being a “social-Darwinist” for my comments on COVID19. Totally, ridiculous, because it is me that, from the beginning, has argued the necessity to ensure that the 20% of the population at serious risk from the virus should be protected against it! 

J, comments, 

“Your critique of Boffy may well be right; on the other hand he may be the one who turns out to have had the best analysis. It makes no sense to call him ‘a social darwinist.’ Such merely debases the discussion. The fact is that the world’s poor are more locked out than locked down, and if I understand him aright he argues that such a policy may well cause more deaths than the disease itself, which seems a rational position.” 

Well, on the first point, see my introductory comments about the mortality rates in Sweden as against the situation in locked down Britain. The fact is that, in Britain, millions are locked down as far as social interaction is concerned, but the same millions are expected to turn up for work each day, to produce profits for capital, and they are not only in close contact at work, but on the buses, tubes and trains taking them to and from work. The lockdown is a farce from start to finish, and has not even come close to achieving the goals that were set for it. As for the second part its only necessary to look at the economic damage that is being done in developed economies to see what the effect on developing economies will be. In Britain, its having an impact on foodbanks both in terms of the demands placed upon them, and on their ability to obtain supplies. Its causing significant damage to livelihoods with a consequent effect on health. Its having a significant effect on the treatment of people suffering other serious conditions like cancer. And, these effects will not be just for one year, but for many years to come. And, of course, the 40,000 deaths from COVID19 are a tragedy, but they are nowhere near the 500,000 deaths that the Imperial study was used to predict. Moreover, it is only half the 78,000 people who die each and every year from smoking related illnesses, and about four times that number that suffer serious smoking related illnesses. Yet, that has not caused a lockdown to stop smoking, or transmission of such diseases from passive smoking. 

J, then goes on to say that he falls into the category of what I call catastrophists, because he looks at reports that a quarter of insects had disappeared due to widespread pesticide use, and global warming. He is concerned about the fact that China and Japan intend to build many more coal-fired power stations, and that China and India intend to drive many more peasants into the cities. This is driving humanity to a cataclysm he concludes, and contrasts my view that despite all this, capitalism remains progressive with my rejection of the idea that left nationalist regimes represent nothing good. In relation to this last point, he picks up my comment that the Great Leap Forward caused millions of deaths due to starvation. He invites me to take part in a numbers game of exactly how many millions this was, and does the usual thing that apologists for such regimes do of saying that its all imperialist propaganda, that the number of deaths was much smaller, and so on. But, the point is that, however many died, it was too many, because China should have been able to have fed its population, and to have increased its food production. Instead, its food production fell dramatically, and fell dramatically as a result of a direct political decision by Mao! This was not a catastrophe arising from the nature of China as a poor country, or of foreign intervention, but of a catastrophe caused directly by the stupid, bureaucratic political decision of Mao.  It is on a par with the millions of Russians that died as a result of Stalin's similarly stupid, bureaucratic political decision to impose forced collectivisation of peasant farms.

So, let's deal with these arguments one by one. Firstly, much of the argument that J puts forward, here, is similar to that put forward by Rory that I have dealt with separately. In other words, it is a argument based upon technological rather than sociological arguments. To put it another way, the question is, if we had socialism tomorrow, would it change much from the standpoint of production, about how we proceeded, in the short to medium term, in terms of technology? The answer is almost certainly no. If you are a developing economy, with a growing population, with a rising standard of living that means that population demands more food, would you, as a workers state, say we are going to stop using pesticides tomorrow so that we don't kill off insects, even if that meant that your food production dropped by 20%, and your population started to go hungry? 

There are other alternatives. To compensate for this reduction in food output, more land could be brought into cultivation, but those that object to the use of pesticides are usually the same ones who would object to greater land clearance so as to facilitate increased agricultural output. But, as I pointed out to Rory, in fact, global food output could be increased significantly simply by replacing inefficient peasant farming with capitalist farming. Some of that involves also the use of pesticides, and fertilisers, but a great deal involves simply more capital intensive farming methods, the use of selected crops, and so on. Yet, what is one of the biggest obstacles to such a development? It is precisely the politics of those petty-bourgeois, “left-nationalist” regimes that J lauds, and their petty-bourgeois “anti-imperialist” cheer leaders, who see any such involvement of large-scale capital in those economies as something that must be avoided like the plague! It is precisely the kind of reactionary, petty-bourgeois politics of Sismondi, and of the Narodniks designed to promote the interests of the peasantry and petty-bourgeois. It is the line that was pursued by Stalinism, in its alliance with Third Worldism, as part of the USSR's global military strategic attempts to restrict the spread of influence of imperialism, and particularly of the US, and the Stalinists and their fellow travellers have continued with that politics even though the USSR and its satellites are now just a distant memory. 

There are other means of increasing output without use of more pesticides. The use of GM crops that are pest and disease resistant is one means of achieving that, but of course, the same environmentalists, “anti-capitalists” and “anti-imperialists” also object to the use of GM crops too!  What J's argument amounts to is not an argument against capitalism, because of a potential environmental crisis, but a technological objection. It is essentially Luddite. The real problem facing those economies is not capitalism causing the potential of an environmental disaster, but, in the absence of Socialism, as Lenin and Marx said, in similar conditions, “not enough capitalism”! It is precisely a capitalist restructuring and modernisation of this peasant agriculture that would enable it to produce more food, more cheaply, and utilising less land and labour, and also, thereby be environmentally more sustainable. Would a socialist solution be better, yes, of course it would, but in the absence of the existence of Socialism, come back and tell me that again, when its an actual solution and not just a pipe dream, or as Lenin described it when put forward by the Narodniks, a pious wish. 

Are there problems with large-scale capitalist agriculture, with the use of GM crops and so on? Yes, of course, but so what? That is the case with all capitalist production, and has always been the case with capitalist production. Its why we posit Socialism as the solution to those problems, but a solution that is only possible when capitalism itself has acted to reorganise, rationalise and develop the productive forces itself to a level whereby that Socialism becomes possible. If we take GM crops, the objection might be that their supply is monopolised by Monsanto, and that they may have unforeseen consequences. But, the response to this of arguing that, instead, agriculture, in large parts of the globe, should be kept at a more primitive level, has nothing to do with a socialist response. It is again simply a petty-bourgeois, Sismondist response. Arguing about the involvement of Monsanto, because its a monopoly is simply an application of the reactionary, Stalinist policy of the “anti-monopoly alliance”. Yet, as Lenin has described, for Marxists, monopolies are the form that property takes as the step prior to Socialism, so why would we oppose them? Rather than opposing such monopolies, and their involvement in agricultural production, the Marxist response is to argue for workers control over them, and thereby to utilise them, and the productive forces they wield, in the interests of workers, and of peasant producers across the globe. And, the same applies to any potential bad effects of the technology. We are not Luddites. Our response is Workers Control and Inspection, so that we can ensure that the technology does not pose such threats, and that it is used appropriately. 

In place of the Marxist position of pushing through the developed forms of capital towards Socialism, the position that J adopts is the reactionary, petty-bourgeois solutions of Sismondism that seeks instead to hold back development, and which, thereby, benefits the petty bourgeoisie, and more reactionary forms of capital. And, of course, if you want to complain about environmental damage, then look no further than that same “left nationalist regime” in China, that J was previously defending, and its methods. The decision of the current Chinese regime to build additional coal-fired power stations is not one driven by capitalist logic, but by the bureaucratic, Stalinist logic of the Chinese Communist Party. It contrasts with the fact that, in Britain, coal is being rapidly phased out, and even in Trump's America, coal cannot compete economically with other forms of power generation, and where the number of jobs in solar power generation now exceeds those in coal production by a ratio of 5:1 (250,000 to 50,000). 

And, the petty-bourgeois, reactionary nature of J's comments are emphasised by his comments about India and China driving peasants from the countryside into the towns. That process, of course, was described by Marx as rescuing millions from the idiocy of rural life. The truth is, of course, that in many of these industrialising economies, now industrialising at a time when capitalism globally has already developed, and raised living standards generally, it is not necessary to “drive” peasants from the countryside, because, particularly for the younger members of these communities, they are only too glad to escape the countryside and move to the cities, to escape that idiocy, and where they can obtain employment as wage labourers that provide them with a standard of living way in excess of anything that they could expect as a subsistence peasant farmer living a precarious existence. Again, what J provides us with is the same kind of petty-bourgeois, Sismondist/Narodnik fantasy of some golden age of independent peasant farming that never existed, and then posits this as some kind of superior condition to that of the wage labourer. It is thoroughly reactionary, not just because it is based upon a fantasy, but also because it is only the wage labourer that offers the potential for a transition to Socialism. 

J says, 

“It is anachronistic to repeat the arguments Marx made against Malthus or Sismondi. That capitalism has brought many economic and social improvements is undoubtedly true, but humanity and nature form a dialectic unity, and nature can little longer sustain the capitalist mode of production.” 

But, this is to misunderstand the nature of the Marxist argument. Its not a question of capitalism bringing economic and social improvements. Its a matter that capitalism creates the material conditions for Socialism, and in creating a large, international, educated and cultured, unified working-class, it creates the subjective element required for Socialism, the historical agent of change. The claim that nature can little longer sustain capitalism is simply a repetition of that same Malthusian claim that has been made for the last two centuries, and without any greater validity today than it has ever had, in fact, probably less. 

He continues, 

“In light of the above ”on the brink of ….. multiple famines of biblical proportions” I trust we will make a break with the thesis that socialism must outproduce capitalism and demands ‘abundance,’ a metaphysical concept indeed, for how would we know when we reached ‘abundance’?” 

This, of course, is the kind of comment that only someone enjoying the benefits that 200 years of industrial capitalism has already brought can make. J would probably feel differently if he was living in Ethiopia, where that same industrial capitalism, is only now bringing a similar kind of development. And, if we are, on the brink of multiple famines, then how J thinks this will be helped by holding back the kind of capitalist development of agriculture that is the only potential short-term solution to such famines, I really don't know. In fact, after sharp rises in the global working-class, and its living standards occurred in the period after the start of the new long wave uptrend in 1999, large investments in industrial agriculture began to be made in parts of Africa that offer the best hope of avoiding any such famines. The same is true with industrial scale farming in South America, which offers a better alternative than the actions of domestic farmers in those countries, whose land rather than capital intensive methods of farming has resulted in them clearing thousands of miles of rainforest for that purpose. 

And, because Socialism will need to raise the living standards of all these millions of people, of course, it must be able to out produce capitalism. Indeed, unless Socialism can outproduce capitalism, how does J think that it will be able to outcompete any remaining powerful capitalist/imperialist states? How does he think it will be able to retain the support of citizens if they see a higher standard of living provided by capitalism, let alone the problem of those capitalist states developing superior technology, and thereby weaponry? The idea of Socialism as some kind of hair shirt existence, of a return to some form of more primitive lifestyle is again symptomatic of the kind of petty-bourgeois Sismondist, not of the Marxist. Developing the means of production does not mean simply producing more and more of the same things, but it does involve being able to produce a wider range of products, as well as producing what is required using less labour so as to make leisure time available for workers so that they can develop as individuals. It will be required to develop the science required for future human development, including exploration of space, for example. 

The idea that we cannot produce much more, and that there are some natural limits upon it, is itself only true if we do not develop science and technology, which is precisely the error that Malthus and Sismondi made. If we take coal, oil and gas for example, it will soon come to be seen that their use to burn as fuel is incredibly wasteful, just as the use of wood for that purpose came to be seen as such prior to the current fad for wood burning stoves. We currently have the development of 3-D printing, which uses various polymers as the substrate for the construction. In fact, the utilisation of coal, gas and oil as feedstock for the petrochemicals required to produce these polymers will be far more important than their use as sources of energy. But, even that is only a short-term solution. We already have the development on nanotechnology, so that materials can be developed from the atomic level upwards. That holds out the prospect of the development, in the not too distant future, of the potential to simply suck atoms from the air, and to manipulate them into molecules, and then larger chemical structures. The potential for the kind of Star Trek fabricators is not as far away as you might think, but to get there will require that productive potential be increased considerably.