The Left has been plagued by catastrophism for much of its history. Its a form of spite combined with wishful thinking by the impotent and demoralised petty-bourgeois. Whether in the field of environmentalism or political economy, the same features can be distinguished within it.
For those like Michael Roberts, whose URL for his website “The Next Recession”, tells you all you need to know about where his hopes and aspirations lie, the last ten years have been one rolled over prediction after another that, there would be a recession in the following year, all, of course, as a result of The Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit To Fall, though, given that this law is one that operates continually over the long-term, why it should result in a recession this year rather than any other year is not apparent. Given the failure of any of these predicted recessions to occur during that period, the arrival of the government imposed lock-outs, as their response to the virus, came, no doubt, as a welcome relief to Michael, as he could, at least claim that his perennial prediction of recession had been proved right, at least once, even if the cause of it had nothing to do with The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall as had been suggested.
Of course, there is absolutely no evidence that the government imposed lock-outs had any beneficial effect, as far as the virus was concerned. All statistical analysis of countries that have imposed them against performance, in relation to per capita mortality, shows no correlation whatsoever. The justification for them is impossible to identify. Not only did they fail to reduce mortality, but they also failed to stop infection, or hospital admissions. They did extend the period that the virus was at large, by slowing the development of herd immunity, and so also facilitated the development of new mutant strains of the virus that might yet pose greater threats in future. What, of course, they also did was to cause the greatest economic slowdown in 300 years, and send hundreds of millions of people, across the globe, into even greater poverty, malnutrition, ill-health and death. About 500 million more people have been thrown into these conditions globally, compared to still only 2 million COVID deaths, itself just a sixth of those that died from flu in 1968, on a population adjusted basis, and a 75th of the population adjusted death toll from Spanish Flu in 1918.
In Britain alone, the latest figures show half a million more people thrown into destitution as a result of the government imposed lock-outs, and this is just the start. Of course, if you have found that, over the years, you have failed to convince any large numbers of people of your vision of socialism as better than that they have under capitalism, and so have concluded that the way forward is to pray that capitalism becomes really fucked up, so that all those people will see what a messiah you really were, after all, then all of that catastrophe coming their way, is grist to your mill. Trouble is, of course, that the people who usually benefit from those conditions of catastrophe are rarely, if ever, the Left, and invariably the Far Right.
So, last April, I wasn't surprised that when I challenged Michael Roberts' arguments in favour of government imposed lock-outs, his response was to block my comments. Incidentally, on checking the other day, I see he is still allowing the trolls like “Anti-Capital”, and his sock puppets such as “Socialism In One Bedroom”, who also posts on the “All That Is Solid” blog under a huge array of pseudonyms, to put forward their mindless pap. Back then, after I had pointed out that, contrary to Michael's argument, Sweden had imposed no lock out, and yet its per capita mortality rate was better than Britain, which had. Michael assured us that it was only a matter of time, claiming that, if it continued not to impose lock-outs, its deaths would rise to 61,000. What, in fact, has happened? In the Summer, its deaths went more or less to zero. Even now, a year later, its total deaths amount, not to 61,000, but to just 12,600, or just double what he claimed would be the case even with lock-outs, and its curve has again flattened.
Of course, Michael Roberts was not alone in making these hysterical claims about how high deaths were going to go. They accepted willingly as good coin the claims of the scientists at Imperial College, advising Boris Johnson, that deaths in Britain could go as high as half a million, and worldwide could go as high as 45 million, the same number the same people had predicted would be the global death toll from Swine Flu some years ago, but which turned out to be about 1% of that figure. There were those like David Ashcroft who proclaimed that deaths in the US were only a couple of weeks away from hitting 1 million. The truth, despite all of the idiocy of Trump, US deaths amount still to just 497 thousand, and as with the UK data, and most other data, this is the number of people dying with COVID, not necessarily from COVID.
In much the same way that Messianic bible-thumpers told us that AIDS was a plague sent down upon gays as punishment for their behaviour, we saw claims that COVID was somehow a plague sent down upon us as a consequence of capitalism. It is as though, such viruses are something that has only arisen since capitalism, as though all history of The Black Death never happened. Its as though all of the thousands of deaths from cholera, typhoid, smallpox and so on that capitalism has eradicated as a result of introducing clean drinking water and sanitation, and vaccines never happened.
And, of course, capitalism has done it again. The Medical-Industrial Complex, seeing great opportunities for profit making – even selling COVID vaccines at cost adds to big pharma profits as a result of a huge contribution to their fixed costs – stepped up to the plate, and produced, not just one, but a plethora of viable vaccines to stop the virus in its tracks in record time. Whilst the state capitalist NHS was not even able to protect its own staff or patients from being infected with the virus, and so became the biggest single superspreader of the virus, all of these corporations provided the solution effectively and efficiently. If ever there is an argument in favour of such large-scale socialised capital, as against the proponents of “anti-monopoly alliances”, then the performance of big pharma in producing the solution to COVID is it. What a pity the workers in those industries do not themselves have control over them, but how lucky we are, given the abysmal performance of the capitalist state, and its health service, that its not the state or Boris Johnson exercising that control.
And, of course, this has wider lessons for catastrophists. In an article recently, Paul Mason wrote,
“Because climate change demands the end of capitalism.”
I almost fell of my seat when I read that. Talk about hyperbole. I know Paul has a book to sell, but still. He's made similar comments before, for example in Postcapitalism, but this seems the most stark to date. But, of course, climate change in no way demands the end of capitalism. Quite the contrary, responding to climate change opens up a a panorama of new investment opportunities for capital, whole new vistas of potential new profits. Many of them are in commodities that were already being developed, as, in any case, new, more efficient means of using materials and energy. Solar and wind power is already cheaper than fossil fuel energy, for instance, and these industries now provide far more jobs and profits in the US than does the old fossil fuel based energy production.
But, set all that aside. Assume that was not the case, then if climate change did really pose a threat to capitalism, isn't the obvious lesson from what we have just seen in the response of big capital and its mobilisation of technology, in producing a whole range of effective vaccines, in just a few months, that capitalism is more than capable of taking on that challenge? In Capital I, Marx describes the way some employers moaned when the Factory Acts imposed on them limitations on the working-day and so on. Earthenware producers, here in Stoke, said it would be the death of them, as their production processes could not adjust to the new requirements. What happened?
“In 1864, however, they were brought under the Act, and within sixteen months every “impossibility” had vanished.
'The improved method,” called forth by the Act, “of making slip by pressure instead of by evaporation, the newly-constructed stoves for drying the ware in its green state, &c., are each events of great importance in the pottery art, and mark an advance which the preceding century could not rival.... It has even considerably reduced the temperature of the stoves themselves with a considerable saving of fuel, and with a readier effect on the ware.'
In spite of every prophecy, the cost-price of earthenware did not rise, but the quantity produced did, and to such an extent that the export for the twelve months, ending December, 1865, exceeded in value by £138,628 the average of the preceding three years.”
(Capital I, Chapter 15 p 447)
Covid was trumpeted by the catastrophists, who gloried in the chaos and misery caused, not by COVID itself, but by the government imposed lock-outs introduced in response to it. However, the rapid, effective and efficient response to it, by the big pharma companies in producing a large number of viable vaccines, in record time, shows not only the extent to which capitalism remains a flexible, and revolutionising force, able to develop and apply technology at a very rapid pace, but that it remains more than capable of dealing with any potential catastrophe thrown at it. The job of socialists is not to be continually seeking the next catastrophe, in the hope that it might bring down this hugely progressive system, but should be to be asking why it is that the workers, the associated producers, who make this system work, do not have control over it, and how can we most readily obtain it.
No comments:
Post a Comment