Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, Historical Background - Part 4 of 5

The theory of permanent revolution, and the Comintern Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, required that the communists warn against the the role of the bourgeoisie, and its political party, the KMT. It required that they maintain a strict political, military and organisational independence from their temporary, unreliable ally. It required that the Comintern seek to ensure that it was the revolutionary forces organised by the Chinese communists that were adequately armed, trained and organised. All of that was perfectly possible, in China, given the size of the Chinese Communist party, and its growing support, not just amongst the industrial workers, but also the poor peasants.

Instead, the Comintern, now under the direction of Stalin and Bukharin, did the opposite. They armed the KMT, and argued against the arming or the workers and poor peasants. As with the pro-imperialist supporters of NATO/Zelensky, today, they played down the bourgeois nature of the KMT, and its close ties to imperialism, and played up its “anti-imperialism”. When the Chinese workers and poor peasants spontaneously began to create soviets, the Stalinists opposed them, arguing there was no need for soviets, as the KMT fulfilled all these functions. The Chinese communists were instructed to liquidate themselves in the KMT, as Stalin/Bukharin sought to appease the bourgeoisie, and avoid it splitting from the bourgeois-national revolution.

In fact, as Trotsky describes, whilst Lenin, in The Theses of The National and Colonial Questions, talks about a temporary alliance with these bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalist forces, even that was distorted by the Stalinists, just as it is, today, by the petty-bourgeois nationalist “Left”. Trotsky makes clear that what Lenin had in mind, was not a temporary, tactical alliance with the political parties of those bourgeois classes, but directly with the petty-bourgeois and bourgeois masses themselves. Trotsky emphasised the following points made by Lenin, in the Theses,

“It is necessary to carry on a determined struggle against the attempt to surround the bourgeois democratic liberation movements in the backward countries with a Communist cloak.”

“The Communist International should enter into a temporary alliance with the democratic bourgeoisie of the colonies and backward countries, but should not fuse with it and must unconditionally maintain the independent character of the proletarian movement – even in its embryonic form.”

And, in relation to this latter, Trotsky notes,

“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.”

(Stalin and the Chinese Revolution)

Contrast that to the subordination of workers to the Ukrainian bourgeoisie and its state, and to NATO imperialism, in the position of the Ukrainian social-chauvinists, and of the western social-imperialists, in organisations such as the Ukraine Solidarity Committee, a position that Trotsky describes when utilised by the Stalinists as communo-patriotism.

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Boffy Boogie

 King's Hall niter was massive, though so were the queues due to requirements for non-cash transactions etc., which they need to sort, as many people were complaining.  Thanks to my mate Keith for sending me this very short clip of me dancing, in what my wife says looks like slow motion compared to the pace I was dancing for most of the night!

Chapter 1 – A Scientific Discovery 1. The Opposition Between Use-Value and Exchange-Value - Part 7 of 7

For the seller of commodities, therefore, they are constrained by the value of all these commodities, which they must, in turn, buy, to produce the commodity they sell. But, also, when it comes to demand, the buyer must also have – under barter – a commodity to exchange, or – under money economy – money to buy the commodity, which implies that, previously, they, or someone else, sold a commodity, and obtained this money in return. And, that commodity was also, thereby, a marketable value, as with the one they, now, seek to buy.

“The producer, the moment he produces in a society founded on the division of labour and on exchange (and that is M. Proudhon’s hypothesis), is forced to sell. M. Proudhon makes the producer master of the means of production; but he will agree with us that his means of production do not depend on free will. Moreover, many of these means of production are products which he gets from the outside, and in modern production he is not even free to produce the amount he wants. The actual degree of development of the productive forces compels him to produce on such or such a scale.” (p 40)

Under commodity production and exchange, as against the conditions where individual peasants merely exchanged surplus products, neither buyers nor sellers, producers nor consumers, exercise free will as Proudhon assumes. The producer, having produced, must sell, and take what price they can obtain. But, to produce, they must also buy, and must also pay the market price. And, consumers must also buy, and pay the market price, because they must live, which requires food, clothing, shelter and so on. Of course, what they buy, and how much they buy is a different matter.

“True, the worker who buys potatoes and the kept woman who buys lace both follow their respective judgments. But the difference in their judgements is explained by the difference in the positions which they occupy in the world, and which themselves are the product of social organisation.” (p 41)

In setting up the opposition of supply and demand, Proudhon also creates a false dichotomy in which these are monolithic blocs confronting each other. In reality, of course, all producers are in competition with each other, in search of buyers, to expand their market share, whereas all consumers are in competition with each other to try to ensure that their consumption requirements are fulfilled.

“The competition among the suppliers and the competition among the demanders form a necessary part of the struggle between buyers and sellers, of which marketable value is the result.” (p 41)

Proudhon eliminated demand in order to arrive at his contradictory opposition of abundance and scarcity, the one representing use-value, and the other representing exchange-value, and supply and demand. He then eliminated cost of production, and reintroduced demand as the sole determinant of “estimation value”, based upon the free will of the buyer. And, then, he eliminated competition amongst sellers on the one hand, and buyers on the other.

“And what was he aiming at?

At arranging for himself a means of introducing later on one of the elements he had set aside, the cost of production, as the synthesis of use value and exchange value. And it is thus that in his eyes the cost of production constitutes synthetic value or constituted value.” (p 42)

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Forward To Section 2. Constituted Value or Synthetic Value

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Lessons Of The Chinese Revolution, Historical Background - Part 3 of 5

Sun Yat Sen, who had fled for his safety to Japan, returned to China, in 1916, and, with the Russian revolution having been accomplished, and the Communist International established, he invited its representatives to Canton, where the KMT had established a provisional government, in 1923. By this time, China, like Russia before it, had experienced rapid development of large-scale industrial capital, in its major cities, and, again, much of it was the result of investment by large-scale capital from the imperialist states. As with Russia, that meant a rapid development of a young, highly concentrated industrial proletariat, and one, from the start, able to look to the lessons of revolutionary workers in Europe, and in Russia.

Similarly, Chinese peasants were able to look to the example of the USSR, and the role of the Bolsheviks in carrying through the agrarian revolution. That meant that the Chinese Communist Party attracted large numbers of both industrial workers and peasants. The latter is significant, because, as Trotsky describes, unlike Russia where the peasants were led to create the S.R's to represent their interest, in China, the peasants created no such party, being subsumed within the Communist Party. That meant that the only parties pursuing the bourgeois-national revolution were the Communist Party and the KMT.

The policy of the Comintern was clearly set out in its Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, drawn up by Lenin, and adopted at its Second Congress, in 1922. The principles of the theses flow from the theory of Permanent Revolution, developed by Trotsky, on the basis of Marx's analysis of the revolutions of 1848, and also adopted by Lenin in his April Theses. In short, it notes the role of the revolutionary proletariat, in all such bourgeois-national revolutions, in the age of imperialism, and the need, thereby, to subsume the bourgeois-national revolution into the proletarian revolution.

On this basis, it sets out that, whilst Marxists acknowledge the abstract rights of colonies and annexed nations to secede, they will only support such movements, in practice, under certain conditions. One of those conditions is the existence of a revolutionary proletariat and peasantry, organised in a communist party, whose role is to be the agent of this process of permanent revolution, organised, not only to fight against any colonial/imperialist power, or feudal/oriental rulers, but also to be ready to fight against the national bourgeoisie with whom they are merely temporarily allied.

The Chinese Communist Party fulfilled that criteria, and an alliance with the petty-bourgeois masses for the purpose of carrying through the bourgeois national revolution was in order. However, that same theses, and the principles of permanent revolution, required the Communist Party to be politically, militarily and organisationally independent from the KMT. The Stalinists, who took over the CPSU, and the Comintern, following Lenin's withdrawal from active politics in 1923, failed to apply those principles. They returned to the Menshevist ideas they clung to in opposition to Lenin, in April 1917.

In place of the principles of permanent revolution, they adopted their old position of the stages theory, which had led them to argue support for the bourgeois provisional government of Milyukov/Kerensky, in 1917. Instead of warning against the bourgeois nature of the KMT government, and the fact that it would turn against the workers and poor peasants, they called it a “bloc of four classes” which had been united as a result of the role of foreign imperialism, and all of which now had a shared interest, rather than the reality of their antagonistic class interests. The social-patriots, and social imperialists make the same argument, today, in supporting the bourgeois government of Zelensky, and its NATO backers.

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Northern Soul Classics - Janice - Skip Mahoney

 Looking forward to the annual King's Hall Niter, tonight.  Starting the day warming up to this.

Friday Night Disco - Happy People (Inst.) - The Temptations

 

Chapter 1 – A Scientific Discovery 1. The Opposition Between Use-Value and Exchange-Value - Part 6 of 7

The opposition and contradiction between supply and demand, set out by Proudhon, is false, Marx says. If we take barter, the supplier is also a demander, and vice versa. In a money economy, the supplier of commodities is a demander of money for them, and the demander of commodities a supplier of money, in exchange for them.

“Demand is at the same time a supply, supply is at the same time a demand. Thus M. Proudhon’s antithesis, in simply identifying supply and demand, the one with utility, the other with estimation, is based only on a futile abstraction.” (p 39)

And, Marx says, other economists, like Storch, reverse the categories' description used by Proudhon.

“According to him, needs are the things for which we feel the need; values are things to which we attribute value. Most things have value only because they satisfy needs engendered by estimation. The estimation of our needs may change; therefore the utility of things, which expresses only the relation of these things to our needs, may also change. Natural needs themselves are continually changing. Indeed, what could be more varied than the objects which form the staple food of different peoples!” (p 39)

So, the determination of exchange-value is not a consequence of a struggle between utility and estimation, but between – under barter – the values of the commodities being exchanged, or – under money economy – the value of the commodity being sold, and the value of the money commodity, as representative of all other commodities.

“In the final analysis, supply and demand bring together production and consumption, but production and consumption based on individual exchanges.

The product supplied is not useful in itself. It is the consumer who determines its utility. And even when its quality of being useful is admitted, it does not exclusively represent utility. In the course of production, it has been exchanged for all the costs of production, such as raw materials, wages of workers, etc., all of which are marketable values. The product, therefore, represents, in the eyes of the producer, a sum total of marketable values.” (p 40)

The producer of any commodity must buy other commodities, required for its production. For this reason alone, Proudhon's earlier comment about the producer having the power to reduce their expenses can be seen to be false, because the producer has no control over the value of these other commodities they must buy in order to produce. True, as buyer of these commodities, it may be said that they have free will to determine how much they are prepared to pay for them, but, in reality, if they are to continue their own production, they must pay whatever the current market price is for those commodities. But, even setting that aside, it assumes that these prices, in turn, are purely subjective, and free from any physical constraint on their production.

If we take labour-power, for example, the worker requires a physical minimum of use values for their own reproduction. It doesn't matter whether this labourer is a slave, peasant, member of a primitive commune, artisan or a wage-labourer. These use values require a given amount of labour for their production, and that amount is determined by the current level of social productivity, not subjective estimation of value. If a labourer requires a kilo of grain to reproduce their labour-power, for a day, but, given the level of social productivity, it requires 2 days labour to produce a kilo of grain, nothing can change that material reality – other than a rise in social productivity – and so it would be necessary to produce some other use value that could reproduce the labourer's labour-power that required less than a day for its production.

No amount of estimation of subjective value of grain at less than a day's labour could reduce its value. Only a change in material conditions, and increase in social productivity could bring that about. That is why The Law of Value operates as a driving force in bringing about such historical development.

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Lessons Of The Chinese Revolution, Historical Background - Part 2 of 5

In the 19th century, China also suffered from the expansion of colonialism, and, as its rulers also sought to exert control over trade, particularly the demands of European nations, such as France and Britain, to sell Opium in China, in exchange for tea, that led to the Opium Wars, and the carving up of China, imposition of unequal treaties, stationing of European colonial forces on its territory, and the seizing of entire Chinese regions such as Hong Kong. At the same time, wars with Japan led to the loss of Taiwan, and China's influence on the Korean peninsula. China became a semi-colony. At the start of the 20th century, a rising US imperialism sought to limit the colonisation of China by Britain, France, Portugal, Russia, Germany and Japan, with its Open Door policy, but if failed to be enforced, given the still subordinate position of the US to British imperialism. Only after WWII, was US imperialism able to implement such a policy of breaking up the old European colonial empires to open the door to US multinational corporations, and the global hegemony of US imperialism.

That condition, and the feeling of national humiliation, engendered a strong nationalist sentiment, in a period when such nationalism could still represent a progressive force. The same effect, but, now, in the age of imperialism, representing a reactionary force, resulted from The Treaty of Versailles, which engendered the nationalism in Germany that aided Hitler's rise to power, and similarly the humiliation of Russia, by NATO, following the fall of the USSR, which aided Putin's rise to power. A similar effect, of declining former imperial powers, lies behind Brexit, Trumpism and other such petty-bourgeois nationalism, in an era when the idea of national independence is a reactionary utopian fantasy.

The nationalist movement, in China, led to the revolution of 1911 that ended the Qing dynasty, and established the Chinese Republic. The figurehead was the bourgeois nationalist Sun Yat Sen, who became the first President, and leader of the bourgeois nationalist party, the Kuomintang. But, Sun did not hold military power in China, not only because of the continued role of foreign colonial powers that had their own police and military, in areas of the country under their jurisdiction, but also, because that military power resided with Yuan Shikai, to whom Sun ceded the provisional Presidency. Yuan later made himself Emperor, echoing the history of France, and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Chinese bourgeoisie, was closely tied to imperialist capital, much as with Ukraine's ties to NATO, and US and EU imperialism, today, and that determined the nature of the political regime.

A part of the tasks of the bourgeois national revolution is to unify the state, but the nature of China, as a semi-colony, divided up between assorted colonial powers, each with their own inextricable ties to the bourgeoisie in each area, much as in Ukraine, today, and to the militarists/warlords that held sway in each area, prevented that task being fulfilled. Another task flowing from that is the establishment of a single internal market, and control over foreign trade, but, again, the role of foreign imperialism, the various treaties establishing unequal trade and so on, prevented that also from being accomplished. So, the first Chinese Revolution, of 1911, left all of these tasks to be fulfilled by the second Chinese Revolution of 1925-7.

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The Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter 1 – A Scientific Discovery, 1. The Opposition Between Use-Value and Exchange-Value - Part 5 of 7

But, the actual producers of commodities, as opposed to those who merely exchange surplus products, are acutely aware, not only of the question of value, i.e. how much labour is required to produce a given amount of output, which, thereby, is a determinant of supply, but also of the question of demand. If there is no demand for something, because it has no utility, for anyone, then, no matter how cheaply it can be produce, it cannot be sold, and so the labour expended by the producer was wasted. The producer must first determine the cost of production of the commodity, and then consider what demand for it there is at the corresponding market value.

“After having represented abundance as use value and scarcity as exchange value – nothing indeed is easier than to prove that abundance and scarcity are in inverse ratio – M. Proudhon identifies use value with supply and exchange value with demand. To make the antithesis even more clear-cut, he substitutes a new term, putting “estimation value” instead of exchange value. The battle has now shifted its ground, and we have on one side utility (use value, supply), on the other side, estimation (exchange value, demand).” (p 38)

So, now, we have two contradictory forces of supply and demand, as the determinant of prices, but how, exactly, is this contradiction to be resolved by the establishment of a market price? What determines that this price is X rather than Y? For Proudhon, the solution resides, again, within the individual, both as producer and consumer, and in the realm of the mind, rather than the real world. He says,

“In my capacity as a free buyer, I am judge of my needs, judge of the desirability of an object, judge of the price I am willing to pay for it. On the other hand, in your capacity as a free producer, you are master of the means of execution, and in consequence, you have the power to reduce your expenses." (p 38)

So, now, exchange-value is reduced to market price, and market price is reduced to only what the consumer is prepared to pay, or, in terms of neoclassical theory, their subjective valuation of the commodity, or as Proudhon calls it, the estimation value. Having initially omitted demand from the question of determining scarcity and abundance, he now makes demand the sole determinant of value, with the producer left with the problem of somehow reducing their expenses so as to sell it at that price.

“Thus there is no possible way out. There is a struggle between two as it were incommensurable powers, between utility and estimation, between the free buyer and the free producer.” (p 39)

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Slithery Starmer and Stalin

I chanced upon this Youtube video from “Not The Andrew Marr Show”, the other day, and was struck, in the section of it showing the slithery nature of Starmer, in his attempt to blame the Uxbridge By-Election defeat on Sadiq Khan, and ULEZ, a policy he was shown to have previously endorsed and encouraged, with the approach of Stalin, as described by Trotsky in relation to The Chinese Revolution. The other similarity, was the way Stalin, and Stalinism engendered a series of political clones, in the same way that Starmer is doing inside the Labour Party.

The similarities can be summarised as:

1. Public pronouncements by the Leader are phrased in vague terms so that, later, they can be reinterpreted.
   
   
2. Internal discussions, and requirements place responsibility on local representatives to carry out decisions, meaning, when they go wrong, the Leaders can deny blame, and use the local representatives as scapegoats.
   
   
3. The Leaders can publicly make 180 degree turns in position without justifying themselves, but again phrased in vague terms, ready to repeat the exercise.
   
   
4. The leaders, must always, never lead, but always tail public opinion, meaning they adopt positions after the event, including when that means that public opinion and events has, then, left them behind.

In China, after the betrayal of the revolution, by Stalin, had led to defeat and demoralisation, for lack of leadership, and support of the rising revolutionary wave, and, instead, had opposed the creation of soviets, arming of the workers, and so on, and, instead, subordinated them to the Popular Front and the KMT, the Stalinists publicly spoke out against “adventurism”, i.e., against the organisation of further coups and military attacks by groups of workers and poor peasants. However, in the internal discussions, and directions sent to local Communist Party officials, the pressure was precisely for such adventurist activities to be organised, partly as a means of diverting attention from the discussion of the betrayals and failures of the Stalinist leadership, being exposed by the Left Opposition.

It meant that, when these adventures occurred, the Stalinist press could report them without comment, leaving them free to take credit for any success, but also, to point to its vague public pronouncements, when they invariably went wrong, and to simply blame the instruments of the policy, at local level, rather than the leadership itself. All of that can be seen in the way Starmer now operates in the LP.

(See: “A Remarkable Document On The Policy and Regime of The Communist International”)

Reactionary Nationalism Stalls Despite Lack of Principled Opposition

By-elections, last week, in England, and the Spanish General Election on Sunday, showed reactionary nationalism stalling, despite the lack of any credible, principled opposition being mounted against it. In England, the Liberals who, along with the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru are the only main parties opposing the reactionary, Brexitoryism of the Tories and Blue Labour, won a striking victory in Somerton and Frome. In Selby, the reactionary nationalists of Starmer's Blue Labour, scored a contrasting, but unconvincing win against their Tory twins, whilst failing to defeat them in Boris Johnson's former seat in Uxbridge. In Spain, a much predicted win for the right-wing nationalists of the Popular Party, and their ultra-right allies of Vox, failed to materialise, again despite no credible, principled opposition from either the PSOE, or its allies in the hodge-podge, rotten bloc, popular front of Sumar.

In the Somerton and Frome by-election, a Tory majority of 19,000, in 2019, was overturned by the Liberals, with a 29% swing, to give them an 11,000 majority. Blue Labour's vote share collapsed, falling 80% from 12.9% to just 2.6%. Nor can that be put down to simply tactical voting to ensure the defeat of the Tories. Blue Labour is far closer to the Tories than to the Liberals, whilst the Greens, are closer to the Liberals, and yet, seen, as more progressive. If it was simply tactical voting, then you would expect that the Green vote would have collapsed even more than that of Labour. The opposite happened. The Greens share of the vote rose by 100%, doubling from 5.1% in 2019, to 10.2%.

That represents a significant rejection of the reactionary, nationalist Brexitory policies of both the Tories, and Blue Labour, in favour of the pro-EU stance of the Liberals and Greens, despite the fact that the Liberals and Greens have, themselves, hardly been championing the cause of progressive internationalism, and a return to the EU. That is no doubt why the biggest winner in the by-election was “None of the Above”, as the turnout almost halved from 76% in 2019, to just 44%. Still, even if, in a General Election, the Tories picked up the majority of that missing 25,000 votes, they would still be struggling to overturn the Liberals current 11,000 majority.

That is not the case in Selby. The same drop in turnout was witnessed, falling from 72% to 44%. Although Labour saw its share of the vote rise from 24.6% to 46%, and the swing to it from the Tories being 24%, as against the 29% swing to the Liberals in Somerton, it was only enough to give Labour a majority of 4,000, which is more than likely to disappear come a General Election, as it would be expected the Tories would pick up the majority of the missing 20,000 votes. A further look at the two by-elections, shows the difference. Where Labour's vote share dropped by 80% in Somerton, the Liberal vote share in Selby fell by only 60%, and again, the Greens, seen as both more pro-EU, and more progressive (wrongly) saw their vote share rise by 60%.

The failure of Labour to secure any sizeable tactical voting from the Liberals or Greens, despite the fact that those parties had no chance of winning in Selby, is a result of the fact that their voters see Starmer's Blue Labour, rightly, as just an imitation of the reactionary nationalist, pro-Brexit policies of the Tories. Whilst Corbyn was also tainted with that same reactionary nationalism and Brexitism, at least, under his leadership, Labour was seen to have returned to its original social-democratic heritage, and, on Brexit, Corbyn was out of step with the vast majority of the party. But, under Starmer, not only is the reactionary nationalism and jingoism taken to the extreme, but his purges of the party offers no glimmer of hope that it might be reversed, any time soon, and that goes along with all of the rest of the petty-bourgeois, reactionary policies that Starmer is introducing that make Labour a party way to the Right of what it has ever been in the past. It is no longer even a social-democratic party geared to the interests of large-scale capital.

In Uxbridge, its weakness was even further exposed. There the fact that it is just a clone of Boris Johnson's Brexitory Party, gave no reason for anyone hostile to those reactionary nationalist politics to vote for it. Where, in Selby, a protest vote against a dysfunctional Tory Party was enough to have many Tory voters stay at home, in protest, enabling Labour to scrape in with a fragile majority, in Uxbridge, the petty-bourgeoisie found another reason to turn out to vote for the Tories rather than Labour – ULEZ. ULEZ is illustrative of the reasons for the failure of social-democracy, and rise of petty-bourgeois reaction, over the last 40 years.

The motivation for ULEZ, to reduce dangerous carbon emissions into the atmosphere, not only to deal with its effects on climate change, but, also, and more immediately, to deal with the dangers to the health of workers, breathing in a cocktail of noxious fumes, is entirely progressive and commendable. It ought to be one of those policies that social-democrats can champion, and win support for. Of course, amongst many workers, in London, that is, indeed, the case. As with Brexit, its not amongst progressive, working-class, Labour voters that there is opposition. The opposition comes from the petty-bourgeoisie, but that petty-bourgeoisie, not only also votes, but its sentiments are also echoed amongst sections of the working-class.

The petty-bourgeoisie opposes ULEZ, because they see in it, another layer of costs and bureaucracy to pay for that eats into its small profits. And, the same is true of those poorer, and less affluent workers, who are the ones that have the old inefficient cars that get hit by ULEZ and similar policies. The problem with social-democracy, particularly conservative social-democracy is that it is managerialist and bureaucratic, and thinks that, just because it sees the progressive nature of certain policies, everyone else will do so too, and, if not, well too bad, because it will push through the policy anyway, seeking acceptance of it later. That was the approach of social-democracy to the EU, for example.

The idea that the role of a political party is to be proponents of an ideology, to go out and actually win support for its ideas is alien to social-democracy, and has become even more so in recent decades, when the focus has been placed, more and more, simply on populism and tailism. Starmer's immediate scapegoating of Sadiq Khan, for Labour's failure in Uxbridge, and fact that he seems to be prepared to abandon the remnants of its environmental agenda for the sake of a few votes, is again illustrative of it. In the case of his attack on the soft-Right Khan, its another warning, as I predicted before Starmer's election, that he will have to move continuously to the Right, making not only the soft-Left in danger, but a whole swathe of even the centre and soft-Right of the PLP.

In the 1950's, and early 60's, a raft of progressive social-democratic measures were introduced, by both Tories and Labour. The perennial London “pea-soupers” were turned into a thing of the past, as air quality was improved with a shift from the burning of coal, and production of town gas from coal, by the introduction of much cleaner, and more efficient, natural gas from the North Sea, as well as a shift to electricity. The general development was codified in various pieces of Environmental Health legislation, such as The Clean Air Acts. The reason these acts could be, and were introduced was that new technologies produced more efficient means of producing and using energy. That reduced costs for industry, and raised its rate of profit, but also, with rising living standards, and a need to reduce time spent on domestic labour, the use of gas and electric heaters, as well as of central heating made phasing out inefficient coal fires, and coal burning inevitable.

At a time of falling costs for these new types of energy and heating, as well as rising living standards that enabled worker households to be able to pay out for these new forms of heating that went along with improving their lives with things like fridges, TV's, electric washing machines, vacuum cleaners and so on, social-democracy was pushing on an open door. Its not so easy when living standards have been under pressure from ten years of government imposed austerity, when the boycott of Russian oil and gas and so on, has pushed up energy prices, and so on. Its in those conditions that social-democracy needs to work harder to engage in a determined struggle to advance its ideas, but also to offer workers incentives to adopt them. That, however, sometimes involves social-democracy providing those incentives at the expense of capital, and that is what it is never prepared to do.

In Spain, the PSOE, like other social-democratic parties, has failed to advance the interests of Spanish workers. It has been a part of the general EU support for NATO's war against Russia in Ukraine, including the boycott of Russian oil and gas, and food exports that has pushed up global prices for those commodities, with a consequent effect on the living standards of Spanish workers. The Right have benefited from that failure of the PSOE, just as they have done elsewhere, over the last 20 years, pushing easy, but false and reactionary nationalist solutions. It fuelled the rise of the BNP and UKIP in Britain, the FN in France, and their equivalents across Europe, as well as Trump in the US.

Yet, the reality is that a progressive social-democracy, attending to the needs of real, large-scale, industrial capital, could, in the last 20 years, have also supported the needs and interests of workers. The expansion of the EU, and of global trade was a progressive development that reduced costs of production, and boosted the potential for capital accumulation, as well as of raising workers' living standards. But, instead of facilitating that accumulation of capital, and rise in living standards, social-democratic governments, and states, looking to the interests not of that real industrial capital, but of the owners of fictitious-capital (shareholders, bondholders etc.), i.e. the ruling class, were transfixed with the idea of continually inflating this fictitious wealth, of the need to produce each year, additional capital gains that could form the basis of further borrowing, as the means of funding additional consumption.

When that fool's paradise collapsed in 2008, they still sought to restore it, unable to change their mindset and conception of how the world functions. So, rather than seeing the solution in the need to actually create new value, and surplus value, via the accumulation of additional capital, they saw any such development, occurring naturally, despite their efforts to frustrate it via fiscal austerity and so on, as deeply troublesome, because that economic expansion, and capital accumulation, meant rising employment, and rising demand for capital causing interest rates to rise, the same rising interest rates that had caused asset prices to crash. All efforts were deliriously put into holding back the real economy, real capital, real value creation, in order to ensure the renewed inflation of purely illusory paper wealth, the rise in meaningless asset prices, as the form of wealth of the ruling class.

At first, it is only the lower ranks of the working-class that most notably suffer from that. Its they that do not own a home, whose paper price inflates hugely each year, who probably do not have a company, let alone private pension, or savings tucked away into mutual funds, whose paper valuation again inflates each year with other asset prices. Even some of the petty-bourgeoisie, can often turn its attention to this development, and expand its activities into becoming buy to let landlords, increasingly interested, not in the rents, but in the same annual inflation of property prices, and consequent capital gains. Its those elements excluded from that fantasy of rising asset prices that first become alienated, and, as always, provide a pool in which the reactionaries can fish. But, as asset prices continue to rise, so this pool of people grows larger, because an increasing number of people cannot afford to buy a home, or to move up to a better home, like every Ponzi Scheme, if you were not in near the beginning, it costs you more to buy in at the later higher prices, whether it is a house, a pension, or the purchase of shares, meaning that the returns, from doing so, are increasingly diminished, and your risk of making a capital loss rises significantly.

The conservative social-democrats, in trying to live in that world of fantasy that existed from the late 1980's until 2008, of ever rising asset prices, are offering workers something they cannot deliver, and, in the meantime, in order to try to engineer a return of that fantasy, and even just to avoid the reality represented by the 2008 crash, they have to attack workers real, immediate interests, as with Larry Summers calls for millions of US workers to be sacked so that the inflation that central banks have created can be reduced, or the calls of British Labour politicians, and their EU counterparts for workers not to seek to avoid their living standards being cut, by demanding above inflation pay rises.

In Britain, the US and across the EU, despite this abysmal performance by social-democrats, the reactionary nationalist Right are failing to make further headway, from that they have made in the last 20 years, and that is a sign of the underlying objective changes in material conditions, and its reflection in ideas. A decade ago, it was manifest, confusedly in the rise of Sanders, Corbyn, Syriza, Podemos, the Left Bloc and so on.

The confused, inadequate nature of those initial responses, themselves still stuck in the realms of social-democracy, saw them collapse when tested, but the course of history has simply, as it always does, flowed into other channels. It is flowing into the channels of industrial action, as workers feel a new found strength and confidence, as economic expansion has continued despite the best efforts of conservatives, and labour shortages have forced employers to compete for labour, via higher wages.

That kind of industrial, sectional economic struggle can never be sufficient, as Marx described in Value, Price and Profit, and as Lenin described, because what workers need to move forward is a political struggle, a class struggle. But, the two are not divorced. As Marx put it, workers cannot wage a class struggle unless they can first, at least, wage a struggle to defend their standard of living, and as Lenin put it, whilst strikes are not instances of class struggle, they are schools for class struggle. And, there is also a connection between economic strikes and political strikes. Those of us who lived through the similar period of the 1950's, and 60's are aware of that, as the state sought to constrain the wildcat strikes of an emboldened working-class, with laws, which, in response, led to workers engaging in political strikes, such as that for the release of the Pentonville Five.

The task of Marxists analysing these developments, and their precedents, is to insist on revolutionary optimism. The reactionary nationalists have hit a high water mark, and despite the miserable performance of social-democracy, the conditions are moving against them, and also against conservative social-democracy itself. But, we also need to learn the lessons of the 1960's, and 70's too, when revolutionaries, were caught up in that rising tide of economism, and growth in the size and influence of progressive social-democracy. We are not social-democrats, even progressive or Left Social Democrats.

We are Marxists, revolutionary, international socialists. Social-democracy, even left social-democracy, is the ideology of the bourgeoisie, ultimately representing its objective interests. We march with it for part of the way, in so far as it strengthens the position of the working-class to fight, as Marx describes in Wage-Labour and Capital, because the working-class is strongest when real capital itself expands more rapidly, and facilitates that opening up of ideas, discussed by Lenin above, of the need for workers control of production, and so on. However, our goal is not simply this improvement of conditions within capitalism, including workers' control of production and so on, which the ruling class would, in any case, never concede, unless forced to do so by an armed working-class. Our goal is the overthrow of the existing wages system itself, and its replacement by international socialism.

Lessons Of The Chinese Revolution, Historical Background - Part 1 of 5

China is one of the countries that is a classic example of what Marx termed the Asiatic Mode of Production. As a result of a series of material conditions, in relation to the geography of the country, requiring large-scale civil engineering for control of water, terracing of land, for agriculture, and so on, its people undertook this work collectively, establishing an administrative superstructure to organise and oversee it. Over a long period of time, this administrative body, which requires to fund its operations, separates from the society, providing a privileged position for its members. In order to preserve itself, it establishes rules on who can become a member of it, and turns itself into a bureaucratic collectivist state apparatus. From as early as 2100 BCE, this took the form of hereditary dynasties, such as the Xia.

Melotti describes China as “The Most Typical Example of 'Asiatic' Society In Marxian Terms” (Marx and The Third World, Chapter 17)

“China can be called the most classic and significant society based on the Asiatic mode of production, in that it achieved the fullest social development of any society so based. Moreover, it did so without having any contacts with the rest of the world, not even those important periodic relations with the West experienced by India and the Middle east back to Hellenic times at least.” (p 105)

As with feudal Europe, the remit of these dynasties was geographically limited, leading also to continual wars between them. Unlike the feudal system, which is based upon a hierarchy of social estates, and land ownership, the Asiatic Mode of Production, is based upon control of the state, and the ability to extract surplus product, on the basis of it, rather than the ownership of land and extraction of feudal rent. A landlord class exists, but does not form a ruling class. As Barrington Moore Junior describes, they often seek to have their children accepted into the state bureaucracy, and families comprising that bureaucracy adopt the brightest children from the rest of society, able to pass the exams set for entry into it.

The dynasties can be apparently stable for long periods of time, but, are subject to periodic violent upheavals, in which one dynasty replaces another, but the basic structure of the society remains the same, unlike the social revolutions that occurred in Europe, resulting in the development of different forms of property ownership, and social classes, and replacement of feudalism with capitalism. Its why Marx describes these societies as stagnant, requiring external shocks to bring about real social revolutions, as with his description of the role of British colonialism in India.

Marx notes, in A Contribution To The Critique of Political Economy,

“Conquests may lead to either of three results. The conquering nation may impose its own mode of production upon the conquered people (this was done, for example, by the English in Ireland during this century, and to some extent in India); or it may refrain from interfering in the old mode of production and be content with tribute (e.g., the Turks and Romans); or interaction may take place between the two, giving rise to a new system as a synthesis (this occurred partly in the Germanic conquests). In any case it is the mode of production – whether that of the conquering nation or of the conquered or the new system brought about by a merging of the two – that determines the new mode of distribution employed. Although the latter appears to be a pre-condition of the new period of production, it is in its turn a result of production, a result not simply occasioned by the historical evolution of production in general, but by a specific historical form of production.” (p 202-3)

China experienced conquests, as well as engaging in trade with Asia and Europe, in the Middle Ages, and later with the United States. It helped to engender commodity production and exchange, and the development of a commercial bourgeoisie. As Marx and Lenin describe, commodity production and exchange, itself leads, inexorably, to the development of a bourgeoisie and proletariat, and of industrial capital, as competition between the producers results in winners and losers. The winners grow larger, and ultimately, produce on such a scale as to need to employ wage labour, and machines, the losers, who previously became paupers, slaves, serfs or servants, become wage labourers. Means of production, becomes capital.

Back To Introduction

Forward To Part 2

The Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter 1 – A Scientific Discovery, 1. The Opposition Between Use-Value and Exchange-Value - Part 4 of 7

In The Grundrisse, and in Theories of Surplus Value, Marx explains why, as set out above, supply is, in fact, a function of value, whereas demand is a function of use-value. As we will now see, Proudhon arrives at the opposite conclusion.

Marx notes Proudhon's statement,

“So that, following up the principle to its ultimate consequences, one would come to the conclusion, the most logical in the world, that the things whose use is indispensable and whose quantity is unlimited should be had for nothing, and those whose utility is nil and whose scarcity is extreme should be of incalculable worth. To cap the difficulty, these extremes are impossible in practice: on the one hand, no human product could ever be unlimited in magnitude; on the other, even the scarcest things must perforce be useful to a certain degree, otherwise they would be quite valueless. Use value and exchange value are thus inexorably bound up with each other, although by their nature they continually tend to be mutually exclusive.” (p 36-7)

This is a precursor to the water-diamond paradox, much beloved by proponents of neoclassical economics. In the latter, its argued that a man in a desert, dying of thirst, would give up a diamond in their possession in exchange for a glass of water, demonstrating that its not total utility that determines value, for individual consumers, but only marginal utility, i.e. the utility of the last unsatisfied unit of demand. But, what this neoclassical example, and Proudhon, fail to take into account, in analysing commodity production and exchange, let alone capitalism, is precisely the requirement for commodities to be produced, before they can be exchanged, and such production has a cost that the producer will seek to at least cover, before engaging in that production. As Marx sets out later, in fact, more significantly, commodities that are sold, must be reproduced, and it is this current reproduction cost that determines their value. I've set this out, elsewhere, in relation to the Water-Diamond paradox.

If we take Proudhon's argument then it can be seen to be clearly false, but from the opposite direction. The most obvious example is air. It has the greatest possible utility, because without it we die in minutes. Contrary to Proudhon's claims that the extremes are impossible, in practice, the supply of air is indeed unlimited, relative to demand, and it is, indeed, free. Similarly, if something has no utility for anyone, it is not a use-value for anyone, there is no demand for it, and so, no matter how scarce it may be, its supply, relative to demand is excessive.

“What caps M. Proudhon’s difficulty? That he has simply forgotten about demand, and that a thing can be scarce or abundant only in so far as it is in demand. The moment he leaves out demand, he identifies exchange value with scarcity and use value with abundance. In reality, in saying that things “whose utility is nil and scarcity extreme are of incalculable worth,” he is simply declaring that exchange value is merely scarcity.” (p 37)

Put another way, he assumes away the problem of demand, and, as will be seen later, this is important for him, because, by this means, he smuggles in the basis of value being the cost of production. As Marx sets out, in The Grundrisse, and in Theories of Surplus Value, Ricardians make the same error.

“Here a great confusion: (1) This identity of supply, so that it is a demand measured by its own amount, is true only to the extent that it is exchange value = to a certain amount of objectified labour. To that extent it is the measure of its own demand -- as far as value is concerned. But, as such a value, it first has to be realized through the exchange for money, and as object of exchange for money it depends (2) on its use value, but as use value it depends on the mass of needs present for it, the demand for it. But as use value it is absolutely not measured by the labour time objectified in it, but rather a measuring rod is applied to it which lies outside its nature as exchange value.”

(The Grundrisse)

And,

“The value supplied (but not yet realised) and the quantity of iron which is realised, do not correspond to each other. No grounds exist therefore for assuming that the possibility of selling a commodity at its value corresponds in any way to the quantity of the commodity I bring to market. For the buyer, my commodity exists, above all, as use-value. He buys it as such. But what he needs is a definite quantity of iron. His need for iron is just as little determined by the quantity produced by me as the value of my iron is commensurate with this quantity.

It is true that the man who buys has in his possession merely the converted form of a commodity—money—i.e., the commodity in the form of exchange-value, and he can act as a buyer only because he or others have earlier acted as sellers of commodities which now exist in the form of money. This, however, is no reason why he should reconvert his money into my commodity or why his need for my commodity should be determined by the quantity of it that I have produced. Insofar as he wants to buy my commodity, he may want either a smaller quantity than I supply, or the entire quantity, but below its value. His demand does not have to correspond to my supply any more than the quantity I supply and the value at which I supply it are identical.”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20)

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Forward To Part 5

Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, Introduction - Part 4 of 4

Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev were cowed, and Lenin won the day. The Bolsheviks argued for the Popular Front to be smashed, demanding “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”. That would have turned it into a Workers' Government comprised of reformist workers' parties, centrists and peasant parties. The Bolsheviks still would not have joined it, unless they had a clear majority, but would have urged it on, demanding it acted in workers' interests. But, as with all Popular Fronts, the reformists and centrists did not break with the bourgeoisie, leaving them subordinated to it.

As the class nature of the Provisional Government was, thereby, exposed, as it attacked the workers, so the Bolsheviks grew rapidly, and the battle between the government and the soviets sharpened. At the appropriate time, having argued for “All Power To The Soviets”, the Bolsheviks implemented that demand, with the soviets seizing state power.

The analysis of Permanent Revolution had been confirmed by history. It was not possible to pause history, on completion of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. The workers would demand that their interests be pursued, and if the workers' parties refused to do that they would be destroyed. Apathy, if not opposition and disenchantment would infect the workers ranks, driving them into the arms of reaction. Trotsky makes the same point in relation to fascism, and the Spanish Revolution. It was not possible to mobilise workers on the basis of opposing fascism, and supporting some abstract “democracy”, because what the workers actually want is jobs, better standards of living and so on.

The same was true of WWII. The bourgeoisie and the Labour Party made all sorts of nonsensical arguments about the war being a “People's War” against fascism, but, after the war ended, all of the promises came to nothing, as after WWI. The Labour Government sent troops to break strikes, paid huge amounts of compensation to the former owners of core industries that had to be nationalised, because they had been starved of investment, and rationed food and other essentials for more than a decade, whilst spending huge sums on nuclear and other weapons, fighting a war in Korea, as well as maintaining a huge colonial empire by the power of the gun. Not surprisingly, the workers increasingly turned against it, leading to 13 years of Tory Government.

The approach of these bourgeois social democratic parties is always one of “lesser-evilism”, appealing to voters to support them, because the other party is worse. That is most apparent in French Presidential elections, where voters are encouraged to vote for candidates they would never otherwise support, solely to prevent the election of a fascist, as summed up in the infamous slogan “Vote for the crook, not the fascist”! But, not as bad is not the same thing as good, and, at times, apathy and antipathy, built up in the working class towards bourgeois parties is enough to get them to abstain, or even, for their more backward elements, to vote for outright reactionary parties that are able to present themselves as a radical alternative. It, then, gives added weight to the petty-bourgeoisie, whose strength lies in its numbers, not its socio-economic position and muscle.

Looking at the Chinese revolution, starting with the background to Sun Yat Senism, and through to the events of the 1920's, is useful in analysing these ideas and why they are significant today. But, these ideas also played a huge role in explaining events after WWII, with the creation of deformed workers' states in Eastern Europe, a deformed workers and peasants state in China, and similar formations in Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and elsewhere. It explains the wrong-headed approach to the national liberation struggles that flourished, as imperialism, driven by the needs of multinational industrial capital, itself smashed apart the old colonial empires. Instead of an independent proletarian stance, the “Left”, under pressure from the Stalinist and Liberal milieu in which it operated – primarily amongst the student movement – adopted the same kind of popular frontist, petty-bourgeois nationalist agenda, in relation to the plethora of national liberation struggles, lining up alongside all sorts of anti-working class forces, simply on the basis of their supposed “anti-imperialism”.

The same legacy is witnessed, today, in relation to the war in Ukraine, and is used by one camp of “anti-imperialists” to support Ukraine, backed by NATO, and the other camp of “anti-imperialists” to back Russia, some way behind which stands China. It is idiot anti-imperialism taken to its extreme, in which it turns into its opposite, “pro-imperialism”, a reductio ad absurdum forced on it by reality.

In this series of posts, I will look at the lessons of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-7, and its betrayal by Stalinism. In the process, I will also briefly look at the history of China that led up to it, as well as the effects of it on China, and its 1949 Revolution, the role it plays in the development of Maoism, and of Guevarism and other guerrilla warfare alternatives to socialist revolution.

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Northern Soul Classics - You Better Watch Out - Gwen Owens

 

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The Poverty of Philosophy, Chapter 1 – A Scientific Discovery, 1. The Opposition Between Use-Value and Exchange-Value - Part 3 of 7

In fact, the opposition and contradiction between use-value and exchange-value follows necessarily from The Law of Value. In order to increase the wealth of society, i.e. the quantity of use-values available to it, it is necessary to raise social productivity. i.e. to be able to produce more use-values for any given amount of labour. If 1,000 use values are produced by 100 hours of labour, then, each use value contains, on average, 0.10 hours of labour, but, if 10,000 use-values are produced, each contains only 0.010 hours of labour. However, value is labour, and so the unit value of each use-value necessarily falls, as the consequence of the rise in productivity, and social wealth. The exchange-value of any commodity is a function of its value, relative to the value of other commodities.

Marx sets out the situation in terms of supply an demand.

“The exchange value of a product falls as the supply increases, the demand remaining the same; in other words, the more abundant a product is relatively to the demand, the lower is its exchange value, or price. Vice versa: The weaker the supply relatively to the demand, the higher rises the exchange value or the price of the product supplied: in other words, the greater the scarcity in the products supplied, relatively to the demand, the higher the prices. The exchange value of a product depends upon its abundance or its scarcity; but always in relation to the demand.” (p 36)

For those familiar with Marx's analysis of value, and exchange-value, founded upon socially necessary labour-time, and his criticism if the superficial nature of supply and demand, this might seem odd, if not wrong, but far from it. Marx's criticism of analysis of prices based on supply and demand is not that it is wrong, but that it is superficial and inadequate, because it's necessary to go beyond these categories to analyse what determines the level of supply and demand. Indeed, in terms of market prices, Marx sets out that they are a function of supply and demand, causing them to fluctuate around the exchange-value/price of production, and, for the price of money-capital (which has no value/price of production), i.e. the rate of interest, it is determined solely on the basis of supply and demand.

If we take supply, then we can see that Marx's statement, here, that, given any level of demand, increased supply results in lower exchange-value is certainly true, in respect of market prices. But, further inspection, on the basis of Marx's analysis, shows its true more fundamentally than that. If the average rate of profit is 10%, so that a commodity whose cost-price is £1, sells at £1.10, then, if the supply of these commodities rises by 10%, they cannot all be sold at £1.10. The excess supply would cause the market price to fall, maybe to £1, at which no profit would be made. Some of the less efficient producers might go out of business, or switch to production of some other commodity, where the average profit could be made. Supply would fall.

In fact, if the less efficient producers moved to another line of production, that would, itself, reduce the average cost of production of the commodity, say, to £0.95, so that, with an average rate of profit of 10%, the market value/exchange-value falls from £1.10 to £1.045, so that the increased supply does now result not only in a lower market price, but also lower exchange-value, which would also be expected to promote an increase in demand. The only way that an increased supply could remain permanent, in conditions of static demand, is if the cost of production, itself, falls, bringing about a fall in market value, because otherwise less than average profit is produced, and so capital would move to other spheres, so reducing supply.

Marx sets out the argument in terms of supply and demand, because that is the terms in which Proudhon had set out his argument, and Marx wants to disprove it, even in those terms, and part of the proof resides in the fact that Proudhon, himself, misses out, entirely, the factor of demand, meaning that his argument amounts to saying that exchange-value is determined by supply, i.e. scarcity. Marx notes,

“The exchange value of a product depends upon its abundance or its scarcity; but always in relation to the demand. Take a product that is more than scarce, unique of its kind if you will: this unique product will be more than abundant, it will be superfluous, if there is no demand for it. On the other hand, take a product multiplied into millions, it will always be scarce if it does not satisfy the demand, that is, if there is too great a demand for it.” (p 36)

This should be borne in mind by those modern Marxists who also ignore the question of demand, assuming, as with Ricardo, and Say's Law, that supply creates its own demand.

“These are what we should almost call truisms, yet we have had to repeat them here in order to render M. Proudhon’s mysteries comprehensible.” (p 36)

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Forward To Part 4

4. Production

4. Production

Marx sets out a number of points that might otherwise be forgotten.

1. War develops certain features faster than peace. For example, in armies, wage labour is developed, as is the use of machinery, and, to pay wages, money is used more extensively. In WWII, many of the features already apparent within social-democracy, such as increased role of the state, planning and regulation, standardisation and so on, were accelerated.
   
   
2. “The relation of the hitherto existing idealistic historiography to realistic historiography. In particular what is known as history of civilisation, the old history of religion and states. (The various kinds of historiography hitherto existing could also be discussed in this context; the so-called objective, subjective (moral and others), philosophical [historiography].)” (p 215)

Third is a discussion of secondary and tertiary phenomenon, such as discussed earlier, with the continuation of small, private production, domestic production, continuation of slavery, peasant production and so on. Marx also notes the “influence of international relations.” (p 215)

He also notes the need to deal with criticism of this materialist method in analysing social evolution, a requirement highlighted, later, by Lenin, in responding to the attack on Marx's method by Mikhailovsky, and other Narodniks. Marx also notes the dialectical nature of concepts such as “means of production”, and “relations of production”. Marx never gives a fixed definition of these categories, precisely because to do so would be contrary to his materialist and dialectical method. In other words, these categories are merely constructs in the mind, as reflections of the real world, and as the real world was in constant flux, so these categories and their reflection also changes. It would not be scientific to identify the means of production and relations of production of the 1850's, with those of the 2020's.

A further area for discussion was the relation between production and art, along with a consideration of the role of chance, existence of freedom etc., and the role of communication.

In this respect, Marx begins with the objective and subjective factors. Natural and geographical factors play a key role. Agriculture begins in Mesopotamia and the Nile Valley, and the conducive conditions allow surplus production, enabling labour to engage in other activities. The requirement for irrigation etc. gives rise to the role of an administrative apparatus that consolidates into a ruling caste, and state, as foundation of the Asiatic Mode of Production. In Northern Europe, more adverse conditions delay agricultural development, but also encourage other development to enhance labour productivity. In North America, vast plains and ample, freely available food, encourages a continuation of hunting and gathering.

In terms of art, Greek art was a function of its mythology.

“Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and therefore Greek (art) possible when there are self-acting mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is a Vulcan compared with Roberts and Co., Jupiter compared with the lightning conductor, and Hermes compared with the Credit Mobilier? All mythology subdues, controls and fashions the forces of nature in the imagination and through imagination; it disappears therefore when real control over these forces is established.” (p 216)

Today, Star Wars, like a lot of science fiction, has to try to combine as yet non-existing technologies with societies compatible with the dawn rather than the zenith of civilisation. Superman is the modern equivalent of a Greek god, but, either he is a god, and invincible, or else he is not, and has vulnerability. The vulnerability is either itself derived from magic and mysticism, and so requires a temporary suspension of disbelief, in an age of science, or is itself a consequence of the use of technology.

“The difficulty we are confronted with is not, however, that of understanding how Greek art and epic poetry are associated with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still give us aesthetic pleasure and are in certain respects regarded as a standard and unattainable ideal.

An adult cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish. But does the naivete of the child not give him pleasure, and does not he himself endeavour to reproduce the child's veracity on a higher level? Does not the child in every epoch represent the character of the period in its natural veracity? Why should not the historical childhood of humanity, where it attained its most beautiful form, exert an eternal charm because it is a stage that will never recur? There are rude children and precocious children. Many of the ancient peoples belong to this category. The Greeks were normal children. The charm their art has for us does not conflict with the immature stage of the society in which it originated. On the contrary its charm is a consequence of this and is inseparably linked with the fact that the immature social conditions which gave rise, and which alone could give rise, to this art cannot recur.” (p 217)

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Table of Contents

Tories Say No Money For Wages But Give £500 Million To Tata

The Tories continue to claim that there is no money to enable them to void cutting the real wages of public sector workers, as UK CPI continues to rise at 7.9%, RPI rises at 10.7%, and food prices rise at 17.3% on the year.  Yet, despite the fact that, during the same time, these falling real wages have been mirrored in rising real profits for companies, the Tories are proposing to hand over half a billion pounds to Tata Motors, as a bribe to locate a new battery producing plant in Somerset, rather than in the EU.  That is a battery plant that Tata Motors needs for its Jaguar Cars, and so would have to build one way or another.

Not only does this again, illustrate the idiocy of Brexit, with a British national government having to offer bribes of taxpayers money to rich Indian businesses to invest the capital these businesses are in business to lay out so as to make their huge profits, and pay out huge amounts of dividends to their shareholders, but it also shows the extent of the other aspect of British national policy too, in relation to its subservience to US imperialism.

The reason that Britain is offering these large bribes to rich capitalist firms, and their shareholders is not just that they have a history of stuffing the pockets of their rich friends, be they Indian, French, German or Australian, with money is that the EU has been led to do that too, and it has been led to do it, because of Biden's misnamed "Inflation reduction Act", which is not intended to reduce inflation, but to systematically bribe global corporations to invest in new production in the US, rather than any other part of the world.  It is Trump's trade war against China and the EU, seen from the other side.  Just another nationalistic measure of economic protectionism reminiscent of the 19th century, and the age of colonialism.

Where Trump's trade war involved putting tariffs on foreign produced commodities imported into the US, and so caused their US prices to rise, also enabling US producers to increase their own prices to match, Biden's policy, whilst continuing most of those Trump era trade restrictions, is placing the emphasis instead on handing out money to firms as bribes to get them to invest in the US, rather than overseas. 

Where does that money come from.  Well it could come from taxes, which would be counterproductive, because those taxes also come out of the surplus value produced by US workers, and appropriated as profits, which could have been invested in new capital.  But, Biden, with an eye on Presidential election in a year's time, does not want to be raising taxes, and so, the money again essentially comes from the printing press, from the state borrowing money.  The consequence of that is inflation, and so higher prices, not the reduction of inflation that the Act describes.  What its really about is protectionism, and protectionism means the protection of US national capital.

This is the same US, of course, that the UK claims to have a special relationship with, and for whom it acts as poodle in military conflicts across the globe, the latest one being that in Ukraine.  The Brexitories promised they would do a trade deal with this US, but instead, they have been pushed further down the list of nations the US needs to talk to, rather than simply give instructions to.  And, of course, Starmer is no alternative as far as that is concerned, because he is just an echo of every Tory policy and agenda, just with more of a monotonous drone.

Starmer also does not support workers getting wage rises that prevent real wages falling, and even sacks Labour MP's for going on the picket lines; he will not even promise to reverse the devastating austerity that the Tories have inflicted on the economy and its social fabric, including continuing with the Tories limitation of Child Benefit (which would not be so bad if it were to replace all of those individual benefits with a single benefit that enabled the average family to have an income on which they could live comfortably); nor will he commit to reversing Brexit, the fundamental measure required to create the conditions to deal with all these issues.

So, we will see Starmer wringing his hands, once again, but moral outrage does not make up for falling real wages, any more than the fatuous, weekly appeals to "the people" to come out and clap, for the NHS and its workers, followed by the rapid transformation, at the end of lockdowns of those same health workers into striking "enemies of the people".