Friday Night Disco - Do It Yourself - Gloria Gaynor

 

Starmer Disappears Up Trump's Arse

No sooner had Keir Starmer arrived at the White House than he had disappeared up Trump's arse, the only sign of him left being a tiny hand, still protruding and waving a tiny, battered union flag. Nothing could more illustrate the nature of Brexit Britain's total impotence, irrelevance and subservience to the real holders of power than this exercise in prostration, or should it be prostate massage?

Two inveterate liars met, both of whom lied even more, as they tried to square the circles of their recent contradictory statements in relation to the Ukraine-Russia war. Trump indicating a more rapid onset of his cognitive impairment, said he could not even remember calling Zelensky a dictator only a couple of days earlier. Of course, for all intents and purposes, based on the US's previous definition of a dictator, Zelensky would qualify. He has cancelled the elections, meaning he has no democratic mandate to continue in office, and yet is doing so; he has closed down opposition parties; he has placed restrictions on workers' organisations; he has closed down Ukrainian TV, Radio and media companies that were critical of his regime; Ukraine continually appears in various western league tables of corruption, openness etc., as no better than Russia.

Trump's memory lapse was a means of him placating Starmer (or more correctly the press pack following him around) without the need to square the circle of his current lies about providing some vague “backstop”, which he has merged into his demand that the US be given its pound of Ukrainian flesh, from the minerals deal. Starmer and the petty-bourgeois media pack, of course, did not press that issue as they fall over themselves to believe that Trump is somehow going to go to war with Putin, or at least, continue to provide the weapons and funding that allow brave Ukrainian workers to continue to sacrifice themselves in the interests of western imperialism, and Zelensky's corrupt, oligarchical regime. But, tomorrow, or the day after, Trump will simply lie some more, and all of the hot air of Thursday will be forgotten.

The imagery was gut-wrenching. The US bourgeois revolutionaries, overthrew their King, George III, and established their Republic. Asked whether they had a Monarchy or a Republic, following the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Of course, in Presidential systems, as against parliamentary systems, a Republic simply means that you have an elected Monarch, rather than an hereditary Monarch, as the President alone claims a popular mandate – even though in the US, not even the latter is true as a result of the Electoral College – and the Constitution vests monarchical, prerogative power in the hands of the President, which is why such Presidential systems are always more amenable to Bonapartism. Trump clearly sees himself, not only as a Bonaparte, but, like Bonaparte himself, as a future Monarch or Emperor.

In the age of the Internet, e-mail, and of global electronic telecommunications, it was rather fitting therefore, that a British Prime Minister was reduced to the role of postman, to have flown 3,000 miles to deliver, by hand, a hand-written letter from his liege Lord, King Charles III, the incumbent of an institution that should have been abolished more than two centuries ago, at the time of the bourgeois revolution, and who is the descendant of that same George III that the American Revolution did rid themselves of! No wonder that the, now for all to see, totally ignorant, Elon Musk, has no idea about how the UK political system works, leading him to call on the said King Charles to remove the elected government, no doubt, in his fantasy, to, then, see his chosen candidate, Tommy Robinson, appointed, possibly to be supported by Trump's other buddies, the Tate Brothers, recently also relocated to the US.

Prior to Brexit, I noted that the vision of the petty-bourgeois nationalists was to turn Britain into the equivalent of Batista's Cuba of the 1950's, but I did not expect that it would be a Labour government that would be the vehicle of such a transformation. That seems to be the intention of Blue Labour, whose Brexit agenda requires Britain to be separated from the EU definitively, by tying it in to the US, if not as its 51st state, then as dominated by it, and its rules, standards and laws, much as, Trump now advocates for Canada and Greenland. If Starmer agrees to a trade deal with the US, it would remove any possibility of a closer relation with the EU, because it would involve the UK accepting all of those US food and other standards, in relation to chlorinated chicken, and so on. Its no wonder that a British media, which fell over itself to back Brexit, in order, mostly, to appeal to the sentiments of its largely aged, petty-bourgeois, nationalist readers and viewers, and, now, seeing the disaster that has resulted from it, try to double down on their previous lies about the benefits of Brexit, by hugely inflating the chances of, and benefits of a trade deal with the US, whilst, at the same time, attempting to claim that Starmer has been able to adopt this stance on the world stage, only because of being freed from the constraints of the EU.

Complete delusion, of the type that, also, lay behind the jingoism of the hype for Brexit in the first place. In fact, the delusion goes back way before that, into the hugely inflated role of Britain during World War II, a fantasy tale, largely constructed, as he claimed in advance, by Churchill, and readily snapped up by those that sought to cling to the idea of Rule Britannia, and rolled out repeatedly, as now, to draw parallels with standing up to dictators and aggressors. The reality was that, in the 1930's, the British ruling class and its media welcomed first Mussolini and then Hitler's rise to power, as they saw it smashing down uppity workers, and acting as a counter to the epitome of that in the USSR. They saw no reason to stand up to those dictators when they were attacking workers, or, as in Germany and elsewhere, when they were conducting pogroms against Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and so on.

Recently, I heard the otherwise, usually good, James O'Brien, making this same comparison, and fallacy, in relation to Ukraine. His conclusion that appeasement had been wrong in the 1930's, when Hitler went on to invade Poland, and so it would be wrong to appease Putin, by not acting to return Eastern Ukraine, did not follow. For one thing, he failed to ask the question of why it was that the Sudeten Germans saw becoming part of a fascist Germany as preferable to remaining inside a supposedly “democratic” Czechoslovakia. Secondly, he assumes that Germany's invasion of Poland, then left no other option than for other imperialist states to engage in a new slaughter of millions of mainly workers, in a war that was actually fought for the interests of their own respective exploiters and oppressors. The alternative, of course, was to have supported the workers in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Germany to have organised to fight fascism from within, to exploit its inherently contradictory and antagonistic nature, resulting from the heterogeneous nature of the petty-bourgeois masses that it rests upon, not to mention its function when in power of acting in the interests not of that petty-bourgeoisie, but in the interests of large-scale industrial capital.

But, the narrative presented is that the world could only be saved by being destroyed by World War, with the world's workers playing the role only of cannon fodder, and their own interests having to be denied until some future date. And, even there, the history is denied, and a fantasy constructed in its place. By 1940, Nazi Germany had rolled over western and central Europe. Just to put that in modern context, Putin's Russia is stretched just to take Eastern Ukraine, let alone be able to roll over the far more developed, and better armed, states of western Europe. Britain had been defeated catastrophically at Dunkirk, and, in every other confrontation, exposing the lie of the supposed superiority of the British military, it suffered similar losses, both in North Africa, and in Asia, where, for example, it suffered its worst ever defeat, even in Churchill's words, to the Japanese, in Singapore.

In 1940, Britain was already defeated, slowly starving were it not for the shipments sent from the US and Canada, at the great expense of the lives of thousands of brave merchant seamen. It was the USSR that defeated Germany, not Britain, nor even the US, though the US, after it, again, belatedly entered the war in 1941, did provide large amounts of equipment and material, to enable the USSR to take the war to Germany, and it was, again, the US that tipped the scales in North Africa, It is the fantasy of Britain's imperial past, and not the reality of even then, let alone the reality of Britain today, as a second, or even third rate world power that the Brexiters presented, and that they continue, now, in the form of Starmer, to cling to.

Britain, in 1982, barely was able to defeat Argentina in the Falklands War, and, today, would not be able to do so. But, nor is that a reason to try to go back to the fantasy of that previous military capability, by the increase in military spending proposed by Starmer, itself, as with the cuts in Foreign Aid, designed only to appeal to the sentiments of the bigots, and jingoists. An increase in military spending will act to further undermine the British economy.

It can only be financed by diverting a portion of surplus value away from productive investment/capital accumulation into destructive investment. If the state, appropriates a portion of surplus value/profits to finance investment in roads and infrastructure, or in schools, hospitals and so on, then the use-values created by that investment go back into the economy. Roads get used to transport goods to market, schools and teachers produce educated future workers, required to produce further goods and services, and, also, to produce new value and surplus value. But, that is not true with military spending, the bombs, bullets, tanks simply sit, if you are lucky, slowly rusting away, providing no useful benefit to society, a destruction of the value used up in the labour and materials for their construction. But, if you are not lucky, and they are used, the result is even worse, because, instead of increasing the wealth of society, instead of acting as means of production or consumption to assist further production, they act to destroy what already exists in the most violent manner.  Such spending at the least reduces capital accumulation and growth, and at worst, results in expanded negative reproduction.

Starmer was already proposing to cut state spending, at a time when decades of spending cuts has led to the fabric of society, in terms of its infrastructure, being in a state of advanced decay. The idea that it can continue in that way, and even intensify it, by cutting spending further, whilst throwing money and resources into the production of arms, is simply untenable. As I wrote recently, it could borrow the money to pay for that military spending, but that will simply defer the problem of paying for it, and meanwhile will cause interest rates to rise further. It may seem hard to grasp at the moment, as right-wing populists, petty-bourgeois nationalists have been on the rise across the globe, whether in the form of Trump, or Blue Labour, or Le Pen and so on, but they have almost certainly reached a peak, and the contradictions inherent within them are set to explode. Its up to workers to seize the day.

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 16 of 24

In developed economies, themselves, we see how far we still are, necessarily, from that idea of “from each according to their ability” (often misrepresented by reformists and welfarists as “ability to pay”, i.e. higher taxes) in the fact that bourgeois, trades union consciousness still seeks to base collective bargaining (i.e. haggling over the price of labour-power, or how much workers are to be exploited) on the protection of differentials. The irony of that, of course, is that one consequence of the maintenance of such differentials between skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers is differences, then, in workers' household incomes, which, then, are intended to be ameliorated by the capitalist state, which sets up a whole bureaucratic apparatus of welfarism, draining resources for no other purpose than to administer this welfare, as alms, which, also, provides it with a mechanism of social control, which provides benefits to the poorer households, which would not have been required had their real wages been higher to begin with, and covers the cost of these benefits by raising taxes on better paid workers, which itself sets up a division and antagonism within the working-class itself, utilised, also, as a means of social control.

In other words, the trades unions insist on the pay differentials of their skilled workers being maintained, but, also, collectively demand that the capitalist state protect the living standards of their unskilled members via the welfare system, which it funds by taxes on the incomes of those better paid, skilled workers who, thereby, lose a considerable portion of the benefit of that pay differential, and all of which involves the unnecessary employment of large numbers of state bureaucrats to collect those taxes, keep records, and pay benefits, who could, otherwise, have been employed productively! The social democrats and reformist socialists justify this welfarism on the basis of the idea that it is redistributing income from “the rich”, but, as Marx and Engels showed, that is not possible. The relation between the revenues received by the owners of capital (real industrial capital, or fictitious capital) and workers is, ultimately, objectively determined, whether the revenues of workers take the form of actual money wages, or the social wage. In summary, it is determined by the value of labour-power, which is why capital always seeks to raise productivity so as to reduce that value of labour-power, i.e. to reduce the proportion of the working-day required as necessary labour to reproduce the worker. If due to market conditions, in the short run, workers' revenues (wages/social wage, i.e. relative wages) rise, and consequently, relative profits fall, this leads inexorably to a crisis of overproduction of capital, causing capital to first throw labour on to the streets, and secondly to engage in a technological revolution, which replaces labour with machines, which then results in relative wages falling.

The extension of this absurd concept of welfarism is the concept of so called specific types of poverty, such as fuel poverty, food poverty, housing poverty, child poverty, and so on, all of which, of course, provides the basis for a gaggle of middle-class people to be employed in campaigns, and quangos resting upon the need to deal with each, rather than a recognition that they are all simply a manifestation, not of some specific poverty, but of poverty itself, or more correctly, a lack of income! If we take someone with an income of £500 a week who spends £300 a week eating well, £150 on the cost of shelter and £40 on other things, leaving them with £10 to cover energy, whilst their fuel bill is £20, they would be in “fuel poverty”. However, they could have spent less on food, and so paid their fuel bill.

Likewise, they may have six kids so that the £300 food bill is a minimum required, whilst they must, also, now, spend the £40 they spent on themselves on their kids, leaving them, in “fuel poverty”, and probably “child poverty” too. Yet, in both cases, the “poverty” was a consequence of particular choices of how to spend their income – food in the first case, six kids in the second. However, if the household income is only £300 a week, they may spend, say, only the minimum amount of £100 on food, have no kids, spend the minimum £150 on shelter, and a minimum £40 on other necessities, still leaving them in “fuel poverty”, or they could pay the fuel bill, and spend less on food, then being in “food poverty”.

Back To Part 15

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Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 1 of 6

Social imperialists have, again, led the working-class into disaster. At a time of an evident and growing drive to global imperialist war, which, this time, would inevitably, and quickly, become a thermonuclear war, destroying humanity, the social imperialists have disarmed the working-class both physically and politically, by subordinating them to their own respective ruling classes, and making them simply foot soldiers in the interests of those ruling classes, rather than an independent third camp of the proletariat, fighting for its own class interests, against those ruling classes. The most obvious example of that, now, is in Ukraine, but the same can be seen in Palestine.

That, short of a direct military confrontation between US imperialism/NATO and Russian~Chinese imperialism, i.e. World War III, Ukraine could never defeat Russia, no matter how much weaponry NATO provided, should have been obvious to any intelligent person, let alone Marxist. As I have set out before, part of the reason for them believing it could, or was even about to do so, was not just that the social imperialists, and other apologists for NATO, swallowed their own propaganda, as part of a moralistic act of wishful thinking, but that, from the start, they committed to the false narrative that Russia wanted to annex the whole of Ukraine, and had launched a full scale invasion to that effect. The reality always was that Russia knew it could never conquer the whole of Ukraine, didn't need to, to achieve its aims, and so never did launch such a full-scale invasion.

US imperialism/NATO did not need to occupy the whole of Serbia to achieve its aims. It only needed to occupy Kosovo, and split it away from Serbia. It didn't mean that, in the process, it didn't also bomb Serbia itself, and so on. In the same way, Russia did not need to occupy the whole of Georgia in 2007, and, despite claims of NATO, and its apologists, that it would, it didn't do so, even though it clearly could have done so, easily, having driven its tanks right up to Tbilisi. It only needed to occupy the ethnic Russian areas of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and did so using the same justification that US imperialism/NATO had done on many occasions, including in Kosovo, of preventing genocide/ethnic cleansing etc. Its amazing how many times imperialist powers have used this pretext as the basis for their own military adventures, and yet the social-imperialists continue to ask workers to swallow it.

Trotsky, writing as a war correspondent, during the Balkan Wars, not only noted, and searingly exposed, the lies and hypocrisy of the European imperialists and their media, which recounted, in gory detail, the atrocities of the Turks, whilst not only failing to report the equally grisly atrocities of those fighting against them, but, also, deliberately censoring any such reports made by journalists and socialists such as Trotsky. Trotsky wrote to Miliukov, who had been a prominent, liberal, Russian advocate for “national liberation” of the Balkan Slavic peoples, and advocate of liberal interventionism to achieve it,

“Recently, during the period of the armistice, you made a political journey to the Balkans; you visited several centres and, what is of particular importance, you went to the regions recently conquered by the allies.

Did you not hear during your travels – it must be supposed that this would be of interest to you – about the monstrous acts of brutality that were committed by the triumphant soldiery of the allies all along their line of march, not only on unarmed Turkish soldiers, wounded or taken prisoner, but also on the peaceful Muslim inhabitants, on old men and women, on defenceless children?”

(The Balkan Wars p 285-6)

The same has been seen in every such military conflict, with domestic populations being led into support for the actions of their own ruling class, by lurid claims of the bestiality of those they are fighting, whilst scrupulously avoiding any suggestion of their own atrocities. The justification of the genocide in Gaza on the basis, not of the already abominable nature of Hamas' attack on October 7th, but of a systematic and torrential series of lies, about babies being beheaded, women raped and so on, during those attacks, is a recent example. Trotsky, continued,

“Would you not agree that a conspiracy of silence by all of our 'leading' papers.... that this mutual agreement to keep quiet makes all of you fellow travellers and moral participants in bestialities that will lie as a stain of dishonour on our whole epoch?

Are not, in these circumstances, your protests against Turkish atrocities – which I am not at all going to deny – like the disgusting conduct of Pharisees: resulting, it must be supposed, not from the general principles of culture and humanity but from naked calculations of imperialist greed?”

(ibid)

Forward To Part 2

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 15 of 24

There is, then, a difference between equality of being, and equality of rights. As Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, the bourgeoisie established the concept of equality on the basis of the equality of being, and a consequent equality of rights. It was revolutionary, precisely because, at the time, there was no concept of such equality. The higher echelons of society were considered superior beings, only a step down from God, with the rest of society occupying ever lower rungs on that ladder. Similarly, those at the top had rights according to their station, and those at the bottom effectively had no rights at all.

In establishing the idea of equality of being, the bourgeoisie broke down the basis of this ordering of society and the social relations, based on it, along with its political and juridical superstructure. It broke down the privileged position of the feudal guild production, with all of its protectionism and monopolies, for example, and posited all commodity owners as free and equal individuals, meeting on equal terms in the market. And, alongside this, it posited, and demanded, therefore, equal political and legal rights – the right to vote, and to equal standing before the law.

But, whilst this was revolutionary compared to feudal society, it was also based upon the lie set out above. Individuals are not all equal/the same. Some have greater needs than others, some have greater abilities, and, thereby, obligations than others. Yet, as Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, if this is to be acknowledged, and acted upon, as set out in the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, it would require a vast increase in social productivity, so that, indeed, those with the greatest abilities, strength, intelligence and so on contribute fully, but also freely to social production, without concern for proportional recompense, and that those with the greatest needs, for example, those with children, are able to take from social production to meet them, without the requirement to contribute in equal measure.

As Marx notes, even the initial socialist society, emerging from bourgeois society, could not do that. Far from it, which makes all of the moralism of the welfarists and reformists idealist and utopian nonsense that, actually, is, thereby, reactionary, and stands in the way of the transition to Socialism. In The Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx set this out in relation to the demands of the Lassalleans, at that time, for free, universal education and an end to child labour etc. Capitalism itself, in the developed economies, has so raised productivity, and changed the nature of labour that the first not only became possible, but necessary, whilst the second continues, as seen in the thousands of children that provide free social care in the home to parents and others. But, in the developing economies, Marx's argument against he Lassalleans still applies, and yet the liberals and moralists demand the same rights, in those countries as those only now made possible in developed economies, by their much higher productivity and wealth.

This is simply a reflection of the extent to which bourgeois ideology, and its concept of equality of being is pervasive, even though its clear that no such equality is possible or desirable, because if everyone were truly equal/the same, as in Duhring's abstraction, it would mean no diversity of being, with everyone reduced to the same grey clone of everyone else. Here, that equality of being is not viewed from the standpoint of the individual, but of the economy itself. In other words, the economy of Bangladesh is put on the same equal level as the economy of, say, Britain, and, thereby, expected to provide the same rights to its citizens in terms of education, child-labour, wages and conditions and so on, even though this is clearly impossible. The same applies in respect to its obligations in regard to environmental considerations. It, thereby, necessarily disadvantages the Bangladeshi economy compared to developed economies, and is itself a manifestation of imperialism, and of combined and uneven development.

Back To Part 14

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 14 of 24

Engels notes that at least Kaufman had not been so cruel as to claim that he was slaughtering the Yomuds to respect them and return them to the true path.

“Once again in this conflict it is the elect, those who claim to be acting in accordance with truth and science and therefore in the last resort the philosophers of reality, who have to decide what are superstition, prejudice, brutality and perversity of character and when force and subjection are necessary for purposes of equalisation. Equality, therefore, is now — equalisation by force; and the second will is recognised by the first to have equal rights through subjection.” (p 128)

As I have set out, elsewhere, in the same way, the subjectivism and petty-bourgeois moralism of the petty-bourgeois Third Camp is also manifest in the fact that one section of it sets as their guiding principle their categorical imperative, the opposition to imperialism, and the other their opposition to authoritarianism, and, in each case, to will the end is to will the means.  It means politics determined by lesser-evilism.

Engels notes that this concept expressed by Duhring, essentially meaning being forced to be free, or here, “forcible equalisation is only a distortion of the Hegelian theory, according to which punishment is the right of the criminal” (p 128) For Hegel, it means recognising the criminal as also being a rational being, who, as Kant described, in the Categorical Imperative, must recognise that their actions were irrational.

From the basis of two equal, sovereign wills, Duhring concludes the requirement for a third, because otherwise, there is no means of arriving at majority decisions, and it is this which, then, forms the basis of the state to enforce those majority decisions. Duhring, then, proceeds from this basis to elaborate his schema for “the construction of his socialitarian state of the future where one fine morning we shall have the honour to look him up.” (p 129)

As with the pure mathematical abstraction of the point, which cannot exist in the real world, Duhring's pure human will, as an abstraction, cannot exist in the real world. As soon as we examine real human wills, even Duhring is led to set up a series of exceptions in which they are not equal.

“... that childhood, madness, so-called bestiality, alleged superstition, assumed prejudice and putative incapacity on the one hand, and pretensions to humanity and knowledge of truth and science on the other — that therefore every difference in the quality of the two wills and in that of the intelligence associated with them justifies an inequality which may go as far as subjection.” (p 129)

Individuals, clearly, are not equal/the same, as Engels, here, and Marx, in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, establish. Some are strong, others weak, some clever, some not, some have children others do not. As Marx sets out in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, therefore, to treat them as though they are all equal/the same is actually to treat them differently. It is to expect the weak individual to work as hard as the strong, in manual labour, the not so clever as hard as the clever in mental labour, and for the individual with children to be able to live on the same wages as the individual with no children.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 13 of 24

Duhring's third retreat relates to the mental faculties of individuals. He says,

“If one man acts in accordance with truth and science, and the other in accordance with some superstition or prejudice, then ... as a rule mutual interference must occur... At a certain degree of incompetence, brutality or perversity of character, conflict is always inevitable... It is not only children and madmen in relation to whom the ultimate resource is force. The character of whole natural groups and cultural classes of human beings may inexorably necessitate the subjection of their will, which is hostile because of its perversity, if it is to be led back to the common social ties. Even in such cases the alien will is still recognised as having equal rights; but the perversity of its injurious and hostile activity has provoked an equalisation, and if it is subjected to force, it is only reaping the reaction to its own unrighteousness”. (p 127)

Again, this merges with the racist nature of the second retreat, because the enslavement of millions in the colonial empires, created from the 17th century onwards, by mercantilism, was justified on the basis that those enslaved and denied equality was that they were sub-human, either morally or intellectually.

“So not only moral but also mental inequality is enough to remove the “complete equality” of the two wills and to call into being a morality by which all the infamous deeds of civilised robber states against backward peoples, down to the Russian atrocities in Turkestan, can be justified. When in the summer of 1873, General Kaufmann ordered the Tatar tribe of the Yomuds to be attacked, their tents to be burnt and their wives and children butchered — “in the good old Caucasian way”;, as the order was worded — he, too, declared that the subjection of the hostile, because perverted, will of the Yomuds, had become an inexorable necessity if it were to be led back to the common social ties, that the means he employed were best suited to the purpose, and that whoever willed the end had also to will the means.” (p 127-8)

And, today, the same morality denies equality to Palestinian lives, and defends Zionist genocide committed against them, on the basis of a right to self-defence by the imperialist, Zionist state in Israel, and, whoever wills that end, also wills the means. The Zionist state, backed by NATO imperialism, also proclaims that its genocide against Palestinians is really, also, for their own good, protecting their own rights against the restriction of those rights by Hamas. Imperialist military intervention is always cloaked in these kind of terms of “liberation from above”, as Trotsky described in relation to the Balkan Wars.

“Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.”

(Trotsky – The Balkan Wars, p 293-4)

“'Free'! And to whom, pray, are the Macedonians to pay the costs of their 'liberation'? And exactly how much do these costs amount to? How easily people operate with words, and now with living concepts, when they are not involved themselves! You, Ivan Kirillovich, say that peace is not an end in itself and so on, but you are letting your vision of reality be obscured. 'Free'! Have you any idea what the areas that were recently the theatre of war have been turned into? All through those places a terrible tornado has raged, which has torn up, broken, mangled, reduced to ashes everything that man's labour had created, has maimed and crushed man himself, and mortally laid low the young generation, down to the baby at the breast and even further to the foetus in the mother's womb. The Turks burned and massacred as they fled. The local Christians, where they had the advantage, burned and slaughtered as the allied armies drew near. The soldiers finished off the wounded, and ate up or carried off everything they could lay their hands on. The partisans, following at their heels, plundered, violated, burned. And, finally, along with the armies, epidemics of typhus and cholera advanced across the 'liberated' land.”

(ibid, p 330)

The same was seen a few years later, as Trotsky predicted, in WWI, and, then, after a brief pause, its continuation in WWII. When US imperialism destroyed much of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, including the use of Agent Orange, whose effects continued for decades, and even considered the use of atomic bombs, they also claimed it was done for the benefit of the Vietnamese, a claim that the mentors of today's petty-bourgeois Third Camp endorsed. So, too with the slaughter of a million Iraqis, the destruction of Libya, the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and Palestinians.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 12 of 24

But, even if we set all that aside, and assume a state of general equality and uniformity, Duhring is still left with the need to recognise that not all are equal. He says,

“There are also cases of “permissible dependence”, but these can be explained “on grounds which are to be sought not in the activity of the two wills as such, but in a third sphere, as for example in regard to children, in the inadequacy of their self-determination”.” (p 125)

Engels notes this as “Retreat No. 1” from Duhring's absolute and universal truth, in relation to the construction of a system of morals and laws. There are further such retreats. Duhring's second retreat starts from a peculiar argument relating to “beast” and “man”, in which individuals are a blend of the two in varying proportions. He says,

“Where beast and man are blended in one person the question may be asked, on behalf of a second, entirely human, person, whether his mode of action should be the same as if only human persons, so to speak, were confronting each other ... our hypothesis of two morally unequal persons, one of whom in some sense or other has something of the real beast in his character, is therefore the typical basic form for all relations which may come about in accordance with this difference, ... within and between groups of people”. (p 126)

This argument is particularly objectionable to us, today, because of its racist undertones. It is the basis of colonialism, and, as Engels described, is used by Duhring “to determine casuistically how far the human man can interfere with the bestial man, how far he may show distrust and employ stratagems and harsh, nay terrorist means, as well as deception against him, without himself deviating in any way from immutable morality.” (p 126)

Racists and colonialists, like Churchill, used it to justify the enslavement of millions across the Empire, to argue for machine-gunning, gassing and starving anyone who resisted. Of course, Churchill, also, viewed British workers such as the Welsh miners in Tonypandy, in not much higher regard.

“So, equality also ceases when two persons are “morally unequal”. But then it was surely not worth while to conjure up two completely equal people, for there are no two persons who are completely equal morally. — But the inequality is supposed to consist in this: that one person is human and the other has a streak of the beast in him.” (p 126)

Humans are animals, too, but are separated from the animal kingdom by the power to reason, and, thereby, to develop laws and morals, as well as to change the material conditions of their existence. The less developed the latter, the less able are humans to be truly human, and the more they are conditioned and constrained by their nature as animals. The basic animal instinct is to survive, procreate, eat, dominate. It is not some inherent difference in the morality of individuals, reflecting a difference in the genetic blend of beast and man, but the material conditions of existence that are determinant.

“Apart from the philosophy of reality, a division of mankind into two sharply differentiated groups, into human men and bestial men, into good and bad, sheep and goats, is only to be found in Christianity, which quite logically also has its judge of the universe to make the separation. But who is to be the judge of the universe in the philosophy of reality?” ( p 126-7)

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 11 of 24

This argument, put forward by Engels, is not liked by moral socialists, because, of course, it has similarities to that put by liberals, set out above. But, it is entirely consistent with the materialist method of Marx and Engels. It recognises, as Marx also does in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, that individuals are not all equal. As Marx says, the fact that they are not equal/the same, is what makes them individuals. Some are strong, some are weak, some are clever, others not, some have children, some do not. This question of being equal/the same is not the same as the concept of whether they have equal rights and obligations.

Moreover, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9, and repeated by Lenin, in his critique of the moral socialism of Sismondi, it is precisely these inequalities, these material differences that, in every stage of human social development, means that there are some individuals best adapted to the material conditions, who, thereby, prosper, and, in doing so, drive human social development forward.

“... although at first the development of the capacities of the human species takes place at the cost of the majority of human individuals and even classes, in the end it breaks through this contradiction and coincides with the development of the individual; the higher development of individuality is thus only achieved by a historical process during which individuals are sacrificed for the interests of the species in the human kingdom, as in the animal and plant kingdoms, always assert themselves at the cost of the interests of individuals, because these interests of the species coincide only with the interests of certain individuals, and it is this coincidence which constitutes the strength of these privileged individuals.”

(Marx – Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 9)

If we consider the dissolution of the primitive commune, and development of class society, it is not force that brings it about, but guile. As Marx set out in Capital, all surplus value is, ultimately, relative surplus value, because, unless productivity is sufficient to reduce necessary labour-time to less than the physical working-day, no individual can produce more than required for their own reproduction. Under these conditions, not even slavery is possible, no matter how much force is applied.

However, as soon as social productivity rises to a level where a social surplus is produced, it does not take long before some individuals see the opportunity to consume without engaging in production. They establish themselves as shaman, with an open line to the gods, required for the protection of the tribe, or a good harvest, and so on. Freed from production, they develop their own intellectual skills and knowledge, which further entrenches their position. Others have prowess in battle, and become military leaders of the tribe.

Over time, these functions and positions become entrenched, not by force, but by voluntary agreement.

“Servitude remains servitude, whether the voluntary form is retained or is trampled underfoot. Voluntary entry into servitude was known throughout the Middle Ages, and in Germany until after the Thirty Years' War. When serfdom was abolished in Prussia after the defeats of 1806 and 1807, and with it the obligation of the liege lords to provide for their subjects in need, illness and old age, the peasants petitioned the king asking to be left in servitude — for otherwise who would look after them when in distress? The scheme of two-men is therefore just as “appropriate” to inequality and servitude as to equality and mutual help; and since we are forced, on pain of extinction, to assume that they are heads of families, hereditary servitude is also foreseen from the start.” (p 124-5)

A similar thing is seen with welfarism. Under capitalism, a large section of the population always exists as a stagnant reserve of labour. It fluctuates in absolute size, dependent on the economic cycle, but declines in size relative to the population, as population grows. It becomes entirely dependent on the capitalist state, and is reduced, by this dependency, to a condition of semi-serfdom, its rights and freedom of movement heavily constrained.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 10 of 24

Duhring, however, bases a lot of his further argument on these two equal members of society, which Engels says, plays a similar role to that of the inhabitants of other planets, used by Duhring. In other words, what can be applied to them must, then, be applicable universally and eternally.

“Whenever a question of economics, politics etc., is to be solved, the two men instantly march up and settle the matter in the twinkling of an eye “axiomatically”. An excellent, creative and system-building discovery on the part of our philosopher of reality. But unfortunately, if we want to pay homage to truth, the two men are not his discovery. They are the common property of the whole eighteenth century.” (p 123)

They are to be found in Rousseau's Discours On Inequality (1754), and in the writing of Smith and Ricardo. In fact, Engels notes, for Rousseau, they prove the opposite of what Duhring asserts, and, for Smith and Ricardo, they are unequal in the sense of pursuing different occupations, as the basis of the exchange of commodities between them. For these theorists of the 18th century, however, such individuals serve merely an illustrative purpose to provide a simplified example of a basic concept.

“... Herr Dühring’s originality consists only in elevating this method of illustration into a basic method for all social science and a yardstick for all historical forms. Certainly it would be impossible to simplify the “strictly scientific conception of things and men any further”.” (p 123)

Rather, as with the abstractions previously discussed, such as the “point” in space and time, these Duhringian individuals cannot exist in the real world.

“They must be two people who are so thoroughly free from all reality, from all the national, economic, political and religious relations present in the world, from all sexual and personal characteristics, that nothing is left of either of them beyond the mere concept: human being, and then of course they are “completely equal”.” (p 123-4)

As other-worldly phantoms, these pure abstractions can serve whatever function Duhring, or anyone else, using this method, seeks to place upon them.

Its worth explaining the terms used in Duhring's argument, and Engels' response, to avoid confusion. Duhring posits these two individuals (men), each with an equal will. By will, here, is really meant an abstract right, so that, if both are equal, neither can demand anything of the other. It does not mean that one is strong-willed and the other weak-willed. Will could be replaced, in this context, by “desire”. This is important, here, and for Duhring's argument later, in which he explains the history of society, and the existence of inequality, injustice, exploitation and oppression on the basis of force. In other words, it is, again, a moralistic argument, reliant on subjectivism.

“The two wills can demand positively nothing from each other. Nevertheless, if one of them does so and has its way by force, this gives rise to a state of injustice; and it is by this fundamental scheme that Herr Dühring explains injustice, tyranny, servitude — in short, the whole reprehensible history of the past.” (p 124)

Engels notes that Rousseau had disproved this argument. Rousseau's argument is also used by liberals and libertarians, who claim that the world basically divides into those who are naturally entrepreneurial, willing to take risks etc., and those who are not. The former become employers, and the latter employed. Of course, this fails to account for the fact that, for millennia, there were no such employers nor employed, and that, under feudalism, that was also true, with the vast majority being self-sustaining peasants.

Rousseau argued that A cannot enslave B by force, but only by making himself indispensable to B. This is also the foundation of the argument put forward by liberals, in which the employers (capital) is indispensable to the employed (labour), because, without the employer providing capital (means of production and consumption) the workers cannot work. Of course, again, this does not explain why, then, for millennia, there were no such employer, and, indeed, no capital, and yet society continued along just fine without them, and proceeded not only to produce and increase its means of consumption, but also to increase and develop its means of production too. It does not explain how this situation, then, ceases to exist, and these means of production and consumption become centralised in the hands of just a few individuals. Duhring's answer to this is force, and this moralistic and subjectivist argument is echoed in the arguments of moralists down to today.

“Let us put the same thing in a slightly different way. Two shipwrecked people are alone on an island, and form a society. Formally, their wills are completely equal, and this is acknowledged by both. But from a material standpoint there is great inequality. A has determination and energy, B is irresolute, lazy and flabby. A is quick-witted, B stupid. How long will it be before A regularly imposes his will on B, first by persuasion, later by dint of habit, but always in a voluntary form?” (p 124)

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US Employment, Wages and Inflation

For all of last year, and much of the year before, I noted that, whilst bourgeois pundits were proclaiming that rises in US employment were about to slow down or end, as they desperately hoped for such an event, in order to restrain the rise in wages, no such slow down was likely. So it turned out. Indeed, it was not just in the US where that was the case. Despite uneven growth across the globe, even in the places where growth was, sluggish, as in the UK, and EU, employment continued to grow, and labour shortages increased.

Speculators latched on to every straw of hope that employment growth was weakening, to bring the required break on wages, so as to enable profits to grow without the need for additional liquidity to facilitate higher prices, with a consequent rise in interest rates, which continue to threaten a new fall in asset prices (fictitious capital), the form of wealth of the ruling class. But, every dawn turned out to be a false one. True, when the annual revisions to US Non-Farm Payrolls were released they showed that the actual figures were around 700,000 less than had been recorded. However, even allowing for that, it remains the case that US employment has risen considerably, way in excess of what is required to absorb the normal increase in the working population.

For last year, the revised data shows a rise in employment of 1.99 million, as against the originally stated figure of 2.2 million. The average monthly increase of 166,000 compares with an average monthly rise in the workforce of around 90,000. So, the US labour market continues to tighten, and that has been shown, also, in the wage data. Last month, average hourly earnings rose by 0.5% compared to the previous month, as against estimates of a 0.3% rise. If continued at that pace, it is equal to a rise of more than 6%, for a year, despite the fact that consumer price rises are running at 3%. Its not just in the US that the gradual fall in the rate of consumer price rises, has not resulted in a corresponding fall in wage rises. Despite being told that workers faced a huge squeeze on real wages, in the UK, the opposite has been true. Last month (December), UK CPI was just 2.5%, (3% in January 2025), whilst the rise in wages, over the last three months of 2024, was 6%. In the Eurozone, wages have risen by 4.4%, whilst CPI was 2.5%.

Back to the US, the attempts to look for weakness in the labour market turned again to other data such as Job Openings, and Quits, the number of workers voluntarily leaving their existing job to move to another, better paid job, as well as the number of hours worked. Job openings stand at just over 7 million, which is down from the figure of nearly 9 million at the start of 2024, and the all-time high of over 12 million in 2022. However, the average over the last 25 years is only 5.5 million, meaning that, today's, level is 50% higher than the average, over that period. Turning to Quits, they are down to 2%, from a high of 3% in November 2021. But, again, they are currently only at the average level over the last 25 years. Moreover, I have set out, previously what this signifies at this stage of the cycle.

When the long wave cycle turns to a period of extensive accumulation, as happened from around 1999, it first manifests as an increase in employment that soaks up existing labour reserves, including using existing employed workers more extensively and intensively. They get offered overtime, and so on. Unemployment falls, as those workers are drawn into employment. Part-time and casual workers get full-time, permanent work. At first, none of this translates directly into stronger workplace organisation, and ability to demand higher wages. But, increasingly, workers are able to act on an individual basis to find better paid employment. So, for example, although its been seen that the average pay rise for workers staying in the same job, in the private sector was around 7%, the average increase in pay for workers who move to another job has been around 14%. Employers have had to compete for labour by bidding up wages to attract them.

But, that difference between the wage rises given to workers staying in the same job, and that for workers moving jobs has declined, as increasingly, not only have employers had to raise wages to stop their workers leaving, but also, as workers have become stronger, as labour shortages arose, so they have begun to rebuild their organisations in the workplace. Existing unionised workers have become stronger, and un-unionised workplaces have been unionised. The emphasis has shifted from individual solutions to collective solutions, as workers have stayed in their jobs, and simply demanded higher pay. That is what always happens, as workers become stronger, and on that basis, the Quits Rate always then falls.

Again, as I have set out elsewhere, the consequence of labour reserves being drawn down, as unemployed workers are employed, part-time and casual workers get full-time permanent work, and so on, the result is that household incomes, as against individual incomes, rise. The majority of households are still, multi-occupancy households, comprising couples, and children. The relevant metric is not, then, individual incomes, let alone hourly wages, but total household income. A household with two people working, rather than one, can more easily cover the rent, or mortgage payments, and other such fixed costs, such as energy bills etc. So, that leaves additional income to use for spending. That is one reason that consumer spending has continually exceeded expectations, and as that spending has continued to rise, it, in turn, leads businesses to seek to meet that increasing demand, by their own further capital accumulation, which in turn, means additional employment of workers. This is what always happens in this phase of the cycle, even though attempts (austerity, tariffs, lockdowns), since 2010, to slow down economic growth have meant that it has been muted.

In the UK, a narrative was attempted following Blue Labour's Budget, and the rise in Employers' NI, to argue that it would result in a slow down, or even fall in employment, as firms cut off their nose to spite their face, by laying off, or failing to employ additional workers, thereby, denying themselves the ability to increase their output and profits, solely to save a few quid in NI contributions. The narrative was nonsense, and the data confirms it. Employment continued to rise into the end of the year, and the rate of employment also rose. At the same time, the number of unemployed fell slightly, with the unemployment rate remaining at 4.4%. Meanwhile, the rise in wages by 6%, was itself, an indication of the continuing tight labour market.

In the US, it was claimed by some pundits that the large rise in average hourly earnings was due to a fall in the number of average hours worked. This latter is also touted as an indication of some supposed weakening in the labour market. But, again, this is also what is seen at this phase of the long wave cycle, and far from suggesting a weakening it indicates the opposite. The initial rise in working time that accompanies the start of the long wave uptrend, is what indicates the continued weakness of labour. In the 1950's, for example, workers could be fobbed off with the offer of additional overtime, rather than a rise in their hourly wage. But, by the 1960's, workers felt strong enough to demand not only higher hourly wages, but shorter working hours, more holidays and so on. That is what is being seen now, and over time, it tightens labour markets even further.

There is another aspect of this too. Since the 1980's, the size of the petty-bourgeoisie has grown by 50%. The capital of the petty-bourgeoisie is, by definition, less productive. It does not enjoy economies of scale and so on. Similarly, the labour is less productive. As the long wave uptrend continues, the long-term historical process by which capital is centralised and concentrated, and the petty-bourgeoisie is liquidated, asserts itself. The capital and labour, previously tied up in these inefficient small businesses gets flushed out, and concentrated into larger-scale businesses. Consequently, from this alone, productivity rises, so that output rises with less labour required for it. Generally speaking, the incomes of those flushed out of those small, inefficient businesses, rise, when they become wage-labourers in some larger business.

So, in the US, more clearly than anywhere else, currently, employment continues to rise, real wages are also rising, and those increases in real wages, specifically, real household incomes, facilitates a continued rise in the demand for wage goods and services, which competition drives capital to respond to by a continued accumulation of capital. Rising real wages, with flat levels of productivity growth, again consistent with this phase of the long wave cycle, mean a rise in relative wages, and fall in relative profits. To compensate, firms seek to raise prices, so as to maintain profit margins. To an extent they can do so, because of the role of commercial credit in providing additional liquidity, even without additional liquidity from the central bank. But, those rising prices then simply lead to a price-wage spiral, in conditions where labour shortages, and strengthening unions, mean that workers seek higher wages to again compensate for those higher prices. Central banks are led to, at least, stop cutting their policy rates, as again seen most clearly in the US, or to begin raising them once more. In conditions where asset markets have come to expect falling interest rates so as to push up asset prices that spells trouble for the owners of assets. At the very least, it means falling real prices of those assets, and often that is accompanied by crashes in those asset prices, as happened in 2008.

On Bloomberg the other day, I heard one anchor ask a guest how the US housing market was going to deal with mortgage rates that are now around 7%. But, the reality is that the average US 30 Year Mortgage Rate, between 1971 and today, is 7.73%. Current mortgage rates, in the US and UK, are not high by historical standards, but just about average. It is just that, over the last 40 years, they were falling, along with other market rates of interest, as the supply of money-capital exceeded the demand for it. That trend is over, and interest rates are rising, and will continue to rise for a long time. Indeed, given that the average mortgage rate over all that period is 7.73%, and for the last few decades has been significantly below that, to maintain the average, means that rates will need to be significantly above 7% for a prolonged period. In 1981, for example, the 30 Year Mortgage Rate stood at 16%.

That, of course, reflected the fact that, at that time, there was also high levels of inflation, as central banks sought to enable capital to defend profit margins from rising wages, by increasing liquidity. In addition, the US in particular printed currency (money tokens) to finance its war in Vietnam, and state spending on welfarism. But, those same conditions can be seen today. Wages are rising, and to protect profit margins, firms seek to raise prices. Across the globe, the decades of austerity used to try to slow economic growth have left the basic infrastructure crumbling, of which the state of roads, bridges, rail track and so on are testament, as well as crumbling schools, hospitals and other buildings. The state of decay is such, now, that it threatens the overall productivity of advanced economies, itself already abysmal due to the lack of investment in fixed capital, and the growth of inefficient small businesses. The advanced capitalist economies are in danger of an historic collapse, under such conditions, compared to the challenge of new developing economies that have been able to skip several stages in the development of their infrastructure, as described by the process of combined and uneven development.

To prevent it, the developed economies, in the US, EU, UK, and Japan need to engage in large scale capital spending on infrastructure, the kind of rejuvenation seen in previous periods of history, for example, when railways replaced roads and canals as the means of mass transport of people and freight. That investment will require the state to either raise taxes significantly, or to borrow extensively, or both. In the end, borrowing only acts to delay the point at which the spending, is paid for by taxes to repay the debt. In the meantime, that higher borrowing, at a time when capital itself must borrow more to finance its own capital accumulation, means rising interest rates, and falling asset prices. On top of that, we see increasing global frictions driven by economic nationalism driving demands for much higher military spending, much as happened with the Vietnam War.

Given that there is increasing hostility of populations and electorates to renewed austerity, at the same time that money is spent on such wars, and military equipment, it becomes ever harder for governments to justify higher taxes, or restraint of state spending in order to finance those military budgets. That was part of the reason for Harris' defeat as against Trump, and, now, Trump seeks to shift that spending on to Europe. But, in Europe, the Ukraine War, let alone financing a NATO War against China, is already unpopular, and more so by the day. Macron, the cheerleader for it, got smashed when he went to the polls, and is on his way out. Starmer began as massively unpopular, and has become even more hated and unpopular in just a matter of a few months. Scholtz is also on his way out, and although the CDU/CSU is likely to win the most votes, it is unlikely to be able to form a stable government. The idea that this bunch are going to replace the US in funding, and arming the war in Ukraine is a non-starter, but even to put up any kind of show, they will have to either borrow or print currency on a large scale, pushing up interest rates, and inflation, much as happened in the 1970's, but in fundamentally different economic conditions.

In the 1970's, we were at the end of the period of long wave uptrend. Capital began to respond to a shortage of labour/crisis of overproduction of capital, by engaging in a new technological revolution centred around the microchip. But, we are not at that point currently, partly because the attempts to hold back economic growth since 2010, have acted to slow down and draw out the period of uptrend. We are still at around the same stage as the early 1960's, and so with at least another decade of expansion before those crisis conditions pertain. This puts workers in the strongest position they have ever had. They need the leaders to be able to utilise that advantage.

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 9 of 24

Proudhon arrived at a view of history similar to that presented by Rousseau in The Social Contract, whereby the free individual makes a contract with other such individuals to establish society based on a set of legal rules designed for their mutual advantage. Duhring does a similar thing.

“Herr Dühring thus splits society up into its simplest elements, and discovers in doing so that the simplest society consists of at least two people. With these two people he then proceeds to operate axiomatically. And so the basic moral axiom spontaneously presents itself:

“Two human wills are as such completely equal to each other, and in the first place one can demand positively nothing from the other”. This “characterises the basic form of moral justice”, and equally that of legal justice, for “we need only the utterly simple and elementary relation of two persons for the development of the fundamental concepts of right”.” (p 121-2)

Rousseau's concept of the free individual, living outside society is a bourgeois, liberal myth, because no such state ever existed. Humans have always lived in some form of society. Even if we take the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe, based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, Crusoe did not appear ready formed on his island, but was a product of society, before being shipwrecked. The same is true of Proudhon's individual, and, here, too, of Duhring's. Society does not arise out of some agreement between formerly separated individuals, and class society certainly does not represent some voluntary association of free and equal individuals.

“Not only is it not an axiom that two people or two human wills are as such completely equal to each other it is actually a great exaggeration. In the first place, two people, even as such, may be unequal in sex, and this simple fact leads us on at once to the conclusion that the simplest elements of society — if we enter into this childishness for a moment — are not two men, but a man and a woman, who found a family, the simplest and first form of association for the purpose of production.” (p 122)

Engels notes that this does not suit Duhring's purpose, because the two families must be made as equal as possible. It can only be rationally understood as two heads of households, otherwise, procreation and the continuation of society is not possible. Engels proceeds on the basis of two male heads of households, but his research based on the work of Morgan, showed that, originally, these households had female heads, in a system of matriarchy. One reason for that was that, in consanguineous families, based on polygamy, actual lineage could could only be definitively attributed via the mother. The same logic applies, however. Reproduction could no more proceed from a society of just two women than it could two men.

“Consequently, one thing or the other: either the Dühringian social molecule, by the multiplication of which the whole of society is to be built up, is doomed from the first, because two men can never by themselves bring a child into the world; or we must think of them as two heads of families. And in that case the whole simple basic scheme is turned into its opposite: instead of the equality of people it proves at most the equality of heads of families, and as women are not consulted, it further proves that they are subordinate.” (p 122)

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 8 of 24

Ironically, given the original usage of the term “Third Camp”, by Lenin and Trotsky, to mean the independent camp of the proletariat as against one or other camp of warring imperialists, in WWI, and the attempt by the social-patriots and social-imperialists to drive workers into support for their own bourgeois ruling class, the Third Camp of the petty-bourgeoisie, does the exact opposite, as most clearly seen in recent times, in the support for NATO imperialism, and the imperialist state in Ukraine, in their war against Russian imperialism. It again forces the global proletariat to forego its own interests and to line up behind one of these two opposing camps of the bourgeoisie, distinguished only by these superficial political facades of “democracy” or “authoritarianism”. The AWL is the manifestation of this second trend.

The irrationality becomes manifest in the Ukraine-Russia war where the AWL/USC claim not only to be opposing Russian authoritarianism, but also imperialism, and do so by lining up behind NATO/Ukrainian imperialism, i.e. a reductio ad absurdum, in which “anti-imperialism” is also “pro-imperialism”. In reality, as Trotsky's analysis of the Chinese revolution showed, “anti-imperialism”, where it is not in the form of an independent proletarian struggle for socialist revolution, via permanent revolution, is always based upon an alliance with, and so subordination to, some other imperialism. He also made that point in relation to Ukraine, and to Czechoslovakia.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

“It is impermissible to consider a war between Czechoslovakia and Germany, even if other imperialist states were not immediately involved, outside of that entanglement of European and world imperialist relations from which the war might have broken out as an episode. A month or two later the Czech-German war – if the Czech bourgeoisie could fight and wanted to fight – would almost inevitably have involved other states. It would therefore be the greatest mistake for a Marxist to define his position on the basis of temporary conjunctural diplomatic and military groupings, rather than on the basis of the general character of the social forces standing behind the war.”

(Social-Patriotic Sophistry, subtitled The Question of the Defense of Czechoslovakia’s “National Independence”)

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 7 of 24

Engels asks how the method of Duhring, then, constructs the system of morals, and laws of society. He does not start from the real relations in society, and so the material available for such a construction consists of two kinds.

“... first, the meagre residue of real content which may possibly survive in the abstractions from which he starts and, second, the content which our ideologist reintroduces from his own consciousness.” (p 121)

That is, essentially, the same approach taken by Proudhon, and discussed by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy.

“And what does he find in his consciousness? For the most part, moral and legal notions which are a more or less accurate expression (positive or negative, corroborative or antagonistic) of the social and political relations amidst which he lives; perhaps also ideas drawn from the literature on the subject; and finally maybe some personal idiosyncrasies. Our ideologist may twist and turn as he likes, but the historical reality which he cast out at the door comes in again at the window, and while he thinks he is framing a doctrine of morals and law for all times and for all worlds, he is only fashioning an image of the conservative or revolutionary tendencies of his day — an image which is distorted because it has been torn from its real basis and, like a reflection in a concave mirror, is standing on its head.” (p 121)

Proudhon believed that the guiding principle, the nirvana to which all contradictions lead, via a process of, at each stage, choosing the lesser of two-evils, was equality. But, Marx indicated that others may choose some other guiding principle to fulfil that role.

“... we refer him to the Histoire de l’économie politique of M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism.”

(The Poverty of Philosophy, p 112)

As I have noted, elsewhere, today's petty-bourgeois moral socialists of the Third Camp operate on the same basis. One section of that trend identifies “imperialism” as the greater evil, to be opposed, and so the “lesser-evil” set against it is “anti-imperialism”, even where that “anti-imperialism” takes the form of reactionary, anti-working class forces and regimes, as, for example, Iranian mullahs, Islamists and jihadists, and so on. The SWP and its splinters are the representatives of that trend.

Another section of the Third Camp of the petty-bourgeoisie, as Trotsky called them, takes the opposite moral stance. It sees authoritarianism in its many guises as the greater evil, be it that first identified by the founders of that trend, Burnham and Shachtman, i.e. Stalinism, or those later forms of authoritarianism and reaction in the shape of the clerical-fascists. They consequently, as did Burnham and Shachtman, posit bourgeois-democracy and “democratic imperialism”, as the lesser-evil to be supported against it. In both cases, it amounts to renouncing the independent, and historic role of the working-class as agent of revolutionary change, and, instead, subordinating it, via some form of Popular Front, to one or other section of the bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeoisie.

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Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 6 of 24

If a company fails, the private capitalist loses their capital, and source of income, and the day to day managers of companies, production managers etc., paid salaries, lose their jobs along with other workers. But, shareholders, who have taken out in dividends and capital transfers, over several years, far more than they paid for the shares that enabled them to do that, simply take all of that and use it to speculate in the shares of some other company, or financial asset. The Directors are in the same position, and never stay at any company for long, as well as usually getting millions of pounds when joining or leaving a company, and often holding Directorships in several companies at the same time.

Huge monopolies have similarly huge balance sheets, so that the process of effectively asset stripping the company, by excessive amounts of dividends or capital transfers, can go on for a long time, before the company fails, and, as seen, often, when that happens, the capitalist state intervenes to bail it out. That is what the Attlee government did, in Britain, after WWII, with its nationalisation programme of all those core industries, in transport, energy and so on that had been bled dry by shareholders in the previous decades. Its what happened with the nationalisation of banks after 2008, and with the big car companies in the US. Once recapitalised by the capitalist state out of taxes, the companies are sold back to the same ruling-class of speculators that bled them dry in the first place.

But, also, in the 1980's, and 90's, as the new technological revolution produced by the microchip resulted in a huge rise in the mass and rate of profit, companies could, for a long time, fund any real capital accumulation out of those profits, whilst still leaving large amounts that could be paid out as dividends. As I have set out before, the technological revolution massively reduced the value of fixed capital, and large swathes of circulating constant capital, producing a huge release of capital. So, any given mass of profit represents a significant rise in the rate of profit. But, as wages fell, so the mass of profit also rose.

A greater mass of profit, with proportionally less of it required for capital accumulation, i.e. the supply of money-capital rises relative to the demand for it, causes the rate of interest to fall. Falling interest rates lead to higher capitalised values of assets, and falling yields, but shareholders, then, respond by increasing dividends, hence dividends go from 10% of profits in the 1970's, to 70%, today, and, similarly, as asset prices rise, including land prices, land goes from 10% of the price of a new house, to 70% of the price of a new house.

The market value of shares, therefore, is not the same as the market value of the real capital of a company. Over the years, even if 70% of profits are taken out as dividends, that leaves 30% that could be accumulated as additional real capital. The company buys additional buildings, machines, materials and so on, all of which sit on its balance sheet. It is the size of the balance sheet that, also, enables the company to buy up the shares of other companies, and to borrow from banks etc., to do so. So, a company whose shares have a market value of £10 million may have a balance sheet of £100 million. The shareholder who bought £3 million of shares, thereby, has control over £100 million of capital.

But, more than that. Company A, with its £100 million of capital, now, uses it as leverage to buy the shares of company B, with a market capitalisation of, say, £6 million. However, in similar fashion, company A need only buy £2 million of company B's shares to obtain a controlling interest. If company B's balance sheet amounts to £60 million, our shareholder, who bought £3 million of shares in A, now, exercises control over £160 million of capital, and so on. This is also a feature of imperialism.

As I have set out, elsewhere, this is also a characteristic of the nature of the global ruling-class of speculators or coupon-clippers as Marx and Engels referred to them, whose objective interests are quite different to, and, indeed, antagonistic to the objective interests of real, large-scale, industrial capital. It is fundamental to the nature of imperialism, today, but, having already digressed to an extent I had not intended, I cannot go into that further, here. I will deal with it in my future book on imperialism.

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Starmer's Vile, Racist Government

Starmer's Blue Labour Government truly is a vile, obnoxious, racist grotesque. It has nothing to do with social-democracy, nor even with the kind of Labourite governments of the past. Indeed, it has nothing to do with the ideas, values and interests of the vast majority of Labour Party members, and voters of today, which indicates why it won so few votes at the election, why even that support has dissipated, and it is about to get wiped out in the Spring local elections, and why this formation itself cannot survive.

Social-democracy has, in the past, defended its use of immigration controls as being part of an overall attempt to plan and regulate the economy, in the same way that it seeks to plan and regulate investment, prices and so on. A workers' state would, of course, plan and regulate all of those things, including immigration, as part of attempting to plan and regulate the economy in general. It is one of those characteristics of social-democracy/imperialism that signifies its nature as a transitional form between capitalism and socialism that it is forced to borrow these future forms, but as Marx and Engels note, in Anti-Duhring, its use of these future forms continues to be for the benefit of capital and capitalists, not for society as a whole. It continues to use these methods of planning and regulation in order to maximise profits. This signifies the difference between social-democracy and socialism.

When social-democracy talks about immigration controls, just as when it talks about import controls, or wage and price controls, it is never about the use of such measures as part of an attempt to plan and regulate the economy on behalf of the entire society, but only to benefit the maximisation of profit, and the beneficiaries of those profits, including the ruling class owners of fictitious capital that derive their revenues of interest/dividends, rents and taxes as deductions from that profit. The use of price and wage controls, for example, are always premised on the idea of fighting inflation, but inflation is a result of the state depreciating the currency/standard of prices. Higher prices, including a higher price for labour-power, are a consequence of inflation, not the cause of it. So, when the state introduces such controls it is always, really, just a cover for them seeking to depress wages, so as to protect or boost profits.

The use of import controls, is similarly justified on the basis of protecting jobs in the domestic market, as Trump is doing, now, but the real basis of the insecurity of those jobs, under capitalism, is the operation of the capitalist system itself, and the inefficiency of the given domestic capitalist production compared to its foreign competitors. In other words, it is a result of the failure of the domestic capitalists to invest in technology sufficiently to compete. Particularly for developed economies, import controls such as tariffs are never used as a means of enabling such investment to take place, but inevitably are used to simply subsidise the inefficient production of the domestic capitalists, enabling them to stay in business, and draw their profits, without having to invest in additional capital to raise their productivity. The resulting higher prices, simply get passed on to domestic consumers, the majority of whom are workers.

Immigration controls are very similar to import controls. For the domestic capitalists, and their governments, they throw the blame for the failure of the domestic capitalist economy on to foreigners, and away from the real cause, capitalism, and the particular deficiencies of the domestic capitalists to invest. The real purpose of such immigration controls, as with import controls, is not to effectively plan and regulate the economy for the benefit of society, but to protect and maximise the ability to produce and extract profits for the domestic capitalists, at the expense of the rest of society, of which workers comprise around 70%.

Although protectionism was common, in the past, as capitalist economies were dominated by merchant and financial capital, aligned with landed property (Mercantilism), and operated on the basis of appropriation of surplus value via unequal exchange, most visibly in the colonial empires, the overturning of those relations, as industrial capital became dominant, and it swept away those old monopolies, colonial empires and protectionism, as imperialism was based upon the production of surplus value, ushered in a new era. 

After WWII, it was not just that this imperialism established multinational companies on a widening geographical basis, to industrialise economies, and, thereby, to directly exploit labour-power, but it also established transnational para-state institutions, to try to establish a level playing field for capital, wherever it settled, a level playing field, and set of international rules, which, of course, by its nature, benefited the biggest, most efficient capitalist companies, and the states that stood behind them, i.e. primarily the US.

In the post-war period, many developed economies also lacked workers, as a new long wave expansion got underway. The US, had only come into being as an industrialised economy on the back of mass immigration of workers from Europe during the 19th century, and it continued to depend on immigration, increasingly from Mexico and Latin America, to fill millions of low paid, unskilled jobs. Germany filled similar jobs with “guest workers” from Türkiye, France from its former colonies, as did Britain. In the 1950's, Britain was desperate for workers from the Caribbean, for example. There was no question of immigration controls at these times, as capital needed labour, in order to enable the continued production of surplus value.

Indeed, immigration controls are something that has only significantly come into existence since the 1960's. Until that time there was pretty much an ability for a free movement of labour across the globe. In Britain, the first attempt at significant immigration controls was the Aliens Act of 1905, and its fairly open purpose was an attempt by Anti-Semitic Tories and fascists to prevent the immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe who were seeking to escape the pogroms being conducted by the Tsarist regime in Russia. The 1793 Aliens Act, which was a much smaller affair, was introduced to, similarly, prevent French refugees coming to Britain, following the revolution, and, again, its main intention, as part of the Anti-Jacobin Wars, was to prevent French revolutionaries entering Britain, under cover.

So, when the Labour Government introduced immigration laws in the 1960's, it did so, apologetically, whilst attempting to justify the measures, with meaningless talk about them being “non-racist” immigration controls. The Blair/Brown government, of course, needed large-scale immigration in the early 2000's, as the growing economy, in a new period of long-wave expansion, faced severe skilled labour shortages, which were filled from the EU. That government, at the same time, attempted to assuage a growing racist outcry, by focussing its attention, not on immigration, but on refugees, and asylum seekers. It did so, itself, in the most outrageous way that acted to conflate the two things, and so, also fuelled the racist narrative of the likes of the BNP, UKIP and their Tory fellow travellers. But, none of that is comparable to the openly racist, dog whistle politics of Starmer's Blue Labour government, which is entirely consistent with its own jingoistic, narrow nationalist agenda.

Unlike previous Labour governments, Starmer's government wears its racist credentials proudly on its chest. Its well publicised and staged mass arrests of immigrants in the last week, were a more vicious and brutal version of the kinds of racist actions undertaken by Theresa May's government, which were attacked by Labour at that time, and occur at the same time as the similarly vicious acts of the Trump regime, in launching raids on immigrant communities in the US. This latter coordination is also, no doubt, no coincidence, as Starmer seeks to curry favour with the fascistic regime of Trump, just as he has, over recent months, sought to curry favour with the fascistic government of Meloni in Italy.

Starmer and his racist, Blue Labour government claim that they seek to close down the criminal gangs involved in people smuggling, across the Channel. Of course, no socialist, social-democrat, or even Liberal can oppose smashing the criminal gangs. But, the actions this last week had nothing to do with that. They were raids on the poor victims of those gangs, not the gangs themselves. If Starmer wanted to undermine the gangs and their criminal activity, the best way to do that is not to criminalise immigration in the first place! If anyone who wanted to come to Britain, whether as a refugee, or as an economic migrant, was free to do so, and safe channels existed for that purpose, then, there would be no basis for the gangs to exist. Nor would it be necessary to have asylum seekers being kept for months or years, at taxpayers expense in hostels whilst they waited a decision on their application. They could, instead, be working, paying taxes and contributing to society with their labour, and paying rent or mortgage to provide their own shelter and so on.

In any case, the number of migrants coming as refugees or asylum seekers in small boats across the Channel is tiny compared to the number of legal migrants coming into the country to work on visas. When Farage, Johnson, Hoey, Mann and other proponents of Brexit conned large numbers to vote for it on the basis of “controlling the borders”, by which they meant stopping immigration, they, of course, did not mention that the result would be that immigration would, in fact, increase! The difference is, of course, that previously, before Brexit, that migration was mainly of EU citizens, coming to fill vital roles, whereas, now, they have been replaced by migrants from the Indian sub-continent and elsewhere. The former had far greater rights and protections than have the latter, which is, of course, one reason that the petty-bourgeois nationalists prefer it. In undermining those workers rights, they seek to undermine all workers rights, in the interests of the small employers. All EU workers not only have greater rights, as a result of EU laws, but they have the potential to act as a single, EU labour movement to demand even greater rights and protections.

When the racists of the BNP, UKIP, Reform, and now Blue Labour argue for immigration controls, they do so on the basis of arguments that are contradictory. They say that immigrants take “British” jobs, whilst simultaneously claiming that immigrants come to simply obtain benefits. They say that they cause shortages of houses, NHS beds, school places and so on, whilst saying that they simultaneously take “British” jobs in building, healthcare, teaching and so on. One of the most ridiculous claims is that “Britain is full up”, or that its a tiny cramped island. Ridiculous because residential property accounts for only 1% of land use in Britain. Compare that to the 2% used just for golf courses!

It is undoubtedly true that, under capitalism, the capitalists and their state, use immigration as a quick and easy way of recruiting additional labour, when labour shortages exist, rather than training additional skilled workers, or investing in technology to raise productivity. But, for the same reason, when the capitalists or their state seek to limit immigration it is never out of a concern to protect the employment or wages of domestic workers. Just as with import controls, the capitalists never use immigration controls alongside large-scale investment in training and technological development. On the contrary, it is only when, despite immigration, and other means of increasing the supply of labour, they still face labour shortages, and see wages rising, squeezing profits, that they begin to seriously engage in technological development, so as to replace labour with fixed capital. The purpose of that, again, is not for the benefit of society, but is to replace labour, increase unemployment, and so reduce wages and boost profits. Indeed, rather than such investment going along with rising employment and wages, or training of skilled workers, the opposite occurs.

The role of immigrant labour is no different than the role of domestic reserves of labour. For example, in the 1950's, a lot of the increase in labour supply came from married women being drawn into the workforce. Some chauvinists opposed that too on the basis that these married women only “worked for pin-money”, and so undermined male wages. Similarly, the children born as part of the baby-boom, began to enter the workforce from around 1960, increasing the supply of labour-power, and so acting to suppress wages. But, at a certain point of the long-wave cycle, as all of these additional workers, whether married women, former rural labourers, new young workers, or immigrants, also form additional demand for goods and services, and firms have to compete to satisfy that demand by additional capital accumulation, and employment, the effect is not to depress wages, but to raise them, as the labour supply does not rise to meet the demand for it. Only then, as capital faces a crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to labour supply, does it invest in a new technological revolution.

In the late 1970's, and early 1980's, the introduction of all of that new technology acted to replace skilled labour with unskilled labour, operating the new machines. That unskilled labour was inevitably paid lower wages. The increased productivity saw the workforce grow more than employment, so that unemployment rose, putting downward pressure on wages. It was during that period that the Thatcher government, in Britain, ended all of the various apprenticeship schemes for training skilled workers, and, likewise, in the US, Ronald Reagan faced down a strike by highly skilled Air Traffic Controllers, by sacking them all, rather than pay them a decent wage. The US has never been able to recruit sufficient skilled Air Traffic Controllers ever since.

Since Brexit, immigration into Britain has increased, not because of “illegal migration”, but because British firms have needed additional labour, and faced a big hole in obtaining it, as EU workers had left. Starmer's, reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist government has taken over the advocacy of Brexit, and so has to also accept the consequences of it in relation to the destruction caused to the economy, as it stagnates, as it faces the continued crumbling of the infrastructure of roads, buildings and so on, of which Grenfell as well as RAC concrete are symbols, as well as the crisis in finding sufficient workers to staff hospitals, care homes and so on. All of these jobs can only be filled by continued large-scale, legal migration, but to divert attention from that, Starmer's vile racist government focuses on a tiny number of poor refugees, crossing the Channel.

And, of course, a large part of those refugees are a result of the wars waged by NATO in the Middle East. The most grotesque manifestation of that is the NATO backed genocide conducted by the Zionist regime against Palestinians. Now, when Palestinians seek to escape that genocide by coming to Britain, which bears direct responsibility for it, Starmer particularly, Starmer vies with Farage and Badenoch as to who can be the most vile, in rejecting their attempts to come to Britain under the same terms as those offered to Ukrainians. Of course, the difference in attitude is clear, the Ukrainians have white skin, and blue eyes.  Ukraine is part of the NATO imperialist alliance in its global war against China/Russia, whereas the Palestinians are the victims of that global inter-imperialist conflict.

Now, in a further illustration of the vile, reactionary racist nature of this government, Starmer has said that any migrants entering the country illegally, will be banned from becoming citizens, in the future. That is racism and vindictiveness taken directly from the manual of the likes of Donald Trump, to whom they are cosying up, as well as of his British sycophants, such as Farage. No decent social-democrat, Liberal, let alone socialist can vote for such openly racist, and reactionary politicians. So, it is no wonder that, as Starmer attempts to turn Blue Labour into an equivalent of UKIP, Labour voters are abandoning the party in droves. Unfortunately, the Left has failed to either stop the collapse of the Labour Party into this petty-bourgeois, nationalism, or to provide any kind of credible alternative to it, leaving progressive voters with the choice of being drawn to the superficially more attractive Liberals, Greens, and in Wales and Scotland, Plaid and SNP.

In reality, those parties are only superficially more progressive. What is more, they lack the link to the labour movement that the Labour Party has. The fight to rebuild, and provide a truly progressive alternative, must start, not with a concern for the ballot box, but with the need to rebuild the organisations of labour from the ground up. We must ask why it is that the trades unions, for example, have allowed their party to be hijacked by a tiny bunch of petty-bourgeois, nationalists, racists, and jingoists, financed by millionaires based in tax havens, not to mention the role of Zionists, and Zionist organisations such as BICOM.

Although we can understand and sympathise with Labour voters who abandon the party at the polls to vote Green, Liberal, or even for the heterogeneous list of Independents, no way forward can come from that route. It is necessary to wage a political struggle within the labour movement to defeat the Right, Centre and Soft Left, a struggle that can only be completed within the Labour Party itself, as the current political wing of the movement. We cannot say where the dynamic of that struggle may lead. It may lead to a recognition that the current Labour Party cannot be retrieved, and, certainly, without the trades unions committing to such a goal, it will be impossible. In that case, it would be necessary to build a new Workers Party, just as the trades unions did, when they split from the Liberals at the start of the last century. The political struggle waged by Marxists, now, within that context, will shape the nature of that future party, and our goal cannot be simply a Labour Party Mark II, nor even a more left-wing social-democratic party, but must be the formation of a mass, international socialist, i.e. communist party.

Alternatively, the struggle, now, may result in the defeat of the far-right, nationalists of Blue Labour. As I have set out, elsewhere, my analysis suggests to me that the Blair-Rights will, themselves, seek to ditch Starmer, when the Spring Elections show just how low Starmer has laid the party. They will seek to merge the party with the Liberals and social-democratic wing of the Conservatives a la Change UK, to form a new centre-right, opposition to Reform/Tories. The trades union bureaucrats will be likely to go along in the hope of salvaging the electoral fortunes of Labour, and to provide a lesser-evil to Reform/Tories. They will hang themselves, via such a Popular Front, as, when they can, the politicians will ditch the connection to the unions.

The task of Marxists is to warn of that danger, and to organise, now, to prevent it. Conservative social-democracy has had its bite at the cherry, and has completely failed. It has no more answers than does the right-wing populism, and petty-bourgeois nationalism of the likes of Farage and Starmer. Only a clear Marxist programme, founded on the promotion of the interests of workers, and of the working-class as a global class can offer a way forward.