Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 18

Just as, in relation to the state, Marx was closer to the anarchism of Bakunin than to the statism and reformism of Kautsky, so too he and Engels were closer to the cooperative communism of Owen than they were to the statism of Lassalle. Unfortunately, it has been that statism of Lassalle, and the Fabians that has had the dominant effect on the ideas of the labour movement, over the last century.

The problem with Owenite communism, as with the other utopian socialists, was that it clung to the rationalist ideas, and a belief that it could simply set out these schemas of a future society, and that reason would prevail; the other bourgeois would see what Owen, also, saw. But, that was never going to happen. The existing capitalist society created great wealth and power for the new industrial bourgeoisie, and, increasingly, for the financial bourgeoisie. Why would they, in aggregate, as a class, give that up, in the present, simply on the basis of a vision of some future utopia?

At root, industrial capitalism is based on the same competitive principles of commodity production and exchange that existed for centuries before it. Its why those ideas of the petty-bourgeois commodity producer continue to dominate the thinking of not only the small, private capitalists, but even some of the larger capitalists, as their capitals have grown. It is most apparent in those larger capitals that remain family owned concerns, for example.

As noted earlier, because the ruling-class, today, is not a class of industrial capitalists, but a class of rentiers and speculators, whose immediate interests are antagonistic to, and in contradiction to the interests of industrial capital, still less are they constrained by even those longer-term concerns set out by Owen et al, about the maximisation of industrial profit. They are concerned not with the maximisation of industrial profit, and capital accumulation, but with the maximisation of “shareholder value”, i.e. the maximisation of their interest/dividends, rents, and capital gains.

But, inevitably, as Marx describes in Capital III, because those revenues depend, in the end, on industrial profits, which depends on real capital accumulation, that contradiction always ends in a financial crisis.

“It would be still more absurd to presume that capital would yield interest on the basis of capitalist production without performing any productive function, i.e., without creating surplus-value, of which interest is just a part; that the capitalist mode of production would run its course without capitalist production. If an untowardly large section of capitalists were to convert their capital into money-capital, the result would be a frightful depreciation of money-capital and a frightful fall in the rate of interest; many would at once face the impossibility of living on their interest, and would hence be compelled to reconvert into industrial capitalists.”

(Capital III, Chapter 23)

Coming later than Fourier and Saint-Simon, and seeing the creation of the new classes – the industrial bourgeoisie and proletariat – Owen had a clearer view of the road ahead.

“His advance in the direction of communism was the turning-point in Owen’s life. As long as he was simply a philanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth, applause, honour, and glory. He was the most popular man in Europe. Not only men of his own class, but statesmen and princes listened to him approvingly. But when he came out with his communist theories, it was quite another story. Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: private property, religion, and marriage in its present form. He knew what confronted him if he attacked them — universal ostracism by official society and the loss of his whole social standing. But nothing of this prevented him from attacking them without fear of consequences, and what he had foreseen came to pass. Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, and ruined by his unsuccessful communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working class and continued working in their midst for thirty years.” (p 338)

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 17

“To the working-class, therefore, the fruits belonged too. To Owen the newly created gigantic productive forces, which had hitherto served only to enrich individuals and to enslave the masses, offered the foundations for a reconstruction of society and were destined, as the common property of all, solely to work for the common good of all.” (p 338)

Although, today, social-democrats and reformists (Menshevists) emphasise Owen's role as the creator of the cooperative movement, Marx and Engels had no hesitation in calling him what he was – a communist.

“Owenite communism arose in this purely business way, as the outcome, so to speak, of commercial calculation. Throughout, it maintained this practical character. Thus, in 1823, Owen proposed the relief of the distress in Ireland by communist colonies, and drew up complete estimates of initial costs, yearly expenditure, and probable revenue. Similarly, in his definitive plan for the future, the technical working out of details is managed with such practical knowledge [plan, elevation and bird's-eye view all included -] that once the Owenite method of social reform is accepted, there is little to be said against the actual arrangement of details even from specialist's point of view.” (p 338)

Today's social-democratic and reformist co-operators are a million miles from the likes of Owen, and are horrified at the idea of any connection between cooperation and communism. Yet, for Marx and Engels, their vision of communism is inseparable from the idea of cooperation and cooperatives. They frequently describe communist society as being “The Cooperative Commonwealth”.

It is, of course, also, not what the statists desire to hear, as their view of socialism/communism is not one of a bottom-up, self-emancipation of the working-class, asserting its rightful, democratic control over its collective property, but is of the state exercising that control from above, which, also, involves, here and now, denying the reality that this socialised capital is, already, the collective property of the associated producers, and, instead, clinging to the idea that we are still in the conditions of the early 19th century, of the monopoly of private industrial capital that must be expropriated from the capitalist owners.

The position of the statists is the same as that of the Lassalleans attacked by Marx in The Critique of The Gotha Programme.

Lenin, in State and Revolution, noted that Marx's position, in relation to the state, was far closer to that of Bakunin than that of Kautsky. It emphasised that, prior to the revolution, the working-class could place no faith, have no reliance on the state, because that state is a class state, the state of the bourgeoisie, and, as such, represents the concentrated power of the ruling-class, mobilised against them. It is their greatest enemy, not their saviour. As Marx sets out in The Eighteenth Brumaire, The Civil War in France, and elsewhere, the workers seek not to appeal to that state, not to engage in a Quixotic endeavour to capture it, by means of bourgeois-democratic assemblies, but to smash it. In order to smash it, they must build their own, alternative, organs of democracy and state power, themselves corresponding to the new, socialised cooperative forms of property that capitalism itself has created as transitional forms of property, be they the cooperatives themselves, or the joint-stock companies (corporations).

The social revolution, the transformation of the old bourgeois forms of property, based on the monopoly of private capital, and free market competition, is now, in the rear view mirror.  It is the political revolution that the working-class must now accomplish, just as did the bourgeoisie, in the past.  The bourgeoisie, over a long period, did that by concentrating their political offensive where they dominated, in the urban boroughs, until such time that they could confront the political power of the landed aristocracy. The workers have to do the same, to build organs of direct democracy in their strongholds, in the workplaces, and workers communities.

Those organs cannot simply be talking shops, continually being overridden by the bourgeois state, but must be both legislative and executive in nature. In short, the form that arose, in embryo, with the Paris Commune, in 1871, and took shape with the soviets/workers' councils, of 1905, and matured in the soviets of 1917.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 16

Owen recognised that welfarism, the improvement of the condition of his workers was not enough.

““The people were slaves at my mercy.” The relatively favourable conditions in which he had placed them were still far from allowing an all-round rational development of the character and of the intellect, much less the free exercise of all their faculties.” (p 337)

Owen's insight contrasts well with those, today, who proclaim that, because workers live a few years longer, beyond their retirement, it is necessary to extend the retirement age, so as to protect pensions, i.e. to ensure workers never get the pension they have paid for! That, despite the fact that the rise in the productivity of labour, since the retirement age was set at 65, is, proportionally, far greater than the rise in life expectancy, and so what workers produce, during their lifetime, to cover what they consume in retirement, has increased massively. To quote Owen, therefore, we might ask where that difference in additional output has gone?

“And yet, the working part of this population of 2,500 persons was daily producing as much real wealth for society, as, less than half a century before, it would have required the working part of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself what became of the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that which would have been consumed by 600,000?” (p 337)

In the case of New Lanark, it had gone to pay the proprietors “5% interest on their invested capital and in addition a profit of over £300,000.” (p 337) The increase in productivity, in Britain, has been even greater, more than enough to cover not just the requirements of pensioners living a few more years, but to enable them to retire earlier not later, and that applies across the globe. The difference has gone to fund increasing amounts of interest/dividends to the ruling-class, as its share of profits has gone from 10% in the 1970's to over 70% by the early 2000's. It has used those increasing amounts of interest/dividends not to invest productively, so as to increase output, but to finance its own conspicuous consumption, and its gambling addiction, as it ploughs money back into the purchase of existing speculative assets, i.e. existing financial assets and property, on the expectation of speculative capital gains.

Owen noted, in his day.

“If this new wealth had not been created by machinery … the wars ... in opposition to Napoleon and to support the aristocratic principles of society, could not have been maintained. And yet this new power was the creation of the working class.” (p 337)

And, the same is true, today. It is not workers living longer that causes the capitalist state to demand they work longer before retiring, but the fact that, although workers have increased production, massively, to cover their needs in retirement, that additional production has been squandered, by the ruling-class, and its state. It has asset stripped companies, to pay dividends; failed to invest profits in capital accumulation; given increasing amounts in interest/dividends and rent, which is used unproductively; bailed out financial gamblers when their actions caused financial bubbles to burst, and spent billions on wars and weapons, draining the potential for economic growth.

Workers themselves are slowly recognising this truth that has been hidden from them by social-democracy, and by the distractions of the likes of Trump, Farage etc., who would have them believe the problem lies with other workers.

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SNNS 55

 

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 15

Owen, of course, was not the only industrial capitalist to identify that, increasingly, the labourer was the most important element of production, and that ensuring the welfare of their workers represented enlightened self-interest. Some of that enlightenment stemmed from religious beliefs, such as with the Quakers. Families such as the Frys, Cadburys, Rowntrees, Levers, and so on, saw that providing their workers with decent houses, schools, and so on raised the productivity of those workers, and so, also, raised their profits. Firms in the US, also, engaged in similar acts of company welfarism, adopted, also, by Ford.

As Lenin noted, in his polemics against the Narodniks, even in Russia, this same paternalism and philanthropy was to be found. It did not change the fundamental class relations. In Prussia, it was the state that undertook this role, even in the early 19th century, and, as Chancellor, Bismark introduced the same ideas of welfarism and National Insurance.

Owen was the precursor of the later functioning capitalists. He was a professional manager, and, in that role, applied his theories, much as happened, in the early 20th century, with the Taylorists.

“He had already tried it with success in Manchester, as the manager of a factory with 500 workers. From 1800 to 1829, he directed the great cotton-mill of New Lanark, in Scotland, as managing partner, along the same lines, but with greater freedom of action and with a success that won him a European reputation. He transformed a population, which originally consisted of the most diverse and, for the most part, very demoralised elements, and which gradually grew to 2,500, into a model colony, in which drunkenness, police, magistrates, lawsuits, poor law relief, and any need for charity were unknown. All this simply by placing the people in conditions worthy of human beings, and especially by having the rising generation carefully brought up. He was the inventor of infant schools, and first introduced them at New Lanark. From the age of two the children came to school, where they enjoyed themselves so much that they could scarcely be got home again. Whilst his competitors worked their people thirteen to fourteen hours a day, in New Lanark the working-day was only ten and a half hours. When a crisis in cotton stopped work for four months, his unemployed workers received their full wages all the time. Yet the business more than doubled in value, and to the last yielded large profits to its proprietors.” (p 336-7)

The point, here, was that these factories were still the property of private capitalists, and the measures introduced to improve the lot of the workers, which raised their productivity, were still for the benefit of those owners. It illustrates the material basis of social-democracy and welfarism. When these same welfarist measures are undertaken by the capitalist state, the purpose remains the same, i.e. to raise productivity and efficiency, to regulate the supply of labour-power, and, thereby, to boost profits and the accumulation of capital.

By the mid 19th century, a number of factories had failed and been taken over by their workers, who ran them as cooperatives. The former private owners were often employed by the workers as managers on salaries a fraction of what they previously paid themselves. Yet, as Marx describes in Capital, these cooperatives were, generally, more efficient and profitable than equivalent privately owned firms. As a preview of what was to come, however, these cooperatives were charged higher rates of interest by banks, when they borrowed. Increasingly, as the private capitalists retreated from their functional role in production, and became merely money-lending capitalists, the more this became the means of the ruling class obtaining its revenues. It relied no longer on industrial profit, but on interest.

The significance of that change cannot be overstated, given the antagonistic and contradictory interests of industrial capital as against that of interest-bearing capital (fictitious-capital).

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Northern Soul Classics - A Lot Of Love - Homer Banks

 

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 24

Trump offered Saudi Arabia its own nuclear deal, itself exposing his hypocrisy in relation to Iran's nuclear programme. But, immediately, the Zionist state baulked, and Trump folded like a cheap suit. He quickly farted on his Trump Social platform that, of course, his “deal” with Saudi was conditional on Saudi signing the Abraham Accords, and recognising Israel. Saudi, for the reasons set out earlier, can do no such thing, without the Zionist state stopping its genocide, and committing to real measures for the creation of a viable Palestinian state, which, in turn, it cannot do.

The Zionist state, in Israel, has done exactly what I predicted. It has flattened Gaza, and it has stepped up the pace of its annexation of the West Bank; it has annexed a large part of Southern Lebanon, as well as extending its annexation of the Golan Heights in Syria. This is the solution that is being promoted by US imperialism, and its subordinates within the NATO imperialist alliance. It is the basis of the illegal war being conducted by NATO imperialism against Iran. NATO proclaims, of course, that it is not involved in that illegal war being conducted by US imperialism and its Zionist ally. But, claiming that, for example, Britain is only allowing US planes to fly out of UK bases for defensive missions is truly ridiculous.

Two years ago, I thought that US imperialism and the Zionist state would not need to engage in an all out war for regime change in Iran, so long as Iran was cowed enough to enable NATO and the Zionist state to get on with the job of creating the Greater Israel, required as the hub of the projected new MENA politico-economic bloc, as basically set out in The Abraham Accords. I still think that is the case, despite the current illegal war against Iran. What that war has done is to distract attention from the continuing genocide against Palestinians, and annexation of territory as described above, in Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria.

The day to day phenomenal forms of this underlying process are simply a reflection of the political dynamics. In particular, Trump and his political regime are led to adopt the same ultimate path as US imperialism, just as was Biden's regime, but Trump does so, in a typically more crude and vulgar manner, a consequence of the reactionary, petty-bourgeois, MAGA constituency he still relies on, but which is, itself, disintegrating under the strain of contradictions. Some of the elements of that regime reflecting, also, the fact that it relies on the support of Christian Zionists, who have made clear, not only that they want to turn the US into a white supremacist, Christian nationalist state, but, also, that they want the US to facilitate the creation of a Zionist state in more or less the whole of the Middle East.

NATO imperialism can probably accept some kind of agreement between Iran and Oman over the charging of tolls/fees for use of the Straits of Hormuz, at least for now, so long as Iran is sufficiently cowed and quiescent, as the Zionist state, continues its final solution against the Palestinians, so that having exterminated them, it is free to proceed with the Abraham Accords. But, again, the moral socialists are wrong in assuming that US imperialism has lost the war with Iran, or is out of options.

The path is clear that, at some point, the US can undertake military intervention in the Straits, and, when it does, it will only need to clear a section of the Iranian coast. Much as with Russia's annexation of Eastern Ukraine, there is no requirement to occupy the whole country, and, indeed, doing so is not possible, as I pointed out in relation to Ukraine. If the US staged a massive military operation in the Gulf, its inconceivable that it would not do so having long prepared the basis of it, including the propaganda work of lining up the basis of involvement of its NATO allies.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 14

The consequence of these labour-saving technologies is to raise productivity. It is this rise in productivity which means that for any given amount of labour, more materials are processed, that results in the rise of c relative to v + s. This rise in productivity results in lower unit values of all commodities, including those that comprise the constant capital and labour-power. It produces a new qualitative rise in social wealth, including for workers, as Marx describes in The Grundrisse, as being The Civilising Mission of Capital. So, it is, also, this which results in Marx's concept of the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall, not as a cause of crises, but as a consequence of the means by which they are resolved. In a similar vein, Marx notes that, in longer established capitalist economies, where he pool of savings is larger, and particularly where former industrial capitalists retire from production, and live off such savings, the rate of interest also tends to fall.

There is nothing in any of this that leads to some continually intensifying crisis leading to collapse. Each crisis only leads to resolution by these means, and a new period of expansion, as Trotsky, also, described in The Curve of Capitalist Development, and in Flood Tide. The expansion itself requires ever larger single markets, which, itself, creates the dynamic of multinational states and a world economy, which is, also, a precondition for Socialism. The poverty of the working-class is not to be understood in terms of its standard of living, which rises in an upward curve, but in terms of its inability to, individually, own the means of production, which assume an ever more gargantuan scale, even out of the reach of private capitalists.

Private ownership of industrial capital is superseded by socialised capital, the collective property of the associated producers. Indeed, Marx's position should not be seen as a critique of capitalism – as against his critique of political economy – but, as simply a scientific analysis of its inevitable dynamic and metamorphosis into Socialism. “Inevitable”, of course, only on the condition that the working-class understands the nature of the already transpired transformation of productive and property relations, and asserts its legal rights, as resulting from them. Its failure, so far, to do that is a failure of its political leadership.

The reality is that, by the end of the 19th century, that process had removed the role of the private capitalist from production. That functional role was undertaken by a growing middle-class army of professional managers, drawn from a publicly educated working-class. It was, from that time on, only a matter of revealing this reality to workers. There was/is no real difference between these corporations and the worker cooperatives, other than the very significant difference that, in the former, control over the capital was/is exercised by shareholders, who are not the owners of that capital, but merely creditors. In no other sphere does the law enable creditors to exercise such control over property they do not own. The task of Marxists was to bring this property question to the fore, and to engage in a political struggle for industrial democracy, as the rational extension of the previous struggle for political democracy.

“At this juncture a 29 years old manufacturer came forward as a reformer — a man of almost sublime, child-like simplicity of character, and at the same time a born leader of men such as is rarely seen. Robert Owen had adopted the teaching of the materialist philosophers of the Enlightenment: that man's character is the product, of his inherited constitution on the one hand, and of his environment during his lifetime, especially during his period of growth on the other. In the Industrial Revolution most of his class saw only chaos and confusion, and the opportunity of fishing in troubled waters and getting rich quickly. He saw in it the opportunity of putting his favourite theory into practice, and so of bringing order out of chaos.” (p 336)

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 23

Ukraine sits on the Eastern border of the EU, and western border of the Eurasian economy. Even inside Ukraine, its Western and Central populations look mostly to the EU, whilst its Eastern populations look East. The fact that those Eastern populations are mainly ethnic Russians, who have also suffered oppression at the hands of the government in Kyiv, simply provides a political reflection of these underlying material conditions. Similar conditions apply in other economies lying along this fault line between the EU, and Eurasia, as I have described in the past. None of these economies are some kind of pre-imperialist state, as the petty-bourgeois nationalists, and apologists of the USC would have us believe. Lenin, set out, in Left-wing Childishness, what imperialist capital is. It is large-scale, socialised industrial capital, such as had arisen by the latter part of the 19th century, and which required an ever expanding single-market, as described earlier, to justify its large-scale production, and long-term investments. It required the state to plan and regulate the economy to that end, i.e. it becomes state-monopoly capitalism.

“To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism.”

(Left-wing Childishness)

And, by the early part of the 20th century, all developed capitalist economies were characterised by this imperialist capital. As Trotsky put it, talking about Czechoslovakia, and the Sudetenland, which offers a compelling comparison with Ukraine, today,

“Even irrespective of its international ties Czechoslovakia constitutes a thoroughly imperialist state. Economically, monopoly capitalism reigns there. Politically, the Czech bourgeoisie dominates (perhaps soon we will have to say, dominated!) several oppressed nationalities. Such a war, even on the part of isolated Czechoslovakia would thus have been carried on not for national independence but for the maintenance and if possible the extension of the borders of imperialist exploitation.”

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

A similar situation exists in the Middle-East and North Africa. In North Africa, and particularly on its Mediterranean coast, it has had long-standing economic relations with the EU. That is true in relation to Israel too. The EU accounts for 32% of Israel's total trade, making it its largest trading partner. Of course, the US supplies large amounts of finance to Israel, and supplies it with the bulk of its military equipment, whilst the EU and UK, act as suppliers of consumables for that US military hardware.

Israel is by far the most developed imperialist economy in the Middle-East and North Africa, and as such, given its connections with the EU, and US imperialism, it is the obvious vehicle by which an imperialist economic bloc in the region is created. US and EU imperialism would clearly prefer such a new bloc to arise peacefully and voluntarily, which is what the Abraham Accords, are about, but, again, the reality of history, and material conditions, assert themselves into that desire. Industrial capital is largely concentrated in the Northern parts of MENA, whilst the Gulf states continue to be dominated by oil extraction, and as noted earlier, their more recent economic development has focused on services for the global elite. The Gulf states have very small populations, making them often dependent on migrant workers. In many ways, this is the same pattern as arose with the northern US industrial states using the Southern US states, Russia using Siberia, Britain using Ireland, and so on.

The problem for the Gulf states, in particular, in progressing the Abraham Accords, and creating this imperialist politico-economic bloc in MENA, is the continued occupation of Palestine, and genocide against the Palestinians. The latest negotiations of Trump with Saudi Arabia illustrates that. Saudi Arabia not out of any real commitment to the Palestinians, but out of fear of its own masses, and those it relies on as migrant workers, were it to be even more openly abandoning the Palestinians, has refused to sign the Accords until the Zionist state stops its genocide against Palestinians, and concrete measures are in place for the creation of a viable Palestinian state. As I wrote 40 years ago, it shows why the so called “Two-States”, i.e. two bourgeois states solution, is a delusion that places the fate of the Palestinians in the hands of powerful external imperialist powers. In addition, as I wrote more recently, the events of the last few years, show why the grisly truth is that there is no future for Palestine, and increasingly for the Palestinians.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 13

But, as Marx notes, as soon as credit arises, the currency circulation becomes almost infinitely flexible. Capitalists are no longer reliant upon the supply of money tokens from the state, because they are able to trade with each other via commercial credit transactions, the use of Bills of Exchange and so on. The consequence of this is that, irrespective of any change in the value of money, capital is able to cover the increased costs it faces, be it from rising wages or other costs, by raising prices, again, irrespective of any change in values. It simply increases the amount of credit in circulation, which is tantamount to an increase in the currency supply, reducing the value of each money token/the standard of prices – inflation.

So, as relative wages rise, and relative profits fall, that is reflected, not in a “recession”, driven by a falling rate of profit, but a proportional movement of capital into wage goods production. Capital mitigates this process, and tries to protect its relative profits, by inflating the currency supply/credit, and so causing a general rise in prices, but that cannot change the underlying material conditions, of the demand for labour expanding faster than its supply. As seen, clearly, in the 1960's/70's, as capital inflates the currency supply, to enable firms to raise prices, to protect profits, workers simply respond by demanding even higher nominal wages, so as to protect their real wages. It simply creates a price-wage spiral, and increasing instability.

As the rate of profit falls, and the supply of additional money-capital from realised profits falls, relatively, the rate of interest rises, causing asset prices to fall. All this was seen, for example, in the period between 1962-1974. What was also seen, and is discussed by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, is that, as this unfolds, workers, also, demand a shorter working-day, more holidays and so on. Consequently, not only does relative surplus value fall, but so does absolute surplus value. Eventually, this phase of boom tuns into a phase of crisis in which the squeeze on profits from rising relative wages, creates an overproduction of capital relative to labour. The least efficient capitals start to make losses, and this spreads across the economy.

“The rate of profit would not fall under the effect of competition due to over-production of capital. It would rather be the reverse; it would be the competitive struggle which would begin because the fallen rate of profit and over-production of capital originate from the same conditions. The part of ΔC in the hands of old functioning capitalists would be allowed to remain more or less idle to prevent a depreciation of their own original capital and not to narrow its place in the field of production. Or they would employ it, even at a momentary loss, to shift the need of keeping additional capital idle on newcomers and on their competitors in general.

That portion of ΔC which is in new hands would seek to assume a place for itself at the expense of the old capital, and would accomplish this in part by forcing a portion of the old capital to lie idle. It would compel the old capital to give up its old place and withdraw to join completely or partially unemployed additional capital.”

(Capital III, Chapter 15)

But, it is precisely this crisis of an overproduction of capital relative to labour that provokes capital to seek to resolve it via a technological revolution.

“...the fall in prices and the competitive struggle would have driven every capitalist to lower the individual value of his total product below its general value by means of new machines, new and improved working methods, new combinations, i.e., to increase the productivity of a given quantity of labour, to lower the proportion of variable to constant capital, and thereby to release some labourers; in short, to create an artificial over-population.”

(ibid)

Whether it is the introduction of steam engines to power machines, or electric motors, or internal combustion engines, assembly lines, electronic devices, or microchips, the driver of all these developments is to replace labour in the production process, and so overcome the relative shortage of labour/overproduction of capital.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 12

Marx summarises it in Capital III, Chapter 15.

“As soon as capital would, therefore, have grown in such a ratio to the labouring population that neither the absolute working-time supplied by this population, nor the relative surplus working-time, could be expanded any further (this last would not be feasible at any rate in the case when the demand for labour were so strong that there were a tendency for wages to rise); at a point, therefore, when the increased capital produced just as much, or even less, surplus-value than it did before its increase, there would be absolute over-production of capital; i.e., the increased capital C + ΔC would produce no more, or even less, profit than capital C before its expansion by ΔC. In both cases there would be a steep and sudden fall in the general rate of profit, but this time due to a change in the composition of capital not caused by the development of the productive forces, but rather by a rise in the money-value of the variable capital (because of increased wages) and the corresponding reduction in the proportion of surplus-labour to necessary labour.”

So, if the demand for labour rises faster than the supply, at a certain point, the market price of labour-power – wages – rises. That means that relative wages rise. As relative wages rise, workers have more to spend. The demand for wage goods rises, and so, over a period, capital accumulates faster in that production than in the production of luxury goods. Marx discusses this in Capital II, and in Wage-Labour and Capital, and Value, Price and Profit.

“It is not alone the consumption of necessities of life which increases. The working-class (now actively reinforced by its entire reserve army) also enjoys momentarily articles of luxury ordinarily beyond its reach, and those articles which at other times constitute for the greater part consumer “necessities” only for the capitalist class. This on its part calls forth a rise in prices.”

(Capital Vol II)

This rise in market prices for wage goods, and some luxury goods, resulting from increased wages is what leads bourgeois economists to claim that it is increased wages that cause higher prices/inflation. But, as Marx sets out in Value, Price and Profit, that is nonsense. The rise in wages/relative wages, does not change the value of commodities, it merely leads to that value being resolved in different proportions. The rise in relative wages is the other side to a fall in relative profits. The rise in market price of wage goods, is a result of increased demand not immediately being met by increased supply. The higher market prices for those wage goods, mean that the rate of profit in that production rises relative to the average rate of profit, which is what brings a faster accumulation of capital in that sphere.

But, likewise, the market prices of luxury goods fall for the opposite reason. As relative profits fall in proportion to the rise in relative wages, capitalists and other exploiters have less to spend on luxury goods. As the demand for luxury goods falls, so their market price falls, also leading to a fall in the rate of profit, below the average, in that sphere. Capital accumulates slower in that sphere. Overall, there is no change in the total value produced, and so no change in the total of prices. As capital is reallocated to wage good production, the supply of wage goods, and those luxury goods now consumed by workers, increases and their market price falls. The reverse happens in the production of luxury goods consumed by capitalists.

As Marx put it,

“... in periods of prosperity, particularly during the times of bogus prosperity, in which the relative value of money, expressed in commodities, decreases also for other reasons (without any actual revolution in values), so that the prices of commodities rise independently of their own values.”

(ibid)

For, all prices to rise simultaneously, it requires a relative fall in the value of money/standard of prices compared to the value of all other commodities. As Marx points out, when economies based their currency/standard of prices on precious metals such as gold or silver, new discoveries of these metals, that reduced their value, indeed created such conditions. But, it was that fall in the value of money that caused rising prices, and which led to workers requiring higher nominal wages, in order to maintain the same level of real wages, not vice versa.

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Forward To Part 13

SNNS 54

 

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 22

NATO's illegal war against Iran, as well as its proxy war with Russia, in Ukraine, cannot be divorced from this global imperialist competition. Indeed, in the last week, that has become glaringly obvious, as Ukrainian imperialism, has attacked Iranian ships in the Caspian Sea as well as its increasing missile and drone strikes deep inside Russia, killing Russian workers. Its not the first time Ukrainian imperialism has involved itself in the region, as it sent military forces to support US and UK imperialism in their previous illegal war and occupation of Iraq. Ukrainian imperialism has also been involved in the civil war in Sudan etc. Yet, not only do the western imperialist powers and their apologists, but, also, the social-imperialists of The Ukraine Solidarity Committee, continue to ludicrously claim that “poor little Ukraine”, much like “Poor Little Belgium”, in WWI, is merely engaging in an act of national self-defence, to assert its right of national self-determination, much, as is, of course, claimed by the Zionists in relation to their genocidal acts in Palestine, and Lebanon.

And, of course, the other side of that is true, also. NATO's hypocrisy is shown in its argument that it had to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, because the Zionist state in Israel had claimed that Iran was within weeks of developing a nuclear weapon, much as the same had been claimed in relation to Saddam Hussein and WMD, in 2003. When Russia argued, on better grounds, that NATO had been continually expanding up to its borders, despite previous assurances it would not, and so launched its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, as a similarly pre-emptive action, NATO and its apologists, including the social-imperialists of the USC, dismissed that argument. Marxists, have no truck with either side of these imperialist wars, and we reject and expose the hypocrisy being shown by them.

Marxists do not support Russian imperialism, in its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, but we reject the hypocrisy of NATO imperialism, in claiming that Russia had no grounds for doing so, especially when, NATO and its Zionist ally has used precisely the same argument to justify its illegal war on Iran, much as it did in Iraq, Libya, Syria and elsewhere. As Trotsky noted, Lenin described this plainly in relation to WWI.

“Imperialism camouflages its own peculiar aims – seizure of colonies, markets, sources of raw material, spheres of influence – with such ideas as “safeguarding peace against the aggressors,” “defence of the fatherland,” “defence of democracy,” etc. These ideas are false through and through. It is the duty of every socialist not to support them but, on the contrary, to unmask them before the people. “The question of which group delivered the first military blow or first declare war,” wrote Lenin in March 1915, “has no importance whatever in determining the tactics of socialists. Phrases about the defence of the fatherland, repelling invasion by the enemy, conducting a defensive war, etc., are on both sides a complete deception of the people.” “For decades,” explained Lenin, “three bandits (the bourgeoisie and governments of England, Russia, and France) armed themselves to despoil Germany. Is it surprising that the two bandits (Germany and Austria-Hungary) launched an attack before the three bandits succeeded in obtaining the new knives they had ordered?””

(Trotsky – Lenin On Imperialism)

Neither Lenin nor Trotsky, saw any reason, whilst exposing the hypocrisy of British, French and Russian hypocrisy, and their claim that Germany-Austria started the war by shooting first, to side with German-Austrian imperialism, in that war either! Their clear Marxist approach, based on the interests of the working-class, as a global class, was to issue a plague on both their houses. Trotsky adopted the same approach in relation to the Balkan Wars, including the claims that this was a war of liberation against Ottoman oppression. Trotsky saw no reason not to tell the truth about the hypocrisy and war crimes that were taking place on both sides of that conflict. And, yes, while he and other Marxists supported the struggle against Ottoman oppression in the Balkans, they saw that as a struggle that has to be waged by the working-class, leading behind them the masses, not one that is to be delegated to the bourgeoisie, and still less to a bourgeois state.

“But it is not at all a matter of indifference by what methods this emancipation is being accomplished. The method of “liberation” that is being followed today means the enslavement of Macedonia to the personal regime in Bulgaria and to Bulgarian militarism; it means, moreover, the strengthening of reaction in Bulgaria itself. That positive, progressive result which history will, in the last analysis, extract from the ghastly events in the Balkans, will suffer no harm from the exposures made by Balkan and European democracy; on the contrary, only a struggle against the usurpation of history's tasks by the present masters of the situation will educate the Balkan peoples to play the role of superseding not only Turkish despotism but also those who, for their own reactionary purposes, are, by their own barbarous methods, now destroying that despotism...

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)

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Northern Soul Classics - She's Looking Good - Wilson Pickett

 

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 11

In France, the bourgeois revolution assumed its clearest political expression, whilst, in Britain, it was its economic and social expression that was paramount.

“Steam and the new tool-making machinery were transforming manufacture into modern large-scale industry, and thus revolutionising the whole foundation of bourgeois society. The sluggish march of development of the manufacturing period changed into a veritable period of storm and stress in production. The division of society into big capitalists and propertyless proletarians went on with ever-increasing rapidity; between these, instead of the former stable middle estate, an unstable mass of artisans and small shopkeepers, which constituted the most fluctuating portion of the population, now led a precarious existence.” (p 335)

It is an indication of the over-ripe conditions for socialist revolution that, in the advanced economies at least, those same poor and precarious petty-bourgeois, whose size and significance continually declined for 200 years, have, since the 1980's, increased by 50%, and, now, play a dominant role in relation to elections and the political regime, as seen with Brexit, Trump etc.

At the time of the bourgeois revolution, the capitalist mode of production was only at the start of its upward phase.

“Nevertheless, even then it was producing crying social abuses”. (p 335)

Engels described them in his “The Condition of The Working Class”, but, noted in his later Prefaces to that work, also, how the very progress of capitalism did away with most of those abuses. The critique of the capitalist mode of production, from a Marxist perspective, could not be based upon a moralistic concern for those abuses, particularly as its own development, not only put an end to the worst of them, but, also, provided the greatest increase in the living standards of workers, and potential for real freedom ever seen.

No, as Marx set out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, the Marxist critique is not this moralistic concern.

“It is as if, among slaves who have at last got behind the secret of slavery and broken out in rebellion, a slave still in thrall to obsolete notions were to inscribe on the program of the rebellion: Slavery must be abolished because the feeding of slaves in the system of slavery cannot exceed a certain low maximum!”

Nor is the corollary of that the catastrophist claims of inevitable economic collapse. Marx himself, in his Theory of Crisis, set out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, rejected such claims. Rather, the Marxist critique is that even as real wages/living standards rise for workers, relative wages, their share of the ever larger pie they create, gets smaller. What is more, an ever larger portion of this pie goes not even to feed the personal consumption of the capitalists, but goes simply to replace the consumed means of production.

In other words, although output resolves into c, v and s, and although, in absolute terms, each of these gets bigger, v falls relative to s, and both v and s fall relative to c. This is the material basis of Marx's Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit To Fall. To put numbers to it, if we started with c 100 + v 200 + s 100 = 400, we might, then have c 750 + v 250 + s 250 = 1250. Each has grown absolutely, but, now, the rate of surplus value s` has risen from 50% to 100%, whilst the rate of profit has fallen from 33.3% to 25%.

Beneath these numbers resides a host of other quantitative changes. What is the basis for the disproportionate rise in c, compared to v + s, and so total output? As Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21 and 23, if output simply expanded on the same technological basis, there is no possibility of these proportions changing, simply as a result of increased output. However, as he sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21, and this point was made, also, by Adam Smith, as discussed by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, as output expands, the demand for labour grows at a faster pace than the supply of labour/social working-day. Capital can respond, in the short-term, by increasing absolute surplus value, that is by increasing the length of the working-day, but there are limits to that. There are only 24 hours in a day.

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Forward To Part 12

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 10

Fourier held up to the public gaze the glaring contradiction between the promised nirvana following the bourgeois revolution and the reality.

“He mercilessly lays bare the material and moral misery of the bourgeois world. He confronts it with the [earlier] philosophers’ dazzling promises of a society ruled solely by reason, of a civilisation yielding universal happiness, of an illimitable human perfectibility, as well as with the rose-coloured phraseology of the bourgeois ideologists of his time. He shows how everywhere the most pitiful reality corresponds with the most high-sounding phrases, and he overwhelms this hopeless fiasco of phrases with his mordant sarcasm.” (p 333-4)

The denial of liberty to millions of colonial slaves, was justified by claims of their lack of equality of being. A similar claim was made in relation to women. Women continued to be treated as with children, as chattels, the property of the male head of the household. Engels notes, in relation to Fourier,

“He was the first to declare that in any given society the degree of woman’s emancipation is the natural measure of the general emancipation.” (p 334)

This emancipation was, of course, only a formal, bourgeois emancipation, an emancipation in terms of individual freedom, and, as with equality, only on the basis of an equality of rights. But, as Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, a formal equality of rights must result in an inevitable inequality of outcome, precisely because the presumption of an equality of being is false. Individuals are not clones of each other, identical in their needs and abilities. Some are strong, some are weak, and so on. To expect a weak person to exert themselves to an equal extent as a strong person is clearly absurd. I certainly have no intention of deadlifting half a ton, as Eddie Hall was able to do.

For the bourgeoisie, this false claim of equality of being is the ideological bedrock upon which they rest. Everyone has an equal capacity to rise in society, and so those that do must do so on the basis of their individual merits and freely undertaken choices. Its why a billionaire moron like Trump poses a problem for that ideology, also exposing for it the contradiction involved in their insistence upon the right of inheritance.

“But it is in his conception of the history of society that Fourier appears at his greatest. He divides its whole course, thus far, into four stages of development, savagery, the patriarchy, barbarism, and civilisation, the last coinciding with what is now called bourgeois society [i.e. with the social order that came in with the sixteenth century]. He proves

“that the civilised order gives every vice practised by barbarism in a simple fashion a complex, ambiguous, equivocal, hypocritical form”;

that civilisation moves in a “vicious circle”, in contradictions which it constantly reproduces without being able to solve, that it constantly attains the opposite of what it wants to achieve, or pretends it wants to achieve. So that, for example, “under civilisation poverty is born of abundance itself”.” (p 334)

Fourier applied the same dialectical method of thought as Hegel and Kant, seeing every historical period as having an upward and declining phase.

“Just as Kant introduced the idea of the ultimate destruction of the earth into natural science, Fourier introduced that of the ultimate destruction of the human race into historical thought.” (p 335)

Marx and Engels noted in The Communist Manifesto that the class struggle results in the victory of the revolutionary class or else the destruction of the contending classes. In the time of industrialised, total war, it was expressed in the slogan “Socialism or Barbarism”; now, in the time of nuclear warfare it is expressed precisely in the choice of “Socialism or Annihilation”. It is a choice that appears ever more imminent.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 9

In short, a parliamentary road to socialism is impossible, a dangerous delusion. But, that's not just the case in relation to socialism. The ambitions of the petty-bourgeoisie, as represented by Brexit, Trump, et al, also, threaten the interests of the ruling-class, which is why its state, what the Trumpists call “the deep state”, has acted to limit that damage by whatever means it could. We can only assume, in current conditions, that were Starmer (written before my prediction of the Blair-Right counter-coup was fulfilled) replaced by Farage, who would be forced, having presented his betrayal narrative, to even more extreme and irrational measures, that the capitalist state would be led, itself, to resort to even more drastic measures to constrain him, and the damage he might do.

“Saint-Simon showed the same superiority over his contemporaries, when in 1814, immediately after the entry of the allies into Paris, and again in 1815, during the Hundred Days’ War, he proclaimed the alliance of France with England, and then of both these countries with Germany, as the only guarantee for the prosperous development and peace of Europe. To preach an alliance with the victors of Waterloo to the French in 1815 undoubtedly required somewhat more courage than to declare a war of tittle-tattle on German professors.” (p 333)

The last sentence refers to Duhring's conflict with other professors at Berlin University, as referenced earlier. Unfortunately, the rapidly rising power of Germany, by the end of the 19th century, meeting the established power of France and Britain, at the same time as the rising power of the US and Japan, meant that, short of the workers of Europe, themselves, seizing power, and bringing about such a unity, its inevitable manifestation would come in the form of imperialist war and annexation.

Both France and Germany recognised the need to create a single European economy and state, but France, as the established power, saw it as its prerogative to dominate it, whilst Germany, as the rapidly rising power, sought to challenge that prerogative. Britain, as existing world hegemon, had no desire for a large European state on its borders, which would rapidly overhaul it. So, Britain acted to frustrate the ambitions of both France and Germany, setting one against the other. Millions died in the ensuing conflicts.

“If in Saint-Simon we find a masterly breadth of view, by virtue of which almost all the ideas of later socialists that are not strictly economic are found in him in embryo, we find in Fourier a criticism of the existing conditions of society, which, while genuinely French and witty, is none the less penetrating.” (p 333)

The bourgeoisie, in its revolution, had seen itself as representing the whole of society's interest. It mobilised the other oppressed classes on that basis, promising them Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. But, the antagonistic class interests mean that was never possible, and, as soon as that revolution was completed, that reality became apparent. Rather than Liberte, the glaring disparity between what was promised and what was delivered, meant that the bourgeoisie, as ruling class, and its state, had to impose its own restrictions on the freedom of the great mass of society, who saw no sign of the Egalite and Fraterenite, they had been promised. One of the most egregious examples of that, of course, was the denial of liberty to millions of colonial slaves. As Oliver Cromwell Cox has described, it was to try to reconcile this contradiction that the bourgeoisie put forward the idea that not all humans are “equally human”, so that some humans do not have the same right to freedom. It created racism. As Cox describes, before then, no such explanation, nor ideology was required, because previous modes of production never claimed that such equality of rights existed. They all took it as normal that society was divided into ranks based on status, into separate estates, each with their own specific rights and duties.

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SNNS 53

 

Northern Soul Classics - Philly Dog - The Mar-keys

 

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 8

Bourgeois ideology, and its superficial analysis, obscures this class nature of the state, as the means of enforcing the class rule of the ruling-class, its class dictatorship. It conflates it with the purely administrative functions of the state, particularly when it conflates the state with the government/political regime. Particularly within the political regime of bourgeois-democracy, and its current manifestation as social-democracy, it presents the elected government as, thereby, the government of “the people”, and this government of the people as synonymous with “the state”, or at least in control of the state, in the form of its permanent bureaucracy, military, police, courts and so on. The government is expected to govern on behalf of the whole people.

In fact, the elected governments are never the governments of the whole people. Besides the fact that “the people” are divided into classes with antagonistic interests, which leads to the formation of parties that, in whatever way, are based on securing the votes of electors from those classes, there are numerous other cross-cutting cleavages in society, along the lines of sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity and so on. Indeed, in some societies, where “the people” exists as a large undifferentiated mass, i.e. where the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry forms the overwhelming majority, these other cleavages can often predominate, resulting in parties being based on these various communalist interests.

So, the idea that a party, based on whatever sectionalism it relies on for its voter base could ever be a party and government of “the whole people”, is absurd. The trades unions split from the Liberal Party to form the Labour Party, precisely because, once workers have the vote, and begin to use it, even to appeal to those workers on the same basis of the social-democratic, bourgeois ideology, it becomes apparent that the workers need their own party, just as they needed trades unions, rather than employer run staff associations. As Starmer and Blue Labour broke that link, and saw his voter base in that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass that voted for Brexit, and at the same time, attacked workers, the trades unions are faced with the same choice.

Moreover, the elected governments rarely obtain a majority of votes, let alone a unanimity of votes of “the people”. The more parties contesting elections, the more democratic and proportional the voting system, the smaller the share of the vote does any given party tend to obtain. In Britain, the voting system amounts to ballot rigging by the main parties, so that the Blue Labour government obtained a huge majority of seats, but only a third of the votes cast, and only about a fifth of the total electorate.

But, even where a government is elected with a clear majority, the idea that it can govern on behalf of “the whole people” is facile, precisely because “the people” only exists as an abstraction, and, in reality, its main dividing lines, based on class, are ones that represent irreconcilable, antagonistic and contradictory interests, based on the ownership and control of different forms of property.

The idea that the elected government, representing “the people”, is “the state”, or controls the state, is also facile. Hobbes, in Leviathan, spoke of “the people” only being sovereign on one occasion. That is they appoint a sovereign to represent them, and having done so, they must submit to the rule of that sovereign. Moreover, that sovereign is, then, able to appoint its successors. The idea clearly appeals to Trump, and the same logic is applied by the Brexiters to claim that “the people” voted in 2016 for Brexit, and the matter can no longer be considered, even though only 37% of the electorate vote for it, and, today, a clear majority oppose it! Truly absurd.

But, the real insight of Hobbes was that the real sovereign is not “the people”, nor the monarch, nor parliament. The single act of appointing the sovereign is the act of the revolutionary class, in creating the permanent state that represents its interests. Monarchs, like parliaments, come and go, but the permanent state remains throughout and that state appoints its own replacements, on its own terms. The government, particularly in the political regime of social-democracy, plays the useful role of perpetuating the illusion that elections really mean anything substantial, a symbol that it is a democracy of the people by the people, and for the people, when, in fact, these governments are never able to overrule the interests of the ruling-class, as defended by its state. Indeed, as Lenin described, in “State and Revolution”, and Ralph Miliband also set out with specific reference to Britain, even the parliamentary system puts huge obstacles in the way of the working-class creating a party that truly represents its interests, far less that it could form a majority in parliament, and even less that it could simply legislate on behalf of workers, and against the interests of the ruling-class. Even Wilson faced the threat of a coup, all the stops were pulled out to prevent Corbyn even leading Labour to electoral victory, even though he represented little more serious threat to the ruling class than Wilson.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, I – Historical - Part 7

“In his Letters from Geneva, Saint-Simon lays down the proposition that “all men ought to work”. In the same work he also recognised that the Reign of Terror was the reign of the propertyless masses.

“See,” he calls out to them, “what happened in France at the time when your comrades held sway there; they brought about a famine.”

But to recognise the French Revolution as a class struggle (and not simply as one between nobility, bourgeoisie, and those without any property, was, in the year 1802, a discovery of the greatest genius.” (p 332)

At the time of Saint-Simon, “the propertyless” was mostly the petty bourgeoisie and urban proletariat. The petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry overwhelmingly predominated over the industrial proletariat, as, indeed, was the case in Russia in 1917, as Lenin describes in “Left-wing Childishness”. Today, however, the industrial proletariat forms the majority in all developed economies. It constitutes around 70% of the population, but that means that around 30% is still constituted by the petty-bourgeoisie, and its size has grown by 50% since he 1980's.  With the working-class bereft of any Marxist leadership, it has, as social-democracy, inevitably, failed, led to the advance of the petty-bourgeoisie. It is reactionary, even compared to the bourgeoisie, but its numbers, and appeal to simplistic solutions, based on lies, and a focus only on what it is against, has consolidated it electorally, and enabled it to draw behind it the other backward social layers of society.

Brexit has not yet led to “famine”, as Saint-Simon described in relation to France, or as occurred under Stalin, Mao and others, but it has led to a significant deterioration in Britain's economy, with a consequent effect on its poorest, who are the biggest contingent of those that voted for it. As the petty-bourgeois nationalists, be it Farage, Badenoch or Starmer continue to cling to their Brexitism, in the face of that reality, the more they resort to Bonapartism and authoritarianism. If Burnham fails to break with Brexitism, he will be led down the same path, and his support for reactionary policies such as regionalism, already place him on that path.

In the US, the same is seen with Trump, the global figurehead of that petty-bourgeois nationalism. Despite the huge advantages of the US economy, and its continued inertial force, Trump's idiotic policies of economic nationalism, protectionism, tariffs and so on, are creating a similar chaos in the US. Only the capitalist state is mitigating its effects, and slowing the progress of that chaos.

Engels continues.

“In 1816, he declared that politics was the science of production, and foretold the complete absorption of politics by economics. Although the knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo, what is already very plainly expressed is the transition from political rule over men to the administration of things and the guidance of the processes of production — that is to say, the “abolition of the state”, about which there has recently been so much noise.” (p 332-3)

As Engels set out in The Origin, the state only arises as a consequence of class society. In all previous society, there are bodies comprising the whole of the society or clan. Even with the AMP, the body that, eventually, becomes the state, after a very long period of time, begins not as a state, but, merely, as an administrative, bureaucratic, technocratic body serving the interests of the whole society. The state arises only at that point at which the productive forces have sufficiently developed that a section of society can separate itself into a separate class or caste, whose ownership or control over the means of production gives them a qualitatively different share in the distribution of society's output, and, also, enables them to utilise it, to employ its own bodies of armed men to guarantee its continued position in that regard. Often, these are people it recruits from outside the given society to fulfil that function.

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The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 21

Considered from the perspective of industrial capital as an abstraction, all of these different standards, rules, regulations and so on are irrational, but industrial capital, like everything else in the world, does not exist as an abstraction, but as a reality. That reality is one in which industrial capital developed within the context of the nation state, and each of those nation states created their own standards, rules, regulations, laws and so on, in order to protect and advance the interests of industrial capital, not in the abstract, but in the concrete reality of that state.

Britain adopted the standard gauge for railways in the 19th century, as noted earlier. One of the reasons for adopting it, rather than the broad gauge used by Brunel, was that the Stephensons had built more engines and track, using their standard gauge, and so were able to convince parliament to adopt it, even though there are numerous reasons for thinking that the broad gauge was technically superior. A similar thing occurred with the adoption of VHS as the standard for video recorders, even though Betamax was technically superior. As the leading industrial power, in the 19th century, Britain exported locomotives across the world, as well as building railways in its colonial Empire. In so doing, it created the same standards used for production in Britain, and so gave its own manufacturers an immediate advantage. Had motor vehicles been developed earlier, most of the world would drive on the left side of the road and have right-hand drive cars, as in Britain, rather than left hand drive cars, as in the US, where, from the start, most of them were produced.

In the post-war era, although the first programmable, electronic computer was built in Britain, and used at Bletchley Park to decrypt German codes, it was the US, which dominated the global market for mainframe computers. The number of these computers in operation was tiny, compared to the number of computers produced and used today. They were nearly all used by governments or large corporations. Countries like Britain, therefore, subsidised and protected their own small mainframe computer companies like ICL. But, ICL was never going to be able to dominate the global mainframe computer market, in the way that IBM did, because the limited size of the UK market meant it did not have the scale of production enjoyed by IBM. Had Britain been part of the EU, in the 1950's, it might have been able to help create a European mainframe computer industry of a size that could have competed with the US, but it wasn't.

Moreover, the US developed its computer industry in large part to assist in its military capability. The computers controlled missiles and so on. Given that the US produced the majority of the weapons systems used by NATO, and deployed in Europe, it ensured that it was those US computer standards that were adopted. In the 1980's, when the microchip revolution took place, it was, then, the US which dominated the market for personal computers. Even when other countries, and companies produced personal computers, they quickly had to be sold as being “IBM compatible”. Similarly, the operating system used on those “IBM Compatible”, PC's had to be Microsoft's DOS, a factor which enabled Microsoft to dominate the global software market.

This is also seen, in relation to the Internet, and global communications systems. The difference is that the US, in the 1980's and after, having shifted a large part of the production of hardware to other parts of the world (mostly Asia), content that 90% of the value of the end product came from the skilled complex labour, embodied in the intellectual property, retained in the US, opened itself up to the possibility that having become the dominant producers of the hardware, companies in these other regions would, also, develop their own firmware, and software. They would, inevitably, develop their own standards and protocols. As the world's largest market for almost everything, China has a huge advantage in that regard. The Chinese state, as the centralised planner of the economy, has a massive advantage in being able to pursue that course.

The EU, developed its own Atomic Energy Industry, to be able to compete with the US, and belatedly, the EU has been prompted by the regime of Trump, to begin separating itself from the US domination of the Internet and technology.  The EU Parliament has already banned use of several US platforms for its MEP's and staff, and has developed EU alternative systems.

Amazingly, even in the 21st century, the railways continue to play a significant role in that respect. China has developed its high speed trains linking up the vast expanses of the country. But, as part of its “Belt and Road” strategy, it has provided the capital for railways to be constructed across Asia. The real significance of railways has always been in relation to the movement of freight, particularly bulk freight. Over short, local distances, railways are too rigid to be useful means of passenger transport. They lost out, prior to car ownership, to buses, which could provide flexible routes. But, buses too are too rigid, compared to private motor cars. Over longer, inter-city, journeys, trains are less rigid but, as families bought cars, and as companies provided company cars for their representatives, and as motorways were developed, trains could not compete. Only on much bigger land masses could high speed trains compete, over even larger distances, for passenger traffic, and there, they initially faced the already established airlines.

Railways, like canals, are significant as a means of, effectively moving bulk freight, particularly over large distances, and that is what China has done, spreading out from China itself, into Eurasia, and across to the Middle East and Europe. Last year, it sent a freight train from China to London. As I have set out before, Eurasia is a rational economic entity, just as is the EU. Trade within these two entities, inevitably increases, and drives towards, the adoption of common rules, standards, laws, regulations and so politico-economic integration and centralisation. But, the fact that the EU and Eurasian bloc share a common land mass, also means that trade between these blocs, will also increase, relative to with the US etc.

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