US Workers - Defend Your Kids Against Biden's Stormtroopers!

 This is what the start of totalitarianism in a mass society looks like!

Biden's stormtroopers have immense physical force to mobilise against the peaceful student protests springing up across US university campuses.  Like the forces of Zionism in Palestine, they are indirectly supporting, and which itself trained these US police forces, they have an overwhelming monopoly of violence.  In the end, that is the role of the state, when all of its other methods, based on the use of ideology, and its mass media have failed.

Across the US, Biden's stormtroopers are using that monopoly of violence to attack peaceful protests in order to continue to support the genocide of Zionism in Gaza, and to slap down any criticism of it.  It isn't working for them as an increasing proportion of the US population opposes that genocide and opposes Biden's complicity in it.  

The students cannot defeat this huge monopoly of violence by the US state, which is careening headlong towards the kind of totalitarian state seen, elsewhere, such as in Israel itself, as well as in Russia, China and so on, where the role of ideology no longer suffices to control the masses, because its presentation of reality no longer conforms with what those masses can see and experience for themselves.

The students have learned something from the experience of their grandparents, some of whom were involved 60 years ago, during a similar period of the long wave, in the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement and so on.  At UCLA, recognising the superior violence of the police goons, the mantra of Bruce Lee, and of his system of Jit Kun Do, was heard "Move like Water".  The students can simply move continuously as the stormtroopers launch their attacks, reforming in another place, just as when a fist strikes water, the water parts, and surrounds the fist, which only makes a temporary hole.  As soon as the fist is removed, the hole fills with water once more.

The students are going nowhere, and the heavily armed goons cannot stay assembled on the campuses forever.  A few protesters may be arrested, but for each one arrested, a hundred more are being recruited to the protests as they see for themselves the reality of the state violence being imposed by Biden and his increasingly authoritarian Bonapartist regime.

But, the US working-class should not settle for such a condition in which their kids on college campuses are facing this kind of violence, not only from Biden's stormtroopers, but also from the Zionist and other fascist auxiliaries being mobilised alongside them.  Many working-class people from local communities have already joined into give passive support to the protests having seen the reality of the state aggression.  However, given the fact that imperialism has staked so much on its support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza, it is also not likely to simply accept some kind of stalemate, especially as the Zionist state continues its genocide in Gaza, with an imminent assault on Rafah, and planned attacks on Lebanon.

The organised labour movement, in the US needs to mobilise its own violence to counter that of the capitalist state, in the best traditions of that movement, and the history of US militia, in their war against British colonialism, during their War of Independence.  Local unions and activists should begin to organise defence squads to form protective rings around student protests, and the peace camps.  In an election year, where Biden and the Democrats already look to have lost against Trump and the Republicans, due to the reactionary policies adopted by Biden over the last four years, those workers should use their influence through the unions to press for alternative workers candidates to be standing in the elections, on a socialist programme.  At the very least, they should be raising their voices in union locals, and in local Democrat organisations to condemn the genocide and Biden's support for it, as well as the use of the fascist goons.

It may be too early yet, though the role of university lecturers and their unions provides some basis for it, to begin to call for local general strikes to oppose the state violence, but, at some point, such calls will become relevant, as well as calls to spread the occupations into workplaces, especially any workplaces related to the state, the production of weapons and so on.  It is time that significant pressure was put on the unions of journalists and other media workers, as the US media has played a truly appalling role in lying about the genocide in Gaza, and supporting Zionism.  That is not just the usual suspects of Fox News, and so on.  We need strikes and occupations of workers in those media outlets.

The role of Marxists is to act as the memory of the class from one generation to the next.  We are living through an equivalent period of the 1960's.  Marxists should study the lessons of that time, codify them, and use them to the benefit of the current generation, advancing its successes and warning against its errors.

The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 7 of 10

It is necessary to know what time of day it is, in formulating policy and strategy, and these adventurist positions were wholly damaging, in a counter-revolutionary period. But, the reason for their adoption was not entirely due to the incompetence of Stalinism and its desertion from Marxism. The policy also acted to distract attention from its failures, and to provide it with a superficial, revolutionary panache.

“Even though there was no revolutionary situation and the working masses were abandoning the Party, this Committee declared that the economic and social situation was, in its opinion, “favourable to the insurrection”. In any case, a triumphant uprising would have been very “favourable” to the prestige of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Given the fact that the workers were abandoning the revolution, it was therefore necessary to turn one’s back to the towns and endeavour to launch isolated uprisings in the villages.” (p 213)

The Opposition had correctly predicted that, in conditions of counter-revolution, arising from the earlier defeats, and, without any renewed activity by the masses themselves, the adventurist policy of organising isolated uprisings, would lead to further defeat and demoralisation. Stalin/Bukharin, and the ECCI, had described such predictions as “defeatist” and “liquidationist”, and, accordingly, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party followed suit. But, the Kiangsu Committee, whilst ensuring only to criticise the Chinese leaders, and not the ECCI, noted,

“In spite of the defeat of the armies of Ho Lung and Ye Ting in Guangdong, even after the November Plenum the Central Committee persists in clinging to the tactic of immediate uprisings and takes as its point of departure an estimation leading to the direct ascent of the revolution.” (p 213)

The Committee also noted, in relation to the Canton rebellion, that was supposed to be part of a coup, spreading across the whole of China,

“These measures flowed from a subjective estimation of the situation and did not correspond to the objective circumstances. Obviously, under such conditions defeats will be inevitable.” (p 214)

The ECCI, and the Chinese party had called for an end to putschism, but the fact was that the very theories and analysis of these bodies, of defining the period as one of permanent rise of the revolutionary wave, in which there were only short-term ebbs and flows, itself encouraged such putschism.

““But being given the fact that the Central Committee based itself in its estimation of the revolutionary movement, upon an uninterrupted advance,” as the Kiangsu resolution says correctly and pointedly,

“no modifications were brought into this question at the bottom. The forces of the enemy are far too greatly underrated and at the same time, no attention is paid to the fact that our organizations have lost contact with the masses. Therefore, in spite of the fact that the Central Committee had sent its information letter no.28 (on putschism) everywhere, it did not at the same time correct its mistakes.”” (p 214-5)

The Committee, again, only mentioned the Chinese party, but the ECCI also made no change in its analysis or policy, whilst simply warning against skirmishes, a warning, which, again, was designed only to cover its back, in relation to future defeats.

“... the resolution of this Plenum pounced furiously upon the Opposition which spoke of the necessity of a resolute change in the whole orientation. In February 1928, the course continued as before to lead towards insurrection. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party only served as a mechanism to transmit this instruction.” (p 215)

This set the tone for the future turn towards guerrilla warfare, as will be seen. On the one hand, the ECCI, and Russian party, via Pravda, made anodyne reports of the movements of Chinese communist guerrilla armies, but with no detailed background on what social forces were being mobilised, as the foundation of such actions. It meant that any victories could be reported and claimed, any defeat ignored or disowned.

Back To Part 6

Zionism/Imperialism Is Winning Militarily and Losing Politically

Zionism is winning, as I always expected it would, its military offensive against the Palestinian people.  It is a military superpower in its own right, and backed by the world's largest military superpower, the US, and by the next biggest military superpowers the EU and UK.  That it could wipe out the Palestinians militarily was never in doubt, even without resorting to the use of its nuclear weapons as proposed by one of its politicians, and at least one US Republican politician.  As I wrote recently, it is, now, well on its way to completing its genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, leaving it free to occupy that land, and to move on to a similar military assault on the West Bank, and to continue its increasing offensive against Lebanon and Syria.

The fact that it is carrying on with great efficiency in that genocide, backed by US, EU and UK imperialism, which arms and finances it, and acts as its attorney and publicist on the world stage, is precisely why the bourgeois "democracies", in those states have had to massively ramp up their propaganda, and to remove the velvet glove that hides the iron fist of the bourgeois class dictatorship.  The clash between appearance, as they seek to present it, and reality, has increasingly been exposed, especially as modern technology allows the actions of imperialism to be documented as never before, breaking the monopoly of the bourgeois media.  Hence the use of Zionist and other fascist irregulars to violently attack the peaceful student encampments on universities across America, as the attempt to brand opponents of genocide as being "anti-Semitic" supporters of Hamas, violent terrorists, or even "agents of Putin", collapses in its own hysterical absurdity.

As Owen Jones describes, Zionism is winning militarily in Gaza, and its same violent methods have now been transferred to the US.  In the same way that in the West Bank, fascist Zionist settlers attack Palestinians, and ae backed by the Zionist military, so, now, on US university campuses, we see peaceful protests violently attacked by fascist Zionist irregulars, in a way that was clearly planned, organised, and orchestrated with the forces of the state, which allowed them to engage in their violent assault using weapons, fireworks, pepper-spray, cable ties and so on, for a prolonged period, before the police turned up.  And, of course, as anyone familiar with such methods in Britain in the 1970's is aware, when the police do, then, intervene, it is not against the violent fascists, but against those they are attacking!

All, of this shows that whilst the Zionists and imperialism have the military might to win, they are losing politically, and all of this ramped up use of force, increased hysterical lying via its media and politicians, is because they know they are losing politically.  Unfortunately, just because they are losing politically, does not mean that socialists are winning.  In the US, Biden has, now, clearly lost the election, not just for himself, but for the Democrats in general, and deservingly so.  But, in the absence of a socialist party, and socialist candidate to rally around, the winner will be Trump, and his reactionary Republicans, just as in Britain, as Sunak goes down to a massive defeat, he will be replaced by the petty-bourgeois, reactionary Starmer and his ultra-nationalist/monarchist, Blue Labour, which is no better.

Moreover, the fact that Zionism/Imperialism is losing politically, at the moment, contrary to Owen Jones' argument, does not mean that they have to lose politically, in the longer term, precisely because, without a progressive alternative to them they will simply bring about their own stabilisation, and, in the short-term, the consequence may be even worse, as the election of Trump, and so on would demonstrate.  It shows the need to build a socialist alternative to them, and to fight for it, now.

Owen Jones says that even if Zionism wins against the Palestinians it can bring no positive solution for Israel.  Wrong.  If the Zionists wipe the Palestinians from history, as the Europeans did against Native Americans, Australasian Aborigines and so on, although there will be a lot of moralistic hand-wringing, for a time - much, indeed as there was following the initial Naqba - then the Zionists, with US and EU imperialist backing, will quickly establish normalised relations with the surrounding bourgeois Arab states in Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf states, creating a powerful imperialist base from which to turn their attention to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Libya, and eventually Iran.

For workers, in the end, that will also open significant opportunities, just as the more rapid capitalist development in the Americas, and Australasia did, following similar genocides.  Ironically, it would also spell the end for Zionism itself, just as the more rapid economic development in Ireland, in recent decades, and its membership of the EU, undermined the material basis both of Orangeism in the North, and Catholic Confessionalism in the South.  But, it again, shows that these grotesque means of bringing about such objectively progressive, historical development used by imperialism, require socialists not only to oppose those methods, but also to show how the progressive results can only be effectively achieved by proletarian means, by a class struggle of the global working-class.  As Trotsky put it,

"Capitalism has transferred into the field of international relations the same methods applied by it in “regulating” the internal economic life of the nations. The path of competition is the path of systematically annihilating the small and medium-sized enterprises and of achieving the supremacy of big capital. World competition of the capitalist forces means the systematic subjection of the small, medium-sized and backward nations by the great and greatest capitalist powers. The more developed the technique of capitalism, the greater the role played by finance capital and the higher the demands of militarism, all the more grows the dependency of the small states on the great powers. This process, forming as it does an integral element of imperialist mechanics, flourishes undisturbed also in times of peace by means of state loans, railway and other concessions, military-diplomatic agreements, etc. The war uncovered and accelerated this process by introducing the factor of open violence. The war destroys the last shreds of the “independence” of small states, quite apart from the military outcome, of the conflict between the two basic enemy camps...

Whether Germany or England wins – in either case the question to be determined is who will be the direct master over the small nations. Only charlatans or hopeless simpletons are capable of linking up the question of the freedom of the small peoples with the victory of one side or the other...

In its struggle against imperialism, the proletariat cannot set up as its political aim the return to the map of old Europe; it must advance its own programme of state and national relations, corresponding to the fundamental tendencies of economic development, corresponding to the revolutionary character of the epoch and the socialist interests of the proletariat...

Imperialism is the capitalist-thievish expression of this tendency of modern economy to tear itself completely away from the idiocy of national narrowness, as it did previously with regard to local and provincial confinement. While fighting against the imperialist form of economic centralization, socialism does not at all take a stand against the particular tendency as such but, on the contrary, makes the tendency its own guiding principle."

(The Programme of Peace)

Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 8

There are a series of contradictions faced by bourgeois-democracy, each of which is inter-related, and many of which arise as a result of the solutions utilised for previous contradictions, themselves creating new contradictions. This is very like the situation described by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy, that resulted from Proudhon's method, and that is not surprising, because the method of social-democracy, is pretty much that same method.

The fundamental contradiction is that socialised capital, as a transitional form of property, is objectively the collective property of workers, but is controlled, not by workers but the ruling-class of money-lending capitalists (coupon clippers) whose wealth now exists in the form of fictitious-capital, not this real industrial capital. As Marx sets out in Capital III, the interests of these two forms of capital are immediately antagonistic. The money-lending capitalists (shareholders, bondholders etc.) seek to maximise their total return from interest/dividends and capital gain, but that is antagonistic to the interests of real industrial capital that seeks to minimise the amount paid as interest, or other forms of capital transfer, in order to maximise profit of enterprise, so as to maximise capital accumulation.

The collective owners of socialised capital (the workers) do not control it, and the state, as the state of the ruling class of coupon clippers/speculators, ensures they can never control it, short of a pre-revolutionary situation, of dual power, in which the workers, organised in soviets/workers' councils, impose workers control, arms in hand. Yet, that use of force (albeit legal or legislative force) that prevents workers exercising that control, and vests it with the shareholders, does not change the underlying contradiction of the antagonistic interests of these two forms of capital. Even where social-democracy reached its zenith, in the 1970's, with the introduction of co-determination, most noticeably in Germany, it was again just a repeat of the sham of bourgeois-democracy, transplanted into industrial democracy. The elected worker directors are always in a minority, and so simply give cover for a continuation of the domination of the shareholders.

So boards of Directors continued to denude retained profits for capital accumulation, and instead used those profits to finance excessive dividends and interest payments, capital transfers to shareholders, the buy back of shares to raise share prices, as well as exorbitant remittances to those Directors, including the use of share options and so on that further tie them in to shareholder interests as against the company interest. This condition was hidden in the 1990's, because the technological revolution of the 1980's, so raised productivity, and brought about a moral depreciation of fixed capital, rise in the annual rate of profit, and release of capital, that even as profit was drained into these unproductive revenues, the mass of realised profit grew to such an extent, and the mass of physical output grew so much that the aforementioned condition arose that 25% of all human production is accounted for in just the first ten years of the current century.

But, as the proportion of profits going to rent and interest payments, particularly, (but also taxes) grew, at the expense of retained profits, so asset prices rose. The growing mass of interest/dividends did not go back into financing additional capital accumulation – which simply retaining profits would have done more effectively – but went instead into a demand for existing shares, bonds and property, pushing up those asset prices, as monetary demand for them grew faster than a, now, constrained supply of them. That fuelled further speculation, on the basis of the now familiar fear of missing out (FOMO). Moreover, not only was it the recipients of these revenues that ploughed money into such speculation, but a proportion of wages also went into it, and, in the case of property, increasing amounts of money was simply borrowed for that purpose.

The solutions, and consequences of this fundamental contradiction, were as follows.

1. Asset prices inflated to astronomical levels acting as a drag on the real economy, and capital accumulation, contrary to the claims about so called “wealth effects”.
   
   
2. The ruling-class of coupon-clippers/speculators, became more concerned with the capital gain element of total returns than with the revenue element, whether in the form of interest/dividends or rents.
   
   
3. When asset price bubbles burst, as in 1987, 2000 and 2008, the state, as protector of the immediate interest of this ruling class, acted to reflate those asset prices, both by devaluing the standard of prices, and by damaging the real economy to slow the demand for capital, in order to reduce rates of interest.
   
   
4. One solution to the need to expand the mass of profit, so as to facilitate the continued increase in interest/dividends and rents, without a proportional increase in capital accumulation, was to shift production to other lower cost countries in Asia, notably China, and this process got underway in the 1980's, creating a new contradiction, now being seen, as China, is rising as an imperialist power in its own right, combining with Russia and BRICS+ to challenge the old imperialist hegemon.
   
   
5. This process of “deindustrialisation” begun in the 1980's, and shift of production to China etc., led to a weakening of large-scale socialised capital, in the developed economies. At the same time, it created conditions for a rapid growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, reversing the trend of the previous 150 years. Most of this petty-bourgeoisie was itself deprived and precarious, taking the form of the self-employed, white van man, or small business sweating other labour, including family labour. It was concentrated in the old decaying urban areas, decimated by deindustrialisation, the so called “Red Wall” constituencies. Its petty-bourgeois nature brought with it all of the reactionary ideology of that petty-bourgeois layer.
   
   
6. Its strength resides, like the peasantry, in its numbers, significant only in electoral terms, not in its socio-economic strength. It does not control large masses of property or the state, as the bourgeoisie does, and nor does it have the industrial economic power that the working-class possesses. But, it does have the large numbers (around 15 million in Britain) to vote. That voting power, enabled it to seize control of the Tories, and, thereby, to push through Brexit, against the interests of both the ruling class, and the interests of large-scale socialised capital, and, thereby, of its collective owners, the working-class.
   
   
7. That cut off another solution for bourgeois-democracy that of reducing costs and raising the rate of turnover of capital, by abolishing national borders and creating larger single markets, such as the EU.
   
   
8. As globalisation stalls, the world returns to the conditions prior to WWI, in which powerful nation states sought to advance their own interests at the expense of others, by dominating the economies around them. But, now, it is large, continental sized politico-economic blocs engaged in such conflict, which drives towards WWIII. That is the context of the proxy wars in Ukraine, Israel/Palestine, Africa, and increasingly the South China Sea/Pacific.

Back To Part 7

Zionist Fascists and Biden's Stormtroopers Attack Peaceful Student Protest

Zionist fascists have combined with Biden's stormtroopers to attack peaceful, pro-Palestine students at UCLA in California. Across The USA, where polls show a large majority of the population hostile to the genocide being undertaken by the Zionist regime, supported by western imperialism, the state has been mobilising its bodies of armed men to break up protests, and to deny the right to free speech. All of the facade of bourgeois-democracy is collapsing at an increasing pace as it tries to defend its genocide in Gaza, alongside its imperialist war in Ukraine, and its growing militarist stance in the South China Sea, in Africa and so on.

Fascism is a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie that draws behind it sections of the working-class, and lumpen proletariat. As a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie, it is, consequently, generally impotent. Only when the bourgeoisie itself faces a serious threat from a rising proletariat, does it resort to use of such fascist irregulars, to supplement the much more powerful forces of the state it controls. In the US, the ruling class is not facing a serious challenge from the proletariat. It does not need to resort to fascism or fascist irregulars. However, those forces can come in useful for it, as this recent episode illustrates.

The polls show that Biden's genocide in Gaza is hugely unpopular. The standard tactic of social-democracy, in the US and elsewhere, has been to utilise the vast power of the bourgeois media to simply libel its opponents, by smearing them with the label of “anti-Semitism”, the strategy used by the Right to undermine, and then remove Corbyn, but which has been used everywhere. The same strategy is used to smear opponents of NATO's war in Ukraine, by claiming that there are only two options, two camps, support for NATO and the corrupt anti-working-class regime of Zelensky, or else support for the corrupt, anti-working class regime of Putin. The fact that, in the US, in particular, the majority of Jews are hostile to Zionism, many of them taking part in the protests against the Zionist genocide, including taking part in the current student, anti-war encampments springing up on University campuses like mushrooms, poses a problem for imperialism, and for social-democracy.

Hence, use of these Zionist fascist irregulars to attack the peaceful student Peace Camps. The state didn't need them to do so, as it had more than enough force, turning up as it has in full riot gear, wearing gas masks, and carrying heavy weapons. It needed the assault by the Zionist fascists, in order to give it a cover for its own heavy handed intervention to break up the protests. Imperialism has used this tactic on many numerous occasions.

The Zionist fascists, many of whom have also been found, over the last few years, in the ranks of Trump's irregular forces, with other racists and white supremacists, have played a different role, here, than they did in his farcical coup attempt on January 6th. On that occasion, they were part of that reactionary, petty-bourgeois movement that was hostile to the interests of the US ruling-class, and found itself in confrontation with its state. But, here, they acted as auxiliaries of that state, which is the historic role of fascism, as seen in the 1920's and 30's. The majority of Zionists in the US, are not, themselves Jews, but are Christian Zionists, so called Endtimers, fundamentalist nutters, who believe that we are on the verge of Armageddon and the Second Coming, to be heralded by a war in Palestine.

It would be interesting to see, just who those involved in this violent Zionist attack on the peaceful student encampment were. It would not be surprising to find that a large part of them were made up of such elements, and the same forces that have been backing Trump. Certainly there has been plenty of encouragement for such action by Trump and Right-Wing Republicans with a supporting chorus from Biden and his regime, as he continues to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Zionists as they engage in genocide, and continues to provide them with the weapons to carry it out. It illustrates the extent to which Biden and the forces of conservative social-democracy are being pulled like moths to a flame, in the direction of Bonapartism and authoritarianism.

In the same way that the logic of Zionism in Israel itself has drawn all of the Zionist parties, from right to left, into a national government supporting Netanyahu and his genocide, so too across western imperialism. Not, of course, that this centripetal force is itself new. Biden continued the reactionary nationalist policies of Trump, and in relation to China has even intensified them; in Britain, Starmer has shot from being an ardent pro-Remainer to being an even more ardent jingoist, Brexiter, ultra-nationalist and Monarchist. The same course can be seen across Europe.

Confounding the arguments put forward by the likes of Paul Mason, over recent years, as described in his book on fascism, the real drive to Bonapartism and authoritarianism is coming not from the likes of Johnson or Trump, but from those that Mason looked to as saviours from it, i.e. Biden, Starmer, Macron, Scholtz etc., and anyone who had actually understood and properly analysed the nature of Bonapartism and fascism, could have told him that. Indeed, I did!

The image of a young student protester kneeling in prayer, in front of a line of Biden's stormtroopers, dressed in black like clones of Darth Vader, shown on Sky News, in the report from its reporter, is one that is reminiscent of those in Russia that were a foreshadowing of its revolution.

Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 6 of 6

As seen earlier, the capitalist obtains profit because of the difference between the value of the commodity they sell, its social cost of production, and what they actually pay for its production. But, what the worker is paid for the commodity they sell, labour-power, is always, on average, also what it costs them to produce. Labour-power is the only commodity which does not provide to its owner a surplus-value/profit. If the demand for labour-power rises so high that wages rise to a level where surplus value/profit is even significantly squeezed, this results in a crisis of overproduction of capital.

As described earlier, the rate of profit relevant to the capitalist is the annual rate of profit, and this is a function of the rate of turnover of the circulating capital. As productivity rises, due to an increased use of technology, so also the rate of turnover rises. As Engels describes in Capital III, if we take two identical capitals, but one turns over ten times faster than the other, although they produce the same rate of profit/profit margin (p/k), the capital that turns over faster will produce an annual rate of profit ten times larger.

Suppose that for the total social capital, and, therefore, given an average rate of turnover, the annual rate of profit is 30%. With a rate of turnover of 10, the average rate of profit/profit margin is just 3%. For some commodities, the profit margin is higher, and for some lower, depending on the rate of turnover in that sphere. Consequently, although the average annual rate of profit may appear to give a comfortable margin, a rise in wages may quickly erode the actual profit embodied in each commodity unit, where the margin is only 3% or less.

The overall mass of profit is a function of the high volume of output, and annual rate of profit a function of the fact that a relatively small amount of capital is advanced repeatedly to produce it, during the year. By the same token, a rise in wages that eats up the profit margin turns what was a large total mass of profit, into a large loss. Similarly, any change in market conditions can have a similar result.

This is the cause of crises of overproduction of capital, as described by Marx in Capital III, Chapter 15, and in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 21. That is capital expands faster than the supply of labour-power/social working-day. The demand for labour-power pushes wages higher, eventually squeezing surplus value. Capital is overproduced relative to the available working population. But, for the reasons set out earlier, capital is only advanced to produce profit. The first consequence of such overproduction is that capital is withdrawn or destroyed. Workers are laid off, and wages fall. But, secondly, firms engage in innovation so that they reduce their demand for labour, by introducing new machines. The demand for labour falls and a relative surplus population is created, so wages fall.

The same technological developments reduce the value of wage goods, and so reduce the value of labour-power, thereby, raising the rate of surplus value. It is not that absolutely less labour is employed. Unemployment rises, because as the population grows, a smaller proportion of it is required to produce a given quantity of additional output. A rising rate of surplus value, and increased mass of labour employed results in a growing mass of profit, and rising rate of profit, creating the conditions for the next expansion.

Back To Part 5

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 7

The method of the Left, though it continues to call itself “Marxist”, is, in fact, metaphysical rather than dialectical, it is, largely moralistic rather than materialist, and so cannot identify and analyse flux, leaving it mechanically applying old categories and formulas, rather than analysing current reality. These failings have left the working-class without any effective leadership over the last 80 years, strengthening the position of social-democracy. But, social-democracy, wracked by the contradictions set out above, has also arrived at a point of crisis, and, in order to try to contain that crisis, it has had to resort to increasing degrees of Bonapartism, to make appearance and reality hang together.

The Bonapartist regime of Starmer inside Blue Labour is a clear example of that, but the same applies inside the US Democrats, and across European social democracy. That same Bonapartism is manifest in the social-democratic state too, and the current overt abandonment of the façade of bourgeois-democracy, in order to justify genocide, and deny the masses the right to speak out against it is just the latest, most visible manifestation of it. There is a clear yellow line connecting the use of claims of “anti-Semitism” against the Left over recent years, to justify witch hunts, deny free speech, and to justify Zionism, with the current utilisation of those same tropes to suppress the global opposition to the Zionist genocide in Palestine.

The astronomical levels of liquidity thrown into circulation, via QE etc., are an indication of that underlying crisis of social-democracy, as are the astronomical levels of asset prices, that bear no resemblance to the underlying valuation of real capital, and its profitability. Its most surreal expression was negative yields, with more than $20 trillion of bonds, globally, at one point, having negative yields! That was not because the amount of interest being paid was small, it wasn't, it was huge, as with the amounts paid as rents and taxes. It was simply a function of the astronomical level to which the price of assets be they bonds, shares, or land had been inflated. In other words, 100/1,000 is 10%, but if the 100 increases to 700, whilst the 1,000 rises to 70,000, it is only 1%!

The nature of socialised capital, identified by Marx, as a transitional form of property, implies and necessitates change, transition from one state to another, but the nature of the Left's metaphysical philosophical method, means that it cannot theorise or grasp this process of transition. In one form, its either capital or not capital, utilising the method of the syllogism, manifest in the idea that the change of state occurs in one leap, effected by the proletarian revolution, pace 1917, and in another, this change occurs superficially, at least, by the action of the capitalist state, via an act of nationalisation, for example.

But, the objective laws of capital, continue to grind on, behind Men's backs, even though they have been churning at subterranean depths for the last 40 years, breaking through the surface every so often, as they have resulted in rising employment, rising wages, feeding through into increased aggregate demand, fuelling economic growth, and a demand for additional capital, causing interest rates to rise, and asset prices to drop, as most visibly occurred in 2008. The capitalist state, as the state of the ruling class, whose form of property is fictitious capital, has tried to reconcile this contradiction.

In 2010, it implemented austerity to slow economic growth, so trying to slow the growth in employment, and consequent rise in wages. The goal was two-fold. By holding back the rise in wages, it held back any squeeze on profits, and, secondly, by holding back the expansion of employment and rise in wages, it held back the expansion of demand for wage goods, which, in turn, dampens the role of competition in driving firms to accumulate capital so as to increase their supply. By reducing that demand for capital accumulation, it holds down interest rates, and so enables asset prices to remain inflated. 

Why does it do that, because, contrary to the model used by the Left, which sees capital in the terms of its early 19th century form, in which capitalists are the private owners of real industrial capital, dependent on maximising profit, the ruling class, today, is rather that class of “coupon clippers”, owners, not of real industrial capital, but of fictitious-capital, identified by Marx and Engels in Capital, and Anti-Duhring.

This ruling class, rather than seeking the maximisation of industrial profit, seeks the maximisation of its total returns from interest, rent and capital gains. For more than 20 years, it could maximise its revenues from interest and rent, at the expense of retained profits, because, in the 1980's, the technological revolution, raised productivity, and the rate of profit, as well as creating a huge release of capital, as vast amounts of fixed capital suffered a massive moral depreciation. This reality, is also in complete contradiction to the idea, clung to by much of the Left, that capitalism is in some kind of period of decline or decay. On the contrary, in that period, it has been at its most dynamic, since its inception.

But, as with every such long wave cycle, this period in which the new technology raises productivity, as existing equipment gets replaced by new equipment (See Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23), and the rate of profit rises along with a release of capital, (intensive accumulation), runs out. At some point, all the old fixed capital has been replaced by the new. The rise in productivity slows, and, to increase output, it is no longer a matter of replacing old equipment with newer equipment, but of adding additional equipment itself (extensive accumulation). And, added equipment means additional workers, even if relatively fewer additional workers than would have previously been required using the old technology.

That point arose around 1999, and as I have set out many times before, going back to the early 2000's, this period after 1999, and up to the global financial crisis of 2008, saw a huge expansion in output, again confounding the claims of the catastrophists that capitalism, globally, was in some kind of terminal decline or decay. The simple fact that, of all of Man's output, in his entire history, 25% of it occurred in the first decade of this century, illustrates that point.

But, it was this economic expansion that spelled the end for the model of conservative social-democracy that had existed over the previous 20 years, starting with Thatcher and Reagan, and ending with Brown and Bush. Everything that has happened since 2008, is merely an attempt to deny reality, and to cling to that old model at an ever increasing cost, and ever more authoritarian means. And, again, contrary to the model used by the Left, in which this is all done in the interests of capital, rather than the interests of the ruling class, the measures undertaken have increasingly damaged the real economy, and damaged real industrial capital. It illustrates the extent to which, as Marx and Engels theorised more than a century ago, that ruling class of coupon clippers, whose interests are antagonistic to real capital, have become a reactionary fetter on the development of capital itself.

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