Friday, 7 March 2025
Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 5 of 6
Inevitably, as Marx and Engels wrote, in relation to the European “non-historic peoples” in the 19th century, and as Lenin and Trotsky wrote about such small nations in the 20th, the Palestinians turned to other more powerful states, creating yet again divisions within the global working-class along national lines, and causing them to fall in behind the ruling classes of those states, lines and divisions themselves determined by imperialism. The reality of the supposed Two Bourgeois States solution was always that it could only be brought about, not only over the heads of the workers in the Middle-East, but also over the heads of the ruling classes of Israel and Palestine, and the surrounding states. It would require US imperialism, probably in conjunction with EU imperialism to impose such a solution on those ruling classes, and they had no reason to do that, rather than continuing to support the Zionist state as their proxy, and have it implement their agenda in the region.
The same is true in relation to the imperialist solution imposed from above on Ukraine. In the 1930's, Trotsky noted.
“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score...
The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”
Thursday, 6 March 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 19 of 24
With the fall of the Roman Empire, at the hands of the Goths and Vandals, even the limited egalitarianism it posited for freemen was swept away. In its place came a hierarchical social structure, which forms the basis of feudalism. It brought, “Western and Central Europe into the course of historical development, created a compact cultural area for the first time, and within this area also for the first time a system of predominantly national states influencing each other and mutually holding each other in check. It thus prepared the ground on which alone the question of the equal status of men, of the rights of man, could be raised at a later period.” (p 131)
As Marx noted in The Poverty of Philosophy, feudalism does not metamorphose into capitalism, nor do the serfs, as serfs, metamorphose into bourgeois and proletarians. A serf, as with a slave, can simply be reproduced for ever and a day, their surplus labour appropriated by the slave owner or feudal lord. It is not this relation that provides the dynamic of social development. Rather, it is the rupture of this relation. Once the serfs are freed, and the feudal retainers are disbanded, they are also separated from the means of production and consumption. In order to survive, they must find themselves some other source of income. They move to towns and cities in the Middle Ages, and use whatever skills they have developed from cottage industry to become independent commodity producers. As such, they come into competition with the existing feudal guild production, based on protectionism and guild monopolies. It is this activity of the former serfs, as, now, small scale commodity producers that leads to their development into a new bourgeois class.
“Originally itself a feudal estate, the bourgeoisie had developed the predominantly handicraft industry and the exchange of products within feudal society to a relatively high level, when at the end of the fifteenth century the great maritime discoveries opened up to it a new career of wider scope. Trade beyond the confines of Europe, which had previously been carried on only between Italy and the Levant, was now extended to America and India, and soon surpassed in importance both the mutual exchange between the various European countries and the internal trade within each individual country. American gold and silver flooded Europe and forced its way like a disintegrating element into every gap, fissure, and pore of feudal society. Handicraft industry could no longer satisfy the rising demand, in the leading industries of the most advanced countries it was replaced by manufacture.” (p 131-2)
By manufacture, here, is meant handicraft production, but, now, undertaken by several producers under one roof, as described by Marx in Capital, and by Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. These manufactories, set up, often, by merchant capitalists, or the larger handicraft producers themselves, already facilitate economies of scale. The size of building required does not increase proportionate to the volume of production, buying materials in larger quantities enables lower prices to be negotiated, savings on marketing are achieved, time required to get materials etc. from a stock room is reduced, but, also, it already enables a level of technical division of labour, and attendant increase in productivity.
That enabled this bourgeois production to undercut the old, feudal, guild production so that it continued to expand, despite the restrictions placed upon it. It does not arise as a metamorphosis of feudal production, but as, from the start, a separate species in competition with it.
“But this mighty revolution in the economic conditions of society was not followed by any immediate corresponding change in its political structure. The state order remained feudal, while society became more and more bourgeois.” (p 132)
Wednesday, 5 March 2025
Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 4 of 6
When the working-class and its leadership fail to insist on their independence from the ruling-class, and cease fighting for its own interests, by subordinating itself to the interests of the ruling-class, based only on some moralistic conception of backing the lesser-evil, that is the inevitable result. It disqualifies itself from any say in the historical process, and as the workers in Ukraine will, now, find, as I predicted at the start of the conflict, will have fatally undermined themselves in the struggle that follows. What is more, as the world hurtles towards WWIII, and the extinction of humanity, the working-class, everywhere, has also been fundamentally undermined, by the moralising, and class-collaborationist policies of the social-imperialists, most disgracefully some of whom call themselves Trotskyists.
As Trotsky had noted in some of his last writings,
“... the facts of every passing day demonstrate to us that Zionism is incapable of resolving the Jewish question. The conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine acquires a more and more tragic and more and more menacing character. I do not at all believe that the Jewish question can be resolved within the framework of rotting capitalism and under the control of British imperialism.”
And,
“The attempt to solve the Jewish question through the migration of Jews to Palestine can now be seen for what it is, a tragic mockery of the Jewish people. Interested in winning the sympathies of the Arabs who are more numerous than the Jews, the British government has sharply altered its policy toward the Jews, and has actually renounced its promise to help them found their “own home” in a foreign land. The future development of military events may well transform Palestine into a bloody trap for several hundred thousand Jews. Never was it so clear as it is today that the salvation of the Jewish people is bound up inseparably with the overthrow of the capitalist system.”
In fact, Jews themselves arrived at the same conclusion. Despite all of the racist laws in Israel to give Jews ethno-religious privileges, only 40% of the world's Jews live in Israel, with as many living in the US. Increasingly, it is not Jews that provide the support for Zionism and its project in Israel, but Christian-Zionist zealots seeking The Second Coming, and Armageddon, and, in the US, they play a significant role within the Republican Party, along with other racists and white nationalists.
The social-imperialists abandoned class politics, and the primacy of proletarian struggle, in relation to the resolution of the problems of Jews, not only in favour of a reactionary, bourgeois nationalist solution – Zionism – which was no solution at all, and has, in reality fermented even greater anti-Semitism, the more so as the Zionists equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, but have done so, in relation to the consequence of that non-solution – the denial of rights to Palestinians. Having established the new, bourgeois Zionist state at the expense of the Palestinians, the social-imperialists then have sought to inadequately compensate the Palestinians for that consequence, by offering them the prospect of a bourgeois state on just a part of Palestine, in other words, again a bourgeois nationalist solution. But, unlike the bourgeois nationalist solution offered by Zionism, the bourgeois nationalist solution offered to Palestinians has had no chance of being fulfilled. The Palestinians have not had the backing of powerful international forces, be it at one point the USSR, and later US imperialism, that the Zionists have enjoyed.
Tuesday, 4 March 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 18 of 24
In this can be seen just how far Marx was from the views of the moralists and the welfarists, who present the false idea that bourgeois society can provide such equal right.
“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
(ibid)
The moralists and welfarists say that, currently, not providing benefits for those with more than two children, for example, is to punish the children, but it is the parents that have those children without the means to provide for them that are actually the ones inflicting that punishment. There is a difference between equality of being, which forms the basis of bourgeois ideology of free and equal individuals meeting in the market on equal terms, and which, as Marx sets out above, continues even into the first stages of Socialism, as against the concept of equality of rights. The former is a lie, but the latter, the idea that we are all equally human, and so have equal human rights is one that has played a significant role in revolutionary struggles throughout history. As set out above, for the bourgeoisie, the idea of such equal human rights, in terms of political and legal rights, was central to its revolutionary struggle against the feudal aristocracy, “and which to this day still plays an important agitational role in the socialist movement of almost every country. The establishment of its scientific content will also determine its value for proletarian agitation.” (p 129)
Thousands of years elapsed before the idea that individuals, in society, should have equal political and legal rights.
“In the oldest, primitive communities, equality of rights could apply at most to members of the community; women, slaves and strangers were excluded from this equality as a matter of course. Among the Greeks and Romans the inequalities of men were of much greater importance than any equality. It would necessarily have seemed crazy to the ancients that Greeks and barbarians, freemen and slaves, citizens and denizens, Roman citizens and Roman subjects (to use a comprehensive term) should have a claim to equal political status.” (p 130)
Many of those distinctions disappeared, other than that between freemen and slave, which was fundamental to its mode of production. The equality of freemen, as property owners, became the basis of Roman Law, “the fullest elaboration we know of law based on private property. But so long as the antithesis between freemen and slaves existed, there could be no talk of drawing legal conclusions from a general human equality; we saw this again recently, in the slave states of the North American Union.” (p 130)
Indeed, as I have noted, elsewhere, as the US sociologist, Oliver Cromwell Cox, set out, it is the fact that the bourgeoisie espouses this concept of human equality, as the basis of its ideology and bourgeois society that means, in order to rationalise the enslavement of millions in the various colonial empires, established in the 17th century and after, by mercantilism, it must develop the ideology of racism, of the idea that those subjugated are less than human.
“Christianity knew only one equality on the part of all men, that of an equal possession of original sin, which corresponded perfectly to its character as the religion of the slaves and the oppressed. Apart from this it recognised, at most, the equality of the elect, which however was only stressed at the very beginning.” (p 131)
Indeed, in The New Testament, we find the story of how Jesus saw no reason to bestow his miracles on gentiles, when it came to healing a sick child. And, the Old Testament is replete with examples of the acceptance of inequality between men and women, who, like servants and slaves, were treated as chattels.
“The traces of common ownership which are also found in the early stages of the new religion can be ascribed to solidarity among the proscribed rather than to genuine equalitarian ideas. Within a very short time the establishment of the distinction between priests and laymen put an end to even this incipient Christian equality.” (p 131)
Monday, 3 March 2025
Social-Imperialists Have Led Workers To Disaster - Part 3 of 6
It was impossible to establish the Zionist state in 1948, in Palestine, without it being “at the expense of another nation.” And, the attempt to create such a state by those violent means, could have no other result than to divide Palestinian and Jewish workers, and create the conditions for such division and violence to persist, including the extension of that division in the working-class to the working-class in the surrounding Arab states. Who benefited from that? Not only the Zionist ruling caste, resting upon the Israeli ruling-class, but, also the Arab ruling classes in those surrounding states, who could use Zionism as a convenient bogey, so as to distract from the real enemy of the workers in their own country.
“Social-Democrats must moreover bear in mind that the landowners, the clergy and the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations often cover up with nationalist slogans their efforts to divide the workers and dupe them by doing deals behind their backs with the landowners and bourgeoisie of the ruling nation to the detriment of the masses of the working people of all nations.”
And, of course, the other beneficiary was US imperialism, which not only kept the working-class divided (not only in the Middle-East, but also in the imperialist heartlands where Zionism had considerable influence within labour movements), but, also, obtained its own heavily armed encampment through which to channel its activities. As the then Senator Joe Bidden put it, “If Israel did not exist, the US would have had to create it”! Indeed, Israel largely is the creation of US imperialism, for all intents and purposes a vassal state dependent upon it, for its existence. As I noted several years ago, Ukraine's dependence on US imperialism would have the same consequence, as NATO used Ukrainian workers blood and bones as grist in the mill of its global imperialist conflict with Russian~Chinese imperialism. As with much else, Trump has simply said it out loud as he now demands his own pound of Ukrainian flesh in the form of control over vast quantities of Ukrainian minerals, and revenues.
It is also no coincidence that the favoured “solution” to the question of Palestine is the mythical “Two-State Solution”, which could only have come into existence itself if the Palestinians agreed to similarly play the role of vassals to US imperialism, though, even with Fatah, in the West Bank, largely prostrating themselves in that manner, and acting as the contracted police force of the Zionist state, it has taken them no further forward, as the process of annexation of Palestinian land and property, and extermination of Palestinians as a people has continued. For social-imperialism, the two-state solution, the creation of two new bourgeois states – Israel and Palestine – is the logical manifestation of its subordination of workers' interests to those of the bourgeoisie, with the workers being removed from any role other than as cheerleaders or cannon fodder for the solutions formulated by the world's ruling classes, which in reality means the solutions to be provided by imperialism.
And, that is most clearly being seen, now, not only with Trump's proposals for Gaza, but, also, in his proposals for Ukraine. The moralistic whining and whimpering of social-democrats and liberals that there can be no peace negotiations without the EU and Ukraine at the table is simply an exposition of their bankruptcy. Trump and Putin have carved up Ukraine between them, just as Trotsky described, in the 1930's, happened to Ukraine, and as happened in many more places, such as the carving up of China. When the wolves gather to rend the flesh of the lambs, they do not engage in discussion of it first with the lambs! Defeated Germany was excluded from the negotiations between the other imperialist powers, at Versailles, who, having carved up the world between them, simply told Germany that the war would resume unless it agreed to their terms. The same happened when, after WWII, the US, USSR, and Britain carved up the world between them, in their talks at Potsdam and Yalta, satirised in "Animal Farm", by Orwell as the pigs and humans, at the end of the book, sitting around the table together.
Sunday, 2 March 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 17 of 24
In the first examples, the specific “fuel poverty” was a consequence of consumption decisions – food or kids – whereas, in these latter examples, its a consequence of inadequate income, to cover the cost of the reproduction of labour-power. In Capital, Marx sets out the objective basis of the value of labour-power. But, as with any such commodity value, it is based on what is socially necessary labour. A yarn spinner might, as Marx describes, use gold spindles rather than steel, but cannot, thereby, recover their value in the yarn they produce. Labour-power is no different. Given the standards of the time, workers need a certain quantity and quality of food, clothing, shelter, education and so on to reproduce their labour-power. If some choose to eat more, they can do so, but it does not change the value of that labour-power, reflected in their wages. It simply means they must consume less, or cheaper types of other wage goods.
Similarly, to reproduce labour-power, parents need to produce two children. If they choose to have three, four, six or twelve children, is also up to them, but does not increase the value of their labour-power, or entitle them to have it compensated in benefits paid for out of the taxes levied on other workers' wages, who make different consumption choices. The moralists protest that that means the right to have more than two children is, then, restricted to the rich/affluent. Well, yes,just as the right to live in a mansion, to own a yacht, jet or new Ferrari is restricted to those that can afford these consumption choices! That is the way capitalism works, and as Marx set out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, it is also the way Socialism would, initially, have to work, as it emerges from bourgeois society.
“Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.
Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.”
(Marx – Critique of The Gotha Programme)
But, Marx notes the points set out above. Besides the fact that one worker is stronger, fitter etc., and so doing 8 hours of labour is easier for them than for another worker who is not so strong, or fit (i.e. whose ability to labour is less) one worker may have two children that need feeding clothing and so on, whilst the other does not. Yet, both workers would receive back from society the same equivalent of 8 hours labour, meaning that one worker has contributed less, in terms of their ability to labour, whilst the other also, receives less, relative to their needs, because they need to also provide for two children. This is only something that can be addressed, as a socialist society so raises social productivity so that an increasing proportion of the social product can be distributed on the basis of need.
Until that time,
“... it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.
But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”
(ibid)
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