Anti-Duhring, Part II Political, Economy, III – The Force Theory (Continued) - Part 8 of 10

Engels saw the elements of that process that led to increasing militarism and militarisation requiring universal conscription and military spending that ruined economies by the draining of surplus-value and potential for capital accumulation. He certainly would not have been a proponent of the nonsense of the “Left” Keynesian notions of The Permanent Arms Economy. But, it was not just that the resolution, by war, of those conflicts and creation of large, multinational states, reduces the relative amount those states must commit to the means of destruction, as a result of economies of scale. That process is similar to the unproductive costs of large companies, competing against each other, until they merge, as one company takes over the other. The military, also, experiences the same thing that other labour processes do, which is that, in order to reduce the amount of labour required, which detracts from actual production, but also creates those conditions Engels describes, of an armed and trained proletariat, it replaces military labour with fixed capital, tanks, ever larger battleships, planes, missiles and so on.

This, also, changes the nature of warfare. Hundreds of thousands of proletarians, stuck in trenches for month after month, gradually gaining the awareness that, in similar trenches, a few hundred yards away, are other workers, identical to them, and drafted into the opposing army to fight, not for their own interests, but those of their ruling class, are the conditions that lead to mutiny, to the formation of revolutionary cells within the army, and to them turning their guns on their own ruling classes, as happened in 1917. When the process of killing is immediate and personal, in that manner, it is hard not to see that that those you are killing and maiming are not only human beings, but people like your own friends and family, with their own children. That is not the case when you are simply firing shells at coordinates on a map, miles away, and still less when you are sitting in a control room firing missiles with many, many more times the killing power of the individual soldier with a rifle.

After WWII, imperialism is driven to try to pursue its ultimate logic of a global state, a global single market, but is still constrained by those existing material conditions. Even in the US, a failure to establish a fully centralised state, and, instead, to settle for a federal state, leads to continued friction between states, pursuing their own interests, and is used by reactionaries, as again witnessed with Trump. The failure, also, leads to a failure to develop truly national parties, with a common national programme, increasing the role of the individual representative. Even more is that the case with the proto-federal state in the EU. Various global, para state bodies, such as GATT/WTO, World Bank, and IMF were established, but, without an actual world state, they become either toothless, or just instruments of the dominant US imperialism, as does the UN and its agencies, again seen with the ICJ and ICC, when they seek to uphold international law, in relation to the Zionist genocide against Palestinians.

The existence of the USSR gave the impetus for US imperialism to create NATO, with its imperialist allies in Europe, but NATO is, also, dominated by US imperialism, and simply a tool for the implementation of the interests of US imperialism across the globe. As US imperialism has declined, relatively, as China and other economies have risen, the divergent interests of US imperialism and EU imperialism, become sharpened. The EU is the world's largest single market, and, thereby, despite the rapid growth of Chinese imperialism, the main competitor to US imperialism. The military is the means by which each imperialism promotes its own specific interests in the continuation of economic competition, and trade wars, by other means. Consequently, NATO, as the military expression of US interests, stands, increasingly, in contradiction to the EU, and interests of EU imperialism, whose logic drives towards the creation of its own military organisation, i.e. an EU army.

Back To Part 7

Forward To Part 8

Anti-Duhring, Part II Political, Economy, III – The Force Theory (Continued) - Part 7 of 10

Again, it is the nature of large-scale industrial capital, as opposed to the earlier mercantilism, which determines the characteristics of this imperialism, as opposed to colonialism. The US Civil War was driven by the need of the Northern states, dominated by large-scale, industrial capital, to consolidate a large, single US market, within the context of a single, centralised state, as against the continued power and influence of the individual states. It requires that single, centralised state – which it still has not fully established – in order to create a level playing field within its single market, based on a single monetary and fiscal system, uniformity of laws, standards and regulations etc., and to, thereby, erect this structure and protect it against other, external capitals.

In other words, imperialism, the dominance of large-scale, socialised, industrial capital, which requires the involvement of the state to ensure planning and regulation, continually requires the construction of ever larger single markets, in which these conditions exist, and in which it can produce and realise surplus value. It does not require colonies, spread across the globe, as sources of cheap primary products, based on slave or very low paid workers, because the basis of the cheap primary products, itself, becomes a function of the introduction of machines and fixed capital, i.e. the capitalist development of those countries.

In the post-war period, with the hegemony of US imperialism, and the expansion of US multinationals across the globe, various para state bodies were created at a global level, with a distinctly social-democratic heritage, designed for planning, regulation and “stability”, such as GATT/WTO, World Bank, IMF. The breakdown of these global para state bodies, today, is not a consequence of the rise of a multipolar world, per se, but of the fact that, they were created in a context of US hegemony, in a world run to meet US interests. It is the US that can no longer enforce its interests, and those bodies no longer simply reflect its interests, which means that it is the US, which is collapsing them. Its response to the ICC and ICJ actions against Zionist war criminals, and genocide is simply a glaring manifestation of that.

What Engels saw in the militarisation of Europe, therefore, was the manifestation of this process, in the only form it could appear, at that time, given the similar level of development of France and Germany, both of which contended for the role of bringing about the unification of a European single market and state under their domination, as well as the role of the established hegemon, Britain, which had no desire to see such a development, which would rapidly have overwhelmed it.

It is the decimation of the power of both France and Germany, resulting from those wars, at the same time that, on the one hand, US imperialism becomes hegemonic, and, on the other, the USSR rises to challenge it, that the European imperialist states are driven to establish that single market, and single multinational state, by voluntary agreement, in the form of the EU, rather than by the process of war and annexation. It was the continued and accelerating pace of decline of British imperialism, relative to these other imperialists states, in the US and EU, as well as new emerging challengers such as Japan, that led Britain to also seek salvation inside the EU, a reality that demonstrates the utter lunacy, 50 years later, of Brexit.

Back To Part 6

Forward To Part 8

Anti-Duhring, Part II Political, Economy, III – The Force Theory (Continued) - Part 6 of 10

Engels sets out the way that the Franco-Prussian War, in which two similarly equipped armies confronted each other, also, brought to an end the column formation, as the Prussians, initially, lost large numbers.

“Henceforward, the company column, too, was condemned as a battle formation, no less than the battalion column and the line; all idea of further exposing troops in any kind of close formation to enemy gun-fire was abandoned, and all subsequent fighting on the German side was conducted only in those compact bodies of skirmishers into which the columns had so far regularly dissolved of themselves under a deadly hail of bullets, although this had been opposed by the higher commands as contrary to order; and in the same way the only form of movement when under fire from enemy rifles became the double. Once again the soldier had proved shrewder than the officer; it was he who instinctively found the only way of fighting which has so far proved of service under the fire of breech-loading rifles, and in spite of his officers' resistance he carried it through successfully.” (p 217)

Engels was actually, guilty of the same error he criticised in Duhring, because he wrote,

“... weapons are now so perfected that further progress which would have any revolutionising influence is no longer possible. Once armies have guns capable of hitting a battalion at any range at which the eye can distinguish it, and rifles which are equally effective against individual men, and with which loading takes less time than aiming, all further improvements are more or less unimportant for field warfare.” (p 217)

Of course, the development took the form of trench warfare, and trench warfare, also, led to mechanical warfare, and tank battles, as well as the use of, first, balloons and, then, aircraft, which itself, then, shifts the location of warfare from the battlefield to the towns and cities. Even with the rifle, it was no longer just what the eye could see, but what could be seen via a telescopic sight and so on.

The Franco-Prussian War had led nations to “introduce the Prussian Landwehr system in a stricter form, and with it a military burden which must bring them to ruin within a few years. The army has become the main purpose of the state, and an end in itself; the peoples are there only to provide soldiers and feed them. Militarism dominates and is swallowing Europe.” (p 218)

Engels was, of course, glimpsing the future that unfolded in WWI and II, as he also alludes to in notes in Capital III. But, that militarism that gripped the European states, resulting in WWI and II, just as with the Franco-Prussian War and the US Civil War, was, itself, just a manifestation of the fact that, by the latter half of the 19th century, capitalism had outgrown the nation states, which it had, itself created, as its minimum adequate form. Just as the monopoly of private capital had become a fetter on the further development of capital that was burst asunder by the development of large-scale, socialised capital, so too the nation state had become a fetter on the further development of capital, and had to be burst asunder by imperialism and the creation of larger single markets, encompassed by the creation of new multinational states.

When the component states are no longer fighting each other, the need for such a large military is reduced, which is why, following the creation of the EU, European states were able to reduce their spending on militarism, other than what they had to contribute to support the global imperialist objectives of US imperialism, as developed via NATO. That, however, shows the evolution, as these new multinational states, eventually, are led to posit their own global imperialist interests against those of other similar imperialist states. The increased military spending, now, proposed by the EU, is presented as simply it responding to US pressure inside NATO, but it is, really, the inevitable consequence of the interests of EU imperialism diverging from those of US imperialism. The larger, multinational state, also, engages, thereby, in a sort of economies of scale in its military. It is, however, still a huge waste of resources, and diversion of surplus value away from capital accumulation, which undermines potential growth.

Back To Part 5

Forward To Part 7

Bank Of England Rate Cut Is Irrelevant

Last week's 25 basis point cut in the Bank of England's overnight lending rate is irrelevant window-dressing.

In terms of the real economy it is insignificant and meaningless. The stated argument behind such a measure is that it encourages consumers to spend rather than save, and encourages firms to invest (actual investment, i.e. buying additional machines, labour-power etc., rather than speculation, i.e. buying shares and other financial assets). The fallacy of that can be seen in the fact that, during the 1980's and 90's, interest rates were falling, but the consequence was not to stimulate such real economic activity, but to encourage speculation. Cheap credit meant that asset prices rose, and as asset prices rose, be it share prices, bond prices, or property prices, that simply encouraged even more of that cheap credit to flood into the purchase of those assets for fear of missing out. It created the asset price bubbles of the period after 1987, and their consequent bursting.

In the last 20 years, following the 2008 financial crash, we have had not just low interest rates, but near zero interest rates, and even negative real interest rates, when the effects of inflation are taken into consideration. Did that lead to a rush of consumption spending, and real capital accumulation? No, it led only to a further diversion of that liquidity into the purchase of existing financial and property assets, blowing up those asset price bubbles all over again. The only time we have seen increased liquidity go into a stimulation of actual consumption and real investment, is during lockdowns, and that was not a consequence of a reduction in Bank of England rates, but of the state physically handing currency to households. The further reason that led to a stimulation of economic activity is that, during lockdowns, those households could not spend money on various forms of consumption, and when that changed with the ending of lockdowns, they saw a consequent inflation - just as previous liquidity had created asset price inflation – which led them to try to buy before prices rose further.

Even then, the main effect in that last regard was in relation to larger purchases, such as cars. The reality is that for the vast bulk of day to day consumption, households rely not on credit, but on their own revenues, i.e. wages, rents, interest, profits. Although many households may use a credit card as a convenient way of paying for the weekly shop, the reality is that its not borrowing, because a large part of that is simply paid off, in full, at the end of the month, thereby, just taking advantage of a month of free credit, rather than using a debit card, or cash. Its unaffected by interest rates. For those who are in such desperate conditions that they do need to borrow just to pay for day to day consumption, they are already paying usurious rates to do so. Just look at the rates on credit cards, if you don't pay it off each month. If you are so desperate that you are paying 30% plus to buy necessities using a credit card, a 25 basis point cut by the Bank of England is not going to encourage you to buy more, and nor is it going to have any material impact on your debt payments. And, of course, other forms of credit are even more usurious than that.

If the state wanted to encourage additional consumption, the more effective means of doing so, therefore, would be to raise wages, in particular the minimum age. Its out of those wages that the vast majority pay for their day to day consumption, not from borrowing. A rise in the Minimum Wage, particular setting a Minimum Weekly Wage, would increase the revenues of specifically those workers who will use it to fund their day to day consumption, rather than them having to rely on food banks, or usurious credit. It would, also, facilitate a reduction in government spending, because with such higher minimum wages, the state would have less need to pay out benefits, such as Housing Benefit, and so on.

Of course, the state does not like to go down the road of such solutions, because higher relative wages means lower relative profits. Higher household incomes from higher wages, creates higher demand for wage goods. As Marx sets out in Value, Price and Profit, this higher demand for wage goods, then, means that firms, competing for this increased demand, have to increase their own spending, to increase their supply. They must buy additional machines, materials, and employ additional labour-power. The latter acts to push wages higher still. And, although these higher wages mean that firms' rate of profit falls, they still have to invest or lose market share. Indeed, although their rate of profit and relative profits overall, may fall, the increase in the mass of capital, results in a greater mass of profit.

What it does mean is that as firms invest to meet this rising demand, at the same time that relative profits fall, a greater proportion of their realised profits are retained to finance this investment. Less of them go into the money market, so the supply of loanable money-capital relatively declines, at the same time as the demand for it rises, to finance capital accumulation in general. Interest rates would, then, rise. But, that rise in interest rates would cause asset prices to fall. Falling asset prices, mean that the incentive to buy those assets, for fear of missing out, disappears, and so the dynamic of the last 40 years, in which liquidity has been sucked out of the real economy into that speculation, in order to inflate the paper wealth of the ruling class, which, today, owns its wealth in that form, would be undermined. Instead of realised profits going to buy back shares, and so on, the money would go to buy new factories, machines, materials and employ additional workers, stimulating real economic growth.

But, that is precisely why the state and central banks resist such a solution, because their goal is not economic expansion, but a protection of the interests of the ruling-class, and currently, that interest is inextricably tied to a maintenance, and preferably an inflation of the price of assets. The Bank of England's rate cut has nothing to do with stimulating economic activity, but only with trying to maintain asset prices. Even, in that regard it is irrelevant. As set out earlier, borrowing is only relevant in terms of larger purchases, such as cars, and notably houses. Its unlikely that this cut is going to stimulate domestic car demand in any meaningful way, and certainly not enough to offset the reduction in UK car exports to the US, resulting from Trump's tariffs. The best way of offsetting the effects of the latter, is via an expansion of the European domestic market, but Britain is also cut off from that, as a result of the idiotic Brexit decision, and the even more idiotic insistence of Starmer and Blue Labour to persist with it.

The consequence in relation to houses has been described previously. Cuts in interest rates do not act to stimulate additional supply of housing and construction. Lower interest rates cause asset prices to rise, as a result of capitalisation. In addition, lower interest rates that lead to lower mortgage rates leads to higher demand for existing houses. It is existing houses that account for around 85% of all transactions. The higher demand causes the prices of those houses to rise, and that forms the basis upon which builders then set the prices of the houses they build, even if the actual costs of building houses (materials, labour costs and so on) fall. That means surplus profits, which are extracted by landowners as rents/higher land prices. So, ironically, the effect of lower interest rates is to reduce the potential for increased house building and supply, even as it causes the demand for houses to rise!

But, in fact, the 25 basis point cut is unlikely to have any impact on demand either. Many house-buyers, now, have fixed rate mortgages, so a cut will not impact them. Others who have fixed rates that are coming to an end, fixed them five years ago, potentially at lower rates than they will now face.

All in all an irrelevant event.

Anti-Duhring, Part II Political, Economy, III – The Force Theory (Continued) - Part 5 of 10

In the American Revolution, the bourgeois nationalists were supported by France, in the form of Lafayette. On his return to France, Lafayette, himself, becomes a part of the revolutionary, bourgeois forces that overthrew the old feudal regime, just the Americans had done, in relation to Britain. This also shows just how facile and dishonest are those arguments of the social-imperialists, who have used the example of the involvement of aristocratic France in support of the American revolutionaries, to justify their support for the involvement of NATO imperialism in various conflicts, as in Libya, Iraq and so on. At no time did France have a controlling role in the American Revolution, as US imperialism/NATO insists upon, and exercises due to its overwhelming military power. Even then, 20% of the American revolutionaries, in Congress voted against an alliance with France, correctly fearing that they would simply exchange one tyranny for another.

“The French Revolution completed and in the military sphere too what the American Revolution had begun. It too could oppose to the well-trained mercenary armies of the Coalition only poorly trained masses but in large numbers, the levy of the entire nation. But these masses had to protect Paris, that is, to hold a definite area, and for this purpose victory in open mass battle was essential. Mere skirmishes were not enough; a form had to be found to make use of large masses and this form was discovered in the column.” (p 215)

This brings the need to reorganise the army itself, into independent divisions, which is later extended in combing the army with the navy and, later, air force. In turn, the need to coordinate these independent services requires a new structure above them.

“The revolutionary system of arming the whole people was soon restricted to conscription (with substitution for the rich, who paid for their release) and in this form it was adopted by most of the large states on the Continent. Only Prussia attempted through its Landwehr system, to draw to a greater extent on the military strength of the nation. Prussia was also the first state to equip its whole infantry—after the rifled muzzle-loader, which had been improved between 1830 and 1860 and found fit for use in war, had played a brief role—with the most up-to-date weapon, the rifled breech-loader. Its successes in 1866 were due to these two innovations.” (p 216)

Engels had set out, in his discussion of the Prussian Military Question, that universal conscription was the corollary of universal suffrage. If the entire people, the majority of whom are increasingly proletarians, are to have the vote, how are they to ensure that the outcome of that vote is implemented other than by themselves enforcing it, arms in hand. Of course, that is not the desire of the bourgeoisie, who, just in case all of the firewalls erected by bourgeois-democracy, to prevent the election of a socialist government, are breached, wants to be able to cast the façade of that democracy aside, and use its army to ensure its continued rule.

In the US, where the popular militia was a symbol of its popular revolution, and was written into its constitution, in The Second Amendment, the bourgeoisie, once established, quickly undermined it, and created a standing army. The Second Amendment, intended to guarantee the continuation of such an armed popular militia, has, instead, become just a basis for individual gun ownership by all sorts of crackpots and criminals.

In place of universal conscription, and military training, which is only introduced when countries are engaged in large-scale, inter-imperialist wars, bourgeois states have created professional armies, small in size, but with strict hierarchical organisation and discipline. They are more akin to the old organisation based upon mercenaries, as the foot soldiers are largely economic conscripts and lumpen elements drawn from depressed areas, whilst the NCO's are, usually, drawn from the middle-class layers, whilst the top brass continue to be drawn from the ranks of the ruling-class. The ruling-class continue to be able to exclude themselves from anything that involves actual fighting, as seen during conscription in the US, in the Vietnam War.

As is also seen, the imperialist states have also reverted to the use of mercenaries on a wider scale, as they utilise other states to engage in proxy wars on their behalf, as now seen in Ukraine and the Middle-East, and previously, the use of Iraq to attack Iran, in the 1980's. The use of various criminal gangs, as in El Salvador and Nicaragua, the KLA in Kosovo, has also been developed, often connected with the use of drug trafficking, as with the Iran-Contra Scandal. The same was true with US support for the Mujaheddin, and Bin Laden in Afghanistan. The use of Islamist gangs has also been a feature of more recent US policy in Libya, and Syria, channelled via the CIA, and US allies in the Gulf Monarchies.

Back To Part 4

Forward To Part 6

Anti-Duhring, Part II Political, Economy, III – The Force Theory (Continued) - Part 4 of 10

In fact, the growing dominance of industrial capital, and its creation of surplus value, in production, is what determines the characteristic features of imperialism, as against those of the mercantilism and colonialism that preceded it. As Marx notes, in The Poverty of Philosophy, without slavery in the US, cheap, plentiful supplies of cotton would not have been available, and the Industrial Revolution, in Britain, based upon textile production, would not have happened. But, that slavery had its day, and became not only unnecessary, but an impediment. It wasn't altruism that led to its abolition, rather it died out, because it was no longer economic.

As soon as slave labour can be replaced by wage-labour, using machines, slavery dies out. But, the use of machines, and wage-labour, in cotton production, as with any other kind of production, means a different mode of production has arisen, and that was true across all of the colonies too, where the old forms of agriculture and other production gave way to machine production, and wage-labour. As in the developed economies, it was, now, industrial capital that was becoming dominant, was producing increasing amounts of relative surplus value, and formed the basis of capitalist exploitation.

Marx noted that, in Britain, despite wages being 50% higher than in Europe, British textiles were continually cheaper than those produced in Europe, and British profits were also higher. The reason for that was that British textile labour was fare more productive, as a result of being backed by a much greater quantity of, and more advanced, machinery and fixed capital. What is true of that manufacturing is true of primary production too. When agricultural workers in the colonies are supplemented by increasing levels of mechanisation, it is this higher level of productivity that reduces the unit value of these primary products, not the fact that they are produced by slaves, or very low paid workers, and the use of those machines, also, itself, changes the nature of the labour required. So, the advantages of colonial empires, which also had to be administered and policed, increasingly diminished, because the capitalist development, within them, itself reduced the value of primary products used in manufacture.

What is more, particularly after WWII, it is the US, which is the epitome of this dominance of industrial capital, and it has an incentive to break up all of those old European colonial empires, and their outmoded protectionism and restrictions. But, its interest is not primarily access to the cheap primary products, or the ability to export its commodities to them – though that remains a function of them – it is rather to be able to export capital itself (i.e. the social relation between capital and wage-labour), to establish its own production in those economies, via the growth of US multinational corporations, and, thereby, to exploit large masses of available labour. Its interest is that of industrial capital, the production and maximisation of surplus value, as against the interests of mercantilism to maximise the appropriation of that surplus value via unequal exchange. It is these changed economic relations that determine the characteristics of imperialism, as against those of colonialism, which, like slavery dies out, as its time and function had passed.

Engels also describes the way it is not only in industry that the introduction of machines requires a different type of worker, and new relations of production, but also applies to the military. The infantryman that uses a flintlock and bayonet is different to the one who previously marched only with a pike staff, and all of the equipment requires the creation of a new type of soldier – the corps of engineers – as well as new tactics and formations.

“The foot soldiers were then the mercenaries of princes; they were rigorously drilled but quite unreliable and only held together by the rod; they were recruited from among the most demoralised elements in society and often from enemy prisoners of war who had been pressed into service. The only type of fighting in which these soldiers could apply the new weapons was the tactics of the line, which reached its highest perfection under Frederick II.” (p 214)

This formation could only move forward very slowly, and that on level ground. Its demise came with the American War of Independence. The Americans had rifled guns, which were more accurate, and they attacked the exposed lines of British infantry, using skirmishing tactics, hiding in small groups in the woods, as they were used to doing as hunters. As revolutionary nationalists, they were fighting for their own interests, and so, not prone to running away, as were the mercenaries that made up the foot soldiers of other armies at that time. The same thing was seen in the guerrilla tactics used by the Maoists in China, Vietnam and elsewhere.

Back To Part 3

Forward To Part 5

Saturday Night Northern Soul (3)