Dancing with dynamite (2010)

Book Review from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dancing with dynamite. Social movements and the State in Latin America. By Benjamin Dangl. AK Press. $12.

Anarchists and anti-parliamentarists are always pointing to the overthrow of Allende in Chile in 1973 as an example of how the ruling class will not accept defeat at the polls, not even by leftwing reformists let alone by the election of a majority of socialist MPs.

They are behind the times. The last 15 or so years have seen the election and survival of leftwing presidents in a number of South American countries (Bolivia, Venezuela, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay and even Paraguay), some of them with programmes more radical than Allende’s. There was indeed an attempt to overthrow one of them (Chavez in Venezuela in 2002) but this failed due to popular resistance and the refusal of the armed forces to back it.

Of course this doesn’t show that the ruling class might not stage a coup in the event of a socialist election victory, but it does rather undermine the argument that elections can never be a way to win control of political power.

In this book, brought out by an anarchist publishing house, Dangl examines the relationship – the “dance” – between “social movements” (in favour of land rights, legalising factory occupations, getting amenities in shanty towns) and the elected leftwing governments. He argues that the social movements should not put up candidates themselves nor let themselves be dominated by leftwing parties; instead, they should maintain their independence and continue to employ “direct action” to try to get what they want.

However, he is unable to take up a strict anti-parliamentarist stance because he can’t deny the logic of the movements preferring a government that will help them to leaving political power in the hands of those opposed to their aims. None of the movements have, as Dangl is obliged to record, adopted this stance but have voted and even campaigned for the leftwing presidents.

The case for a mass socialist movement not taking electoral action is just as weak since this would be to leave the apparatus of the state in enemy hands. A socialist movement is no more likely to do this than the present-day social movements in South America have.

Adam Buick

Marx and Engels and the 'Collapse' of Capitalism (1969)

From the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1786, three years before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Gracchus Babeuf wrote:

"The majority is always on the side of routine and immobility, so much is it unenlightened, encrusted, apathetic . . . Those who do not want to move forward are the enemies of those who do, and unhappily it is the mass which persists stubbornly in never budging at all."

The events of 1789 disproved his gloomy predictions but, by the time Babeuf became prominent, the reaction was already setting in. His slogan of "The revolution is not finished, because the rich absorb ail wealth and rule exclusively, while the poor work like veritable slaves, languishing in poverty and counting for nothing in the State" was not taken up by the peasants and artisans. Faced with this, Babeuf and his followers planned an insurrection in which they would seize power, constitute themselves as the 'Insurrectionary Committee of Public Safety', crush all opposition and — only then — introduce democracy. It was this method of conspiracy and coup d'etat which became the standard technique for 19th-century insurrectionaries such as Blanqui and which formed the inspiration for their innumerable secret societies and abortive rebellions.

From the start, Marx and Engels were scathing about this concept of revolution. For them it was self-evident that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself" and that, in any case, "revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily" as the plotters imagined.

"It goes without saying that these conspirators by no means confine themselves to organising the revolutionary proletariat. Their business consists in forestalling the process of revolutionary development, spurring it in to artificial crises, making revolutions extempore without the conditions for revolution. For them the only condition required for the revolution is a sufficient organisation of their own conspiracy. They are the alchemists of the revolution." [See here.]

Yet, however devastating the attack which Marx might make on the Blanquists and others, in one aspect he and Engels were in a very weak position. If they maintained that it was the entire working class which would be responsible for establishing socialism, how would they square this with the obvious fact that the mass of workers still gave every sign of being as "unenlightened, encrusted, apathetic" as they had been in Babeuf's time? To counter this, Marx and Engels fell back on the theory that it was the crisis in capitalist production which would galvanise the masses into revolutionary activity.

Even in their earliest writings both Marx and Engels attached great importance to crises: but over the years their observations caused them to modify their ideas, especially in relation to the business cycle. In his Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (Deutsche-Franzosische Jahrbucher. 1844) Engels mentioned that slumps occur every five to seven years, "just as regularly as the great plagues did in the past". He repeated this in Principles of Communism (1847) while, in the Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845), there are references to five-year and five to six-year cycles. Marx held similar views during this period. for in an Address on Free Trade delivered in Brussels in 1848 he drew attention to "the average period of from six to seven years — a period of time during which modern industry passes through the various phases of prosperity, overproduction, stagnation, crisis and completes its inevitable cycle". At the same time they both expected crises to become "more frequent and more violent" Wage Labour and Capital. Marx. 1847) and "more serious and more universal" (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy Engels. 1844).

Ten-year cycle

By the time Marx came to publish Capital (Volume I. 1867) he was writing that "the course characteristic of modern industry" was "a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscillations" — and adding that as accumulation advanced the "irregular oscillations" would follow each other more and more quickly. This perspective was echoed by Engels in most of his writings in the 1870s and early 80s as well. (See Dialectics of Nature. Anti-Duhring (1878), articles in the Labour Standard (1881), for example). Although Engels continued to put this line for some time after Marx's death (see his letter to Kautsky. November 8 1884) there was a new development during his last ten years in that more and more he came to maintain that an era of chronic stagnation had overwhelmed capitalism. As early as January 1884 in a letter to Bebel (January 18 1884), he wrote that "the ten-year cycle seems to have broken down" and, that same year, he made a similar point — although more hesitantly — in his Preface to Marx's Poverty of Philosophy:

"The period of general prosperity proceeding the crisis still fails to appear. If it should fail altogether, then chronic stagnation would necessarily become the normal condition of modern industry, with only insignificant fluctuations."

From then until his death in 1895 his writings were full of references to "permanent and chronic depression" (Preface to the English edition of Capital, Volume I. 1886), to the "chronic state of stagnation in all dominant branches of industry" (Preface to the English edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England. 1892) and to "chronic overproduction, depressed prices, falling or disappearing profits" (Capital, Volume III, 1894).

Parallel to this development of their ideas on the business cycle, Marx's and Engels' theories on the relationship between crises and revolution also went through a number of phases. As we have seen, in their early writings both held that the crises in capitalist production would become "more frequent and more violent". But, if this is seen as an absolute tendency, it must mean that eventually capitalism will be brought to a point where it can no longer recover. At any rate, this was certainly Engels' interpretation of the trends taking place in the 1840s and he repeatedly implied that crises would produce a revolution independently of the level of socialist consciousness reached by the working class:

Every new crisis must be more serious and more universal than the last. Every fresh slump must ruin more small capitalists and increase the workers who live only by their labour. This will increase the number of the unemployed and this is the main problem that worries economists. In the end commercial crises will lead to a social revolution far beyond the comprehension of the economists with their scholastic wisdom. (Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, 1844.) 

The revolution must come; it is already too late to bring about a peaceful solution: but it can be made more gentle than that prophesied in the foregoing pages. This depends, however, more upon the development of the proletariat than upon that of the bourgeoisie. In proportion, as the proletariat absorbs socialistic and communistic elements, will the revolution diminish in bloodshed, revenge, and savagery. (Condition of the Working Class in England, 1845).

Thus, although the extent to which socialist ideas had penetrated the working class might be important in influencing the revolution which Engels thought he saw emerging in England, that was the limit of their role. In both these works, it is the increase in misery of the workers which Engels stresses as the vital factor in the development of their revolutionary activity — rather than their growing understanding of socialism as an alternative method of organising society to capitalism. This contrasts sharply with some of Marx's writings of the same period, where he puts all his emphasis on the spread of socialist concepts among the working class:

"It is true that, in its economic development, private property advances towards its own dissolution; but it only does this through a development which is independent of itself, unconscious and achieved against its will — solely because it produces the proletariat as proletariat, poverty conscious of its moral and physical poverty, degradation conscious of its degradation, and for this reason trying to abolish itself." (Holy Family, 1845.)

In fact, socialist consciousness was considered of such vital importance by Marx that he grossly exaggerated its depth and extent

"There is no need to dwell here upon the fact that a large part of the English and French proletariat is already conscious of its historical task and is constantly working to develop that consciousness into complete clarity." [In 1845!]

The upheavals in France, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe in 1848, however, had a profound influence on Marx, and for a time at any rate his enthusiasm got the better of him and he was evidently prepared to suspend his former commitment to socialist consciousness. His writings of this period suggest that it is the commercial crisis and the resulting hardship of the workers which are the critical factors in inducing the working class to turn to revolution. The articles he wrote for the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in 1850 all revolve around the axiom that "crises produce revolution", and since the revolutionary tide had by then ebbed away, that "a new revolution is only possible as a result of a new crisis". Naturally, Engels' earlier ideas readily accommodated themselves to this new development in Marx's thought and together they wrote:

"With this general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop as luxuriantly as is at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can be no talk of a real revolution. Such a revolution is only possible in periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms, come in collision with each other."

This was the line they they were to take throughout the 1850s. Living in exile in London and Manchester, they anxiously searched for any signs of the next crisis — and oscillated between wild optimism and more justified impatience in time with the fluctuations in world trade. In September 1852 Engels is writing to Marx that "with the the temporary prosperity ... the workers (in France) seem to have become completely bourgeois after all. It will take a severe chastisement by crises if they are to become good for anything again soon." By April 1853, however. "Europe is admirably prepared; it needs only the spark of a crisis". (Engels to Weydemeyer). When the required spark didn't materialise he became more cautious but in 1857, when a crisis really did develop, they were both certain that "now our time is coming". As early as September 1856, Marx had recognised the symptoms of the approaching disruption in industry and had written to Engels: "This time, moreover, the thing is on a European scale never reached before and I do not think we shall be able to sit here as spectators much longer". The following year, in the midst of the crisis, he is "working like mad all through the nights at putting my economic studies together so that I may at least have the outlines clear before the deluge comes." (Letter to Engels, December 8, 1857). Meanwhile Engels was maintaining that a really chronic crisis would be needed to stir the workers into revolution since "the masses must have got damned lethargic after such long prosperity" (Engels to Marx, November 15, 1857). When trade started to pick up again at the end of December 1857 both of them were sadly disappointed and, a year later, we find Engels returning to a familiar theme: "The English proletariat is 'becoming more and more bourgeois".

The crisis of 1857 and its failure to evoke a revolutionary response from the working class had a big impact on Marx. So when he came to publish Capital (Volume I, 1867), although he outlined the cycle of modern industry as "a series of periods of moderate activity, prosperity, over¬production, crisis and stagnation", there were no references to revolution automatically arising from this sequence. But if Marx seems to have largely shaken himself free of his former romantic notions, they remained well in evidence in Engel's writings. Anti-Duhring (1878) in particular was as outspoken in its commitment to the idea that capitalism would 'collapse' as any of his earlier works had been.

"... this mode of production (capitalism), by virtue of its own development, drives towards the point at which it makes itself impossible."

Anticipating Rosa Luxemburg, Engels wrote that "if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place" and that the working class would be "forced to accomplish this revolution", "under penalty of its own destruction". Crises, then, were still seen as "means of compelling the social revolution".

Until the early 1880s Engels's ideas on crises and revolution hardly showed any advance on those he had held 30 years before. This is made clear enough by a letter he wrote to Bernstein in January 1882.

"That crises are one of the most powerful levels of revolutionary upheaval was already stated in The Communist Manifesto and was treated in detail up to 1848 inclusive in the review in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, where, however, it was shown too that returning prosperity also breaks revolutions and lays the basis for the victory of reaction."

But after Marx's death in 1883, with Engels deciding that capitalism might well be entering a phase of chronic stagnation with correspondingly less chance of acute crises occurring, his emphasis naturally shifted from the earlier concept of a crisis-provoked revolution to the view that the capitalist system would be driven into an economic impasse. Thus in his preface to the first German edition of Marx's Poverty of Philosophy (1884) he refers to "the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever greater degree". Four years later, in his introduction to Marx's Address on Free Trade, he writes that society will be "brought to a deadlock, out of which there is no escaping but by a complete remodelling of the economic structure which forms its basis".

Engels's correspondence during his last ten years is also an interesting record of his tendency to imagine that capitalism would 'collapse'. In a letter to J. P. Becker in June 1885 he assessed the political currents at work in England and concluded that "the masses will turn socialist here too. Industrial over-production will do the rest". As late as 1893, in a letter to Danielson (February 24, 1893), he is still convinced that there are "economic consequences of the capitalist system which must bring it up to the critical point", that "the crisis must come".

Yet although at times during this final period of his life, Engels was to foreshadow the determinism of the leaders of the Second International on this question, at others he came near to the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties. As we have shown, as long as Marx was alive, it was he rather than Engels who emphasised the need for socialist consciousness as a precondition for the overthrowing of capitalism by the working class. But with Marx dead, Engels seems to have become aware of the need to stress this himself. Although he could not free himself entirely from the ideas which had dominated his thinking on revolution for over 40 years, yet he could also write that:

"... the old bourgeois society might still vegetate on for a while, so long as a shove from outside does not bring the whole ramshackle old building crashing down. A rotten old casing like this can survive its inner essential death for a few decades, if the atmosphere is undisturbed. So I should be very cautious about prophesying such a thing" (the collapse of bourgeois society). (Letter to Bebel, October 24, 1891).

When this is coupled with other statements he was to make, to the effect that "where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul" (Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France, 1895), one gets an entirely different slant from that conveyed in some of his other writings.

This study of the attitude of Marx and Engels towards crises and the concept of capitalism 'collapsing' shows, then, the extent to which they were influenced by the various phases which capitalism passed through in 19th-century Europe. If we have outlined some of the mistaken attitudes they adopted this is not to detract from the immense contributions they made to socialist thought. What it does mean, however, is that it was left to other socialists to produce a more penetrating analysis of the role of crises in capitalist production. What was most useful in their work on this topic was later summed up in the pamphlet Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse which the Socialist Party published in 1932:

"Until a sufficient number of workers are prepared to organise politically for the conscious purpose of ending capitalism, that system will stagger on indefinitely from one crisis to another."

John Crump

Material World: Beyond “peak oil” – dirty oil (2010)

The Material World Column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is widely held that the world has reached or possibly passed “peak oil” – the point beyond which oil production is expected to decline. Some suggest that “peak gas” is likely to follow within a few years, while two recent reports claim that even “peak coal” too might be reached by 2025 (energybulletin.net/node/29919). If so, 20 years from now all three hydrocarbons may be in decline.

This is good news, isn’t it? Doesn’t it force the capitalists to switch to cleaner and less harmful sources of energy?

Yes, market forces will push things in this direction, but not very fast. It is projected that even in 2040 oil production will have fallen only to half its current level (peakoil.com). The normal functioning of capitalism will take several decades to complete the transition – much too late to prevent climatic catastrophe.

But there is worse. The main near-term prospect is rapid expansion in “non-conventional” oil extraction from oil sand (or tar sand), oil shale and deep-water offshore deposits. These forms of “dirty” oil are far more damaging to the environment even than the ordinary kind.

A barren moonscape
Oil sand is a thick mixture consisting of 10 percent bitumen (crude oil), 85 percent sand, clay and silt, and 5 percent water. Its first commercial exploitation is proceeding in the Athabasca region of northern Alberta, Canada. This entails removing it from the ground and delivering it to initial processing plants. The output of these “upgraders” is pumped through pipelines to refineries in various parts of the US for further processing. The US already imports more oil from Canada than from any other country.

As Antonia Juhasz says in The Tyranny of Oil (Harper 2008, pp. 291-2), “millions of acres of boreal [subarctic] forest have been transformed into a barren moonscape. Mammoth, lumbering creatures of steel have replaced the wildlife. The machines work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, ripping vast open pits into the earth, up to 3 miles wide and 200 feet deep. Among the machinery is the world’s biggest dump truck, which stands three stories high.” (See also: Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, Greystone Books 2008; National Geographic, March 2009 for photos; onearth.org/node/2243.)

Fort McMurray, the centre of the industry, attracts workers from Canada’s depressed Maritime Provinces and from as far away as India and China. The pay is high, but so is the cost of living. And so is the level of pollution – even higher than in China’s cities. Many die before their time of cancer or lung disease.

Cooking rocks
Oil shale is a type of rock that when crushed and heated to 430˚ C. releases a solid material called kerogen that yields a heavy oil. There are vast deposits of oil shale in the Green River Formation (GRF), which mostly lies under public lands in the western American states of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The rock is mined from deep below the surface, hauled, crushed, and then “cooked” in huge furnaces or “retorts”. However, Shell is working on a new technology to cook the shale in the ground, using electric resistor heaters like those in your toaster, so that the oil can be extracted in liquid form (Juhasz, pp. 296--318).

Oil sand and oil shale still account for under 10 percent of global oil extraction, but this proportion will increase as new deposits are opened to exploitation and conventional oil production declines. The Orinoco oil sands in Venezuela contain at least as much oil as those in Alberta; other countries, such as Trinidad and Madagascar, have smaller deposits. Australia has a substantial amount of oil shale and a processing facility in Queensland.

Being very costly, extraction from oil sand and oil shale is only profitable when oil prices are sufficiently high. This is why operations in the GRF in the 1960s and 1970s were abandoned, only to be resumed in recent years. Unfortunately, continuing high demand for oil and its declining supply is likely to keep prices high.

Impact on global warming
We all know that hydrocarbons are the worst energy source in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the production and consumption of oil from these non-conventional sources has a much greater total impact on atmospheric greenhouse gas levels even than the use of conventional hydrocarbon sources. Producing a barrel of oil from oil sand is estimated to emit about three times as much greenhouse gas as producing the same barrel by conventional means, largely due to the massive amounts of energy needed to mine, transport, upgrade and refine the oil sand. Another factor is the loss of carbon sink from permanent stripping of the boreal forest. Despite claims to the contrary, the forest is not and cannot be reclaimed after the oil sand is extracted.

Offshore drilling for oil or gas in water deeper than 150 metres – and many rigs drill in much greater depths than this – also adds to global warming, because it releases methane into the atmosphere from methane hydrates (ice-methane compounds) on the seabed. Methane is a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Despite all the talk about the need to do something about global warming, despite all the policy strategies, emissions targets and ingenious incentive schemes, governments have failed to constrain the extraction of dirty oil. If even this energy source, the most harmful of all, cannot be ruled off limits, then what can be the purpose of those strategies, targets and schemes? Presumably only to conceal the helpless complicity of governments in face of the blind and relentless drive of capital to expand.

Stefan

Rosa Luxemburg and the Collapse of Capitalism (1969)

From the January 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fifty years ago on 6th January began the hopeless Spartakist rising against the Social Democrat government of Germany. It led to the brutal murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, two well-known and courageous opponents of the first world slaughter. Luxemburg, as an opponent of both reformism and Bolshevism who understood the worldwide and democratic nature of socialism, had views on many subjects near to those of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. However, there were certain basic differences between our views and hers. The following article discusses one of them: the collapse of capitalism.

(1) Rosa Luxemburg was murdered on January 15 1919. Her head was first smashed in with the butt of a soldier's rifle and she was then dumped in the Landwehr Canal. With her death, the uprising of the Spartakus Bund in Berlin collapsed—as it had been doomed to do all along. In fact, the real tragedy of this affair was not its brutality but the waste of it all. Why had Luxemburg allowed herself to become involved in such a useless adventure in the first place?

The only adequate explanation seems to lay in her conviction that capitalism had been driven to an impasse, that its internal contradictions had brought it to the point of breaking down. Speaking to the founding congress of the Communist Party of Germany on 3Oth December 1918, she had outlined her analysis of the current situation:

"I need hardly say that no serious thinker has ever been inclined to fix upon a definite date for the collapse of capitalism; but after the failures of 1848, the day for that collapse seemed to lie in the distant future. We are now in a position to cast up the account, and we are able to see that the time has really been short in comparison with that occupied by the sequence of class struggles throughout history... what has the war left of bourgeois society beyond a gigantic rubbish heap? Formally, of course, all the means of production and most of the instruments of power, practically all the decisive instruments of power, are still in the hands of the dominant classes. We are under no illusions here. But what our rulers will be able to achieve with the powers they possess, over and above frantic attempts to re-establish their system of spoliation through blood and slaughter, will be nothing more than chaos. Matters have reached such a pitch that today mankind is faced with two alternatives: it may perish amid chaos, or it may find salvation in socialism …. Socialism is inevitable, not merely because the proletarians are no longer willing to live under the conditions imposed by the capitalist class, but, further, because if the proletariat fail to fulfil its duties as a class, if it fails to realise socialism, we shall crash down together to a common doom."

This was not a new idea, which Rosa Luxemburg had suddenly come up with in 1918. The implication that at some time capitalism would almost mechanically collapse had run like a thread through her writings over the previous twenty years. At the time of the revisionist controversy, she had used this as one of her main weapons against Bernstein and his supporters. Bernstein had written in Neue Zeit that "with the growing development of society a complete and almost general collapse of the present system of production becomes more and more improbable because capitalist development increases on the one hand the capacity of adaptation and, on the other—that is at the same time—the differentiation of industry." The development of the credit system, of employers' organisations, improved means of communication and information services were all tending to stabilise capitalism suggested Bernstein. Quite apart from his other heresies, Luxemburg was especially indignant about this because it seemed to her that the revisionists were undermining one of the "fundamental supports of scientific socialism". Hitting back in her Reform or Revolution (1899), she put what she took to be the orthodox position:

"Socialist theory up to now declared that the point of departure for a transformation to socialism would be a general and catastrophic crisis…. The fundamental idea consists of the affirmation that capitalism, as a result of its own inner contradictions moves toward a point when it will be unbalanced, when it will simply become impossible . . . Bernstein began his revision of the Social Democracy by abandoning the theory of capitalist collapse. The latter, however, is the corner stone of scientific socialism. Rejecting it, Bernstein also rejects the whole doctrine of socialism . . . Without the collapse of capitalism the expropriation of the capitalist class is impossible."

It ought to be mentioned that Luxemburg is here overstating her case, since Bernstein was not disputing the theory that the capitalist system could collapse but merely suggesting that in practice this possibility had been eliminated by the modifications which capitalism had undergone. However the failure of a major crisis to develop during the years before the First World War served to make the left wing of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) more adamant than ever that capitalism's breakdown was on the way. This was one of the main points which Luxemburg set out to demonstrate in her principal theoretical work—the Accumulation of Capital—written in 1912. Here she argued that capital was undermining its own ability to accumulate by its inevitable tendency to eliminate the peasantry in the advanced countries and by also destroying the pre-capitalist economies of the colonies. Capital is ruthless in its drive to achieve this end, says Luxemburg. but at the same time it is producing an 'economic impasse', since capitalism is "the first mode of economy which is unable to exist by itself, which needs other economic system as a medium and soil."

Although it strives to become universal, and, indeed, on account of this its tendency, it must break down — because it is immanently incapable of a universal form of production. In its living history it is a contradiction in itself, and its movement of accumulation provides a solution to the conflict and aggravates it at the same time. At a certain stage of development there will be no other way out than the application of socialist principles.

In stressing Luxernburg's emphasis on 'collapse' we must be careful not to attribute too crude a theory to her. Of course, she also pointed out that the working class had a positive role to play in this process and even suggested that the workers might be able to seize power before the actual breakdown stage had been reached. But, while recognising this, it is even more important not to underestimate the grip which this idea had on her. Luxemburg was a woman of immense experience in the German and Polish social-democratic movements and was also one of the foremost Marxist scholars of her day. Her intransigence had even won her the admiration of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. She was altogether superior to the romantic and volatile Liebknecht and yet when it came to the crunch, she was as confused as him in her estimate of the situation. A week before her death she was writing: "The masses are ready to support any revolutionary action, to go through fire and water for Socialism." This, of course, was patent nonsense. The working class in Germany had no clear idea of what Socialism was or how it could be achieved. Not only was there no chance of overthrowing capitalism, but even the limited aim of unseating the government was hopeless—as J. P. Nettl in his sympathetic biography records:

"It was clear probably by the evening of the 6th (January 1919) certainly by the morning of the 7th that there was no chance of overturning the government, and troops were known to be moving steadily into Berlin."

Luxemburg, then, had mistaken the economic dislocation following Germany's defeat for the 'collapse' of the capitalist system and since to her the choice seemed one of a desperate gamble for Socialism or else "crashing down to a common doom" she staked her life on the former.

(2) What distinguished Rosa Luxemburg from the other leaders of the Second International was not her emphasis on the theory that capitalism would 'collapse' but rather, her exceptional courage which caused her to pursue her ideas at whatever he risk to herself. In fact, over the years, most prominent leaders of the social-democratic parties had at various times expounded the view that capitalism would crash down in some form of immense economic crisis.

Kautsky, as the principal theoretician of the German Social Democratic Party, deserves special attention in this respect. When the SPD congress adopted a new programme at Erfurt in 1891 this was taken as a model for the other parties of the Second International and Kautsky's commentary on, and elaboration of, this document in Das Erfurter Program (1892) was accepted as one of the classic texts of social democracy. Here he predicted a very grim and uncertain future for world capitalism. The general tendencies he saw, or thought he saw, were a steady rise in the reserve army of the unemployed, a "constant increase in chronic over-production", and a virtually complete saturation of the markets. He conceded the point which Bernstein was later to make, that the credit system is a means of developing capitalist production but remarked that it also causes the ground on which the capitalists stand to "vibrate ever more strongly". His conclusion was that:

"…in short, the moment seems to be near, when the market for European industry not only becomes incapable of expansion but begins to contract. But that would spell the bankruptcy of the entire capitalist society."

By and large, Kautsky stuck to this position—and the revisionist controversy forced him to go even further. For example, in his Krisentheorien (Neut Zeit, 1901-2), he rejected the suggestions of Bernstein and Tugan-Barnovsky that capitalism's periods of depression were becoming milder and maintained instead that they were becoming sharper and more prolonged. Again, he predicted that a period of chronic stagnation was approaching. Only much later was he to put forward a more sophisticated view. In The High Cost of Living (Kerr edition 1914), he admitted that his earlier predictions of chronic overproduction had been wrong. Here he puts far greater stress on the role of the working class in the overthrowing of capitalism, although he still thinks that the business cycle is of vital importance. During boom periods, says Kautsky, the working class is best able to organise itself, but high wages and full employment make it less revolutionary. The subsequent crisis and slump increase the misery of the workers and this gives rise to an upsurge in class consciousness. This alternation of boom and slump would alternately organise and revolutionise the workers, each time leaving them better equipped to establish Socialism, and in the end, the working class would be "compelled to cause the overthrow of the capitalist system on pain of its own destruction."

A particularly crude variant of the collapse' theory is that based on the idea of under consumption—that is, the concept that since the workers' wages are insufficient to buy up all the commodities which they alone produce, this will eventually cause capitalist production to seize up. Although this train of thought suffers from the obvious weakness of completely overlooking the role of the capitalist class as consumers, it was widely accepted among the parties of the Second International. Bogdanov, the principal economist in the Russian social-democratic parties, referred in his Short Course of Economic Science to the 'relative shrinking of the market for articles of consumption' which would set in motion "the conditions which lead to the destruction of the whole system of capitalist production" and Ernest Untermann of the Socialist' Party of America in his Marxian Economics makes the same point:

"the keeping of wages at the lowest level of subsistence threatens periodically to wreck the entire capitalist system, because the working people are the principal consumers, and they cannot begin to absorb the immense quantity of goods made by them."

Hyndman of the Social Democratic Federation was another leader who continually exaggerated the impact of crises. Echoing Kautsky, he predicted that they would "follow one another at ever-shortening distances" and that they would "last longer each time that they come". He also shared the general belief in their magical properties, maintaining that if the workers failed to take conscious action to substitute "organised co-operation for anarchical competition" then this would be achieved anyway ("unconsciously and forcibly") by the commercial crisis and its aftermath.

One could go on indefinitely quoting such examples but perhaps it is more important to spotlight those who criticised the theory of collapse. Louis Boudin in his Theoretical System of Karl Marx more than once pointed out that the "cataclysmic conception of the breakdown of capitalism is not part of the Marxian theory" and that the "theory of a final catastrophe which has been much exploited by Marx-critics is the result of their woeful ignorance of the Marxian philosophy". But, despite this, there are references to capitalism breaking down elsewhere in Boudin's book and presumably inconsistencies are due to the fact that he wrote it as a series of articles for the International Socialist Review over a relatively long period. Apart from Boudin, however, there were two distinct tendencies which consistently opposed the collapse theory.

Revisionists such as Bernstein, Otto Bauer and Hilferding did so because, in this way, they sought to justify and strengthen the reformist tendencies within the social-democratic parties. This accounts for the gusto with which Bauer and Hilferding (and Pannekoek—but for different reasons) attempted to refute the arguments in Luxemburg's Accumulation of Capital. To them it seemed that if it could be demonstrated that capitalism would not break down, then this would he ample justification for abandoning revolution altogether and for simply concentrating on modifying the harsher injustices of capitalist society. Of course, they did not put it as blatantly as this and still clung to the face-saving formula that gradually the expropriators would be expropriated But, arguing theoretically, they were quite prepared to suggest that capitalism could maintain itself indefinetly by adopting what today we would call a state-capitalist form. Thus Otto Bauer wrote in his Finance Capital (Der Kampf. June 1910):

"The entire capitalistic society would be consciously controlled by a single tribunal, by which the extent of production in all departments would be determined, and by, which by means of a scale of prices, the product of labour would be divided between the cartel magnates on the one hand, and the whole mass of the other members of society on the other, The anarchy of production at present prevailing would thus be brought to an end: we should have a consciously regulated society in an antagonistic form."

The most coherent opposition to the theory of capitalist collapse, however, came from the Socialist Party of Great Britain. This is not to imply that in the period before the First World War our early members disregarded the importance of the crises in capitalist production altogether. On the contrary, they were naturally influenced by social-democratic ideas and as result tended to exaggerate the repercussions of the crisis more than we would today. But, despite this, the Socialist Party was clearly distinguished from all shades of social democrats by its emphasis on socialist understanding as the critical factor in any potentially revolutionary situation. Certainly, some statements appearing in the Socialist Standard had mechanistic undertones:

"The revolutionary forces at work within the capitalist society must eventually evolve to the point of upheaval. The result will be the downfall of capitalism and the consequent exhaustion of the forces which have destroyed it. Having accomplished its mission, revolution disappears and the new system starts to grow, not from a revolutionary base, but from an evolutionary base." (June 1907).

and these provoked one correspondent into writing that "the whole of your teaching may, in fact be summed up a 'Preach economic consideration as the sole factor in social development, and wait until the crash comes!' " But the editorial committee made our position quite clear in its reply to this critics:

"It is inevitable that economic development will bring things to a crisis, but whether from out: of this crisis will arise the Socialist Commonwealth depends upon whether sufficient of the working-class have been made Socialists, and have been class consciously organised. Obviously, then, to, ´wait until the crash comes' may be the policy of reform pedlars, but is decidedly not the policy of THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN."

In other words, even conceding that a crisis might be the most opportune moment for stripping the capitalist class of its wealth and instituting Socialism, the Socialist Party hammered home the simple point which it has since never failed to stress—that there can be no Socialism without a majority of the working class understanding what needs to be done and prepared to take decisive action to establish the new society.

John Crump

Education as tainted by capitalism (2010)

From the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

State schools have always turned out various grades of worker. Now universities are to be allowed to charge the going market rate for their courses.

The Browne review of higher education in England proposes the abolition of the £3,290 cap on tuition fees and declares that there should be no limit on what universities can charge their students. It plans for typical fees of up to £12,000 per year for a degree course, with a continuation of the system of loans. In addition to a loan for the tuition fees, most students would have a further loan (for maintenance) of £3,750 and would have interest to pay on that, as well.

Once in employment, former students would begin to repay the cost of their loans (together with interest) from a salary level of up- to over £9000 per annum, upwards. This is not a high income to have to start paying back the loan, particularly for workers living in cities, where the cost of living is higher. Therefore, huge numbers of young people, on modest salaries will face these loan repayments, on top of either having to pay high rents for accommodation or taking out large mortgages. Economists have been advising people not to get further into debt but the Browne Report will undoubtedly contribute to the level of debt rising significantly for many.

The university guide, Push, estimated in August 2010 that student indebtedness could rise to £25,000 for a degree course. Clearly, for many with the extra expenses of accommodation, books, other course materials, etc, the figure would be substantially higher, quite likely, in access of £30,000.

So, the result of this is that most working class students will have an unenviable choice: either (1) to enter higher education and to be burdened with enormous amounts of debt, especially when accommodation and maintenance are considered, or (2) having to give up higher education altogether, with the probable consequence of stunted intellectual growth, temporarily, at the very least.

This is all capitalism can offer the vast majority of people: a huge burden of debt which induces a form of enslavement or missing important opportunities in life in order to reduce the debt.

As regards schools, dubious methods are being resorted to by more affluent parents in an attempt to get their children into schools which occupy a higher position in the league tables of the exam treadmill. Many of these better off parents often try to segregate their children from those of poorer backgrounds, through the use of tutors, private schools and faith schools. Desperate efforts are made by some parents in an attempt to get their children into the desired schools. The measures employed include moving house into the catchment area of the targeted school or allowing their children to move temporarily into the homes of relatives or friends who live in the sought after catchment area. All of this, in an attempt to deceive the LEA (Local Education Authority).

Then, there are the exams themselves: GCSEs, AS-levels and A2-Levels, with the perennially critical claim that “standards are dropping” in comparison with the past. Lesson time is largely devoted to the demands of passing these exams, rather than giving students a real understanding and appreciation of the subjects which they are supposed to be studying. In fact, many believe that lessons are much more about how to pass the exams rather than learning about the subjects for their own sake. Numerous teachers complain about the rigidity of the syllabus and about how their lesson plans are being constantly supervised, something which previously only applied to those who were in their first six months probationary period.

Aims of the Education System
Political leaders and mainstream educationalists usually claim that the purpose of education is along the following lines:

(1) Acquisition of knowledge, development of mental and physical skills and personality to enhance the life of an individual.

(2) The achievement of the above, it is then declared, will enable individuals to make a contribution towards the overall economic, social and cultural wealth of society.

To a limited extent, in the developed countries at least, much of this has been partially achieved. However, in a class-based society such as capitalism education, like much else, is subordinated to the interests of the ruling class. Those interests fundamentally involve the creation of profit which is a vital source of the wealth of the capitalists.

Although on occasions, mainstream education may refer to isolated ideas which criticise some of the policies of ruling elites (generally policies which took place in the distant past, such as Britain’s involvement in the slave trade from the 16th to the 19th century), the reality is that the education system has rarely radicalised students, apart from a brief period in the 1960s and 1970s. Usually it has taught them to accept the status quo and to fit into it. This lack of radicalisation of students has been maintained through the following factors:

The very limited nature of the education received by many students. Most of that education is geared to the demands of industry and commerce.

Capitalism has so far at least, managed to pressure most students into thinking more about getting employment at the end of their course, rather than to consider becoming radical.

The prevalence of status quo ideas in the education system: the values of religious organisations in feudal times and, since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the values of the capitalist class.

In more recent times most people’s understanding of the society in which they live has been influenced hugely by an expanding media, much of which is controlled by wealthy corporate owners and other commercial interests.

In the present society the main aim of education is to provide the knowledge and skills base necessary for employment in capitalism. A workforce educated according to the demands of the profit system will then maintain and, in favourable trade cycle periods, boost the wealth of the owners of the means of production.

An obvious consequence of these objectives of education has been a strong emphasis on subjects considered to be relevant to employment: maths, English, science, computer and business studies. The Education Reform Act of 1988 set up the National Curriculum which was designed to standardise what was taught in schools. The intention of this was to facilitate assessment and led to the creation of “league tables” showing the academic performance of schools in exams. Most significantly, maths, English, science and information technology were established as compulsory subjects up to the minimum school leaving age of 16. In contrast, under the 2002 Education Act, subjects such as history, geography, foreign languages, art and music could be dropped at the age of 14 since most of them were thought to be less relevant to the employment process.

Education and Income Group
Under capitalism, there has always been a very strong income factor determining educational achievement. Children from better off homes overwhelmingly do better than those from poorer families. The children from deprived backgrounds are frequently and erroneously labelled as being “less able” by those educationalists who are entirely ignorant of the vital socio-economic factors influencing educational development and the gaining of qualifications.

A useful book which refutes the claims of the “less able” educationalists is Education and Working Class by Jackson and Marsden, written in 1962 and which has been on the reading lists of many teacher training courses. The authors concentrate mainly on differing levels of educational achievement within the working class itself (as mainstream sociologists frequently do). They show by statistics and surveys, how children of unskilled manual workers are far more likely to leave school early, with few qualifications. In contrast to this, those with white collar, managerial parents, were more likely to pass a greater number of school exams and then to go on to university. Aspects of the book may be criticised by socialists for its emphasis on the material, social and economic divisions within the working class itself, rather than including a comparison with the children of the capitalist class. Nevertheless, it is still of significant value since it illustrates clearly how a lack of material resources and encouragement can seriously affect a child’s progress in education.

In 2007 a report entitled Chicken and Egg: Child Poverty and Educational Inequalities by Donald Hirsch, shows how little has changed, after another 45 years of capitalism. By the age of three, Hirsch concludes that “being in poverty makes a difference equivalent to nine months’ development in school readiness.” He continues: “At each stage of compulsory schooling, the poverty gap grows. In particular, there is a big jump early in secondary school, with poor children nearly two years behind by the age of 14.”

Hirsch adds: “Children who do badly at primary school are less likely to improve at secondary school, if they are poor. Children who are only slightly below average at primary school are more likely to be among the worst performers at secondary school, if they are poor.

Young people with parents in manual occupations remain far less likely than others to go to university. Even though their prospects have improved, they have not been the main beneficiaries of university expansion. Children of non-manual workers are over two and a half times as likely to go to university than children of manual workers.”

Like Jackson and Marsden, Hirsch is mainly looking here at different layers of the working class. All the same, it is a clear demonstration of how material circumstances in capitalism affect outcomes in education.

In February 2010 the Sutton Trust supported research which showed that “the vocabulary of children from the poorest backgrounds lags more than a year behind that of their classmates from richer homes by the time they start school.”

“Those from the poorest 20 percent of homes, where household annual incomes averaged £10,300 before tax, had an average developmental age of 53.6 months…Children from families in the richest 20 percent, on around £80,000 reached a development age of 69.8 months.”

In other words, children from the more affluent homes had a developmental age more than 16 months ahead of those from poorer homes. This is clearly a result of material circumstances.

Certainly, the demands of the capitalist education system, to restrain monetary expenditure and investment, cause highly significant barriers, particularly for children from more deprived backgrounds. Additionally, these cutbacks create real problems for many other working class children from less deprived backgrounds. The wealthy can purchase places for their children in private schools and universities, usually without any fear of indebtedness. For the rest of the population (the working class), the situation is very different and in recent years these inequalities have been increasing rather than diminishing.

Education in Socialist Society
So, what would education be like in a socialist society? A detailed description obviously cannot be given since it will be up to the people at the time to decide upon exactly which forms education would take. However, it is very clear that, in complete contrast to capitalism, socialism will put human need first. The welfare and needs of people, both as individuals and as a community will be treated as a priority.

The importance of developing to the full, the mental, physical and social abilities and talents of everyone, as individuals, will undoubtedly be recognised. Most significantly, education will inevitably be considered a lifelong process and certainly not something to be compartmentalised into time slots, like happens under the present system. As a result of this, people will be able to lead far more satisfying lives than could ever be even remotely achieved under capitalism. This satisfaction would derive from the contributions to the overall material, intellectual social and cultural wealth of society which people would be able to make and, of course, from the fact that, as individuals, they would be able to enjoy the fruits of the common store.

A quotation from Chapter 2 of the Communist Manifesto sums up the situation well:

“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Here, the term “free development” can be taken to include education. In socialist society, there would be no financial constraints since the monetary system will have been abolished and production will be carried out solely for human need. The stresses and strains of cutbacks and needless austerity measures will finally have been abolished forever and at last, humanity will be able to move forward, considerably through genuine and effective education, towards real progress, both as individuals and as a community.

Vincent Otter

Inside the Socialist Party of Canada

Cross-posted from the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog

From the online magazine Digital Journal.

Some believe that the recent financial meltdown was caused by free markets and capitalism, which has drawn many people to look at the alternative: Socialism. The Socialist Party of Canada wants to define what socialism really means.

At several demonstrations in Toronto, this journalist has come across a lot of members of the Socialist and Communist Parties of Canada. The representatives hand out information on certain events occurring and their stance on the issue. It was time to finally speak with the party and understand their points of view.

The Socialist Party of Canada (SPC) distinguishes itself from the left-leaning parties, such as the Liberal Party, the Green Party and the New Democratic Party, by not representing the “capitalist class” and not being “managers of the capitalist system.”

On Thursday, Digital Journal had the opportunity to speak with Socialist Party of Canada representative and content contributor to the publication journal Imagine, John Ayers, to discuss the idea of socialism, what the party’s views are in terms of foreign policy and the current political establishment and system.

According to dictionary.com, socialism is defined as: “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.”

However, Ayers feels that socialism and communism have been misunderstood due to the media and various governments around the world that call themselves socialists but do not represent the idea or have the vaguest notion of what it actually is.

About the party
The first Socialist Party of Canada began in 1904 and ended in 1925. The second SPC began in 1931 and continues to this day and is part of the World Socialist Movement.
“We have an idea, which when implemented by the majority worldwide, will end all war, all poverty, all inequality and provide everybody with the needs they have.” said Ayers. “Capitalism can’t do that, which is obvious right now.”

Even though the party does not have the proper funds to operate on a level as the main political parties, Ayers says that the party is mainly operating on an educational basis by publishing brochures, pamphlets and other methods to get out the proper information.

“Our electoral system is based on whoever has got the most money wins and we have to a lot of money, we don’t have a lot of money,” notes Ayers. “Right now we’re basically an educational phase.”

What will happen if the SPC gets elected? First the voters must understand what their view of socialism is. Ayers calls the ideology of the SPC as “scientific socialism” as they study the work of Karl Marx and use his economic theory as a basis of socialism but “don’t take his work as gospel.”

Socialism and ideas
The quintessential question is then: What is socialism? Ayers explains the following:
“Socialism is a society based on the common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth. Managed democratically in the interest of all mankind. That necessarily means an end to the class system, to money, to employment, to wages and necessarily means a society based on voluntary labour and free access for everybody to all goods produced. It is a production for use and not for profit.”

Ayers adds that this idea has never been practiced and certainly the Green Party, NDP and those who say they are socialists are not because they don’t have the same idea of socialism and communism due to their attempts of trying to be popular and “putting a happy face on capitalism.”

If elected, the SPC would use parliament and legislative powers to end the private property and state systems. In place of it, voluntary labour would be implemented and power would be given to local and production councils, which would be democratically elected and ultimately be the foundation of socialism.
“Most of the stuff won over the past 50 years are disappearing such as the health care system, proper wages, etc.,” notes Ayers. “The only thing we promote is establishing a socialist society. Promoting capitalism can never work and benefit the working class.”

Foreign policy and war
Remembrance Day was on Thursday and it was only fitting to understand the party’s stance on Canada’s foreign policy and war. Ayers says the party’s foreign policy would be to “join the hands with socialist parties around the world,” which would result in no war and nothing to fight over because “wars are fought over economics.”

War, according to Ayers, is a struggle between two capitalist classes and their attempt to gain control over strategic and trade routes. However, in the end, says Ayers, “humans don’t need wars” because we’re the ones who get killed and “it solves nothing.”
“Once we’ve established socialism,” says Ayers, “all of this is gone. The military complexes are gone.”

The current state and can the government change?
According to Ayers, ultimately nothing is going to change. The SPC representative cites Toronto mayor-elect Rob Ford as an example because he is someone who is not going to change the system but ran on a campaign promise of ending the gravy train and changing the corrupt city hall.
In the end, says Ayers, the municipal government is going to get bigger and make union workers poorer. Although one public official can “tweak” little things in government, if you want real change then you have to “remove it entirely” in order to have a “society that is viable, equitable and worth living in.”

The current system does not give people freedom or the freedom to travel: “If you don’t have money for a bus ticket, you can’t go anywhere. But people with billions of dollars can travel anywhere and have their voices heard easily.”

“It’s the system itself that creates war, poverty and global warming,” says Ayers. “The government, managers of capitalists, have done absolutely nothing.”

Ireland in recession (2010)

From the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The only flourishing industry in Ireland now seems to be economic punditry.

A fellow socialist recently sent me an economic article critiquing the contrasting financial approaches of the various governments in Europe to the current crisis. It wasn’t the first article that I’ve read on this subject! Ever since the storm broke in autumn 2008, the media in Ireland has filled the airwaves/newspaper pages with an endless procession of economists commenting on various aspects of Ireland’s severe economic situation and either second guessing the government’s decisions on various policy matters or attempting to persuade the people that they have much cleverer solutions to ‘our’ problems. Part of my weariness with all this analysis stems from the fact that as a socialist I know booms and slumps are an inevitable part of the economic operation of capitalism and there was clearly an unsustainable boom occurring in Ireland over the years 2004 to 2008. So now we have the consequent contraction which is just going to have to be endured as long as capitalism governs our lives.

In fact, the only flourishing industry in Ireland now seems to be economic punditry and whether you open a magazine, turn on the TV, listen to the radio or surf the net for news, you won’t have long to wait until you encounter the predictions of economists mainly drawn from either academia or the financial institutions or on some rare occasions, the trade unions. Because Ireland’s situation is deemed so critical, we even have Nobel prize winning economists from the United States commenting on us, while just a few years ago we wouldn’t have merited any attention from them as they’d probably have been pre-occupied with China.

In fact one popular media economist, David McWilliams, currently has a travelling roadshow where he tours the country, filling halls and theatres with his views. As the publicity blurb for his ridiculous ‘Outsiders’ tour goes “McWilliams believes Ireland’s political and social divide is not so much about rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, but about Insiders and Outsiders”. This strange mixture of showbiz and economics has climaxed in a ‘Kilkenomics’ festival held in Kilkenny in late November where stand up comedy will be interspersed with economic analysis. On its website one of the topics listed for discussion is to be ’23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism’. As the man said, you couldn’t make it up!

What’s tiresome about all the contributors to this public debate, is that in spite of furious argument over some superficial points, essentially they’re all singing from the same hymn sheet. Corrective action is needed to deal with Ireland’s soaring debt and it’s only the time scale (whether it should be over 4 or 6 years) and the areas of public spending to be excluded from cuts (such as old age pension) that are in contention. It is now anticipated that a general election is only months away and it’s noticeable that the main opposition parties have moderated their criticism of the government’s budget approach; they know full well that room for manoeuvre is extremely limited and if elected (which seems very probable at the moment) they will be implementing the hair-shirt budgets over the next four years.

To give some background, it now seems accepted that whatever reality lay behind the Celtic Tiger had by about 2003/2004 been replaced by an old-fashioned, foundation-less credit boom based on the expectation that property (both residential and commercial) was destined to appreciate at a significant level beyond any other type of investment. This led to a frenzy of construction, some clearly insane even to non-socialists, where perfectly functioning warehouses, hotels and office blocks were demolished so their footprint could be used for even more profitable apartment blocks and fancier hotels.

By 2006 the unsustainability of what was happening began to be widely commented upon in everyday life though this didn’t seem to flag any warning bells with Brian Cowan, the then minister of finance, subsequently promoted to Taoiseach (Prime Minister). The crash has highlighted a structural weakness in Irish politics whereby that opaque interaction between the politicians and leading business people (particularly property developers) masked the rationale for economic decisions. By 2008, a huge proportion of Irish government revenue was attributable, directly or indirectly, to the construction sector in terms of which has now all but vanished. This has left an almost twenty billion euro gap between the government’s annual income and expenditure. The problem has been exacerbated by the government’s initial decision to give a very wide ranging guarantee to all the main banks’ creditors. As the scale of loses (fifty billion and counting) has turned out to be much greater than anticipated, this has increased Ireland’s need to borrow. Whether the government naively underestimated the risks from this banking strategy or was responding to the pressing needs of some well-connected business people has been hotly debated since.

The predominant response to date in Ireland has been a fearful resignation rather than any outright ‘resistance’ as has intermittently been seen in the strikes and demonstrations of France and Greece. Partly this is due to an apathy to the potential power of real politics, that has been engendered amongst great swathes of the electorate, resulting from so many broken promises by reformist parties over the years. Unemployment has risen sharply and emigration as a social phenomenon has returned. A reduction in living standards is seen as inevitable in the medium term. There has been a deliberate divide and rule strategy employed by the ruling class with a vociferous campaign, championed by the media outlets controlled by the media tycoons Tony O’Reilly and Denis O’Brien, waged against public sector worker to separate them from private sector employees.

That is not to say that people are not angry about the situation and the heavy penalties and burdens they are now expected to bear as a result of reckless and profligate activities of bankers and developers. What is perceived to be most galling is how when the senior executives in many financial institutions knew that the balloon was going up, they negotiated or arranged legally watertight generous exit packages for themselves, without a care for the consequences to the mass of the people. It certainly has raised questions about the ‘fairness’ of the system which is a clearly welcome development for socialists. Of course some of the discontent is mis-directed, with talk of betrayal by the government, when the recession is an inevitable part of the capitalist cycle albeit in this exacerbated by the greed and incompetence of the local ruling class.

The power of capitalism over people has never been more nakedly exposed. The government’s daily mantra is the need to restore confidence in Ireland’s position to ‘the market’ when we know ‘the market’ is fundamentally that very small number of people who control multi-billion financial investment decisions. So each government action is quantified as to whether it has reassured the markets (which we’re constantly told is a good thing) or has caused uncertainty (‘a very bad thing’) as the more uncertain the markets are, the greater the interest rate Ireland must pay on the loans it needs to raise. The fact that it’s naturally in the market’s interest to either doubt, or at least feign doubt, about Ireland’s economic outlook in order to justify higher loan charges is never commented upon which shows the whole deal is really a gigantic scam. Perceived wisdom is that it should be easier to make socialists in a recession when the shortcomings of capitalism are more evident. This capitalist recession will eventually end and the Irish economy at some time in the future will inevitably return to growth. If there are more socialists in Ireland at that future time, then at least one positive outcome will have resulted from this sorry and preventable mess.

Kevin Cronin

How I became a socialist (1976)

From the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following from a reader of Varldssocialism in Sweden and publish it for the similarity between experiences of pseudo-revolutionary organisations there and in Britain.

In the early sixties a "radical" consciousness arose among some of the students in the industrialized countries. The Cuban revolution had taken place and the struggles in South Vietnam escalated. The Berlin wall was built. From the late fifties, I had more or less been attracted by the idea of "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and sympathized with Russia and the other "socialist" countries. I accepted all catchwords uncritically and started subscribing to propaganda magazines from these countries. I sympathized with the Communist Party of Sweden and subscribed to My Dag (New Day), the party’s newspaper. Encouraged by a workmate, I became a party member at the beginning of 1962. Since no theoretical studies were pursued in the party at that time, the majority of the membership were profoundly ignorant theoretically. Perhaps one would have remained ignorant even if studies had been pursued. Everything told by the party leadership was accepted, and naturally one thought it was awfully "revolutionary" to distribute reformist election propaganda before every election. The party encouraged the membership to participate in the pacifist Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, and many of us took part in the Campaign’s Whitsun marches.

For a time I was also a member of the party’s youth league, Democratic Youth, who mostly pottered with hobbies and boycotts against South African goods. I belonged to the more inactive members in the party, at least at the beginning. Gradually I undertook the task to collect the members’ subscriptions in a dwelling-house area. On May Day we always would march in the demonstrations of the Social-Democrats and the Trade Union Federation. I travelled as a tourist to all European "socialist countries" except Albania. To the so-called Baltic- Sea Week in Eastern Germany I travelled several times, and I thought it was awfully remarkable. And what did I learn? Not a jot! In the mid-sixties, the antagonism between the two "communist" giants Russia and China had been sharpened. Throughout the world new "communist parties" were founded, which supported China and her European ally, Albania. In 1966 the so-called cultural revolution was introduced in China. I began to think it was good that the people over there fiercely attacked the domestic bureaucrats and also the bureaucracy and "revisionism" in Russia and other "Communist" countries. But since I was still ignorant, I swallowed the Chinese party’s lies about Lenin’s and Stalin’s Russia as a real socialist example.

Shortly after the party’s change of name to Left Party Communists at their congress in 1967, I resigned my membership. Instead I joined the Communist League Marxist-Leninist (KFML), a Maoist organization that was founded at their midsummer conference the same year. Now I regarded myself as a real revolutionary. I participated in so-called Marxist studies, which among other things consisted in learning to rattle off a lot of Mao Tse tung quotations by heart. I went about about selling Ghiston (The Spark) and Marxistiskt Forum (Marxist Forum), periodical of the KFML. I undertook the task as cashier and secretary of a local branch. Later I also joined the Swedish Clarte League, a Maoist students’ league, and the United NLF Groups, supporters of Viet Cong.

In May 68, students and workers revolted in France. This even influenced young people in other countries. Here in Sweden the so-called occupation of the Students’ Association building in Stockholm took place. Within KFML, Clarté League and the NLF movement an opposition had emerged during the spring, partly the « rebel movement » and partly the so-called appelianism. The "rebel movement" was strongly influenced by the Chinese cultural revolution, and was a spontaneous reaction to the stalinist bureaucracy within KFML, Clarté League and the NLF movement. They developed into a kind of fanatical, religious sect, where they tortured each other and read aloud from the red book of Mao Tsetung quotations. After a couple of months their movement was dissolved.

Appelianism derived from the Communist Working Circle, a Maoist group in Denmark. Its chairman is Gotfred Appel. Their "theory" is that the capitalists in Europe and North America take super profits from the countries of the third world and use these profits to bribe "their" workers. Therefore they thought that posturing with reform struggle was to waste time. Instead one should try to induce the workers in North America and Europe to support national « liberation movements » in the third world thereby they would become class-conscious and be secured on the side of Leninism, they hoped.

Since I was still equally ignorant, I thought this sounded reasonable and left KFML, Clarté League and the NFL movement at the beginning of 1969. Now I had at last learned something, namely that reform struggle could not be something for a socialist organization to potter with. In late summer 1971 a number of persons broke away from one of the appelianist organizations and formed the Manifesto Group. They started publishing a journal called Hammaren och Skaran (Hammer and Sickle), which also appeared in English. The group I belonged to, mostly consisted of older ex-members of the Communist Workers’ League of Sweden, which had been founded in 1956 by a group that broke away from the Communist Party. It ceased to exist in the mid-sixties.

As a result of personal antagonism, our group broke with the other two appelianist groups and started a close co-operation with the newly formed Manifesto Group. We studied some material from the Progressive Labor Party, an American organization which had broken with Maoism but still clung firmly to Stalinism. They now claimed that capitalism had been "re-established" in China. Further they rightly claimed that the NLF of South Vietnam did not fight for anything but capitalism. Otherwise, they were incorrigible reformists. We also read Gorter, Pannekoek, Ruehle, Mattick, Kollontay and Others.

At the beginning of 1973 we got in touch with Varldssocialism (World Socialism) and read some SPGB material. We agreed with much of what SPGB said, but opposed parliamentarism. We had been influenced by the Dutch and German left communists, who in the twenties fiercely criticised Lenin’s policy. We had now approached some sort of council-communist outlook, the foremost characteristic of which is anti-parliamentarianism and advocacy of workers’ councils. However, we soon relinquished the council idea, and began to question organizations and programs on the whole. At this point the majority of our group broke with the Manifesto Group which was now charged with "syndicalism" and "anarchism". However I myself left the "appelianist" group and joined the Manifesto Group, which was soon dissolved and stopped publishing Hammer and Sickle. Instead we began to publish a series of pamphlets, which formostly carried situationnist, but also council-communist stuff. Some titles we also publish in english.

We now almost understood what socialism (communism) really meant. We understood that the Russian, Chinese and all other revolutions in reality had been capitalist. We also understood that a socialist revolution could only be worldwide. However, later the "organization" even began to question Marxism and claimed that conceptions like socialism and revolution were meaningless. They also claim that the class conception is meaningless and that- the working class will never carry socialism through. They mean that every individual should instead concentrate upon trying to get out as much enjoyment as possible from life. I agree with this, but capitalism sets up very limited bounds to how much "enjoyment" people can reach.

I think their view is a manifestation of defeatism, therefore I have now stopped working for this group. I have changed my mind concerning parliamentarism, and now sympathize entirely with the World Socialist Movement, the only movement that stands for SOCIALISM, the abolition of the wages system! I now understand that neither social-democracy, Leninism-Maoism-Stalinism, Trotskyism, Appelianism, Anarchism, Syndicalism or Situationism can be an alternative to capitalism. After fifteen years of ideological confusion, I now understand what socialism really means and hope to be make a contribution for it.

Y.E.H.

Cooking the Books: Currency wars (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“More than a dozen countries”, the (London) Times (11 November) reported, “have been intervening in the foreign exchange markets to weaken their currencies and protect exporters, raising fears of a rerun of currency wars that damaged the world economy in the 1930s.”

The 1930s – that’s the spectre currently haunting those in charge of trying to run capitalism. Then, faced with the contraction of world trade, states tried to grab as much as was left by resorting to protectionism, export subsidies and devaluations. The conventional wisdom is that this only made things worse, deepening and prolonging the depression.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO), and its predecessor GATT, have made it difficult for states to adopt protective tariffs and export subsidies. So, all that’s left, to try to get the better of their rivals (and it’s a war of each against all), is to devalue their currencies.

Strictly speaking, since the collapse in 1971 of the Bretton Woods agreement, which had laid down fixed exchange rates between currencies, the sort of formal devaluation that the Labour governments of the 1960s were forced to carry out no longer occur. Currencies now “float”, which means that their exchange rate with other currencies is determined by supply and demand on foreign exchange markets.

Normally (if there’s a level playing field) what would happen is that the more a state exported the higher would be the demand for its currency due to those buying the exports having to acquire some to pay for these. This would lead to the currency’s exchange rate rising; which would make its exports more expensive. Similarly, a state with a balance of trade deficit would find its currency’s value fall; which would make its exports cheaper. So matters would be more or less self-regulating.
That’s the theory. The real world is rather different, since governments can influence the exchange rate of their currency by affecting the supply and demand for it. If they want to keep its exchange value low (so as to encourage exports by making them relatively cheaper) they can increase the supply on foreign exchange markets by themselves selling more there (printing more if necessary). Which is what has been happening:

The US points the finger at China but China is not the only state trying to grab a bigger share of world trade in this way. One of the main reasons why Britain didn’t join the euro was that this would have prevented it letting the pound float downwards to encourage exports. The US too has recently been increasing the supply of dollars (via “quantitative easing”) with this end partly in view as a means of putting pressure on China to upvalue the yuan.

The matter was the main item of the agenda of the G20 summit in Seoul in November, but all that was agreed was to adopt a pious declaration condemning “competitive devaluations” and wishing for “market-determined exchange rates”. Some sort of agreement may eventually be cobbled together. But maybe not. The competitive struggle for profits built-in to capitalism has already prevented agreement on a further round of tariff reductions, let alone on what to do about the threat of climate change.

Build It Now? (2007)

Book Review from Issue 21 of the World Socialist Review

Build It Now: Socialism For The Twenty-First Century by Michael A. Lebowitz

Marx wrote: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by them- selves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.”[1]

The circumstances encountered by those of us striving to build a socialist majority in the North today include a population made up almost entirely of people who have never known any form of society except for capitalism. Arguably, this is the greatest obstacle to building a socialist majority here in the United States, and has been so for many generations.

But in Venezuela, this obstacle does not loom quite so large. In a speech made on Dec. 15, 2006, Hugo Chávez claimed that the indigenous peoples in Venezuela had “lived in socialism for centuries,” and called them “the bearers of socialist seed in our land.”[2] (According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, about two-thirds of Venezuelans have some Indian ancestry.) In other words, the constituency who voted overwhelmingly for Hugo Chávez in 2006 is made up, in part, of people who can still remember another way of life. A case can certainly be made that the “circumstances directly encountered” by people striving to build a socialist majority in Venezuela are more propitious than what we Americans are used to.

Build It Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century gives us a fascinating look at contemporary Venezuela. Its author paints a picture of “a country which at the time of this writing embodies the hopes of many for a real alternative to capitalism.” (Introduction, p 10). Since most readers of this journal understand that the only two possible “real alternatives” to capitalism are socialism or barbarism, in this review I would like to address the question: “Is Venezuela under Hugo Chávez actually on the road to socialism?”

Lebowitz is a Marxist writer based in Caracas, and in Build It Now he makes many worthwhile points. One is that, once you understand the nature of capitalism, “you can no longer look at capital as this wondrous god providing us with sustenance in return for our periodic sacrifces. Rather, you understand capital as the product of working people, our own power turned against us.” He makes the case that we must “go beyond capitalism” if we want to end the exploitation of the working class; and states (p. 30):

The society to which Marx looked as an alternative to capitalism was one in which the relation of production would be that of an association of free producers. Freely associated individuals would treat ‘their communal, social productivity as their social wealth,’ producing for the needs of all.

The chapter entitled “The Knowledge of a Better World” contains some of the key points in the book. Lebowitz tells us:

Knowing where we want to go is a necessity if we want to build an alternative. But, it is not the same as being there. We live in a world dominated by global capital, a world in which capital divides us, setting the people of each country against each other to see who can produce more cheaply by driving wages, working conditions, and environmental standards down to the lowest level in order to survive in the war of all against all. We know, too, that any country that would challenge neoliberalism faces the assorted weapons of international capital — foremost among them the IMF, the World Bank, and imperialist power… We need to recognize the possibility of a world in which the products of the social brain and the social hand are common property… For this reason, the battle of ideas is essential.

It is easy to find inspiration in the following words, that Lebowitz addressed, in 2005, to a National Conference of Revolutionary Students for the Construction of Socialism in the Twenty-first Century, in Mérida, Venezuela:

We need to remember the goal. If you don’t know where you want to go, then no road will take you there. The world that socialists have always wanted to build is one in which people relate to each other as members of a human family, a society in which we recognize that the welfare of others concerns us; it is a world of human solidarity and love where, in place of classes and class antagonisms, we have “an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” (pp. 64-65)
…We see that our productivity is the result of combining our different capabilities and that our unity and the common ownership of the means of production make us all the beneficiaries of our common efforts… (p. 66)
All of these characteristics and relations coexist simultaneously and support one another in the world we want to build. Democratic decision making within the workplace (instead of capitalist direction and supervision). Democratic direction by the community of the goals of activity (in place of direction by capitalists), production for the purpose of satisfying needs (rather than for the purpose of exchange), common ownership of the means of production (rather than private or group ownership), a democratic, participatory, and protagonistic form of governance (rather than a state over and above society)… (p. 66-67)

So, how can we build this world?

He suggests (in Chapter 2 and elsewhere) that this world can be built in Venezuela with the support of Chávez’s government. Lebowitz asserts (pp. 98 –99) that if the Venezuelan government under Hugo Chávez encourages “radical endogenous development,” e.g., “preparing people for new productive relations through courses in cooperation and self-management,” (which would be possible only for a government “prepared to break ideologically and politically with capital”), that can be seen as a step towards socialism.

Socialists have sometimes called government “the executive committee of the capitalist class.” For that reason, the World Socialist Movement does not envision any role in socialist society for government per se, but anticipates that the men and women living in socialism will devise some method of managing affairs, with the necessary administrative authority but no coercive power.

One must ask, can a government “prepared to break ideologically and politically with capital” exist in the present world? Can a socialist nation exist, surrounded by capitalist nations on all sides? Certainly, it must be pointed out, contemporary Venezuela is not an example of a socialist society. Although Lebowitz may have asserted, “We see that… our unity and the common ownership of the means of production make us all the beneficiaries of our common efforts,” there is really not, at this moment, common ownership of the means of production anywhere. (If there were, there would also be common ownership of the goods and services produced, which would imply free right of access to these things — but, as of this writing in 2007, Venezuelan citizens do not enjoy free access. It remains a goal to be achieved.)

On the other hand, this is not to say that they have not taken a step in that direction. “Radical endogenous development” could include building a socialist majority. Chávez has stated that as his intention. If that should happen, then a global Socialist Revolution would have a real chance of beginning in Venezuela.

“Socialism” with a qualifier
I want to take a moment here to talk about words. When Lebowitz speaks of “Socialism for the Twenty-First Century,” does he mean the same thing by “socialism” that Hugo Chávez does? Does either of them mean the same thing that we do? Over time, words change their meanings. When I was a child, for example, all wristwatches had faces, and when you said “watch” the concept called up was a circle of numbers with 12 at the top and 6 at the bottom. Since the advent of digital technology, “watch” no longer has that meaning. Now, if you want to refer to that kind of watch, you have to add a qualifier: “analog watch.”

In order to call up the concept of “socialism” as Marx used it in the 19th Century, it is also now necessary to add a qualifier. The qualifier is “non-market.” Without that qualifier, the word “socialism” means many different things to different speakers. Because I want to be crystal clear about what I mean by “socialism” in this writing, I will make a distinction between “non-market socialism” and “market socialism” (although I am aware that most people do not add "market" any more than people who wear a digital wristwatch add "digital").

Socialism is not a market economy. It is (as developed in Engels's Socialism, Utopian & Scientific) a society where money has become superfluous because the means of production are completely under social control. All labor is voluntary, everyone has free access to whatever goods and services are available.

Without importing goods from other nations, the people of Venezuela could never maintain an acceptable standard of living. No country in the world has all the raw materials necessary to do that, within its own national boundaries. Therefore, even if a socialist majority were to be created in Venezuela under Chávez, as long as there is a global capitalist economy, it could not establish non-market socialism. It could not become either moneyless or classless.

Perhaps Lebowitz has lost sight of this — or perhaps he believes that this aspect of Marxian socialism is not to be present in the Twenty-First Century version. He emphasizes, “I am convinced that worker management is the only real ultimate alternative to capitalism,” (p. 74), which implies he has forgotten that when the means of production are under social control, there is no more class of workers, and no more class of capitalists either. There are just people, all equal members of society.

Venezuela needs a money economy now to trade even with neighboring Latin American countries, let alone with giant imperialist states like the US; so, when one refers to “socialism” in Venezuela under Chávez — or in Cuba under Castro — what is really meant is “market socialism,” in which money is still used to regulate the exchange of goods and there is no common right of access. Moreover, the government of a “market socialist” economy (think: Cuba) is forced to exert coercive authority over people from time to time.

Will a conscious, political socialist majority in Venezuela put up with this? Or, freed from the logic of capital, will they take the next step and demand free access to what they produce?

Hope for a real alternative
I think there is reason for optimism, and I applaud Lebowitz for his careful and insightful development of the situation in Venezuela. Certainly, there is hope for a real alternative to global capitalism resulting from the circumstances described in Build It Now.

Hugo Chávez himself, shortly after his election last year, called on his followers to dissolve their existing parties and to form a new “United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” which would provide a forum for discussing how to “construct socialism from below.”[3] The material conditions in the world are ripe today for a global Socialist Revolution, except for the lack of a majority of people who understand that non-market socialism represents a viable alternative to capitalism and are willing to commit themselves to making it work. Capitalism has wrought so much havoc on the ecology of Earth that the welfare of all human beings — capitalists as well as workers — is threatened. Not just the working class, but all of humanity, need to stop the engine of capital, if we are to survive.
The revolution has to start somewhere, and the indigenous Venezuelans who elected Chávez may yet set an example for the rest of the planet.

Karla Rab

Footnotes

[1] The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
[2] “Chávez Calls or United Socialist Party of Venezuela" by John Riddle< Socialist Voice, December 2006.
[3] “Chavez Calls for United Socialist Party of Venezuela,” by Gregory Wilpert; retrieved from Dec 18, 2006