Saturday, March 18, 2006

Murdering the Dead (2003)

Book review from the February 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Murdering the Dead: Amadeo Bordiga on Capitalism and Other Disasters. Antagonism Press GBP5. Available from Antagonism Press, c/o BM Makhno, London, WC1N 3XX. Website

It would hardly be controversial to argue that capitalism, with its emphasis on profit and short-term considerations, provides fertile ground for accidents and disasters of various kinds. It also means that any accidents which do happen are likely to be more serious and harmful than would otherwise be the case. Cutting corners and ignoring safety matters is part and parcel of a profit-oriented system. However, in the essays collected in this book, originally dating from between 1951 and 1963, Amadeo Bordiga argues that capitalism actually benefits from disasters.

(1889-1970) was the first general secretary of the Italian `Communist' Party, but soon broke with the politics of the Third International. After being jailed under Mussolini, he went on to advocate a moneyless non-market society. This might seem to put Bordiga in the same political tradition as the Socialist Party, but unfortunately he saw Socialism as being managed by an elitist central administration and was thus opposed to a truly democratic society.

His argument here is basically that disasters are profitable, far more so than simple maintenance of existing buildings, machines, etc. Contracts for rebuilding and replacement involve much larger sums than those for keeping an existing dam (or whatever) up and running. Natural disasters are therefore insufficient, and must be supplemented by human-made cataclysms. Destruction means bigger profits than mere depreciation, with built-in obsolescence just being a special case of destruction. Disasters, then, are not just made more likely by capitalism's emphasis on profits at the expense of safety, but are actually welcome in the pursuit of surplus value.

A possible objection to this approach is that it regards capitalism too much as a single entity, rather than as a system with a variety of competing capitalists. Certainly, some companies will benefit from a huge rebuilding contract, but others will not. And when the state pays in the case of `public' works, the costs fall on all the capitalist class. So it is not at all clear that capitalism as a whole does well from such a situation. In addition, if it really were just a matter of making money from disasters, capitalism could surely use this as a means of escaping from any kind of recession, along the lines that (some claim) can be done via arms-expenditure. In all cases, such spending has to come out of taxes and so out of profits.

Despite these reservations, though, this is a worthwhile volume devoted to a writer and activist who deserves to be better-known than he is. And it helps to show up the hypocrisy of the capitalists and their political supporters when they shed tears for the victims of disasters.

Paul Bennett

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