Interview with Drew Pendergrass (2023)

From the July 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Drew Pendergrass, the co-author, with Troy Vettese, of a striking new book entitled Half-Earth Socialism: a Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics (reviewed in the March 2023 edition of this journal) talks to the Socialist Standard to discuss why he thinks both human society and the natural environment can only survive through a new model of social and economic organisation, a moneyless, wageless one of democratic planning, voluntary cooperation and free access to all goods and services.

In the book you co-wrote with Troy Vettese, you put forward the idea of a world non-market society and outline how you see it as operating in practical terms. What brought you to this idea in the first place?

By day, I am a climate scientist — in my work, I see how incompatible our current economic order is with an ecologically and climatologically stable planet. Even more radicalizing than this, I am a scientist at Harvard University, a place unafraid to take the status quo to its logical conclusion. People at Harvard don’t believe in the possibility of social change, at least not beyond marginal adjustments. However, the scientists there are just as aware as I am about the incompatibility of capitalism and the climate, though they would not use those terms. This is why solar geoengineering, the idea that we could spray particles into the stratosphere to dim the sun and cool the planet, has become a central part of the environmental research and curriculum at this university. Rather than change our society to meet the demands of our planet, it is more realistic to them to change the planet to meet the demands of capitalism. And I think they are right — to keep the status quo, you need geoengineering, even though the risks are profound. I have been a socialist since I was in high school and have no interest in preserving capitalism, so Troy and I wanted to offer an alternative.

There are others who advocate the kind of society you do, but, following Marx, they usually say that you can’t write ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future’. Why do think it’s feasible and useful to try to do this?

During and immediately after Marx and Engels were writing, utopia was in the air. Utopian fiction peaked in the 1880s and 90s with books like Bellamy’s Looking Backward and Morris’s News from Nowhere. At that time, even the mainstream thought capitalism really could be supplanted by something new. Although Marx himself does not lay out in one place his vision of a socialist or communist society, this does not mean he didn’t have ideas about what that society would entail: scholars like Bertell Ollman have reconstructed in some detail the outlines of Marx’s utopia. More importantly, workers had clear ideas about what alternatives to capitalism might entail — many had memories of non-capitalist lifeways to draw on, such as the peasantry, and a wide-open sense of possibility catalysed by revolutionary moments like 1848 or the Paris Commune.

Now, alternatives are not self-evident. With the failed utopias in the twentieth century and the rise of the world market in the twenty-first, there is not a sense that an alternative to capitalism lies in wait — many doubt that an alternative exists at all. With this recent history, the nineteenth century advice to avoid ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future’ seems outdated. Certainly, when coming up with proposals for how a socialist society might work, one must remain humble. But the concreteness of this exercise is a necessary corrective to a world that has lost its utopian spark. As Robin D. G. Kelley reminds us, no social movement exists without a concrete vision for a better future as its north star.

You describe the common idea that the earth is over-populated as ‘dangerously exaggerated’. But wouldn’t some say that there too many people for the resources that the Earth, even in a non-market society, could make available to give everyone a decent, comfortable life? Wouldn’t some also say that this is especially the case for the system that you advocate, one that would see half the Earth (‘Half-Earth Socialism’) being occupied by rewilded ecosystems in order for it to recover and prosper?

One of the exercises we follow in the book is to imagine what it would take to provide the material basis for human flourishing to ten billion people, a fair bit more than live today, while staying within planetary boundaries. We make the point that both sides of this equation — what a ‘comfortable’ life means, and where exactly planetary boundaries lie — are political questions that can only be answered by reference to values. Science cannot tell us what we should or should not do; it can merely advise on the consequences of certain material pressures on the Earth system.

We argue in the book that it is certainly possible with present technology to provide a comfortable life for ten billion people, rewild much of the biosphere, decarbonize the economy, and begin to repair the damage of centuries of capitalism. The trick is what you mean by the ‘comfortable’. If you mean US levels of energy and material use, then you will be dissatisfied by our proposal. Instead, we propose energy quotas and a change in diet towards veganism for most people.

Deep decarbonization is very hard. Fossil fuels are energy dense (lots of energy per unit mass) and can be burned anytime, day or night. Decarbonizing electricity is the easy part, though load management with intermittent renewable sources presents an engineering challenge. Replacing fuels in industrial and transport processes is much harder. Planes, for example, need energy-dense power sources like kerosene so they are light enough to fly. However, replacing fossil fuels with renewable fuels require vast amounts of electricity to transform carbon from the atmosphere into fuels for planes. For example, decarbonizing flights in the UK alone would require more electricity than the entire country generates today. The other option would be biofuels, but these require vast swaths of land to grow; in the UK, for flights alone, this would be two thirds of its croplands. Quotas are the only way to make a world without fossil fuels work for everyone.

Similarly, animal husbandry eats up 77 percent of agricultural land while providing only a fraction of the nutrients people need. The industry emits gobs of greenhouse gases, including vast amounts of the potent short-lived methane; cutting methane rapidly is a useful way to ‘bend the curve’ on climate change, limiting near-term warming as we build up our capacity to replace carbon dioxide emitting infrastructure. Abolishing the meat industry and eating mainly plants instead would clean up the atmosphere and free up lots of land for rewilding. Remember that habitat loss is one of the main drivers of mass extinction, and one of the main drivers of habitat loss is animal agriculture — both fodder (soy and corn) and grazing land.

A life with no meat, fewer flights, smaller homes, limited cars, and reduced consumption may seem intolerable for some. But that does not mean such a life isn’t comfortable. Guaranteed housing, health care, and education in a built environment that prioritizes sharing and community sounds luxurious to me.

You seem very lukewarm about ‘green’ solutions to the environmental crisis. But wouldn’t some people argue that the policies proposed by mainstream advocates of environmentalism at least contribute to offering some partial remedy to the degradation and despoliation of the Earth that you describe in your book?

Certainly we encourage the development of policies and technologies that can repair the damage to the Earth system. For example, in the book we are bullish on hydrogen for electrifying the industrial sector and management in grid load; lots of capitalists like this investment too. I spend much of my day as an environmental activist in Boston, pushing for reforms like strict building energy use codes and decarbonizing municipal buildings. None of these reforms are incompatible with capitalism, although we hope that our movement will grow in strength and demand more. The argument we make in the book is that the unconscious force of capital will always be dominant in a capitalist society, and that this force is incompatible with the flourishing of the biosphere because of its metabolic need to ingest ever-increasing swaths of nature. Reforms and technologies that limit the damage are welcome, but we need to do all we can to align these forces towards a larger social transformation.

How close do you think the biosphere is to the ‘extinction’ you refer to in the title of your book?

Human beings and the biosphere are not in danger of extinction. The extinction in the title of the book refers to the ongoing Sixth Mass Extinction event in the nearly four-billion-year history of life on this planet. Life is robust; it will continue, however damaged. Still, we have a responsibility to maintain biodiversity both as an end-in-itself, but also out of self-interest. Healthy ecosystems are robust to disease, maintain productive agriculture, and sequester carbon.

You talk about how we can run things rationally and sustainably without money and the market and instead by democratic planning ‘in kind’. But how do you see this planning taking place? How would you argue against those who might say that a society without monetary accounting would quickly degenerate into shortage and social chaos?

This is a hard question, and certainly I will not be able to answer it to your readers’ satisfaction here. I’ll also note that Troy and I are continuing to think about moneyless planning and are planning a follow-up book on the topic.

In the book, we present a thought experiment about how moneyless planning in a world socialist society might work. A global parliament would create a few coarsely-resolved global plans, reflecting different coalitions in power; these plans might offer proposals about energy quotas, the energy generation system, food production, and material throughput needs. After debate, a plan would be adopted for a period, subject to constant revisions. The implementation of these economic plans would take place at more local levels of government, which would have wide leeway to decide how to govern themselves so long as they fit within the parameters of the global plan. Although there should be considerable flexibility, we think that a global plan is necessary. Because humanity has become a planetary species, able to unintentionally alter the climate and biosphere, we argue that we need a form of government that is commensurate with the scale of our power. We want to consciously debate and control our society, rather than let capital blindly trash the biosphere.

We argue that the algorithms and technologies necessary to plan on this scale already exist; in the book we outline the history of linear programming and other algorithms in the fields of optimization and control theory. The challenge is (1) gathering the necessary information to plan effectively, (2) foregrounding democracy, and (3) ensuring that plans are actually implemented. There were experiments in the Eastern Bloc with algorithmic planning as a reform measure, but they failed in these three challenges. Our argument is that these challenges are intertwined and fundamentally emerge from the need for democracy. If planning is carried out by a richly democratic society, with participatory institutions at every level from the workplace to national and global parliaments, then planning will have a legitimacy that technocracy could never hope to achieve. That legitimacy helps with information gathering, at least with enough quality to create passable plans, and with successful plan implementation. No one will work for a socialism they don’t believe in.

Although there is a lot to say about this topic, I think that there is no reason to believe well-formed institutions cannot operate a complex society without the mediating power of money. However, more utopias and thought experiments would be useful in working out some first principles in designing such a society. Here, again, there is a need for more ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future!’

How would you respond to the argument put forward by some that a society based on voluntary work and cooperation to produce everything humanity needs could not work owing to the frailties of ‘human nature’?

I don’t believe in human nature as some timeless, unchanging category. One of the useful lessons of history is that people in the past are wildly different from people today. Even the Ancient Greeks, who we in the West see as our ancestors, lived by practices and beliefs and motivations that are incomprehensible to us today. However, I do take your point that human nature as it exists today has been imprinted with capitalism. While Margaret Thatcher’s line that “there is no such thing as society” is obviously ridiculous, capitalist social relations make it more and more true each day. Hostility towards strangers, paranoia, and loneliness all are outcomes of capitalism that, while not part of human nature, nevertheless make building solidarity hard. That said, I’ve seen people transform when they are brought into genuinely solidaristic institutions like trade unions or activist groups. Being part of a union myself will always make me hopeful about the possibility of socialism.

For socialism to work, you don’t need to believe human beings are angels. Instead, you need to believe that people are shaped by the institutions and social situation around them, and that those infrastructures can be changed by humans because they were constructed by humans.

As an additional note, socialism need not be entirely voluntary. Abolishing alienation in labor and establishing social control of the economy will both involve vast new democratic institutions, but vaccine mandates, for example, will remain necessary to protect public health. Coercive measures like these are obviously a risk for any society, but I am confident that robust participatory institutions can prevent necessary coercion from expanding beyond its remit into tyranny.

How do you think it’s possible to convince enough people that a world socialist society is possible and feasible? And if that does happen, what practical steps do you think will be necessary to bring that society into being?

I think a great way to convince people that alternatives are possible is to use utopias as a method. Real utopias, in the form of democratic rank-and-file trade unions, show people that participatory democracy can transform lives. Fictional utopias and thought experiments like ours demonstrate that even knotty crises like environmental collapse can be remedied. We even made a video game, available at play.half.earth, that allows people to experience what planning a world economy might feel like. All these things together might convince enough people to form the seeds of a movement, which could grow into a revolutionary moment. Our chances are better if we can unite different splinters on the left into a fighting movement. Of course, the odds are against us, but I think that if we can assemble a large base with a radical imagination, design institutions that prefigure the world we want, and build enough power to achieve real intermediate victories, we will be on our way towards a winning socialist movement.

You seem to see some regimes within capitalism (e.g. Soviet Union, Maoist China, Cuba, Allende’s Chile) as genuine but failed attempts to establish socialism. But do these regimes really have any relationship with the socialism that you describe and advocate in your book?

You are absolutely right that these regimes are not socialist. I am sympathetic to interpretations of the USSR and other similar regimes as ‘state capitalist.’ In particular, I like Moishe Postone’s argument that because these societies are still governed by the law of value they have not overcome capitalism, no matter what the party claimed. However, I think it is also important to remember that the people who built these regimes (here I’m thinking primarily of China and the USSR) really were socialists and really did want to build an alternative to capitalism. It is on us to learn from their failures. We may not have the same youthful optimism as socialists from a century ago, but we do have many examples of how not to do socialism — that’s useful data as we shape our demands and imagined alternatives today. This is why in the book we engage deeply with attempts to reform the Soviet economy, even as we are strongly critical of the USSR.

You favour veganism as a way of feeding everyone while having the smallest environmental impact. But do you think that humanity as a whole, having been omnivorous throughout their existence, will ever accept the total exclusion of animal foodstuffs from their diet? And, more generally, isn’t it hard enough to persuade people to work for socialism without also telling them they may have to give up things they like?

I already detailed why veganism makes sense as an environmental policy, so here I’ll focus on the critiques. First, the amount of meat we in the Global North eat today is historically unprecedented. Our ancestors did eat meat, but only a small fraction of what we do today. As a result, there are cultural resources to draw on in most areas to create meatless dishes. For example, I’m from the South in the US, home of barbeque and fried chicken. But my hometown also hosts a large Seventh Day Adventist community, who do not eat meat for religious reasons; my great-grandfather, who was a farmer, lived basically as a vegetarian because he didn’t like to kill animals. As a vegan myself, my main practice is to show people that meatless food can be delicious and joyful. In Spain of all places, the minister for consumer affairs Alberto Garzon is working to reduce meat consumption with some success. There are ways to build campaigns around this issue, even though I agree it is a hard sell.

If I may, I’d like to expand your question further. Even if your readers disagree with me on the animal question, there are other aspects of socialism which are unpopular on their face. For example, fighting neo-colonial exploitation may not poll well in places like the UK. I like this quote from the first pages of the feminist writer Sophie Lewis’s Abolish the Family: ‘All of us—even those of us who own no property, who receive no guaranteed care, and who subsist at the blunt end of empire, whiteness, cis-hetero-patriarchy, and class— will have to let go of something as the process of our collective liberation unfolds. If the world is to be remade utterly, then a person must be willing to be remade also.’ One need not agree with Lewis’s position on family abolition to recognize the truth of her argument. Even if the world we will build is far better than the one that exists, things will be lost in the process. All socialists will need to confront this challenge, even if self-consciously they only demand what is ‘popular.’

Our afterword

Readers will appreciate that many of the ideas expressed in the interview are very much in line with the views the Socialist Party has long been spreading. We would give as examples the fallacy of ‘human nature’, the myth of over-population, and in particular the need for a global, ‘richly democrat’, wageless, moneyless, non-market society using advanced technologies already available. We must, however, also say that we do not see entirely eye to eye with Drew Pendergrass on certain elements of the analysis he puts forwards. In this regard we would highlight in particular: his vision of a future global socialist society as one still to be run by governments, if globally as well as nationally; his view that the Russian and Chinese revolutions of the 20th century constituted, at least in their early stages, an attempt to establish socialism in our terms; and his insistence that, from the point of view of practical resource usage, we can only have socialism if everyone is vegan.

In our view socialism can only be a society without leaders and led and without national boundaries. It follows from this that it must also be free of governments, whether national or global. Its watchword must be administration of things rather than government over people. Of course we accept that the interviewee may be using the word ‘government’ in a wider sense than normal and ‘national’ more in the sense of ‘regional’. If so, then his view may equate closely to ours.

Our less than positive view of his seeing the Russian and Chinese revolutions as attempts at socialism arises from the fact that neither country was anywhere close to the advanced form of capitalism needed for socialism to emerge from them. Lenin famously said that, if the Bolsheviks had to wait for the masses to understand socialism, it would take 500 years (meaning never), while China under Mao was little more than the personal possession of a tyrannical ruler who was prepared to unleash and oversee the most profound atrocities to affirm and consolidate his power.

Pendergrass is open about the need he sees to propose a highly detailed picture of a future non-market society, which he conceives as arising gradually and imperfectly from tendencies within capitalism and being ‘ironed out’ into complete ‘socialism’ with time. We, on the other hand, insist on the need for a majority of workers to first win control of political power, probably via the ballot box, at which point detailed plans for running the new society will have already been made and the passage to it can be relatively seamless. As it will be up to those around when socialism starts to be seriously on the agenda to decide on specific details, we see it as arguably undemocratic and even maybe dogmatic to start proposing detailed plans now (speculative ideas perhaps, but not detailed plans), since we do not know at what point society will then be, in particular technologically.

Blogger's Note:

There is another expanded review of 'Half-Earth Socialism', which goes to into greater detail, at the following link: A plan to save the future (2023).

How will capitalism end? (2023)

From the April 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

We discuss this with Steve Paxton, author of How Capitalism Ends. History, Ideology and Progress (Zero Books, 2023).

Steve Paxton’s book on Russia, Unlearning Marx. Why the Soviet Failure was a Triumph for Marx, published in 2021, stated that the development of technology under capitalism now allows the production of ‘the material abundance required by a free society’ but that the capitalist system by its very nature does not allow this to take place. His book, reviewed in the Socialist Standard in 2022, did not go so far as to propose any kind of detailed remedy for this but rather referred the reader to his upcoming book about ‘the end of capitalism and what comes next’. That book has now been published and the author has agreed to discuss it with the Socialist Standard.

Socialist Standard: Your book contains great analysis of class in terms of capitalist society being divided into two distinct classes, those who possess sufficient capital not to have to sell their energies to an employer and those – the vast majority – who aren’t in that position and have to seek paid employment to survive. It also presents a very detailed and effective demolition of arguments that insist on the inevitability of the market and deny that effective economic calculation would be possible in a non-monetary society. But to what extent do you see the end of capitalism, which is part of the title of your book, as leading to a non-monetary society, to a society without a market?

Steve Paxton: I don’t see a post-capitalist society as necessarily having no room for markets at all. Just as markets existed before capitalism, they may well exist after capitalism. The important thing is that there will be significant differences from the way markets operate under capitalism. In pre-capitalist societies, you couldn’t consider the markets in labour or commodities as free markets in the way that people do under capitalism. So in a post-capitalist future, we might still see markets, but they’re likely to be very different from those we experience under capitalism. The first thing we need to remember is that socialism makes an important distinction between ownership of the means of production and ownership of personal property. Impersonal property is incompatible with socialism, but nobody’s coming for your toothbrush or your bicycle. So I think there’s always room for some kind of market mechanism, the difference being the ownership pattern underlying that market mechanism. The problem with capitalism isn’t that people buy and sell things. It’s the position we start from, in which the only thing one group of people have to sell is their labour power, and they have to do that to survive. So, I guess it’s important to really define what we mean by capitalism. There are in fact competing ideas of what capitalism means. And that’s the case even within Marx. Sometimes he talks about it as a mode of production, and sometimes he talks about it as an economic structure. But I like to take Marx’s idea of capitalism as an economic structure, the sum of class relations, of production relations. It’s basically who owns what and what ownership means is what defines capitalism. So, under capitalism, the dominant production relation is that most people are proletarians, which means they own only their labour power. They’re free to sell that labour power to any capitalist, but because they own no productive forces, they’re actually unfree, in that they must sell that labour power just to survive. So, if that’s how we view capitalism, then markets in themselves are not intrinsically or inherently capitalist. Capitalism is defined by the concentration of ownership of productive resources in very few hands and the consequences that flow from that. It’s true that, once you have a market, you have the potential that some people are just better at buying and selling. But it also has to be said that most of the inequality of ownership under capitalism doesn’t come from the particular skills of entrepreneurs. It comes from people starting with a massive fortune in the first place and starting with lots of resources. So if you remove those things, then the ability to get rich from a market becomes much more limited. At the same time, there’s no hard and fast rule that everyone’s income must be equal.

SS: So how would you see a more equal society with money and a market working?

SP: Under socialism, you might have a situation where, for example, there’s basic income, and on top of that, maybe people that do particularly unpleasant work, particularly hard work, work that no one else wants to do, or maybe work that requires a particular set of skills, will be rewarded more. But these differences would, again, be differences in income, not wealth. And they would be very, very limited compared to today’s great inequalities. Providing income inequality, is structurally limited, it needn’t in itself be a bad thing. Then the person who chooses to work 20 hours a week rather than 40 shouldn’t mind not getting some of the benefits. That’s the choice that people can make under socialism. It’s not a choice they can make under capitalism. So I think that, while it’s possible that we might be able to work out a way to get by without markets at all, just the existence of markets doesn’t necessarily derail the socialist project.

SS: What would be your objections to a moneyless, wageless society as opposed to the kind of thing that you’ve described? After all, Marx did talk about socialism as the abolition of the wages system.

SP: I don’t really have an objection to it, but I think it’s also something that isn’t a necessary component of moving beyond capitalism. It might be something that we need to go through a few more stages before we arrive at. It might be that, once we’ve got rid of all the stuff that is actually the real problem with capitalism, then we realize that money wasn’t really the problem in the first place. When people talk about getting rid of money and using labour vouchers or tokens, that’s just money, isn’t it? That’s just calling money something else. Maybe we should have different currencies. So you get a basic income in one money that you can spend on basic necessities. And then, if you want to contribute more, particularly if you’re prepared to do an unpleasant job or work longer hours, then you get a different currency that you can spend on luxuries. Anyway, we need to focus on getting rid of the real problems of capitalism, which are the fact that a small number of people own all the productive resources and most people own no productive resources.

SS: Just to clarify that we definitely wouldn’t suggest labour vouchers or tokens as a replacement for money. What we suggest is a society of free access to all goods and services, where you wouldn’t need labour vouchers or tokens. When Marx talked about labour vouchers, he was talking about the possibility of using them at an earlier stage of productive development. We would argue that we are now well past that stage and that enough can be produced now to satisfy everyone’s needs the world over, if goods and services are produced and distributed rationally. But to move to something a little bit different, at one point in your book you refer to a socialist government, and you seem to be favourable to the kind of political position of the Labour Party under Corbyn. But can there be such a thing as a socialist government given that in, in Marxian terms, governments are the executive committee of the capitalist class, and therefore a socialist society should involve the abolition of government over people as we know it and its replacement by the cooperative administration of things?

Steve Paxton

SP: I do write from a Marxist point of view, but I tend not to describe myself as a Marxist because, when you do that, people expect you to defend everything Marx said or wrote. On the other hand, I think you can see Marx’s ideas as a coherent whole while not necessarily defending everything he had to say. But I’m not an anarchist and I guess I’m looking a bit more short-term. I’m looking at what our next horizons should be. There’s very short term, for example not having a Tory government, saving the NHS and things like that. And there’s very long term and the ideal society that might be moneyless and have no government. But there’s a big chunk there in between, which is what we should be aiming for. On governments, I do agree that they’re the committee of the ruling class. But that’s under capitalism. Governments under socialism don’t have to be of that kind; they can represent a different interest. They can represent the people rather than the ruling class. In terms of leadership style and some of his policy positions, Corbyn was closer to my position than any other Labour leader since I was in short trousers. Labour as it stands, after a hundred or something years, isn’t really representing the working people. We need a socialist party. I know you would say there is one, the Socialist Party of Great Britain. But we need a socialist party with mainstream political clout. We need socialist MPs, but those MPs who would describe themselves as socialist are unfortunately trapped inside the Labour Party. First of all, we need to get rid of the first past the post electoral system. But there’s also plenty to do outside Parliament in terms of trade unions and industrial relations and worker organization.

SS: What you seem to be saying is that, if we look too far into the future, that takes the focus away from what’s happening right now and the possibility of immediate improvements in workers’ conditions. The Socialist Party would tend to argue more or less the opposite. That is, if you focus on short-term reforms, slight changes to the system, any of which could be easily withdrawn anyway, then you take the focus away from the longer term from the possibility of a really equal society, which we could have if enough people wanted it and were prepared to work towards it. In other words, if you put off the demand for socialism, aren’t you putting off socialism and, in that light can’t reforms actually be the enemy of revolution?

SP: I’m not really advocating that we should focus on short-term gains. I’m saying that we shouldn’t reject and we shouldn’t criticize those who do focus on short-term gains. If they’re fighting for a better minimum wage, I’m not their enemy and they’re not mine. We’ve got plenty of enemies, without picking on people who want basically the same as us but are maybe less ambitious. So, while I think our focus should be on a transformation of society away from capitalism into socialism, I also think that we’re not going to get there in one fell swoop, and so the way has to be incremental, via small gains, but gains that make a transformative difference rather than those that just make capitalism a bit less unpalatable. There’s nothing that says that we must have some kind of sudden or dramatic change to get from capitalism to socialism. It’s most likely to happen by gradual and peaceful means. It’s where we end up that’s the most important thing, not how many steps it takes to get there. People are suffering under capitalism, so obviously the sooner the better, but also it needs to be something that’s sustainable. But we shouldn’t underestimate the positive role that the state could play. It’s happened before – with the NHS for example. No one took any violent action to seize any hospitals. The NHS was the obvious answer to people’s healthcare needs. So the state can offer a better alternative than the private sector. And that can apply to education and housing too.

SS: We’d absolutely agree with you that violent conflict couldn’t be on the agenda to achieve socialism, but in response to your incremental focus, how do you see democratic political action by a majority at the ballot box to bring in the kind of system of free access to goods and services that we advocate, even if you think that is a long way off? Given that we already live in a post-scarcity world, where we can produce everything we need, isn’t it just a question of planning so that it can be made available in a freely accessible way once a majority at the ballot box votes for representatives who are in favour of that?

SP: One problem is that we can’t have socialism when there is the number of socialists that we have now. We need to have more socialists. But the problem with that is that many of the people that see themselves as socialists spend all their time insulting the kind of people that are closest to us on the ideological spectrum and berating them for not yet being socialists. What we need to do is to actually convince them to be socialists. And then, as I’ve said before, an obstacle is the lack of proportional representation. If we had a democratic electoral system where everybody’s vote counted for the same amount, we could end up with a socialist party with, you know, maybe 20 or 30 MPs. And that would be enough to say we’re not coming into coalition with anyone unless we get these red lines. We want this minimum wage, for example. That doesn’t drive us past capitalism, but it moves us in the right direction. It’s a process of bringing people on a journey. Look at the huge amount the first post-war Labour government did, and then even in the sixties when Wilson got in, they pushed again. So many things were nationalized. But they made the mistake of not introducing a democratic electoral system. If they had, Thatcher would never have become Prime Minister and all these things that we gained in the post-war period wouldn’t have been wiped out over the last 30 or 40 years.

SS: We wouldn’t see proportional representation within capitalism as constituting any kind of step towards socialism. Some countries do of course already have proportional representation, but would you say that this has moved them any closer to socialism?

SP: Well, you could also look at somewhere like New Zealand, which has got proportional representation and is much better off for it. The Scandinavian countries too. The usual experience of proportional representation is that those countries that have it end up being more progressive and less in thrall to the interests of global capital. Of course, there are still capitalist governments in all of those countries, but they are generally less right-wing than the governments in places like Britain and America. Having said that, I agree that proportional representation doesn’t deliver anything on its own, but without it we’re not really going anywhere.

SS: You may have noticed that, in recent years, there’ve been lots of what you might broadly call anti-capitalist books published and some of these at least are arguing the same kind of things as the Socialist Party. They’re arguing that the only way to get rid of capitalism is to get rid of the market, money and the wages system. You yourself touch on this in your book, when you refer to Marx’s description of socialism as a society based on from each according to ability to each according to need. So do you think there’s a possibility that in the future you might move to this kind of position yourself, that, rather than arguing that things need to get a bit better gradually, you might join us in asking for the whole pie now?

SP: That is what I think we should be asking for, but, realistically, are we going to get it? There are two things we have to have: a vision of where we want to get to, and a vision of how we get there. I think you look a bit further into the future than I do. And I think that, if we can get rid of capitalism as I’ve defined it – the means of production owned by a tiny number of private individuals – then we’re moving towards some kind of system of common ownership. That’s my focus, and ultimately I think the marketless, moneyless society is one of the ways in which we protect that. But while it’s good that people should try to work out recipes for the future society, you have to acknowledge that, by the time we get there, some of those assumptions that those people are making aren’t going to be true anymore. I think it’s still a worthwhile project to try and envisage the kind of details of exactly how the future society would operate, as people like Michael Albert and Ben Burgis are doing. But I also think that we have to accept that, if you tried to do that in 1820, you’d have a horse pulling a cart instead of an engine. In other words we always have to adapt our ideas as we go along. But once we have the big change – that is in the ownership of the means of production – once that’s held in common, then we can look at all the other ideas – maybe to labour tokens or to a moneyless society with the market completely eradicated and free access. But those arguments weren’t really in the scope of my book.

SS: We don’t actually go in for, as Marx put it, ‘recipes for the cookshops of the future’ either, but we do try to outline a broad structure for the future society we advocate. So we’d agree that, when we get the society we’re aiming for, the particular level of development and technology reached at the time will determine the exact details of production, distribution and social organization. Does that seem reasonable to you?

SP: Yes. For example, we now have this situation where producing more copies of something doesn’t have an additional cost. If you’re going to buy more than one copy of my book on Kindle, it doesn’t cost anything. That server is running already. The electricity is being used, the storage space is there, the bandwidth is there. Whether one person or a thousand people buy it tomorrow, it doesn’t cost the printer, the publisher, the retailer any more. And that kind of thing didn’t really exist until very recently. Many of the things we would need would have zero marginal cost per unit sold. And that makes a massive difference in how an economy could work and why people choose one thing over another, a massive difference that, even 50 years ago, people could probably not have envisaged.

(Interview by Howard Moss.)

Comrade Cyril May on New York Radio (1970)

From issue number 6 (1970) of The Western Socialist

During his recent visit to the United States as fraternal delegate of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to the annual WSP conference in Boston, Comrade May, together with two other SPGB comrades, addressed a successful propaganda meeting conducted by New York Local. While in New York he was interviewed by Arlene Francis (well-known star of motion pictures and TV) on her radio program, on WOR-AM, September 29, 1970.

Inasmuch as the discussion ran about 40 minutes, we had to condense it because of space requirements of The Western Socialist. We take pleasure in presenting Comrade Cyril May’s effective presentation of the socialist case in this interview. Miss Francis asked meaningful and pertinent questions.

Arlene Francis: I would like to introduce Mr. Cyril May, party organizer of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, who is visiting this country to give some lectures. And I'm happy that one of your lectures. Mr. May. is to be addressed to me because what I do not know about your subject is embarrassing to me. Among my few meager bits of knowledge is the fact that the socialist state that you envision does not presently exist nor has It ever existed. Am I right?

Cyril May: That is quite correct. In fact, the statement of a "socialist state” is not one that we would particularly like to go along with because the very word "state” itself has certain political connotations with which you and I would perhaps disagree at this juncture. But it is true that socialism is something that does not exist in any country throughout the world.

Arlene: And has it ever?

Cyril: And it hasn’t ever. No.

Arlene: Then you have come up with a brand new idea today. And . . .  sowhat we are talking about — is what? Ia it another movement toward features such as public control of all utilities? I don't know so I have to ask.

Cyril: OK. Well I’ll try to fill you in with the essentials on it. Socialism to the Socialist Party of Great Britain and to its companion parties in other parts of the world, including the World Socialist Party in the United States, is a system of society, or a way of living if we can put it that way, where the means of wealth production and distribution, the land, the mills, the mines, the minerals, the factories and workshops, the means of transportation will be owned by the whole of society, regardless of sex or race. In short, common ownership is the essential economic fundamental of a socialist society.

Arlene: How do you even begin that?

Cyril: Well, to begin that. It really involves a revolution In the idea process of people. They’ve got to change their ideas and concepts and the scales of social values, that they have today. In short, the establishment of a socialist society, from our point of view, rests upon a majority of people. It can’t be established by some dictatorship or some elitist group. It rests upon a majority of people understanding it and arising from that understanding taking the necessary political action to establish It. So first of all it’s a revolution in ideas.

Arlene: So that it’s a case for the psychotherapist really, before anything else.

Cyril: Well. I changed my ideas and I didn’t have a psychotherapist.

Arlene: What were your ideas?

Cyril: Well, my ideas when I was 14 or 15 were rather typical of most working class boys, I guess. I went to a Methodist Church. I thought at times, I guess, that it was a change of heart that was needed by people. And I looked at the hearts of a lot of people who had apparently changed, belonged to churches, and I found that they had no solution to what I considered to be the major problems then. This was In the middle of the 1930s when the Second World War was looming on the horizon. and after listening to a variety of different political speeches and reading books on it, I came to the conclusion that the ideas of the Socialist Party were the correct ones. But no psychotherapist entered into this. And If we’ve got to wait for psychotherapists to deal with this, then I don’t think It will ever come. It’s long enough to wait for it dealing with it in the normal way. But I think if we let the psychotherapists loose on it we really are in trouble.

Arlene: Yes, but still you’ve said yourself that we have to recondition our own thinking. That takes quite a lot of work to leave in the hands of the individual.

Cyril: No. It doesn't leave work on the part of the individual. But at least they are capable of doing it. The trouble as I see it and the Party sees it, they're not prepared to devote the amount of time to the world in which they live that they devote to football, perhaps. in England and in America to baseball and basketball.

Arlene: Then you don’t recognize natural greed?

Cyril: No, I don’t recognize natural greed, as such. I recognize people are greedy, including myself. But I don’t think that is any natural aspect of man. I rather think that’s more a feature of human behavior that’s determined by social conditions under which he finds himself. (Voice from background: Desperation?)

Arlene: Jeanie just said "desperation.”

Cyril: Well, not so much desperation, perhaps, apart from the way in which this world is organized—rather stupidly in my opinion. There are those who become desperate because on the one hand, the world can turn out sufficient food to feed the millions of the world, while on the other hand millions of people starve. That is a desperate situation, and one which will exist as long as this type of world operates where food isn’t grown primarily for people to eat. I mean, that is of secondary importance. In fact, a lot of food that is produced isn’t fit for humans to eat very often. But the prime reason it is produced, I would say, is for sale on the market with view to profit. No profit, no production, and the people can die of starvation. That’s desperate and I think we’ve got to do something about it.

Arlene: Why does, or does the Socialist Party of Great Britain feel that a gradual reform is impossible?

Cyril: Well, we’ve come up against this political question of reformism in Great Britain since around the turn of the century. Organizations like the Labour Party were formed on the old Social Democratic Federation lines and put out the view that they wanted a different type of society and envisaged that this society could be obtained by a series of political reforms. Well, in England — and obviously I talk out of a great deal of political experience after seventy years of political reforms since the first of the century, some of which have been quite fundamental in character — as for example the introduction of the National Health Service, the fact that certain industries were nationalized, all reforms advocated by the Labour Party, fundamentally these reforms haven’t patched any of the basic problems that confront mankind. And we think that all reforms, some of which may be good, some of which have a left-handed kick, as it were, if added up, do not even touch the ownership of society, which — to us — is the basis of the ills that confront mankind today. So this process of reformism doesn’t in any way bring us that much nearer to the fundamental change which we consider is necessary.

Arlene: Could your ideals be expressed in the ballot?

Cyril: Yes, that is the idea of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Companion Parties, that the capture of political control, political power, to introduce a new way of life can only be done through peaceful means. We do not envisage a revolution on the streets behind barricades, lynching people, that does not give rise to a sane order of society. So It has got to be done through the ballot box.

Arlene: Were the socialist ideals of George Bernard Shaw any closer to your way of thinking?

Cyril: I like George Bernard Shaw as a dramatist. As a political commentator he was not particularly on the beam. He was a member of the Fabian Society which is an offshoot of the Labour Party. He was interested firstly in what the Labour Party stood for, namely, to try and reform, shall we say, rub the raw edges off the capitalist system but really to keep it in being with its ownership basis.

Arlene: Doesn’t it strike you that your goals are so enormous that they are virtually impossible?

Cyril: Uuhm . . .

Arlene: Of course you wouldn't be working for anything that you thought was impossible . . .

Cyril: Yes. If I thought it was impossible I wouldn't be devoting my time. We do realize it is an enormous task. But we have a number of features which are working for us, in many ways. If the introduction of the new system rested upon the mere handful of socialists, relatively speaking, in this and other parts of the country then you could say, why worry? But the way the system operates and organizes itself throws up such a series of problems which man has got to grapple with one way or another, otherwise he's a dead one, that this in itself, acts very much on happy hearts, and people begin to start thinking of things along lines of dealing with them from a worldwide basis without necessarily being socialists. There are a number of agencies, today, which are certainly not socialist — in fact, very much capitalist — in character but they are beginning to appreciate, and realize that the problems today are no longer confined to one geographical unit, but are world-wide in character.

Arlene: Can you mention what some are?

Cyril: Yes. I should think the Food and Agricultural Organization attached to the United Nations Organization has done an enormous amount of research work and printed a considerable amount of literature which is not socialist, but which in many ways has pin-pointed the problem as being one of a social nature and one of a world-wide character. They stop short there, of course, and here, I think, is their fundamental failing. They are dealing with these evils through the eyeglass of capitalism and as long as they wear that eyeglass they will not go any further than that.

Arlene: What about the abolition of money, which was suggested on this microphone some months back by Alan Watts. It is an interesting idea and it still haunts me — all the ramifications of it. Will you please develop that a little for us?

Cyril: Yes. This is one of the points that the socialist mentions — that they envisage a society without money, that at this juncture most people do think that we are cracked (laughter from the hostess). They've got so used to money that they can't envisage anything except money with which to obtain articles. But if you look back over history money wasn't always in existence, certainly not in primitive times and it only came into existence with the development of private property and became the complex money system that we know today as capitalism has become more and more complex . . . In London, recently, due to the fact that our transport system, much like yours in New York, is run down and doesn't pay its way the suggestion’s been made that it is not worthwhile collecting all of these silly coins and silly pieces of paper; let's ride for free. Well, this isn’t socialism, of course, but it shows the way in which people’s minds are working. To us, money is only a means of exchange in order that if I was in a bar instead of your radio studio and wanted a cup of coffee, I’d have to give fifteen cents for it because somebody owns that cup of coffee and if I want it I've got to pay them for it. But this presupposes ownership all away along the line. But if you have a world based on common ownership, where the coffee, the cocoa and all the thousand and one different things that men need in order to live are owned by the whole of society, then what would we have money for? It's no use paying ourselves money in order to obtain these things. And we envisage this socialist society as being one in which people will give according to their abilities and take according to their need. And we will not need money in order to do that.

Arlene: Isn’t that also Communist theory?

Cyril: Strictly speaking the words “socialism” and "communism” are synonomous terms. Marx, a hundred years ago wrote this in many of the political books and pamphlets he was writing at the time and it’s largely in the 20th century, particularly from the dating of the Russian Revolution of 1917, that the words "communism” and "socialism” seem to have taken on a different meaning. In short, some people look upon "socialism” as being parlor pink and "communism” as the deepest of red. But to us they are, indeed, identical terms.

A Forecast of the Coming Revolution: Interview with Paul Lafargue. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Amongst the best known leaders of Socialist thought is our comrade Paul Lafargue, author of "The Evolution of Property", "Socialism and the Intellectuals", and many other volumes and pamphlets of great value to International Socialism. A visit to Paris brought us in touch with a French comrade, through whose kindly offices we received an invitation to visit the veteran debater at his pleasant retreat in a little village some dozen miles from the French capital. Lafargue and his wife (once known personally to English Socialists as Laura Marx) received us with the true comradeship, which in palpable form made it plain that “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity”, is no empty phrase amongst Socialists.

Mindful of the interests of the Party, we secured from our comrade the following interesting expression of his views upon some vital topics of moment:

“The two countries which will benefit from the Russo-Japanese War”, said Lafargue, in answer to a query, “are America and England. Though the Japs succeed in expelling Russia from Manchuria, they are at the same time weakening themselves for a long period, and thus limiting their capacity for industrial competition. Again, the financiers of England and America—principally the former—will draw from Japan a great deal even of such profit as may accrue to her in return for their present assistance. Japan has for years been developing extraordinarily, but the War hinders this. The resources she is squandering in war are lost to industry.”

“And the results of all this upon our policy in the Far East, comrade?”

“The most important thing is the appearance of Japan upon the scene as the strong power of the East, so strong that no European country can compete with it. The rise of Japan marks the conclusion of European piracy in the Far East. Nobody expected such an extraordinary power. Further, Japan will organise China, industrially and politically.”

“What is your view, comrade, of the industrial position in Japan?”

“The rise of Japan industrially has been so rapid that the horrors of child and female labour in the England of the early nineteenth century have been reproduced—with the great difference that the intermediate stages from the England of the fifteenth century were totally absent in Japan. The psychological difference is enormous, and must produce a revolt, but the form we cannot forecast. In England and France the revolt was against the machine, and whilst this may not prove so in Japan, this we know—the Japs start with a Socialist movement such as was not, and could not be, in England and France in the initial stages of Capitalism. Just as the Japs adopt and adapt the ready-made science of Europe, so the Social science of the New Age finds there a ready soil. We may expect the Japanese people, who have shown such extraordinary courage on the battlefield, to show in the Social struggle the same indomitable energy and enterprise.”

“Now, as to the War again, comrade, what are its results upon Europe?”

“This war has shown that Russia has made a fool of Europe with a show of power. Particularly has Czarism befooled France. That show has enabled her to draw from France about eleven milliards of francs (some £400,000,000) by State loans and financial companies for the industrial exploitation of Russia. The latter investments have been chiefly for coal-mining and metal works. These found prosperity as long as the Russian State was a huge customer for railway construction, &c, but even before the War this fell off; and now, in so far as they have a revival, it is only the artificial stimulus of war time, which will have its due reaction. Even now the lack of money is strangling this revival. Either victory or defeat for Russia now means revolution—a bourgeois or constitutional revolution. The first thing that the new power will have to do will be to proclaim the bankruptcy of Russia—as the best means to obtain credit. You will recollect a similar process in the French Revolution. The new rulers of Russia will be the more ready to declare this bankruptcy, in that the losers will be, not the Russians but the French. The international effects will be felt primarily in France, where the chief debt of Russia is held. The fall of the present Russian political system will shake the whole fabric of European society.”

“What is the likely effect upon Socialism in France of the loss of all this capital through the fraud and folly of the bourgeois politicians and the financial magnates who dominate them?”

“Ah, that is the question. Remember the fuss about Panama involving only 1½ milliards of francs. You will see why I anticipate great results from the loss of some eight times as much. Only the Socialist Party of France has opposed itself to the Franco-Russian Alliances and denounced it as a fraud upon the French people. The discrediting of all the bourgeois parties must mean the immense growth of the party of the Proletariat. Only the Socialist Party of France, the Revolutionists of France, had the courage and insight to oppose the alliance with despotism.”

“Very good, comrade; so much for the economic factors. What of other forces?”

“Russia is a compound of different nationalities. In the centre the Slavs, surrounded by Poles, Finns, Caucasians, Armenians, &c, held down by main force. These will spring into position again on the occasion of the Revolution, and Poland principally (the Ireland of Russia), which has never lost the sense of nationality, despite the tyranny of centuries, will make her influence felt. She will want to reconstitute her nationality with the Austrian and the German Poles. Thus I believe that the next few years will bring us the European revolution, which, if Socialists are sufficiently bold and well organised, will mean also the Social Revolution.”

This concluded, as far as the War is concerned, one of the most instructive conversations in which 1 ever had the pleasure of participating. In a future issue I hope to reproduce some expressions of our comrade upon trade unionism, but with which it would be a pity to complicate this article. The difference between the Socialists and the pseudo-Socialists can easily be seen by a comparison of the large-mindedness and grip of the situation disclosed by our comrade, with the puny reflection of Capitalist sentimentality exhibited by Jaurès in dealing with this same position. The attitude of the Reformists in France sufficiently indicates the absurdity of the claim of such superficial politicians to in any sense represent Socialism either in France or elsewhere. Jaurès and his school are straining every nerve in a “Stop the War” agitation, on the surface in the interests of peace, but in reality designed to, if possible, stave off the evil day of capitalist collapse. It was not for nothing that our comrades of the Socialist Party of France moved the resolution at the recent International Congress, which declared against compromise and intrigue with capitalist parties. The Socialists of France have fought and are fighting the same battle against treachery and folly of opportunism, which we of The Socialist Party of Great Britain are waging in this country.

I am sure every Socialist in England joins with us in reciprocating the fraternal greetings extended by Paul and Laura Lafargue to the unofficial representatives of British Socialism to whom this interview was accorded.

H. J. Hawkins.

(Socialist Standard, November 1904)

Correspondence

Our comrade Hawkins forwards a copy of the following letter which he has received:

“Draviel, 15.11.04

Dear Comrade,—I have just received No. 3 of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD, containing your interview, and I am glad to find that you have given a very full and faithful account thereof.

Trusting that the paper will be successful and with my best wishes and our kind regards to Mrs Hawkins and yourself.

Yours fraternally

Paul Lafargue." LAFARGUE.

(Socialist Standard, December 1904)

Explaining the Paranormal (2012)

Chris French

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Marx’s original ideas and his worldview are very much in the sceptical tradition of philosophy. When we say we are scientific socialists, what we mean is that we are sceptical in the same way that scientists should be sceptical – rejecting dogma in favour of doubt, and thus allowing the possibility of progress. But is a properly scientific attitude consistent with capitalism, (with all its contradictions and hypocrisies, invisible hands and other dogmatic notions)? We put some questions to Chris French, head of the Anomalistic Psychology Unit at Goldsmiths College, London and former editor of The Skeptic.

1.    What exactly is ‘anomalistic psychology’ and what have you learned from it?

Anomalistic psychology may be defined as the study of extraordinary phenomena of behaviour and experience, including (but not restricted to) those that are often labelled ‘paranormal’. It is directed towards understanding bizarre experiences that many people have without assuming a priori that there is anything paranormal involved. It entails attempting to explain paranormal and related beliefs and ostensibly paranormal experiences in terms of known psychological and physical factors.

2.    You like to test people’s unscientific beliefs scientifically. How do they react when you prove their beliefs false?

We would never claim to have disproved a claim of, say, psychic powers on the basis of a single test. All that we could conclude is that under the particular conditions of that particular test, the results do not support the claim. Taken in the wider context of numerous other failures to support such claims and more plausible non-paranormal explanations of the phenomena in question, others can draw their own conclusions. We always ensure that claimants agree that the test is fair before we begin but the reaction from the claimants once they fail the test is always the same. They come up with reasons why, in retrospect, the test wasn’t actually fair at all!

3.    People often manage to live with ‘cognitive dissonance’ through denial. Is there an evolutionary value in deluding oneself or is this an accident of advanced cognition?

Our brains have evolved for survival, not necessarily for apprehending “Truth”. In terms of the evolutionary cost-benefit analysis, it makes more sense for us to come to quick decisions that are usually right rather than slower decisions that are right slightly more often (is that rustling in the bushes really a sabre-toothed tiger?). Thus we tend to think using heuristics (quick and dirty rules of thumb) that are good enough to usually lead to the right conclusion. But they can lead us astray. Sometimes we think we’ve found a meaningful pattern or connection when there is not really one there.

4.    Has your research suggested ways in which changing mindsets might be made easier?

Extreme believers (and extreme sceptics for that matter!) will probably never change their opinions regardless of the evidence. They are trapped in an “intellectual black hole” in which they employ various strategies to allow them to dismiss any evidence that does not support their views. The key to changing mindsets is education, education, education – in particular, giving people the critical thinking skills they need to evaluate evidence for themselves. The aim is to tell people how to think not what to think.

5.    Would you say that the study of religious beliefs is a branch of anomalistic psychology?

The psychology of religion is already a recognized, albeit very specialized, sub-discipline of psychology. In general, researchers in this area have tended to hold religious views themselves. More recently, anomalistic psychologists, who tend to be more likely to be atheist or agnostic, have provided a different perspective on a range of religious topics such as near-death experiences, the power of prayer, and mystical states.

6.    You’ve argued that people who believe in conspiracy theories are more likely to be alienated individuals. Why do you think this is?

The limited findings available do indeed support the not-too-surprising conclusion that those who feel alienated are more likely to believe in conspiracies. A number of factors appear to underlie this. For example, those who feel alienated will, almost by definition, distrust the government. This can lead to them endorsing mutually contradictory conspiracies such as Osama Bin Laden being still alive and him having been killed many years ago! Also, those who are alienated are probably drawn to conspiracy theories because such theories provide an explanation for their own marginalized position in society. They feel that they have been held back or pushed out by powerful “others” who are working behind the scenes.

Steven Pinker Clarifies his Opposition to Socialism (2013)

Steven Pinker

From the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Standard: Given your view that socialist communal ownership and cooperation is against human nature, do you see yourself as a latter day Thomas Hobbes, justifying the need for a coercive state apparatus to protect us from ourselves?

Steven Pinker: I don’t think that communal ownership and cooperation are against human nature, period — they are natural among blood relatives, close friends, and tightly knit tribes — but I am indeed skeptical that they are natural among strangers and acquaintances, to say nothing of entire large-scale societies. But yes, I am a Hobbesian, in the sense that I believe the evidence shows that a society with a democratic government, including a police force and judiciary (the coercive apparatus) is vastly less violent than a society living in anarchy. Hobbes himself was squishy about the ‘democratic’ part — he imagined that the state would somehow perfectly embody the interests of the people — and I depart from him in believing that democratic constraints on state power must be an explicit part of the social contract.

Socialist Standard: Your argument that levels of violence were highest among hunter-gatherer societies, thereafter declining to a record low in modern capitalism, has been hotly contested on the grounds that a) the modern primitive communities you cite are not really hunter-gatherers and have in addition had decades of contact with modern capitalism and b) that you have overlooked many large wars and civilian war-related deaths in recent history. Are you simply cherry-picking the evidence to suit your theory?

Steven Pinker: Absolutely not. For one thing, my argument rests on the distinction between anarchic and governed societies, not hunter-gatherers versus the rest. For another, I separate data from hunter-gatherers on the one hand, and hunter-horticulturalists and other tribal groups, on the other; the latter are indeed more violent than the former (on average), but both types of anarchical societies have enormously higher rates of violence than modern ones. Third, many of these estimates come from societies that had little to no contact with Westerners; the archaeological record, and many reports of first encounters with native peoples, indicate that they had high rates of violence well before they made contact with the West. Finally, my data for modern wars come from every independent dataset in the literature that I could find (including those of Quincy Wright, Pitirim Sorokim, L. F. Richardson, the Correlates of War Project, and, for more recent wars, the datasets from the Peace Research Institute of Oslo and the Uppsala Conflict Data Project. It’s possible that they missed some small wars, particularly in earlier periods, but they certainly did not miss any large ones, particularly in recent times. The estimates all include civilian deaths. Some of them stick to violent battle-related deaths (as opposed to indirect deaths from disease or famine), others try to estimate total deaths; the text indicates which is which.

Socialist Standard: To evade the charge of genetic determinism in The Blank Slate you argued that we could tell our genes ‘to go jump in the lake’. Surely, then, you cannot rule out socialist common ownership on genetic grounds?

Steven Pinker: That’s right, not a priori. All modern political systems are artificial, implementing designs that try to allow their citizens to prosper. Yet all of them have to take human nature into account, including the scope of our cooperative instincts, the incentives that drive us, the sources of our pleasure and pain, the differences among us, and the limitations on our powers of reason and decision-making. I suspect that regulated, safety-net capitalism of the form found in, say, today’s Canada and Germany, are likelier to maximize human happiness under these constraints than the forced collectivism of Stalin and Mao. Presumably you have some third alternative in mind; in the absence of details I can’t judge how well it would deal with the constraints imposed by human nature, but I’d argue that its success in bettering people’s lives will depend on how well it deals with them.

(For a review of Pinker’s latest book ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’, see page 20)

Letter: Not ‘Sound Money’ but ‘No Money’ (2014)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

  The author of Gold Wars reviewed in last month’s issue replies and we discuss capitalism, banking, economic crises and money with him and come to similar conclusions.

Kelly Mitchell: DAP’s review in the Socialist Standard of my book Gold Wars is much appreciated. The review quite rightly pointed out a few errors in the book, especially regarding the phrasing I chose. First, it’s correct that negative economic cycles occur under a loosely defined ‘gold standard’. I should have written that they tend to be more muted because sound money has a negative feedback effect on speculative frenzies. However, under a strict gold-backed system, a bank run is not possible, because any currency issued would have proper backing. When such crises happened (and I cover several in the book) the banks were not practicing a true gold standard. They were practicing a fractional reserve gold standard. In other words, there has been no genuine gold standard of fully-backed money for hundreds of years.

My fundamental concern is that socialists and others who sincerely want a better world can do nothing if they fail to properly understand the world we are in. The banking system is needlessly and deliberately opaque. This ‘fog of war’ exists to confuse and bore people. The creation of money is an essential topic for those who object to the capitalist system. You must know how it favours the powers that be. Those who control the supply of money have tilted the deck to assure the increase of elite power. Democracy has become a mere facade, with powerless voting placating the masses while monetary creation dictates all government action. Anyone who considers this a false ‘conspiracy theory’ is woefully ignorant of the nature and manifestation of power in the current capital dominated world.

Socialist Standard: The real issue is whether reforming the monetary system in some way will solve the problems of the market. We’ve seen nothing (and certainly no evidence) to suggest this is the case. In fact, world capitalism throughout its history has produced a long list of monetary reformers of various sorts: advocates of both inflation and deflation, those who support a gold standard, the followers of Major Douglas and Social Credit, those who believe in abolishing interest payments – yet none of these have ever succeeded in removing the problems of the market economy, including its periodic crises and slumps.

This is because the problem with capitalism is not its financial superstructure. That’s a bit like saying the problem with smallpox is only the scabs it produces – the problem is production for profit itself, the market economy, not particular features of it. Crises and slumps with their attendant unemployment and poverty are entirely normal for capitalism. They are not an aberration but the way the system rids itself of inefficient units of production so it can expand further in future.

KM: The review says ‘Mitchell repeats some of the myths about the power of the banks to create massive multiples of credit out of nothing’. This comment is quite puzzling to me. The author fails to specify which ‘myths’ he means. Is it possible for the Central Bank to create as much money as they wish or not? If not, what possible real world constraint exists? There are technical restrictions on fractional reserve lending, but as I detail in the book, these do not apply in all countries, nor do they apply to the shadow banking system.

Socialist Standard: Hopefully you will forgive us if we do not again go into the issue here of why commercial banks can’t create near endless amounts of credit from a given deposit base. We have spent much time on this in recent years already – we refer him to the issue of the Socialist Standard in October 2012 as an example of where this was dealt with in several articles and in quite some depth.

KM: I do take some objection to the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ regarding the ideas in the book. The phrasing is not used in the book, nor do I consider it a valid description. The term is used pejoratively by most analysts to deride theories they find objectionable without having to resort to deeper analysis. The review does, in fact, provide a certain degree of analysis – more than most of my critics, but still falls short in certain areas. Most notably, the review fails to see that I never advocate a gold standard. And if it is a conspiracy theory to point out that manipulation has occurred, then we should sharply question the regulators who have fined most commercial banks for secretly manipulating the LIBOR and Barclays for manipulating the gold market. In fact, they have ended the London gold fix on that basis – a fact that the review neglects to mention. To be fair, the writer probably didn’t hear about this recent official confirmation of the gold suppression. (They did, however, blame it on a lone gunman, as usual, a theory that is absurd considering the scale and variety of manipulation.)

Most gold suppression theorists are fiercely capitalist, with a bizarre faith in something called the free market. I hold that such an animal is like a griffin – it does not exist, nor can it because of a fundamental contradiction. In a completely free market, the government (and regulations) would be simply another commodity to be purchased by those with money. Regulations would arise to punish smaller competitors, destroying any free market. Contrariwise, to prevent that situation would require stopping companies from purchasing desired regulations – but that would be an interference in the free market, as well. Hence, no free market is possible.

Socialist Standard: You are right that your book didn’t explicitly advocate a gold standard, but it is certainly implicit throughout, hence the reason we said Mitchell ‘seems to be part of this group’ of theorists. It also emerges that your definition of a gold standard is rather different to the conventional one, though our point about booms and busts happening when currency is convertible into gold still stands. The idea of capitalism being able to generate sufficient capital flows and liquidity in a system where all currency is either gold itself or 100 percent backed by gold at all times is truly fantastical – indeed, it has never happened. It is no more likely than capitalism without bank deposits, credit and interest, as these all help propel the mass circulation of commodities in world markets, the levels of labour productivity associated with this, and necessary flows of capital investment. You rightly point out that the pure free-market beloved of the Austrian school of economists is a myth but so is capitalism without conventional banking and the paraphernalia that goes with it.

For the record, the article was written about a fortnight before it emerged Barclays had been fined for the part played by an alleged ‘rogue trader’ of gold in their dealing rooms. It has also recently come to light that under pressure from the financial authorities in Germany, Deutsche Bank has now left the gold fix syndicate completely. So the ‘fix’ is set to change dramatically under pressure from governments. If there has been a conspiracy (or collusion) to manipulate the price of gold, it is comparatively peripheral to the operation and survival of capitalism and something governments can and will deal with when necessary. In many ways this is just as they periodically deal with the effects of other cartels that get in the way of the wider interests of the owning class.

KM: The review continues ‘Mitchell has failed to understand that the expansion and contraction of the credit system that he is fixated on, and its attendant asset bubbles, is a reflection of the underlying trade cycle of the market economy and is not its cause. This instead is the drive by firms to sell commodities at a profit as if the demand for them is unlimited, leading to over-expansion of the booming sectors of the economy. This overproduction leads to cut-backs, hoarding and lay-offs and the monetary and credit systems are what transmits these effects throughout the economy more widely.’ The author makes a common analytical mistake. He believes such cycles have only a single possible cause. He also ignores the positive feedback mechanism wherein the effect and the cause reinforce each other. He is correct that expansion and contraction are normal parts of the business cycle – I never claimed otherwise. I contend that gross expansion of the money supply leads to ‘sloshing liquidity’ and out of control mal-investment. The over-expansion of certain sectors is hugely exacerbated by excess money printing and so-called ‘hot money’ flows. The impossibly high valuations of the real estate market would never have occurred under a gold standard. They happened because banks were lending Other People’s Money and cheaply created money to anyone with a pulse. As evidence, the only group pointing out the crisis beforehand (and they were correct) were the Austrian school – most of whom agree with my fundamental thesis of gold market manipulation with the intent of maintaining the currency monopoly.

Socialist Standard: True enough, the cause of each particular crisis will naturally vary. In recent decades we have seen at different times the over-investment in – and over-expansion of – the housing market, the commercial property market, the car industry, the steel industry and micro-electronics to name just a few. But the fundamental point is that it is the competitive drive to accumulate capital by firms operating in a ‘dog-eat-dog’ economy with no social regulation of production that leads to these. The most recent crisis and slump was not caused by a malfunction of the banking system – that was an early product of it, albeit one that then severely exacerbated the situation. Without the profit-driven over-expansion and then collapse of the housing market, which then turned the credit and derivatives that were based on it bad, the banking crisis wouldn’t have happened as it did. And we might add it was some of the opponents of capitalism who saw it coming:

  ‘[A]s the US housing market falters, more sub-prime loans are going bad . . . The bursting of America’s housing bubble could have widespread impacts on US financial institutions and others who have exposure there . . . the entire housing bubble phenomenon is wider than commonly supposed – while the US and UK economies have a particular problem with their housing markets, so do many other countries where identifiable bubbles also exist, from Ireland and Spain to New Zealand . . . When the crash comes, it will return markets to more realistic levels that are more in line with real incomes and values, and this is what has happened on every other previous occasion’. (‘Forever Blowing Bubbles’, Socialist Standard, May 2007).

This was published several months before the crisis broke and a full 18 months before the Lehman Brothers implosion. It was an analysis using Marxian economics as a tool for understanding how capitalism works – one that leads socialists to recognise the inherent dynamic of the market economy as being the problem not part of the solution (unlike the ‘laissez-faire’ Austrian school of economics whose advocates want even more market madness, red in tooth and claw).

KM: I quite agree with the review that all monetary systems, whether gold backed or fiat, lead to concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of the many. My book is solely descriptive of the shape that concentration has taken since the abolition of any gold convertibility in 1971. My fondest desire is for the abolition of money altogether and for completely shared resources by all humanity. You can call it socialism, communism, the gift economy, or whatever you like – the name is irrelevant. It would vastly increase the lifestyle for everyone (even the rich) and lower the drain on earth’s resources because most goods would not sit idle – they would be common property. Further, it would end the odious cycle of converting genuine resources into wilfully obsolete garbage for profit. Goods would be durable and engineers would take pride in that. The most common crime – property theft – would no longer exist. It would be a better world. In fact, the original book concluded with a lengthy critique of capitalism and a prescription – the Resource Based Economy – for a fully equitable system.

Socialist Standard: A book, of course, can only be reviewed on the basis of what it says. It is genuinely pleasing to see you agree that the only real solution to the problems caused by capitalism is the establishment of a society of common ownership and production for use where the market has been abolished. The trouble is that you would never know this from reading your book. In its 256 pages there is not a single reference to any of this. If there had been the book would have received a rather different review from us. Instead we have a book which ends by saying that in the ‘gold wars’ to come ‘the best ammunition is gold’. Not much of an option for the wage and salary earners who make up the working class majority in society.

We feel you have a choice to make. Either you continue to advocate the case for gold (whatever precisely that may be) or you advocate the case for socialism. We suspect that you now realise you wrote a book making the case for the former (possibly encouraged by your publishers), while coming to the conclusion that the latter is the real and lasting solution to the chaos of the market. Not ‘sound money’ but ‘no money’ if you will. We invite you to think seriously about this and join us in spreading the idea of a sustainable, human-centered alternative to capitalism. That is, one where markets and prices have been replaced by production directly geared to satisfying people’s needs and desires.