Letter: Deglobalization? (2017)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deglobalization?

Dear Comrades

I read Stefan’s article ‘Deglobalization: Is globalization going in reverse?’ (Socialist Standard, May). Stefan’s treatment of this extremely complex phenomenon is thought-provoking.

Despite a weakening of intergovernmental institutions, are there not deeper structures of globalization – not necessarily in the political sphere – that remain intact?

There is an inherent carrot versus stick relationship introduced into the arena of international business by existing treaties on trade: ‘Profit’ v ‘Regulation’ however mild. The abandonment of international trade treaties would perhaps result in a more laissez-faire, colonial frontier type freedom of exploitation and expropriation. Down this turnpike the destination could be the hell of war.

At this juncture it would perhaps be unwise to rule out a come-back of globalization in the fairly near future or to assume that we are on the threshold of a long period of deglobalization.

Joe R. Hopkins, 

Florida, USA.

Reply:

Good point – in particular about ‘deep structures’. The crucial deep structure is that of capital itself, because a relentless drive to expand is intrinsic to capital as self-expanding value. Even protectionist governments are under constant pressure to accommodate this drive.

As Marx put it in Grundrisse: 

‘Capital is the endless and limitless drive to go beyond its limiting barrier. Every boundary is and has to be a barrier for it. Else it would cease to be capital – money as self-reproductive’ (Notebook III/IV).

And again:

‘Capital by its nature drives beyond every spatial barrier… Capital must strive to tear down every spatial barrier to intercourse, i.e. to exchange, and conquer the whole earth for its market’ (Notebook V). 

Nor is there any reason to expect capital to halt at the limits of the planet of its birth. – Editors

Letter: Capitalism’s limits? (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

Capitalism is reaching its expansionary limits and being driven by these limits to substitute saturation for expansion. It is turning inward and “eating out its own guts”. The result is “barbarism”. 

“Normal” capitalism generated profits through expansion (growth). Apart from some margin for maneuver in near-earth outer space, it no longer has room for profitable expansion. This drives the system to “expand” inward, deriving profits from forcing down production costs by cutting wages, forcing more family members onto the labour market, and imposing higher productivity levels on workers (intensified exploitation), thereby increasing the quantity of commodities but degrading their quality. Here again, force is an essential factor.

As Rosa Luxemburg wrote in The Accumulation of Capital in 1913, capitalism always needs an “outside” somewhere. Although material conditions have changed since Rosa’s time, this remains true in a “metaphorically substantive” sense. 

With capitalism expanded to its spatial limits and turned inward, exploitation and profits grow apace. The biosphere, however, is a fixed system of reproduction. It took “time out of mind” to generate the hydrocarbon fuels that production for profit has consumed in the course of less than 200 years. It is true that “biological resources, if rationally exploited, are renewable and therefore practically everlasting” (Standard, November 2010, p. 6). But globalised capitalism does not follow a rational logic and already has a toe in the waters of barbarism. Socialists must be the lifeguards on this shore: there is no alternative to socialism.

Joe R. Hopkins, 

Florida, USA.

Reply: 

As we pointed out in a reply to a letter in the September issue, Rosa Luxemburg’s book was based on a faulty analysis of capitalism even if its descriptive parts about the barbaric effect of the spread of capitalism are good. We don’t accept that capitalism does have any “spatial limit” – Editors.

Reflections on Right Wing Talk Radio (2011)

From issue 22 of the World Socialist Review

Right-wing talk radio seems in search of a savior, at least those that broadcast the gospel as interpreted by the religious right who seek to impose a biblical order while abandoning the social aspects of traditional Christianity. The religious right holds a quasi-Calvinist view (with the terror of End Times thrown in), according to which God rewards those who outdo their brethren in cut-throat competition to earn the big bucks. So hold on to your job at all costs and climb the corporate ladder, stepping on the fingers of the guy on the rung below. This worship of cut-throat competition is naturally accompanied by cynical paranoia – heated exaggeration, a suspicious attitude, outright dishonesty, and conspiratorial fantasy. Paranoia is hard to confine to one part of the mind and expands into a worldview.

The function of paranoia

Right-wing talk radio is full of distrust and fear – fear of the unknown, fear of Moslems, fear of invasion – and this feeds the paranoia.

Paranoia actually performs an important social function. It’s one way of bringing order to a disorderly world. Seeing conspiracy everywhere you look at least makes sense of things beyond your understanding. The threat of climate change, financial collapse, nuclear weapons, terrorism – these are phenomena of such magnitude that any conceivable action feels like David versus Goliath.

The millions of Americans who listen to religious conservative talk radio are gradually bringing the United States closer to fascism. Is this because a growing number of them believe there is no alternative?

Twenty-five years ago, Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale actually presented the U.S. electorate with real policy choices, even if they offered no alternative to the established system. Today, however, any differences are a mere matter of degree. The neoliberal stance is shared by both parties. Republicans rail against the Democrats’ bailouts, government takeovers, and budget deficits, hoping the populace forgets that all these things also occurred under George W. Bush. Meanwhile, almost every single concept in Obama’s health plan has been pushed by senior Republicans, from Bob Dole to Mitt Romney.

Farewell to Keynes

The Democrats once accepted Keynes’ approach to economic policy. Keynes concern was to ensure social stability by maintaining full employment at relatively high wages. His utopia was a society of leisure and prosperity, beauty, grace, and variety, where “love of money” would be regarded as an aberration. The new neoliberal paradigm sacrifices all social values – and is prepared if necessary to sacrifice democracy itself – on the altar of “sound finance.” Today’s spineless and stupid Democrats also kowtow to the neoliberal god.

Glen Beck bleats over the airwaves that the call of the “socialist” and “Moslem” Obama for voluntary national service is “something out of Maoist China.” But the “progressive” president of “change” and “hope” copied this idea from George W. Bush, and he in turn copied it from his father, George H.W. Bush, who first proposed it in 1989.

With names like “No Spin Zone,” “Nothing But Truth,” and “Steel on Steel,” right-wing talk radio programs appropriate the “news” format and masquerade as news broadcasts. Many liberals get their news from satirical programs like “The Daily Show” or “The Colbert Report.” The disinformation is so effective that all these people actually imagine that they are hearing the news!

Both political parties represent the same class interests and strive for the same class goals. The strident yap-yap-yap that endlessly streams forth from the radio talk shows does not express any significant policy differences, but is contrived as a substitute for them.

An objective critique must resist all attempts to manipulate its ideas for purposes opposed to its own. “Criticize all that is.”

Joe Hopkins

Politicians: public face of the capitalist class (2021)

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website

What are politicians for? What do they do?

At school we are taught that politicians are chosen by us, the voters, to represent us in the making of laws and in the government of our city, state, and country. This arrangement supposedly ensures that the views of the majority prevail – the essence of democracy (rule by the people).

This picture is not totally false, but it is also very far from the full truth. It does not account for the persistent divergence that researchers have found between policy outcomes and public opinion.[1] For example, no mainstream politician favors ‘Medicare for All’ even though the scheme has the support of a clear majority of Americans – 69% according to one recent poll. 

The main problem with this picture is what it leaves out. It leaves out the most powerful people in our society, who are not the politicians but the capitalist class – that is, the wealthy and those who represent their interests in the top management of big banks and corporations. (There is admittedly some overlap between the two groups – Donald Trump, for instance.)

Almost all candidates for public office depend on capitalists for money – it is extremely expensive to stand for office – and for coverage in the capitalist-owned media. Capitalists play a crucial though largely hidden role in narrowing the range of choices offered to the voters.[2] Capitalists exploit this dependence to exert a strong influence on the processes of lawmaking and government, either directly or through lobbyists and trade associations. 

To understand the role played by politicians we must therefore examine the triangular relations between capitalists, politicians, and voters. The basic relationship is that between the capitalist class and the mass of the population – the 1% and the 99%, to use the terms favored by the Occupy Wall Street movement. Apart from a few mavericks, however, capitalists prefer to remain in the shadows and deal with the public through hired intermediaries such as pollsters, specialists in Public Relations, and politicians. These people, and politicians in particular, are the public face of the capitalist class in the realm of public policy.

ALEC

One institution specifically designed to facilitate interaction between politicians and capitalists in public policy is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Founded in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich and a group of Republican state legislators, ALEC aims to ‘make national policy by acting incrementally at the state level.’[3] Through an array of ‘task forces’ – currently ten of them — ALEC prepares ‘model bills’ for the use of its members. State legislators belonging to ALEC need not know how to draft legislation: they can just select texts from ALEC’s online library of model bills, introduce them in state legislatures, and push them through the legislative process into state law.

The internal structure of ALEC accurately reflects the division of labor between capitalists as the power behind the scenes and politicians as their public face. There are two boards of directors – a public board consisting solely of state legislators and a ‘private enterprise board’ consisting solely of representatives of big corporations. Only the identities of members of the public board are made public. Meetings of task forces are held in secret, so outsiders do not know how the legislators and corporate representatives on them interact.

ALEC has recently extended its activity down to the city/county level by setting up a new division named the American City County Exchange ‘for local elected officials and the private sector.’

Of course, ALEC does not represent all local and state politicians – only those most subservient to the capitalist class. Nevertheless, it has an extensive presence and is very active. The Center for Media and Democracy has identified about a thousand current state legislators in all fifty states, mostly Republicans, ‘known to be involved in’ ALEC as well as hundreds of ALEC’s model bills and resolutions.[4]

How politicians talk to us

As we have seen, capitalists wish to conceal the extent of their influence from the general public. In general, they seek to minimize their presence as political actors in the public consciousness. That is why politicians, when they address the public, never so much as mention their close relations with capitalists. A taboo is placed on an essential aspect of their professional activity in order to sustain the pretense that the picture painted in civics textbooks corresponds to reality. 

This also helps explain why communication between politicians and the public is so one-sided. They talk to the public. No opportunity is provided for open-ended dialogue. The only questions tolerated are those posed by establishment journalists who can be trusted to observe ‘the rules of the game’ — and politicians can evade even their questions with impunity if they wish. Members of the audience who interrupt politicians’ speeches with comments or questions – ‘hecklers’ – are ignored or told off like naughty children. They are liable to be thrown out or even beaten up.

Perhaps fearing that they may inadvertently break a taboo, politicians are loath to talk in public at length about substantive policy matters. Consider the victory speeches of Harris and Biden on November 7. Harris spoke first. Most of her speech consisted of vague rhetoric and personal recognition of colleagues, friends, and relatives, but she did devote a few carefully chosen words to policy issues (omitting healthcare, no doubt in deference to Biden’s opposition to ‘Medicare for All’). Biden said nothing at all about policy.  

It is worth pondering why American politicians feel obliged to sacrifice their domestic privacy and put their whole family on public display, including young children or grandchildren – arguably a form of child abuse. Isn’t this a desperate attempt to compensate for the alienation caused by their structural inability to relate to their fellow citizens in an open and honest way? They cannot reveal to voters the factors that shape and constrain their policy positions, but at least they can grant them the illusion of an intimate connection. What should be private is made public because what should by rights be public has to be kept private.    

The ultimate function of the politician is to be like a buffer protecting the capitalist class from mass discontent. In order to be effective as a buffer he may sometimes find it necessary to give voice to the grievances of ordinary people, but this need not lead to any corrective action. 

Barack Obama was a master at this double game. Campaigning in the mid-West, he thundered against regional companies such as Maytag and Exelon. And yet these same companies, confident that he would do nothing to harm their interests, gave him large donations. Speaking to audiences of workers, Obama denounced Maytag’s decision in 2004 to close the refrigerator plant in Galesburg, Illinois, entailing the loss of 1,600 jobs to Mexico. But he never raised the issue with Maytag directors Henry and Lester Crown, despite his ‘special relationship’ with them.[5] Later, as president, having bailed out the banks during the financial crisis of 2008, Obama expressed dissatisfaction that they were continuing to operate as before. When he met with the CEOs of fifteen top banks in spring 2009, they complained about his ‘populist rhetoric’; his riposte was that his administration ‘are the only ones standing between you and the pitchforks’ – a vivid expression of the buffer metaphor.[6] Obama never did do anything to reform the banks.

What about Bernie? 

Some politicians do not depend on capitalist donors but collect small donations from ordinary people. This occurs mostly at the local level, where campaigning does not require so much money. At the national level Bernie Sanders pursued this strategy with a measure of success in his bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. He broke the taboo and spoke openly in public about the dependence of his political rivals on ‘the billionaire class.’ I suspect that this, rather than any of his specific policy positions, is the main reason for the hatred that the political establishment has for Sanders.   

However, when Biden won the nomination Sanders undertook to support him and stopped talking about this subject. Since then he too has observed the taboo. His silence has not sufficed to win him the trust of the establishment or a place in the new administration.

Stefan 

Notes

[1] Larry M. Bartels, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton University Press, 2008). The author teaches at Vanderbilt University. See also: Paul Street, They Rule: The 1% vs. Democracy (Routledge, 2016) 

[2] See: ‘Selecting a US President: The Invisible Primaries,’ World Socialist Review, No. 22, pp. 68-70.  

[3] For more detailed discussion of ALEC, see: Joe R. Hopkins, Link. 

[4] https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed

[5] ‘The Politics of the “Lesser Evil”,’ World Socialist Review, No. 22, p. 75. 

[6] Barack Obama, A Promised Land (Crown, 2020), pp. 295-6; Link.

Material World: Coal Mining Insanity (2012)

The Material World Column from the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to a report released in July by National Public Radio and the Center for Public Integrity, black lung disease in coal miners has quadrupled since the 1980s and doubled since 2002. The doubling coincided with an increase of 600 hours in the work year of the average miner. Over 10,000 miners died of the disease in 1985-94 in the Appalachians alone.

There is no treatment for black lung disease. At its final stage – ‘massive fibrosis’ – even mild exertion causes disabling oxygen deprivation. Victims say they can either eat or breathe, but not both at the same time.

The coal seams in old mines have thinned, and the companies extract seams down to one inch thick. These thin seams are often embedded in quartz rock with a high silica content, which generates dust even more deadly than coal dust.

Hiding the dust

In 1960 Congress passed a law to regulate dust levels in mines. But Big Coal and its bought politicians – such as the late Senator Robert Byrd, who cynically called himself “the coal miner’s friend” – weakened its safety provisions to keep down costs for the companies. They seek to protect corporate profits, not workers’ health. Miners are expendable and can readily be replaced, perhaps at even lower wages, from the ‘reserve army of the unemployed’.

The main weakness of the law as passed is that it lets the companies police themselves. A government inspector cannot enter a mine while production is underway – and that is 24 hours a day! – without the company’s prior consent. When the dust level readings taken by the company disagree with those taken by the inspector, the company is allowed to take definitive new readings at five locations chosen by itself.

Weak as the law is, it is often broken. During the last decade mining companies were cited with over 53,000 violations. Fewer than 1,000 resulted in court action.

Waste stream

In February 2011 the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published a report by scientists from several US universities, entitled ‘Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal’. The authors found that each stage in the life cycle of coal – extraction, transport, processing, combustion – generates a waste stream that poses multiple hazards to health and the environment.

Thus, the release of Coal Combustion Waste (CCW), also known as fly ash, by burning coal exposes people to toxic chemicals and heavy metals known to cause cancer, birth defects, reproductive disorders, neurological damage, learning disabilities, kidney disease and diabetes.

The coal companies do not pay these ‘external’ costs and therefore ignore them. The scientists estimate the annual cost to the US public as at least a third of a trillion dollars, possibly over half a trillion. Accounting for the damage caused by coal gives a ‘full social cost’ double or triple the ‘economic cost’ of generating electricity from coal. Measured against this benchmark, wind, solar and other non-hydrocarbon energy sources are far cheaper than coal.

Greenhouse gas emissions

The authors found that burning coal produces 50 percent more emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2 — the main greenhouse gas) than combustion of an equivalent amount of oil and double the CO2 emissions from burning an equivalent amount of natural gas.

Coal also contains mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, manganese, beryllium, chromium, and other toxic and carcinogenic substances that are released into the environment during combustion. Finally, the crushing and processing of coal release tons of tiny particles every year that contaminate the water, air and soil, with consequent harm to health and the biosphere.

Methane is also released in the process of coal mining. It is a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than CO2. Even when methane decays it yields CO2 — a lose-lose situation.

Mountaintop Removal

The coal companies make wide use of Mountaintop Removal (MTR) in the Appalachians. To get at the coal inside a mountain, they use explosives to blast away the summit, together with the forest covering it. The resulting rubble or “spoil” is dumped into the valleys below.

MTR has been used at about 500 sites in four states (Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee), burying 2,000 miles of streams and despoiling 1.4 million acres of scenic natural terrain. In Kentucky alone there are 293 MTR sites, with over 1,400 miles of streams damaged or destroyed and 2,500 more miles polluted.

This reckless vandalism is directed against a region whose rich biodiversity is second only to that of the tropics. The Southern Appalachian Mountains are home to the greatest variety of salamanders in the world, with 18 percent of all known species.

Just say no!

In view of the massive social costs associated with coal mining and the availability of less destructive energy sources, this industry would be a thing of the past if the government, with its monopoly on violence, were not in collusion with Big Business — in this case, the coal companies.

There is not and never was any such thing as a ‘free market’. Government, with its law-making, courts, and self-sustaining monopoly on violence, is necessary to camouflage the tremendous imbalance between the classes and create the illusion of a society of normal human relations.

If we all, every working class person, just said no, we don’t want this anymore, it would be a first step towards the means of life passing into our hands so we could stop the insane forms of capitalist production that have been destroying our world for over centuries.

Joe Hopkins (WSPUS)