World View: Sent to Siberia (2000)

From the January 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been called the Frozen Hell. There are no trees. Nothing but rock and tundra. In the winter, which lasts from mid-September until the beginning of May, when the snow begins to melt, the temperature goes as low as –75oC, with blizzards drifting the snow eight-storeys high. The spring and summer last a brief three months; and for two months, in mid-winter, the sun never rises above the horizon. Sixty five miles to the west, the estuary of the Yenisey-Angara river (3,445 miles long) flows, during the short spring and summer months, into the Kara Sea and then the Arctic Ocean. For nine months of the year, it can only be reached by air or by a nuclear-powered icebreaker from Murmansk, docking at the estuary port of Dudinka.

Such is the location of Norilsk, the world’s most northern industrial city, with a population of 200,000 inhabitants.

In 1930, there was nothing there, except a few reindeers and reindeer-hunters. Nevertheless, in that year, Stalin proposed the Angara-Yenisey Combine for central Siberia, similar to the Kuznetz Combine planned for western Siberia. Shortly after, nickel and other metal deposits were discovered. And in 1935¸ construction of what was to be the city of Norilsk and the Norilsk Metallurgical Combine began. The problem, however, was, as elsewhere in Siberia: where would the Soviet state find the hundreds of thousands of workers it needed in such an inhospitable place? Few would volunteer to go there.

The solution was the collectivisation of agriculture and the dispossession of the kulaks, and other peasants, in Ukraine and south-western Russia. Together with “Trotskyists” and other “enemies of the people”, they were rounded-up and shipped off to eastern Russia and Siberia the Soviet Union’s era of what Marx called the “primitive accumulation of capital” had begun.

Responsibility for the administration of the Norilsk Combine was the Glavnoye Upravlniye Lagerei, or Gulag, the Chief Directorate of Labour Camps, a department of the Narodny Kommissariat Gosudarvetvernoy Bezopasnosti, or NKVD, the People’s Commissariat of State Security. After the Second World War, when the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states, eastern Poland, hundreds of thousands of Balts, and thousands of Banderisti¸ Ukrainian Nationalists, were arrested and sent to such places as Vorkuta and Norilsk. Just how many prisoners passed through the Norilsk Combine is not known, as even the present Russian authorities in Krasnoyarsk, where the records are still kept, refuse to permit anyone to see them. Between 1935 and 1955, it has been unofficially estimated that 500,000 prisoners passed through Norilsk. Most died there, buried in unmarked graves or in holes in the ice.

Stalin died on 2 March 1953. Following his death, there was general unrest in many of the Soviet labour camps, including those in the Norilsk Combine. The strike began in zone 5 on 25 May. It soon spread throughout the camps and mines. Thousands of prisoners refused to work. The strike, which lasted about two months, was finally suppressed with many killed by the NKVD guards. After the strike, conditions for the prisoners were, for some time, considerably worse. But 1956 saw the beginning of the end of the vast Gulag system. The rapid industrialisation of the Soviet Union required a more sophisticated workforce of “free” wage-slaves. Not that that made a lot of difference to the surviving ex-prisoners in Norilsk! Nevertheless, some returned to western Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere.

But for many, after ten or fifteen years imprisonment, and five years “administrative exile”, there was nowhere to go. Some of the women married former guards and NKVD (later KGB) officials. All became state employees, or were pensioned off. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, ever-increasing inflation ate up their modest savings. Today, the Combine is no longer a state-run enterprise. No longer are the workers exploited by the state. It has been privatised; and according to James Meek (Observer Magazine, 4 July), “it was bought for fraction of its commercial value in 1995 by Vladimir Potanin, one of Russia’s richest industrialists, a man made very wealthy now by the old slavery and the new freedoms, and a business partner of George Soros”. Private capitalism had replaced state capitalism.

Yenseisk lies on the banks of the Yenisey river, 800 miles to the south of Norilsk. Trees grow here, and it is less cold. Indeed, global warming has been noticeable in Yenseisk. It has become milder, with the minimum winter temperature rising from –52oC to –40oC. Even vegetables can be grown under glass. Nevertheless, the ice only melts on the Yenisey in May, when boats from Dudinka arrive, or pass south to Krasnoyarsk. And over the last couple of years, a few thousand workers have managed to escape the frozen hell, and the smog and pollution, of Norilsk, downstream to Krasnoyarsk.

There is a road between Yenseisk and Krasnoyarsk, but no railway; and, furthermore, the local airline, which links such towns and cities as Norilsk, Yenseisk and Krasnoyarsk, is in deep trouble as it has lost most of its pilots. In fact, according to a local priest, Father Grigory, interviewed by the Guardian (3 December 1997), Yenseisk is “a dying town that lived in the past, by subsidies. There’s no industry. Now, it’s thrown back on its resources. The teachers and doctors haven’t been paid for months”.

Krasnoyarsk, a city of 900,000 inhabitants 200 miles south of Yenseisk, is the administrative centre of the area, and is situated on the Yenisey where it is crossed by the Trans-Siberian Railway. It has factories manufacturing equipment for Siberia’s mining industries, a timber combine and a food processing industry. But like Norilsk and Yenseisk, it too is depressed and probably in terminal decay.

One hundred miles to the west of Krasnoyarsk, also on the Trans-Siberian Railway, is the huge Achinsk Company, recently privatised, which produces alumna, most of which it sends to the Krasnoyarsk Aluminium (KrAZ) Company. It does not make a profit, yet it is the source of massive profits. It pays no taxes to the state. For it does not sell its produce direct to Krasnoyarsk aluminium, but through a series of intermediate companies, owned by the managers of Achinsk Company and KrAZ, all of which make “a killing”, and pay very little tax. Much of this money ultimately finds its way, in dollars, to the Bank of New York. Like Potanin, the owner of the Norilsk Combine, Georgi Lokk, the Chief Executive of the loss-making Achinsk ore combine, is a very rich man; from wealth created by the exploited, poverty-stricken workers of Siberia.

Peter E. Newell

Voice From The Back: Still Accumulating (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Still Accumulating

In last month’s column we reported on how in India capitalism was repeating the process that Karl Marx had analysed in Capital, under the heading of the primitive accumulation of capital; now an identical procedure is being carried out in China. “Several people have been injured in the latest violent clash between villagers and armed police in southern China. …China reported 74,000 demonstrations involving more than a 100 people in 2004.” (Times, 16 January) These demonstrations are by farmers protesting at the seizure by the government of land that they have tilled for generations. The seizures are extremely violent as shown by the death of three protesters gunned down by the police in the previous month.

Same Old Story

Under the headline “People die of famine in nation that exports food” the Times (18 January) expresses astonishment over events in Kenya. “The British aid agency Merlin found that 27 per cent of children around the town were malnourished — nearly twice the 15 per cent emergency level.” Their astonishment is because: “Kenya is a food exporter. Grain silos are still full from last year’s harvest.” Their misunderstanding is because they think malnourishment is caused by drought rather than capitalism, after all in the 19th century during the Irish potato famine Ireland was exporting food. It’s the same all over the world throughout history, if you have money you eat, if you’re poor you starve. That is how capitalism works.

Some Mean Cities

Capitalism is a dangerous society. How dangerous often depends on what part of the world in which you live. More important than that though is the class to which you belong. According to recent figures if you are a man and live in the Gaza Strip your life expectancy is 70.5 years. If you live in some other areas of the war-torn Middle-East it is even lower, but even more hazardous is trying to survive in the working class area of Calton in Glasgow. “In Iraq, life expectancy is 67. Minutes from Glasgow city centre, it’s 54.” (Guardian, 21 January). The message seems clear for all potential parents — don’t have your child reared in a war zone, but if you can’t manage that, at least avoid a working  class area in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham or Newcastle. Capitalism is a killer society, no matter where you live.

The Uncaring Society

We live in a harsh, brutal society; but even by its standards the following report is a shocker. “ A postal worker rode in a subway train around New York for six hours before a commuter noticed he was dead” (Times, 25 January). The 64-year-old Vietnam veteran had joined the subway after finishing work at 1am and his train had covered the 15-mile circuit six times before he was discovered. In the rat race that is capitalism human beings become callous towards others, but probably a contributing factor to this piece of inhumanity was the knowledge that eye contact in the New York subway can prove to be dangerous at certain times.

A Disastrous System

Under the headline “World has only 20 years to stop climate disaster”, the Times (31 January) reported on the document Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change. This reported on the conference hosted by the Met Office in Exeter last year. The release of carbon dioxide is causing the polar caps to melt and many areas face disastrous flooding. As every government in the world represents the interests of the capitalist class, who in their mad drive for profits are polluting the atmosphere, the future looks disastrous unless we can get rid of capitalism. 

Education Is A Commodity

Everything that is produced in capitalism takes the form of a commodity even education. “A detailed look at half a million pupils will show that bright children from the poorest families are often fated to perform below their potential. Success at primary school can soon become irrelevant as children repeatedly fail to get places at the country’s top schools, the study by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation will say.” (Observer, 5 February) Everything that is produced — housing, clothing and food — is distributed according to your wealth. Why should education be any different in a buying and selling society? 

All Right For Some

Every day we read in the newspapers about poverty, world hunger and crime, but it is not all doom and gloom inside capitalism. Take the case of billionaire Larry Ellison, reputed to own about $17 billion, his lawyer reported to a San Francisco court that Ellison owned a $194 million yacht. “But most intriguing is the money his accountant set aside for what are described as “lifestyle” expenses: $55,000 a day.” (Times, 7 February) $55,000 a day? Yes $55,000 a day. We definitely need a revolution!

Voice From The Back: Lies, Damned Lies And Diplomacy (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lies, Damned Lies And Diplomacy

The misuse of language is an essential part of capitalist politics. Every country in the world has a Ministry of Defence, none has a Ministry of Offence. Lies are described as being “economical with the truth”. The bombing of civilians is known as “collateral damage”. The US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has recently come up with a new one, “extraordinary rendition”. According to the Times (4 December) “. . . it will anger many in Europe.” “Extraordinary rendition” means transfer for torture and “enhanced interrogation techniques” means stripped, chained and made to stand up for 40 hours in a dark, cold cell. It is enough to make socialists “involuntarily eject the contents of their stomachs”. If you can accept another euphemism.

So Much For Human Nature

The journalist and author Francis Wheen in his best selling How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World came up with a great quote from George Orwell: “We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. The millionaire as well as the beggar is content with just so much air as he can breathe. .. So also for other goods. If they were made plentiful, as they might easily be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations.” Nice one, George – but of course we want socialism now! To hell with the notion of generations to change.

The Primitive Accumulation Of Capital

In Capital, Karl Marx has a very revealing section devoted to the primitive accumulation of capital. He deals with the expropriation of the agricultural population in England and the Highland clearances in Scotland. A recent news item in the Times (3 January) shows that this process is still going on in India. “Indian police shot and killed nine tribesmen yesterday in the eastern state of Orissa after they were attacked with arrows and stones, killing a constable, an official said. About a thousand tribespeople, some armed with bows and arrows, who oppose a move by the government to acquire land to set up a steel plant in Jaipur, turned on the police assigned to protect officials demarcating the land for Tata Steel Ltd, India’s largest private steel producer.” As Honore de Balzac, the French novelist wrote way back in the 19th century, “Behind every great fortune lies a great theft.”

For Those Who Have Accumulated

A new magazine has been launched entitled Spear’s Wealth Management Survey. It deals with how to buy your own private jet or acquire a vineyard. You are unlikely to have run across a copy though. “Spear Media, publisher of SWMS, hopes to attract a circulation of 25,000 in the UK, with a further 5,000 going to the wealthiest individuals or families across Europe.” ….According to the publisher, “Although we are targeting people who have assets of £5m, the majority will have £10m-plus.” (Observer 8 January) Like we said, you are unlikely to come across a copy.

God’s Will

“At least 345 pilgrims were killed yesterday when one of the holiest rituals of haj in Saudi Arabia turned to tragedy. White-robed believers rushing to stone the devil in a symbolic ceremony were caught up in a stampede and crushed. Many who escaped were seriously hurt, with 289 people reported injured.” (Times, 13 January) God, Allah, Jehovah or whatever he’s called is supposed to be all powerful so we suppose it is all part of the divine plan. In recent years God seems to have been particularly deadly during haj. In 2004 244 killed, 2001 36 killed and in 1998 180 trampled to death. Truly the ways of God are mysterious but that is small consolation to the victims or their families.

A Changing World?

Away back on the seventh of April 1775 an old conservative gentleman, disgusted by the job-seeking antics of politicians  recorded a worthwhile notion. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” said Dr. Johnson. Now in your newspapers you can read “Gordon Brown is today calling for a ‘British Day’ on which the country can unite and celebrate its values, setting out the fullest version of his agenda for government.” (Times, 14 January) Dr Johnson was an old tory lick-spittle but today he looks distinctly principled.

Voice From The Back: What immigration problem? (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

What immigration problem?

The US government has recently had a crack down on illegal immigration and the French and British press have been full of the problems of immigration in those countries, but for one group there seems to be no problem in settling in another country. “Seven of the wealthiest billionaires living in Britain come from overseas, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal comes out on top with a fortune estimated by the newspaper at £14.8 bn. Roman Abramovich drops to second place, but the Russian oil tycoon and Chelsea football club owner is reckoned to be worth £7.5 bn.” (BBC NEWS, 3 April). So far none of the seven billionaires seem to be having any trouble with housing, schools or social security and no one has suggested passes or tagging for any of them.

Not so bright

When socialists attack the inequalities of capitalism we are often told by its defenders that the owning class deserve their wealth because of their hard work or superior intellect. No one could ever accuse Paris Hilton of hard work, she recently celebrated her 21st birthday by having 5 birthday parties in 5 different countries, attended by thousands of friends. The rich tend to have more friends than the poor. If she couldn’t be accused of hard work she certainly could not be accused of possessing a grasp of world affairs. “The word ‘mother’ confused her, a friend of Paris Hilton explains the hotel heiress’s request to meet Mother Teresa’s children in preparation for playing the nun in a new film” (Observer,16 April).

Primitive Accumulation 

In recent months we have highlighted the process of the capitalist class grabbing land and throwing off the previous occupants in India and China. Now from Botswana comes another example of this “primitive accumulation of capital” so well described by Karl Marx in Capital in the 19th century. “Since 1997, more than 1,500 Gana and Gwi Bushmen have been evicted from their homes in the Kalahari” (Observer, 16 April). They have been found to be “primitive and a barrier to progress” ever since De Beers took an interest in the area’s diamonds. 

The American Nightmare

The journalist Heather Stewart in her Letter from Washington describes the contrast between the rich and poor in what is described as the most affluent country in the world. “Men in chinos and women with neat hair and brilliant white teeth sip giant cappuccinos or chat animatedly into their cellphones. …Look closer, though, and there are signs of another DC. Tired looking black men stand on street corners holding out the same giant coffee cups to collect coins. The Washington Post details a horrific crime wave of car-jacking and gunpoint robberies. Less than a mile from the grandeur of the White House are neighbourhoods with all the deprivation and social issues of the poorest inner cities” (Observer, 23 April).

A Fishy Story

Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are in dispute with Iran in a bitter controversy. What is it all about? Civil rights, nuclear armament? No way. This is about caviar! “Iran may be increasingly out of favour with the UK Security Council, but the UN Secretarial for International Trade in Endangered Species gave the country the thumbs up last week, when it gave Iran’s quota to export 44,000 kilos of caviar this year. Exports from the other countries have been banned by the UN since January” (Times, 27 April). The price of caviar is currently £6,000 a kilo, so the furore is easily understood. After all Russia alone caught 650 tonnes in 2001. Millions of thousands of hard currencies is more important than war, poverty or civil rights to capitalist governments.

Do-Gooders Do Badly

“The world is failing children by not ensuring they have enough to eat, says the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef). It says the number of children under five who are underweight has remained virtually unchanged since 1990, despite a target to reduce the number affected. Half of all the under-nourished children in the world live in South Asia, Unicef reported. And it said poor nutrition contributes to about 5.6 million child deaths per year, more than half the total” (BBC NEWS, 1 May). Despite the efforts of Unicef and countless well-meaning charities capitalism is still starving millions of children to death every year.

A Depressing Tale

“Depression is the biggest social problem in the UK, says Richard Lanyard, a health economist who advises the Government on mental health. He claims that 15 per cent of the population suffers from depression or anxiety, and that the cost in lost productivity is about £17 billion” (Times, 2 May). It is typical of capitalism that not only does it drive us screwy, it can only see mental ill-health as a productivity problem.

The origin and rise of capital. (1910)

From the March 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

While to-day, in the domain of natural science, the theory of evolution is generally accepted as the basis of research, the reverse is the case in the field of political economy. The reason is that natural evolution can be “squared” with individualism, but social evolution cannot. Natural organic development can admittedly be evolutionary without interfering with the “God-and-creation” idea which attributes the privileged position of the few to Omnipotent favour. Social development along evolutionary lines must, if logically and persistently traced, demonstrate more clearly that all men are social products and economic positions, therefore, merely the result of necessity and not of choice.

While orthodox political economy at the bidding of the possessing class, is at all times concerned to prove that capital and wage labour have existed through all history, the historic and economic teachings of Karl Marx, particularly the “Materialist Conception of History” and the “Theory of Surplus Value,” supply ample evidence that capital and wage-labour are conditions of a social system of production forming but a comparatively small link in the great chain of social evolution.

In the “seventies” and “eighties” the orthodox political economists who set out to demolish the “pernicious” theories of Marx had not yet acquired the craftiness of present-day “economic experts”, and therefore contented themselves with mere fairy tales to explain the origin of capital and wage-labour. Thus Wilhelm Roscher, professor of political economy at the University of Leipsic (until his death in 1894) wrote (Principles of National Economy, Stuttgart, 1874., Vol, I. p. 423) : “Let us imagine a fisher folk without private property and capital, naked and living in caves, gaining their sustenance by catching with their bare hands sea-fish left behind by the tide in pools on the shore. All workers may here be of an equal standing, each catching and consuming 3 fishes a day. Now a wise man limits for 100 days his consumption to 2 fishes a day and uses the 100 fishes accumulated in that way to devote his labour-power for 50 days to the production of a boat and a fish-net. With the aid of this capital he commences in future to catch 30 fishes a day,”

To-day, at the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the origin of and justification for the employment of capital are no longer ascribed by the economic prize-fighters of capitalism to the thriftlessness and laziness of the many and the thrift and industry of the few. No, the mighty annihilators of Marxian theories of the Mallock school have to their own satisfaction, adopted the more profound explanation that it is the “directive ability” of the few and not the mere labour of the workers which creates the greater portion of capital and is the most important factor in wealth production; and, strange to say, they draw the deduction that this factor can be and is supplied by the capitalist class alone. But European history from the 14th century explains the primitive accumulation of capital in quite a different way. Some bourgeois historians have described it from the standpoint essential to the glorification of capitalism. It was left to Karl Marx to explain it from the standpoint of the proletariat.

The literary advocates of the bourgeoisie at times described the rise of capitalism correctly in order to impress upon the workers the bourgeois standpoint that the struggle of capitalism against feudalism was a struggle against tyranny and privilege – a fight for liberty and equality. These capitalist scribes then rightly point out that industrial capital could not rise without “free” workers – workers who had ceased to come under the domination of chattel-slavery, serfdom, or the craft-guilds. They also emphasise the fact that capitalist wealth production had to be freed from the fetters of feudalism, from the clutches of the feudal lords. Socialists have no reason to detract from the importance of that struggle, considering that the capitalist class are most anxious to deny its character when they hear us now proclaiming the need for social revolution.

While a number of bourgeois writers contributed considerably to the records of the history of primitive accumulation, it was left to Marx and his life co-worker, Engels, to point out its significance from the working-class stand-point. It was they who laid stress upon the fact that  this accumulation spelt the creation of the proletariat and of capital itself. Marx, having already given in The Poverty of Philosophy some indications of the conditions that in England – the motherland of capitalism – prepared the way for primitive accumulation, furnished a full and lucid history of it in his great work, Capital.

That fascinating history teaches us that, apart from the craft-guilds in the towns, the greatest hindrance to the rise of capital was the common ownership in the soil by village communities. While such property existed proletarians in large numbers were impossible. Fortunately for capitalism, its development was considerably assisted by the feudal nobility. After the Crusades the production of and commerce in commodities, developed by leaps and bounds, increasing greatly the demand for goods made by the craftsmen and sold by the merchants of the towns for money. The feudal nobility, dependent for their existence upon the direct services of, or goods supplied by, their peasant dependents, began to develope a craving for money. The military power of the towns and princes precluded all possibility of robbing or extorting money from the merchants or craftsmen, while the very poverty of the peasants did the same in their direction. Hence they determined to become producers of commodities like the townfolk – to produce wool, corn and other products for money instead of for their own use only.

Such a change could only be brought about at the expense of the peasantry. These, reduced to serfdom, could now be driven from their homesteads, which were added to the adjacent territory of their lords and masters. And to complete the ruin of the peasants, the communally owned land of the villages standing under the suzerainty of the feudal lords, was turned into the latter’s private property. At that time wool was much in demand by the textile undertakings of  the towns. But the extension of wool production necessitated the turning of arable land into sheep runs. To accomplish this end a great number of peasants were driven from their farms by legal or illegal means, that is, either by economic compulsion or by the use of physical force. (For confirmation of Marx’s statements on these points see H. de Gibbins’ Industrial History of England, pp. 40-57.) With the growth of the textile industry the number of expropriated and evicted peasants increased continually. Besides, the nobility dissolved their retinues, which had under the changed conditions ceased to be a source of power, but on the contrary had become a decided source of financial weakness. The Reformation, too, favoured the rise of capitalism by depriving the old sub-tenants of their holdings of Church property, driving them out, in order to hand the same over, almost for nothing, to speculating farmers and citizens, thus forcing these sub-tenants, like the inmates of the suppressed monasteries, into the proletariat. (See de Gibbins’  Industrial History of England, p. 83, for confirmation on this point.)

By such means a large proportion of the country population was divorced from the soil, from their means of production, with the result that an army of proletarians was created – proletarians compelled, in order to live, to sell their labour-power to the highest capitalist bidder. The feudal lords were thus instrumental in paving the way for agricultural commodity production on a large scale, while at the same time supplying the capitalists of the towns with the wage-workers they so urgently needed.

The consequence of the wholesale expropriation of the peasantry in the 15th and 16th centuries in Western Europe, was general vagabondage, which threatened to overwhelm society, and, as a deterrent., cruel and heartless punishments were meted out to vagabonds and paupers, such as whipping, branding, slicing off ears, and even death. Marx sums up the horror of this treatment as follows (Capital, p. 761) :

 Thus were the agricultural people first forcibly expropriated from the soil, driven from their homes, turned into vagabonds, and then whipped, branded, tortured by laws grotesquely terrible, into the discipline necessary for the wage system.

But while more workers were thus set “free” than capital could employ, the supply of efficient workers fell behind the demands of capital, as during the period of actual manufacture proper, which led to a division of manual labour, production depended upon workers who had gained a certain proficiency (in many cases taking years to acquire) in the various part processes. Besides, much more capital was needed for wages than for tools and materials. Hence with the accumulation of capital the demand for wage labour grew rapidly, while the supply of competent workers proceeded in much slower ratio. Skilled workers were very scarce, and in great demand. The fact that they still retained the high notions of handicraftsmen made the wage-workers during the infancy of capitalism independent, defiant and often rebellious against the hard discipline and wretched monotony of capitalist production. Therefore, to obtain submissive workers, the capitalists had to introduce the same powerful authority by whose aid the peasants were expropriated, the land made private property, and the vagabonds and paupers tortured and murdered  – the authority of the State. The most stringent legislation was enacted to fix a maximum wage, extend the working day, and prohibit combination of the workers. (See Capital, Karl Marx, pp. 761-765; also Industrial History of England, de Gibbins, pp. 71, 106 and 118.)

And how hypocritical was the cry of liberty, fraternity and equality of the French industrial capitalists at the time of the French Revolution was proved by the fact that as soon as they had conquered political power (mainly by the assistance of the workers) these “just” people instituted a bitter campaign for the abolition of the remainder of common land and for the strictest prohibition of any kind of labour combination. (Capital, pp. 765-6.)

The foregoing historical survey explains how the proletariat, and subsequently a “surplus” number of wage-workers, were created and how they made possible the development or capitalism, which in its turn reproduced to an ever larger extent the proletariat and a “surplus” of wage-workers. Another important question remains: whence originated the wealth which provided the nucleus of industrial capital? The usurers’ and merchants’ capital inherited from ancient society played an important part in the middle ages. Ever since the crusades commerce with the near and far East had expanded, with the result that the merchants’ capital had become concentrated in few hands. But usury and commerce were not the only sources which supplied the nucleus of industrial capital. Readers desirous of an explicit exposition of the historical development bearing on this point should study the brilliant chapter relating to primitive accumulation in Marx’s Capital. Here a quotation from that work (p. 775) summing up the  various methods of this accumulation must suffice:

  The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief moments of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theatre. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England’s Anti-Jacobin War, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, etc. 

  The different moments of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

The foregoing brief outline of the brilliant history of the origins of capital demonstrate beyond doubt that primitive capital was the result of robbery, murder and rapine, and that therefore it is only to be expected that the orthodox political economists, the cat’s-paws of the capitalists, should lie and shuffle to the utmost degree in order to prove that capital is the outcome of thrift and industry, or the result of the “directive ability” of the capitalists. And there is no reason for surprise in the fact that, in the face of the overwhelming evidence as to the origin and development of capitalism furnished by Marx, the present orthodox school is averse to accepting the theory of evolution as the basis of its research. For pinned down to the glaring facts of history, it loses every vestige of argument against Marx’s theory of value and his explanation of the origin of capital. Unfortunately the misrepresentations and lies levelled by the bourgeois economists, politicians and diplomatists against the sound and irrefutable teachings of Marx, are still swallowed without much hesitation by the workers of this country. But we Socialists, as evolutionists and revolutionists, know that the failure of the capitalist quack remedies for the great social evils of to-day, must, in the long run, convince the bulk of the proletariat that their salvation is to be found in Socialism alone.

Hans Neumann

The Russian ‘Planned Economy’ – What Was It? (2018)

From the February 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

How can we define in Marxian terms the system of ‘planned’ or ‘administrative’ economy that emerged in Russia at the end of the 1920s?

One approach to this question is to examine relevant works written by Bolshevik theorists during the first decade after the Revolution, when freedom of debate within certain limits still existed in Russia. Two of these works are available in English translation:

(1) Nikolai Bukharin, The Politics and Economics of the Transition Period (published in Russia in 1920, in the UK by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1979 – on internet at thecharnelhouse.org);

(2) E. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics (published in Russia in 1926, in the UK by Oxford University Press and Clarendon Press in 1965 – on internet at libcom.org).

These theorists took it for granted that since November 1917 the country had been embarking upon a more or less prolonged transition to socialism. (In 1936 Stalin declared that the transition was complete.) They acknowledged, however, that what was being built in Russia did not correspond to ‘our old familiar ideas about socialism’ (Preobrazhensky’s phrase).

Logically there were two possible methods of dealing with such discrepancies. One method – the one that was adopted – was to change the meaning of ‘socialism’ to conform with the emerging Russian reality. The other method would have been to retain the original meaning of ‘socialism’ and choose another descriptive term for Russian society. But this was politically unacceptable, even in the ‘liberal’ 1920s, as it would have undermined the legitimacy of the Bolshevik regime.

A substitute for capitalism
The key discrepancy concerns the place occupied by ‘socialism’ in the Marxian schema of historical evolution.

According to ‘the old familiar ideas’, it is the function of capitalism to accumulate technologically advanced productive capacities that socialist society then uses to satisfy human needs. Thus capitalist development must precede the establishment of socialism.

In the new Bolshevik conception, by contrast, ‘socialism’ performs the same function as capitalism – the accumulation of productive capacities. ‘Socialism’ is now not so much the successor to capitalism as a substitute for it.

Accumulation was required in Bolshevik Russia not just because capitalist development had still been at quite an early stage in 1913 but also in order to restore the huge losses in productive capacity during World War One and the Civil War. Bukharin regarded such losses as inevitable even in the advanced countries, on the grounds that imperialist war causes capitalism to collapse and proletarian revolution leads to further civil and interstate wars. Thus the new society has to cope with a ‘regression of the productive forces’.

Russia was the first country in which ‘socialism’ served as a substitute for capitalism but by no means the last. Almost all the other countries that later borrowed the Stalinist model, including China, North Korea and North Vietnam, were underdeveloped and ravaged by war.

Primitive accumulation
Capitalism in its mature form extracts the surplus it needs for accumulation in the course of production for market exchange. In its initial phase, however, capitalism jump-started the accumulation process by forcibly plundering resources from the peasantry at home and from colonial populations abroad. Marx calls this phase ‘primitive accumulation’ (Chapters 26-28 of Volume 1 of Capital).

Bolshevik theorists disagreed over whether their regime would have to engage in primitive accumulation. Bukharin argued that accumulation could and should be achieved on the basis of market exchange with the peasantry under the New Economic Policy, even though it would be a slow process (‘riding into socialism on a peasant nag’). Preobrazhensky and others demanded a faster pace and considered primitive accumulation unavoidable. Stalin finally implemented the second strategy by means of collectivisation, which enabled the state forcibly to procure resources for rapid industrialisation from agriculture.

In an attempt to distance Russian practice from capitalism, the theorists stressed a distinction between ‘primitive capitalist accumulation’ and ‘primitive socialist accumulation’. Clearly, however, there is no real distinction here. The whole debate bears witness to the close parallelism between Stalinist development and its classical capitalist prototype.

Extending the concept of ‘capitalism’
If we deny that the Russian ‘planned economy’ was socialism, what can we call it? Can we call it ‘capitalism’ – or, more specifically, a form of state capitalism?

The ‘planned economy’ did not function in exactly the same way as the capitalism that Marx had analysed in Capital and other works.

In particular, the Russian economy did not contain major units that operated as separate capitals, competing with one another to sell their products in the market. Enterprises of any size or significance were subordinate to industrial ministries and ‘planning’ agencies, all of which constituted a single bureaucratic apparatus. Who was to supply how much of what to whom was specified in advance by the state plan, so in most spheres of activity there could be no competition for customers.

The cycles of boom and slump so characteristic of ‘classical’ capitalism had no direct equivalent in the Russian economy.

Nevertheless, there is a strong case for calling the Russian ‘planned economy’ a form of capitalism despite these differences, even if this can be seen as extending the concept of ‘capitalism’. The justification for such an extension is the role that the Russian system played as an alternative regime of accumulation that substituted for capitalism under certain conditions and occupied the same place as capitalism in the schema of historical evolution.

Stefan.

What is history? (1999)

Book Review from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and History. By S. H. Rigby, Manchester University Press, 1998.

This is a revised second edition of a book, first published in 1987, which is widely used at undergraduate level teaching. The focus of Rigby’s analysis is G. A. Cohen’s influential book, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, published in 1978. Cohen argued that Marx’s account of history is a form of “productive forces determinism” in which society’s productive forces (applied technology) bring into being specific class relations. As these productive forces develop throughout history, they periodically bring about new class relations of production. Thus the growth of the productive forces is said to be the dynamic which creates specific class relations and through them new forms of state and ideology.

Rigby admits that this is a legitimate reading of Marx, most notably found in Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. Marx and Engels often asserted that the productive forces have an inherent tendency to develop throughout history but in practice, says Rigby, Marx was not consistent in applying such a thesis in his historical and contemporary analyses.

He argues that Cohen’s specific argument that society’s relations of production are functional for the productive forces is not an explanation of why the productive forces develop, nor is it consistently supported by historical evidence. Of course human history has seen a growth of productive power, but such developments have been specific to time and place. There have been periods of human history in which the productive forces stagnated or even regressed, other periods in which class relations have changed without any obvious development of the productive forces, and yet other periods where the growth of the productive forces bring no change in class relations. For Rigby, the growth of the productive forces does not explain the change from the Ancient world to feudalism and it was only after feudalism had ended and capitalist relations of property had been established that new productive forces were introduced.

Rigby asks how can the productive forces within capitalism bring about socialist relations of production without invoking some kind of determinist assertion? His contention is that productive forces do not determine class relations. Rather, that class relations determine the direction and rate of advance of the productive forces. Instead of determinism we have a conditional statement: “if the productive forces are to advance then certain relations of production must obtain”. According to him, “whether these relations of production do develop is historically contingent and can only be established through empirical research”; Marx’s theory of history is a guide in that research by supplying the framework for identifying societies and how they change.

A society is not identified merely by its class relations, it is rather a specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour. Feudalism was based on the appropriation of surplus labour as feudal tribute (whether in the form of money, produce or labour services) from the peasantry. Capitalism is a society where surplus labour takes the form of surplus value (ground rent, interest and profit) extracted from wage labour. However, class relations and the mode of appropriation of surplus labour do not always coincide. This can be seen in the Ancient world where the predominant relations of production were the master and slave of chattel slavery. Yet independent producers who were the forerunner of the medieval serf produced the surplus labour, appropriated as taxation. As the Roman Empire declined chattel slavery increased, but the increasing demands placed on the independent producers by an expanding and costly empire brought about (together with external invasion) internal collapse. There then followed four centuries of stagnation of the productive forces. A simple analysis of relations or forces of production would not reveal what was really going on.

Rigby argues that the development of the forces of production in feudalism had a tendency to stall and sometimes to recede, as in fourteenth-century England and seventeenth-century Poland; the process described by Marx as “the primitive accumulation of capital” was largely one of the establishment of capitalist relations of production prior to the “take off” with the productive forces in the industrial revolution. Hence his conclusion: “capitalism was not the result of the growth of the productive forces. On the contrary, capitalism was the cause of that growth.” From which it would follow that the case for socialism does not rest on the assertion that the productive forces have run up against the limits imposed by capitalist relations of production. Instead the argument would be how socialist relations of production will allow the forces of production to be used to meet human needs. If Rigby’s argument is correct, then this is not just a criticism of Cohen but also the theory of history in what is known as “classical Marxism”. You will need to read the book to decide.

Rigby also includes a useful account of state capitalism. At the same time he wrongly identifies Marx’s proposed first stage of communism as “socialism or the dictatorship of the proletariat”. Marx did not say that socialism was a first stage, nor did he equate it with working class political control of the state—which is what he meant by “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Rigby follows academic convention (as does Cohen) by wanting to keep Marx’s theory of history free from what he regards as Marx’s irredeemably false theory of value. But he cannot have it both ways. Rigby’s main contribution in this book is to emphasise how a society must be identified by its historically specific mode of appropriation of surplus labour. Capitalism is therefore identified as the extraction of surplus value through wage labour, and this clearly requires a theory of value as part of the identification process. Marx’s theory of history and his theory of value are dependent on each other.

Lew Higgins

Primitive Accumulation (1967)

From the September 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

How they got the Scottish Highlands 

Even after a newcomer to Socialism has seen that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the workers, he may still feel that originally the propertied class must have obtained their property by superior merit. Surely, he will argue, riches were obtained in the first place by worthy individuals who worked hard and saved?

Marx deals with the question of “primitive accumulation”, the original gathering together of wealth, in Part VIII of Capital. This “primitive accumulation”, he says, plays the same part in orthodox economic theory as original sin does in theology. “In times gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal, élite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living . . . And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.” The facts, Marx pointed out, are very different. Wealth was originally accumulated by a process of legalised robbery. The land of Britain, for example, once belonged to those who tilled it. The theft of the land by a few has gone on in stages throughout the last fifteen centuries.

This expropriation was perhaps most striking, as we look back now, in the Highlands of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. The reason is that the blight of private property struck in the Highlands later than in other areas, so that the whole of the coercive forces of Britain were available to help on the transformation, which as a result was particularly sudden and brutal.

The Highlands owed their long immunity to their physical configuration. Entrance to the mountainous area could only be gained through narrow passes, where a handful of men could defeat an army; and the glens and straths within the Highlands were easily defensible against invaders for the same reason. Within this area, during the first part of the 18th century, the clans owned their own clan territories as they had done for centuries. The Campbells in Argyll, the Stewarts and Robertsons in Perthshire, the Rosses and Munros in Ross-shire, could have been forgiven for thinking that their ownership of their land was eternal and unchallengeable. It was not individual ownership; no clansman owned this or that stretch of land to the exclusion of all other clansmen; clan ownership meant that every clansman had the right to hunt the game on the mountain and moor within the clan land, to share in the general grazing, and to till part of the clan's soil. The general right to a living off the land had a corresponding duty: the duty to defend the clan land against invasion. At any alarm the croishtarich — the fiery cross, a piece of wood burnt at one end and dipped in lamb’s blood at the other — would go from township to township through the clan land, and every man capable of bearing arms at once repaired to the pre-arranged rallying spot (the Grants, for example, at Craigellachie, and the Clan Chattan at Dunlichity hill) to ward off the danger.

But among the institutions thrown up by clanship was one which was pregnant with future disaster. It was the chiefship. The chief led the clan in war, and judged any dispute in peacetime. When a chief died, another chief would be chosen, usually a new or distant relative of the last chief: although this meant little when every member of the clan believed himself related to every other, and could recount his descent — whether real or mythical — from the clan’s founder. (Clan is Gaelic for children: the Clan Leod were the children of Leod — the originator of the clan — and each man was Mac Leod, or son of Leod, and each woman Nic Leod, or daughter of Leod). In time it became usual for chiefs to be chosen from the members of one family — the system of tanistry. If a chief’s eldest son were old enough when his father died to lead the clan in war, and the clan thought highly of him, he would usually have the best claim to the succession.

The Highlands, however, were not isolated. Together with the English-speaking Lowlands they formed the kingdom of Scotland. This was largely a theoretical arrangement: the king in Edinburgh had no control in the Highlands, and the only way he could force his will on any clan was by leading an army against it — and often not even then. There were in practice many kings in the Highlands — the chief was “king” of his clan territory. The chiefs soon began to meddle in Lowland politics; and to gain their support, the Edinburgh king would often grant a charter to a particular chief to say that he owned the land of his clan. These charters were of no practical effect at the time, since the chief was unable to exercise any of the powers of ownership. The clansmen paid the chief small annual sums, analogous to present-day taxes, to support him; he had no right to increase this annual tax, much less to evict the clansmen from the clan land. Indeed, if he had gone beyond his traditional powers the clan would have evicted the chief. As a matter of historical fact, whenever a chief was found unsatisfactory he was deposed, and replaced by another member of the chiefly family.

The clan (if it even knew of the fact) was probably relieved when its chief did secure a charter to the clan territory, since it meant that no other chief could do so. Occasionally a chief in particular favour at court would obtain a charter not only to the land of his own clan (which did not belong to him) but also to the land of other clans (which, equally, did not belong to him). The chief of Macintosh, for example, got charters to the lands of the Camerons and of the MacDonalds of Keppoch; and both the Camerons and the MacDonalds had to light several battles to assert their right to their own land by beating off Macintosh and his clan who, out of a mistaken sense of duty, had followed him to support his claim.

Some of the Highland clans followed James Stuart, the Old Pretender, in 1715, and Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, in 1745. Both rebellions were defeated. The British Government determined to end the anomaly of having more than a sixth of Great Britain still under a type of society based on communal ownership, a system moreover which produced such superlative fighting men that only a few thousand of them had seemed about to topple the Government twice in thirty years. In addition the Industrial Revolution, beginning in the middle years of the 18th century, both provided the material strength needed to conquer the Highlands, and spawned great cities which demanded large supplies of food from the non-industrial districts, such as the Highlands. Soldiers marched and counter-marched through the Highlands, garrison towns were created, and the old Highland law was crushed, making way for the new private property law of the Lowlands.

According to this Lowland law, the charters which most of the chiefs had by this time obtained gave them exclusive rights to the whole of the clan land. This was such an enormous change, since it entailed the replacement of an entire system of society by another, that the chiefs themselves were hardly able to comprehend it for a time. Then some of the chiefs, desirous of making a fine figure in Edinburgh or London, realised that by turning out the clansmen and letting the clan land to sheep farmers, they could at one stroke increase their incomes five or six times. The clansmen were as astounded at this turn of events as if they had been told that the sun was henceforward to rise in the west. They had lived in and defended their land from time immemorial: and now the chief had brought in a lawyer who said that because of some writing in a foreign language on a small piece of paper in Edinburgh, the chief—chosen and loyally supported by the clan, and in fact the embodiment of the clan—had now the right to tell every clansman to leave, and to bring in instead a capitalist tenant farmer with great flocks of sheep! Some clearances were met with physical resistance, rioting, and violence; but where that happened, the chief brought up a detachment of Lowland, English, or Irish soldiers, and evicted the clansmen at the point of the bayonet. Often the threat of force was sufficient, especially since the local parish ministers backed up the landlords with warnings of eternal punishments as well as temporal ones. The odds against the clansmen were too great. In district after district the Gaels packed up their belongings, sold off their sheep and cattle, and left the glen for the last time, headed by a piper playing a clan lament. Often the chief cleared out his clan himself; sometimes he sold out to a buyer at such a high price that the new owner obviously intended to recoup—and did recoup—by a wholesale clearance. The tide of evictions crept steadily northwards. From the 1760s to the 1780s there were clearances among the Campbells in Argyll, the MacPhersons in Strath Spey, the various clans of MacDonalds in Glen Garry, Glen Coe and Keppoch, and the MacKenzies in Ross-shire. In the first decade of the 19th century there were many clearances in Inverness- and Ross-shires. MacNeil of Barra, the Chisholm, and MacLeod of Dunvegan were clearing out their clans; Glengarry was doing the same for the MacDonalds, Lochiel for the Camerons, Seaforth for the MacRaes and MacKenzies, and Lovat for the Frasers. Then, from 1807 to 1820, the great Sutherland Clearances took place, the Countess of Sutherland putting to flight thousands of Sutherlands, Murrays, MacKays, and the other Sutherland clans. Lord Reay, chief of a neighbouring clan of MacKays, was doing the same in what was now his land.

The clearances would have been completed sooner than they were but for two complicating factors. Chiefs who still had clansmen to call on found they could raise Highland regiments for Britain's repeated wars between 1740 and 1815; it was financially profitable to them, and in addition they could nominate officers (thus providing for impecunious relatives) and bask in the reflected glory of vicarious military adventure. Further, there was a kind of sea-weed called kelp found in the Hebrides and along the coast of the western Highlands, which when burned was a source of soda (an ingredient of glass) and of iodine. During the Napoleonic wars this burnt kelp brought £20 a ton, at a time when the kelp-worker got only £3 or less a ton. The enormous profits to be made meant that the coast and island landlords were eager to retain as many workers on their estates as they could. For these two reasons landlords would usually allow some of the evicted people to squat (for a rent) on odd comers of marsh and moor that no large farmer would have as a gift. The clansmen were always ready to accept these crofts because any toehold in the venerated land of the clan was better than none, especially when the alternatives were either to undergo the horrors of factory work in the Lowlands, or to go overseas in coffin ships to clear the thickly timbered wilderness in America—an experience many of the emigrants did not long survive.

After Waterloo great wars were few, and the demand for soldiers disappeared. Further, from the 1820s to the 1840s the kelp boom faded to nothing as Free Trade politicians allowed the duty-free import of foreign alkalis, with which kelp could not compete. Finally, the introduction of a Poor Law into the Highlands in 1845 meant that henceforward the landlords would have to pay steep poor rates to help support the very paupers they themselves had created. The clearances now rose to a crescendo. The steady driving out of the Gaels in the 1820s and 1830s (e.g. in Skye, Arran, Morven, Kintyre, Breadalbane, the Menzies country, and Rannoch) was now succeeded by a frenzy of evictions in the 1840s and 1850s. Most notable, perhaps, were those of Seaforth and Sir James Matheson in Lewis, Robertson of Kindeace in Glen Calvie and Greenyards, Colonel Gordon in South Uist and Barra, Lord Macdonald in North Uist and Skye, and Macdonell of Glengarry in Knoydart. These are only examples. Everywhere ships were ordered up to the sea-lochs of the Western Highlands and Islands, and people were herded on them for transportation to Canada or Australia without being consulted, and indeed against their strongly expressed wishes. Any escaping were hunted down and put back on board the emigrant vessels with the aid of the police. In this fashion the Highlands were emptied. 

By the time of the 1880s crofters were to be found in any number only in Skye and the Outer Hebrides and along a few lochs on the west coast; even there they clung to patches of land, the good land having all gone to make either sheep farms, or deer forests where rich idlers—noble and royal— came from England and the Continent to make merry in the glens which had seen the tragic and brutal dispersal of the Highlanders. In the 1880s the groundswell of discontent burst out into a series of open insurrections in Skye, Lewis, Barra, Tiree and other places. It was called the Crofters’ War, and resulted in some measure of protection against eviction for the scattered remnants of the Gaels. But it was too late. The Highlands had already been won for capitalism, and great fortunes had been established through the expropriation by a few of what had previously belonged to the many. It may safely be said that the income from Highland land rose fifty or more times between 1750 and 1880.

Today in the Highlands many of the old chiefs’ descendants still own vast stretches of what was once their clans’ land—the Duke of Sutherland, Lord Lovat (chief of the Frasers), the Countess of Seafield (chief of the Grants), Cameron of Lochiel, the Duke of Atholl (chief of the Stewarts), the Marquis of Bute, the Earl of Cawdor (a Campbell chieftain). Lord Macdonald, Sir George Macpherson-Grant of Ballindalloch, and others. Many others of the old chiefs' heirs have preferred to sell their clans’ land, and otherwise invest the proceeds. None of them should be in any doubt as to the real nature of capitalist primitive accumulation.

Alwyn Edgar

Voice From The Back: How The Other Tenth Live (2007)

From the May 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

HOW THE OTHER TENTH LIVE

The trial for fraud and tax avoidance of Lord Black threw up this insight into the parasitical nature of the owning class. "If only his wife hadn't boasted about her extravagant lifestyle in an interview, Lord Black's empire might still span three continents. It was to readers of Vogue in 2002 that Barbara Amiel showed off the size of her wardrobe, the racks of designer clothes inside, and talked of how 'her extravagance knows no bound'. She confided: 'It is always best to have two planes, because however well one plans ahead, one always finds one in the wrong continent'" (Times, 10 March)


PRIMITIVE ACCUMULATION OF CAPITAL

"At least 11 people were killed and 39 injured yesterday when farmers in eastern India, angered over government plans to build an industrial park on their land, fought police with rocks, machetes and pickaxes. The clashes broke out when police tried to enter villages in Nandigram, West Bengal, where the government wants to build a petrochemical plant and a shipyard. All those killed in the clashes were farmers." (Times, 15 March) Away back in 1867 Karl Marx was describing in Capital this capitalist process that he called "the so-called primitive accumulation" in Europe from the 16th century onwards. "The expropriation of the agricultural producer, of the peasant, from the soil, is the basis of the whole process."


MIND THE GAP

The gulf between rich and poor under this Labour government has become so great that even the capitalist class are warning the government about it. "Gordon Brown's closest ally in the City has warned that the gap between rich and poor in Britain is now so deep that it threatens to provoke 'violent reactions' in society. Sir Ronald Cohen, a venture capitalist, also warned on the eve of Brown's last Budget that the boom in the City was in danger of grinding to a halt. Asked whether the huge wealth flooding to an elite group of City professionals was disfiguring society, he agreed, adding: 'I think we're at the top of the cycle. I think the pendulum has swung too far'". (Observer, 18 March)


ESCAPE (1)

The Observer has a supplement each week called "Escape", containing articles about various holiday destinations, and, of course, many advertisements for holidays. Why do they call it "Escape"? It is targeted at all the people whose jobs are so boring or so stressful that they feel they can stand it only if they can get away for a short break in the summer. And the enormous size of the holiday industry shows that there are very many such people. But how can such a holiday be called an "escape" when it is of strictly limited duration, and all the holidaymakers know they will have to go back afterwards to the very same conditions which made them long to "escape" in the first place? "Escape" is clearly the wrong word. Whoever heard of a daring escape from prison or a prisoner-of-war camp, when the successful escapee celebrated his release by going back in two weeks' time to the main gate and asking to be re-admitted?


ESCAPE(2)

The previous item brings to mind the story that an old Glasgow speaker was fond of telling from the outdoor platform. An Eastern potentate was visiting a Glasgow factory when the lunch-time hooter sounded and all the workers made a bee-line for the canteen. "Look out, sir. Your slaves are escaping." "Don't worry, Omar. Wait 40 minutes." Sure enough 40 minutes later the hooter sounded and the wage slaves streamed back into the factory. "Amazing", cried the eastern visitor. "I must buy some of these magic hooters."


GETTING THINGS DONE

Supporters of the Labour Party are always telling socialists that while Labour may not be socialists "at least they get things done". Here is a recent example. "The number of children living in poverty jumped by 100,000 last year, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said, showing that the government is not on course to meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010-11. In 2005-06, 2.8 million children lived in poverty." (Times, 3 April) It would seem that what is "getting done" is the working class in Britain.

China: primitive accumulation of capital (2007)

From the May 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism is not able to develop until, in addition to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few people, there were also vast numbers of men and women free to sell their mental and physical energies, their labour power, for wages, and "free" from other means of obtaining a living such as the ownership of land. This, according to Karl Marx, was — and is — the primitive accumulation of capital. Peasants in England, Scotland, in continental Europe and, later, elsewhere were forced off the land and herded into factories. Today, we witness a similar situation in China and its so-called autonomous province of Tibet. Feudalism, even pre-feudalism and compradore capitalism, is being replaced by full-blooded capitalism known to the West for a century.

Until the 1980s, 80 percent of the Chinese labour force worked on the land. They were an enormous source of exploitable labour. During the last quarter of a century, however, millions of peasants have, by force, harassment or the promise (bait) of a better life, migrated to the ever-expanding cities of the People's Republic of China. For a few, life has indeed improved, even if they have become exploited wage slaves. But for most?

According to Amnesty International (reported in the West Australian, 3 March), millions of Chinese workers who have moved from the countryside to serve the country's expansion are "overworked, underpaid, denied access to health care, education for their children, and even the right to live permanently in the cities which use their labour," and are treated as an underclass. Continues the Amnesty report:

"They are forced to work long stretches of overtime, often denied time off when sick, and labour under hazardous conditions for paltry wages. As well as being exploited by employers, migrant families face discriminatory government regulations in almost every area of daily life."

They are, says the West Australian, easily exploited by unscrupulous bosses, many of whom withhold their wages, knowing, in the end, the workers will simply be forced to return home. Indeed, conditions in China today often parallel those chronicled by Marx and Engels in 19th century Britain. Conditions in the coal mines are particularly bad, with as many as 5,000 miners dying, and thousands more injured, every year in the cities, workers are herded into "shanty towns" or squalid apartments. According to the report, most workers in China "lack free trade union representation in their factories and restaurants, often working 14-hour days, 30 days a month . . ."

Strikes are illegal. But, as we know, they, as well as riots and even mass revolts, have occurred throughout the history of the People's Republic of China. The class struggle is alive and well! Meanwhile, a very rich minority of capitalists, of whom many are or were Communist Party functionaries, and factory managers, have emerged in China during the last 20 years or so. One such capitalist Yan Jiehe, is said to be worth more than £850 million.

Peter E Newell