Author / doctormcgrail

by doctormcgrail

Trump’s Trade Deals with History

‘Make America Great Again’ – the slogan oozes with nostalgia. Its central motif is not “back to the future” but, rather, “forward to the past”. But, this leaves the suspended question of: whatever happened to the (‘our’ / ‘anyones’ / ‘everyones’) future?

If the capitalist system (mode of production) was thriving, then year-on-year Money (M) would be turning into Money Plus (M+), with the extra value produced (the Plus) being easily reinvested into more money-making schemes. The general notion is expressed in a rapidly ‘growing economy’, measured by economists since 1934 in the crucial metric of rising Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Within this ideal socio-economic context, the political representatives of the capitalist class, whether on the Left or Right (i.e., socialists or nationalists, libertarians or conservatives) should be able to provide the population (within and beyond their state’s boundaries; so at a universal level) with a modernist myth of ‘progression’. In other words, they should be narrating and conducting an inspiring vision of the ‘future’ and how it will be glorious for all! And here I always think of Harold Wilson’s “white heat of technology” and how the UK would burn its way into a new cosmos!

Certainly, this kind of modernist myth-making is possible when “opulence” (as Adam Smith, 1776, puts it) reaches down to even the “lowest ranks” of the people. As the nation, overall, gets wealthier – as the pie grows – then even the wretches at the bottom of the social pile may ease their ‘naturally’ or ‘Godly’ imposed burdens. Eating from the sweat of their brow may require slightly less sweat. And whilst the share of national wealth that the wretches actually obtain may decline (in percentage terms), nevertheless, the absolute amount of goods that small % share represents can, crucially, ‘grow’ (in real terms) since the pie their slice is taken from is so much bigger.

It is, therefore, not hard to understand why the elected or co-opted representatives (rulers) of the capitalist class and State prefer times of ‘bread and circuses’ – a growing pie! Under such conditions, they can spin tales about the entire nation, and even other nations, moving forward together, as one; of all boats, no matter how insignificant, rising on a tide of (technologically-determined) progress.

Of course, by Autumn 2025, so factually, such economic conditions haven’t been witnessed (in the ‘developed’ G7 countries) for almost 2 decades, since the Financial Crunch of 2008. ‘Our times’ have been ones of austerity, breakdown in international agreement (e.g., Brexit), shifts in economic power (towards China), rising debt, fiscal crises, unsustainable government deficits, speculative use of ‘fiat’ or fictitious money, and inflationary ‘cost of living’ tragedies on the back of pandemic and war).

What little economic ‘growth’ there has been was concentrated (squandered) on benefitting a minority of the powerful and wealthy, consequently producing the highest levels of social inequality ever seen – with the obvious proviso that either or both the poorest and the middle-classes are worse-off (placed in ‘declining’ positions of what has been referred to as ‘negative growth’).

Unsurprisingly, globalist unifying visions (such as the one that inspired G. W. Bush and Blair to invade Iraq as bearers of the light of ‘liberal democracy’) have been replaced by the reverse gear of ‘nostalgia’. The nationalism (socially-exclusionary, but therein ‘socialism’ for the chosen citizenry) of Trump, Putin, Xi, Orban, and Modi, plus many other ‘il-liberals’, have taken over in times of “work and prayer”. And, of course, it is not just a case of America First (a slogan taken from a US interwar movement), but Russia First, Europe First, India First, China First, even the Taliban First. And it also means that a Right-wingers’ primary enemies include not just Left-wing ‘reds under the bed’, but any other nationalist conservatives. As such, the ‘future’ oriented narratives (plural, of course) are all about a specific trajectory of just ‘one’ people (who, of course, must dominate to survive).

And yet, Trump is also picking up on another legacy of the America First movement from the days of Roosevelt, which is its anti-war / anti-interventionist approach to foreign policy. Trump, as the business man he claims to be, wants to ‘deal’ his way out of the ‘crisis’ situation capitalists of America find themselves in.

On James Steuart’s Principles of Political Economy

Published in 1767, nine years before Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Sir James Steuart’s opus is typically viewed as the last, great intellectual achievement of the Mercantilist School. Whilst Mercantilism, as a philosophy for policy-makers, would hang around for another 80 years (until the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1847), in terms of scientific contributions to the history of political economy, Smith’s surpassing of Steuart’s conceptual grasp of economic categories would quickly eclipse the latter’s work. Where Smith saw the centrality of ‘work’ (industry) in the production of profit, Stewart’s analysis never moved beyond the realm of exchange (market trader relations) in which profit was seen to arise out of commodity ‘circulation’.

Nonetheless, Steuart’s work appears at the very beginning of Marx’s 2,500 pages of ‘notes’ (1861-63) on the theoretical history of political economy, published as Theories of Surplus Value (1904). Marx’s coverage of Steuart only lasts 3 pages, but what Marx focuses upon is Stewart’s awareness that a trader can make money (profit) via two different kinds of relationship. These are ones of ‘Positive Profit’ and ‘Relative Profit’.

Positive Profit refers to the ‘ideal’ trader situation – a deal where both parties come out having made a gain (profit). Of course, Stewart is unable to explain (from the realm of exchange or circulation) ‘how’ both can make a profit. That is, how can both the metropolitan merchant and the colonial trader make profits when the system is skewed towards the mother-country merchant having a politically-controlled monopoly through which they determine prices? But, in practice, it was clearly possible, and Steuart must have observed the outcome despite an inability to explain the phenomenon. Anyhow, positive profit is what we, today, would call a “Positive Sum” result in Game Theory. It is preferable or ideal because it means there are no ‘losers’.

In contrast, by Relative Profit Steuart means a “Zero Sum” outcome – one of the merchants / traders must “lose”, and the profit of the winner rests on taking something from the loser. Mercantilists traders, theorists and politicians (policymakers) were all too aware of this type of relationship; not least because they constructed both a colonial Empire and legal framework to guarantee such an outcome for the chosen few (the 5% of people who controlled the political and legal system on Steuart’s and Smith’s day).

A Fascination with Yesterday’s Game

Made aware of these concepts, forged in pre-Smithian political economy (the Mercantilist era), it is arguable that Trump’s fascination with the raising of taxes through “tariffs” is a reversion or collapse into the dirty wars of the Zero Sum trader game. Crucially, it is not a sign of strength (the existence of capital accumulations ‘ideal’ situation) but of weakness – Trump the capitalist cannibal is aiming to devour the very people who keep shifting the Overton window in the same direction that he has.

Interestingly, Trump wants to reduce internal government taxes on “Americans” (workers as well as capitalists) where his “liberal” predecessors wanted to shift the taxation burden off (any) capitalist (American or not) onto the American poor (getting workers to pay for their own and each others’ welfare). A part of this strategy is to redefine who is “American”. Some Americans are to become “foreigners” – expelled and dispossessed. They are one element of the ‘losers’ from which others will make a gain. At the same time, American merchants reliant on overseas workers (so, also, not “American”) will be taxed higher than those aiming for autarky – the very kind of economy Putin appears to already have achieved.

And this, should, all sound ominous given what we, collectively, know about history. Trump is playing poker with a deck of cards dealt in the 1930s.

by doctormcgrail

Racism and Fire: Capitalism’s Role in the Persistence of Race

October is Black History Month, and both of my institutional employers have emailed me with offers of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) training as part of Continuing Professional Development (CPD), though not mandatory sessions.

Edinburgh University led the way (1st October) by presenting a one-hour workshop on a range of different groups and activities undertaking anti-racism activities (including profile-raising of minority staff networks, provision of links with outside bodies, and highlights on race education projects). Each presenter had about 10 minutes to outline (pitch) what their organisation was doing (and where it could be found).

At the end, the organisers struggled to get the question and answer (Q&A) session going, with no questions coming forward until one presenter felt duty-bound to ask something (of another presenter). This outcome was not due to lack of interest on behalf of the audience (being ‘self-selecting’, they were the ‘converted’). Rather, it was hard to think of ‘questions’ (to get a ‘discussion’ going) from such a factual presentation. What is there to disagree about?

The Open University offer was much more assertive in indicating that people will learn how to challenge their “white privilege” (by becoming aware of it) and, therein, an effective “ally” (who knows how to support people suffering racism and not how to ‘take over’ as a ‘white saviour’). At least this kind of anti-racism work allows more space for people to get into a debate. However, a general feeling of discomfort (about questioning the presented narrative) still pervades what is a workplace ‘instituted’ conversation, such that no-one is really going to challenge the expert anti-racist presenters / session leads.

The positive I take from such employer sanctioned events is that it is good to see the issue of racism being taken seriously, and provisioned with staff time (for those who choose to attend) by my employers. However, what makes me ‘chortle’ is the thought that I might now sit and wait for an email ‘ping’ to announce the equivalent EDI session on ‘The Exploitative Nature of Waged-Employment: Anti-work Initiatives’! Somehow, I can’t see that happening anytime (not even soon), within the ‘employer-employee’ environment. Yet, in anti-racism work, is it not important to investigate and explore the relationship between ‘the social construction of race’ and ‘the mode of production’ which gave rise to modern racism?

The Exploitative Source of Racism

Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery (1944 – developed from his PhD research), observed that it was not racism that gave rise to the Atlantic slave trade. Rather, it was slavery which gave, and continues to give, substance to racism. On the basis of this thesis, whenever we see the smoke of racism rising it is incumbent upon us to look for the fire (the source of the smoke), or at least ask: ‘where is the smoke coming from?’ That is, we should ask ‘where is the slavery?’

To be clear, ‘smoke kills’ – it is not just a ‘signal’ meaning it can be ignored in order to shift ‘analysis’ elsewhere. But Williams’ point highlights that racism is not an ‘autoimmune disease’. It does not ‘seed itself’ in a vacuum, and has a cause (both a ground which it grows out of, and a ‘sense of progression’, or history, of which it is a part – everyone appears to be going ‘somewhere’ for some ‘reason’).

With the Atlantic slave trade, the exploitative source of the racism was ‘obvious’ – the system relied on one person being ‘enslaved’ in order to ‘serve’ another. And whilst Europeans in America initially took ‘white slaves’ (indentured poor, criminals, and vagabonds, even prisoners of war) with them (alongside a highly-oppressed population-half: women), the situation with rapid capital accumulation (the need to accumulate workers as ‘things’) meant there was soon a ‘lack’ of available people. This led to transportation from Africa to fulfil the ‘gap’. Initially, white and black slaves co-existed, even if unequally, but the ‘need’ (requirement) to categorise more and more individuals as ‘slaves’ eventually led to entire ‘groups’ of people taking on different roles in this system’s division of labour. Thus, skin-colour (being ‘black’) took on its slave-defining role.

But what about today’s voluntaristic, liberalised economies where chattel slavery (now in the form of ‘human trafficking’) has been pushed to the margins of ‘the economy’? Whilst there may be 26 million trafficked people (modern slaves) in the world today, this makes up a tiny proportion of the 6+ billion people surviving as ‘wage labourers’. So, why is racism still so widespread?

One answer, from Marx (1894), is that capitalism (in essence waged-labour, because this is the source of ‘profit’) is nothing other than “veiled slavery”! Consequently, following Marx’s assertion, Williams’ thesis holds true, with the persistence of racism (in its different forms: open, unconscious, institutionalised) being built upon the on-going existence of compulsory labour – forced not by the whip-hand but by the invisible-hand of ‘economic conditions’ (the primary condition, for most, being their propertylessness).

Indeed, in today’s contemporary corporate world, racism’s fundamental form is still the ‘reservation‘. On the one hand, there are those ‘reservoirs‘ of cheap labour ‘politically’ confined by ‘citizenship’ (or lack of it) to conditions maintained under brutal undemocratic regimes – a 21st century version of globalised apartheid with ranks of ‘nation states’ determining the extent to which an area of land mass is classified as totally useless (the ‘useless mouths’ of Afghanistan / Somalia / South Sudan) versus ripe for exploitation (Philippines / Nigeria / Bolivia).

On the other hand, there are those places were the very best (well-paid / good working condition) jobs, access to the required education, facilitation by the most ‘labour enhancing’ technologies, and consumption of advanced healthcare are ‘reserved‘ for people with specific ‘characteristics’ (including ‘citizenship’).

Taken together, these different symbiotic and bifurcated spatial reservations form a hierarchy in which skin-colour still plays a fundamental refining mechanism for the ‘underlying’ system of exploitation (capital accumulation through waged-labour). Though, in theory – and in terms of progressivist political myth-making about possible ‘futures’ liberated from race and racialism – a few ‘individuals’ are able to move from marginalised reservoirs to the lands of exclusively ‘reserved’ jobs. Such social mobility gives the impetus to much (but not all) anti-racism work within the world of corporate and institutional employers – whilst, of course, the central mechanisms of waged-labour exploitation remain untouched.

Is the Dream of Corporate Anti-racism possible?

Interestingly, with reference to Afrofuturist writing, Alex Zamalin (2025) points to one dystopian novel in which the imagined society had, finally, managed to expunge Black people, thereby producing a purified world. This is a different version of reaching a state of ‘colour-blindness’ compared to the corporate eutopia (good place). It is touching on the ‘completion’ scenario of the Nazi ‘Final Solution’ of a Jew-free Reich. But the novel is really raising the question that, if such a Nazi utopia ever ‘worked’, would the waged-labour mode of production have been maintained?

In the novel’s Black-free society, racism soon begins to re-emerge in a new form. Someone is (some ‘bodies’ are) always required to do the menial, bottom-of-the-rung jobs in any ‘exchangeable labour’ society and, consequently, the roaming, roving eyes of a surveyor class (whoever they might happen to be) begin to look for anyone who is ruddier or slightly ‘more pink’ than ‘everyone else’. Thus, a new ‘norm’ or ‘average’ is generated from which social categories (by skin, sex, height, voice-box) will ‘form’. In short, and in line with what I argue here, the categorisation process is being driven by the needs of ‘the economy’ and its forced / compelled ‘division of labour‘.

It is the social essence of capitalism’s reproductive structure (that there is a hierarchy based on ‘exchangeable labour‘) which determines the requirement for different social categories of labourers. But a ‘reason’ or justification must be given for the ordering of society (i.e., in the above dystopian society ‘you are overly pink’, though the same distinction could be based just as easily on eye-colour). The ‘passion’ (behind the reasoning) is more consistent and practical in its desire to make extractive exploitation feasible and sustainable (since this exploitation is the very means of survival for those ‘empowered’ but ‘reliant’ groups who eternally seek the social transfer of resources from person X – the ‘enslaved’ – to person Y – ‘the masters of money’).

References:

Marx, K. (1894) Capital: A Critique of Political Economy – Volume 3. [Edited by F. Engels / trans. by D. Fernbach (c) 1991]. London: Penguin.

Williams, E. (1944) Capitalism & Slavery. [Penguin Classics / 1994 imprint]. London: Penguin Random House UK.

Zamalin, A. (2025) ‘The Future of Afrofuturism: Thinking with Afrofuturism’ [Workshop Paper]. Part of Panel 3: Revisiting Utopianism from other critical and radical perspectives. AHRC Workshop 3 of Utopia & Failure: ‘Fail Again, Fail Better! Held at: King’s College London (Mon 8th and Tues 9th Sept).

by doctormcgrail

“Fascism” and the Myth of a Good Capitalism

With the rise of contemporary authoritarian regimes (including those of Duterte, Bolsonaro, Orbán, and Erdoğan) in notional, or prior, ‘liberal democracies’ and especially with the revival of Trump in the US, the term ‘Fascist’ has become a popular and widely applied descriptive term – a quick means of summing up both recent changes and the possible dangers that lie ahead. Of course, like any term, it can suffer from ‘Crying Wolf’ syndrome if it is applied too easily and widely. Indeed, it is known that far-right ‘Libertarians’ can call their more socially-conservative brethren ‘Fascists’, due to differing stances on state-church ‘authorities’ and their political usage. Criticising use of the term ‘Fascist’, however, should not forget that there are connections between a phenomena like the 2nd Trump ‘administration’ and Nazi Germany (and other ‘totalitarian’ states), such as the scapegoating of minority populations, attempts at (and actualised) mass deportations, and a clawing culture of fellow-travelling loyalty to a false-god patriotism. Yet, my criticism here is aimed at the distractive use of “Fascism” in deflecting attention away from the bubbling-stream source of such turns towards reactionary politics, namely, capitalist crises (both with small ‘c’), and the underlying desire for a reconstruction of not just ‘authority’ but, more importantly, profitability.

That recent changes are to be summed up and identified as ‘Fascist’ overlooks two key facts: (1) that there is no form of ‘good’ capitalism against which to contrast the “Fascist” (the latter was/is a product of the former: it’s off-spring); and (2) that Fascism (now in ‘bold’ type) was a specific historic social movement which arose in a pre-Keynesian (so pre-‘planner state’) era, where Fascism represented one ‘possible’ alternate means of capitalism’s ‘evolution’ out of crisis at a specific moment in time (1920s-40s). Furthermore, it competed with Stalinism, Keynesianism, and Japanese Imperialism (all different responses to a global crisis in ‘world markets’, i.e., capital accumulation); only two of which managed to ‘survive’ the war.

Social historian Ellen Meiksins Wood (2002), in The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View, described the French Ancien Regime as a social form (mode of production) which withered on the tree of life – it literally had its head cut-off by the French Revolution. Nevertheless, in 19th century France there were several attempts at a monarchial revival, and there were certainly members of the French nobility knocking about Europe (never mind France) providing mimetic vocabulary to garnish constitutional debates with their liberal adversaries. Though such nobles did traverse the world with bankers’ drafts in their pocket – not the quick rents nor corvee (labour taxes) of Ancien Regime peasants, ‘incomes’ which were abolished with their ancestors’ ‘offices’ in 1793 (the political positions that had enabled a historically and geographically peculiar form of extra-economic domination). While the idea of aristocratic rule then ‘echoed’ down the decades, the generator of this increasingly-distant sound wave had disappeared in any physical/practical sense.

Hence, today we may have the silhouette of what a reactionary politics coping (or not coping) with a crisis in capitalism accumulation looks like, but in drawing attention to the silhouette do we run the risk ignoring its source: the fire and the people making shadows?

When is a capitalist a “Fascist”?

Let me now turn to matters much more mundane. On Monday 15th September 2025, I spotted an investigative report by the BBC World Service entitled “Ex-London bus driver runs degrading sex-trade ring in Dubai’s glamorous neighbourhoods”. Mr Charles Mweisgwa claimed he “could provide women for a sex party at a starting price of $1,000 (£740), adding that many can do ‘pretty much everything’ clients want them to”. According to women involved, one client “regularly asks to defecate on the women”. The women come from poor countries, notably, rural areas of Uganda; so are being exploited due to their lack of jobs and their desperation to earn a living, to survive. They are drawn to Dubai on promises of obtaining work in “supermarkets or hotels”, and face violence if they want to go back home when the promise (expectation) of normal work is not fulfilled. Reporters were also informed by the women “that clients were mostly white Europeans, and included men with extreme fetishes” – which, of course, can only be fulfilled through cold, hard financial transaction.

Of course, Mr Mweisgwa denies the allegations that he’s a pimp who abuses visa ‘rights’ and uses violence. He merely “helps women find accommodation through landlords, and that women follow him to parties because of his wealthy Dubai contacts”. Thus, it’s the women’s free-willed desire for and chase after money that leads them into such situations – everyone wants a piece of action in Dubai! And Mr Mweisgwa doesn’t appear to be a Fascist, even though he facilitates arrangements which are clearly racist. As one witness noted: [The white clients] “want somebody who is going to cry and scream and run. And that somebody [in their eyes] should be a black person”. But if they turn to the police, they are told: “You Africans cause problems for each other. We don’t want to get involved”.

Indeed, Mr Mweisgwa is a worker (a former wage slave) ‘made good’. From starting out as a bus driver in London, he now appears to be ‘living the dream’ in a posh part of Dubai. He doesn’t seem to be bothered by either racism (he is Black living alongside Dubai’s police, who wouldn’t care about offering him protection) nor nationalism (after all, his business is international and multi-national, offering Europeans the services of Africans in a Western Asian/Arab setting). As far as the Dubai authorities are concerned, nothing illegal is taking place, as it’s just Africans hurting each other. Tightened rules on immigration would harm his profitability. Mr Mweisgwa has moved from being one of life’s exploited to being one its successful exploiters. He’s now making more money than he did before, when he was an ‘honest’ bus driver. That’s business. That’s good business. This is the outcome of societal values instilled within Mr Mweisgwa. Once he ‘makes’ enough money the red carpet will be rolled out for him. Dirty money will be cleaned; it will go on to be invested in all sorts of ‘wholesome’ essential businesses (from tyre manufacturing to artificial intelligence and fast-food outlets). After this point, all taxes will be paid, and respect ‘earned’. There is nothing unusual here, as this is everyday capitalism.

Holding on to Capitalism without “Fascism”

Can we imagine Mr Mweisgwa’s ‘enterprise’ operating under the keen eye of ‘inspector capitalism’, that is, the left-leaning social marketeers of socialist heritage who, apparently, want to regulate their nation’s workplaces into conditions of ‘social justice’? The BBC are bringing our attention to this specific case because of its extremities. But it is not just because someone defecating on another (abused) person will gain readers and ‘clicks’ (an instrumental requirement of the media industry, for it to make money or at least justify journalists’ existence). Rather, Mr Mweisgwa’s enterprise does not meet the ‘ideal’ (utopian) standards of how capitalism should operate, as set down by large multi-national corporations such as McDonalds, Walmart, Elbit Systems, Coca Cola, Astra Zeneca, Pfizer, Lush, Ben & Gerry’s, Shell, Mobile, Starbucks, etc. The BBC are reminding us that this is not the way in which things ‘should be’ organised under capitalism – the ‘good’ capitalism that everybody loves and is ‘in favour’ of as “the worst system available, except for all the others” (Churchill).

But the ‘good’ capitalism is mythical as it always relies on memory loss. It’s a product of dementia, literally, being driven demented. Money ‘earned’ during the slave era was reinvested, reinvested and reinvested. But more importantly, as Bonefeld (2023) puts it, today’s workers are employed with money stolen from the very same workers the day before. The system is continuous, with no ‘break’ between the bad and the good days.

Yes, people are suffering under the new “Fascist” Trumpian regime; but people also suffered under Obama, who increased the number of drone strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq on his predecessor, George W Bush, who launched an illegal war leading to the deaths of 1.6 million people. Prior to this Bill Clinton bombed Iraq several times. All of them supported Israel and its use of ‘administrative detention’, based on a law introduced by the British in the 1920s. All of these, along with Western European ‘democracies’, saw regimes such as the Dubai, Qatari, Bahraini, and Saudi ‘monarchies’ as allies (who regularly used torture). Meanwhile, take up a ‘counter-hegemonic’ stand with Second and Third World ‘nations’ and governments isn’t going to help in the classification of Trump as ‘weirdly’ out of sync with what has gone before: Putin, Xi, the Kims, Modi, the Egyptian-Pakistani-Brazilian-Greek-Turkish-Argentine military ‘juntas’, then there are the Black Nationalist ‘socialists’ of East Africa, the Apartheid of South Africa. Can or should we redefine ‘Fascism’ as when suffering ‘comes home’?

My point, to be clear, is not that type of ‘regime’ does not make a difference to ordinary peoples lives, and especially to some people (the lucky ones). Of course regime change can make a difference. But calling Trump a “Fascist” simply takes away from the fact he is a “Capitalist”. And he is the latter first and foremost! Trump has always been motivated by money and capital accumulation; as have his entourage. They are all motivated just like Mr Mweisgwa. Trump’s policies, which he himself has given no overall ‘ideological’ shape to (we see this in his erratic swings and shifts), are an experimental, hotch-potch attempt (similar to Thacther’s) to reconstruct ‘capital’, by which I mean the relationship of labour to capital, between workers and money. The days of seeing the ‘capitalist’ as a top-hat wearing Mr Scrooge are long gone – such people never controlled, individually, the dispossession of indigenous communities, enclosure of land, the enforcement of private property ‘entitlements’ (‘rights’), the privation and starvation of needless / ‘useless’ mouths, programmed reductions in the cost of living (e.g., the reproduction of workers through cheap, subsidised housing), nor the ‘required’ education (indoctrination) of workers and the wider population. It is the (capitalist) State that has always been tasked with ensuring the population of its territorial area (domain) becomes and remains compliant with the core, self-evident truth of modern (bourgeois) society, namely, the successful accumulation of capital: that (as Mr Mweisgwa discovered) money can somehow, magically, become more money. Grabbing the state’s levers hasn’t just been a tactic of Fascists – its been done by Leninists, Conservatives and Social Democrats – but the results have always been some form of reconstruction of ‘capital’, and never the State’s own “withering away”.

So, is Trump a “Fascist”? Well, let’s say he is. The question becomes ‘so what?’ He’s a capitalist, and it is the ‘idea’ (notion) that there can be some form of better or ‘good’ capitalism (a utopia of cold monetary relations) that needs to be questioned!

References:

Bonefeld, W. (2023) A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation London: Routledge.

Wood. E. M. (2002) The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View London: Verso.

by doctormcgrail

History produces nothing but Barbarism

In a recent video interview for publisher Unherd, Yanis Varoufakis asked the question: “Why is the Left the loser of history?’ He went on to argue that the Left failed to “take its opportunity” in the wake of the crisis of capitalism in 2008. Consequently, the ground remained wide-open, only to be filled by the politics of the Far Right.

Of course, since the Left failed in its historic duty to take up the reigns of ‘power’, it has the unenviable position of remaining religiously pure and untainted as the rightful and righteous outcome of ‘history’. It can live for another day, though such a position leads to the inevitable question, given there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ sides of history, of ‘why, so far, has the Right always ended up as the victor of history?’

There is a deeper question here: ‘What is history?’

To ‘Left revolutionaries’, Rosa Luxembourg is famous for stating that ‘the’ class struggle will end in either “Socialism or Barbarism”. The openness of the ‘choice’ with which she confronted her comrades indicates Luxembourg did not see ‘socialism’ as an automatic outcome of the ‘historical process’. But her statement does leave two interpretations: (1) that ‘socialism’ is one possible outcome of ‘the historical process’ (for Varoufakis, socialism can be ‘the victor’), and, alternately, (2) that human action – struggle – is the means by which to avoid the inevitable barbarism that ‘the historical process’ will produce (so, ‘socialism’ can never be ‘the victor’ of a socio-historical process humanity must struggle against).

Following the latter interpretation, a key question is ‘what form should the required struggle take?’ Well, aiming to take up the reigns of political ‘power’ (electoral politics; state capture, Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Bolshevism, Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Black Power, and Matriarchy) has been tried on numerous occasions. Luxembourg was murdered in 1919, so didn’t live to see the historical outcome of ‘actually existing socialism’.

That is, Varoufakis, no matter how he, himself, sees the world, or understands contemporary ‘history’, needs to deal with the fact that for many people, in certain places and times, socialism has been ‘the victor of history’ and has done nothing but produce barbarism. When socialism has been ‘the victor of history’ then, to change Luxembourg’s quotation: Socialism becomes Barbarism! To the ‘victors’ the spoils.

What has Varoufakis missed?

Varoufakis clearly understands ‘socialism’ to be part and parcel of the historical process – it is a component of the current system which can ‘guide’ history towards a positive outcome. This ‘positivity’ is a theoretical descendant of early utopian socialists (heavily criticised by Marx) such as John Bray and Proudhon – who believed in nationalised banks and ‘fair’ labour exchanges on the basis (as Bonefeld, 2023 puts it) that they could get rid of ‘the capitalist’ but keep ‘capital’ (i.e., the waged labour relationship or social form).

Incidentally, I find Varoufakis’ coining of the ‘concept’ technofeudalism very confusing – a jumble of definitions and meanings. By ‘feudalism’ he appears to serfdom (in a similar way as Hayek referred to ‘The Road to Serfdom’). But this forgets that the tech-bros’ goal is to produce ‘surplus value’ and NOT garner tribune (rents/taxes) under a system of ‘extra-economic’ devine-rights (imposed by ‘direct’ violence). In short, Greece had a Finance Minister who never really understood ‘capitalism’ (conceptually nor practically).

I surmise that Varoufakis has never read the Frankfurt School Critical Theorists (Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno), or, if he has, he hasn’t understood them. Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History reminds us that the point of history is to break with it, not “swim” with its tide. Rather, the struggle is to bring the historical process to a ‘stop’ (to serve the needs of the present) and not drive history to its ‘completion’ (towards some Messianic ‘vision’). Adorno brilliantly sums the same point up: “There is a history which leads from the slingshot to the atom bomb, but not one that goes from barbarism to humanity”.

History is on the wrong side of class struggle – it is a process which runs against the presently-existing needs of humanity. Rather, history (the perpetuation of tradition) is an accumulating “nightmare” which weighs heavily on the “brains of the living” (Marx from 18th Brumaire), compelling them forward on grounds of ‘lack of alternative’. The struggle is to wake up and leave the nightmare; not stay in it to find out who will be ‘victors’. If we stay in it (do not wake up) and keep ‘falling’, then the urban myth tells us there will be just one outcome: Thump!

Notes: The featured image is from a photo of holiday postcards I took in a museum – I’ve entitled it ‘History Sails Forward’. It’s an image captured from ‘the past’, held within a time-capsule.

References:

Bonefeld, W. (2023) A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation London: Routledge.

by doctormcgrail

Marx’s Anarchism and the Politics of Capitalism

On the relevance of Marx in times of ‘Zombie Capitalism?’

Studying an author hermeneutically refers to understanding a writer by standing in their shoes and seeing the world from their perspective.  Studying political writings in such a manner was advanced in the mid-20th century by scholars like those in the ‘Cambridge School’ of history of political thought.  

When Karl Marx was writing Capital, in mid 19th century, the term ‘left’ (on the political spectrum) meant being ‘radical’ whilst ‘right’ referred to being ‘conservative’.  The designations (literally positions or ’wings’) were taken from the post-revolutionary Constituent Assembly of France, with the colours derived from the Republican tricolour flag. 

However, by the mid 20th century, during the post-war consensus, ‘the left’ was associated with support for state control of the economy and government social intervention whilst ‘the right’ had come to be associated with anti-state individualism and ‘liberalism’ (or Hayekian ‘market non-interventionism’).  By the 1970s and ‘80s a new breed of ‘post-consensus’ right-wing politicians emerged who were deemed (in many respects correctly) ‘radical’.

Reagan and Thatcher were the most prominent ’radicals’ to have ideologies named after them (Reaganism and Thatcherism).  Such radical right-wingers wanted to tear down what they saw as a ’statist’ establishment which, of course, many left-wingers wanted to ‘conserve’.  The switch in meanings of left and right was completed in the form of conservative left-wingers (whether Bolsheviks, Maoists, Post-colonialists, Keynesians, Swedish Social Democrats, British reformers, or any other version of left ’state power’ grabbers who felt they had something to preserve, a status quo).

This kind of ‘conservative’ left statism was not unknown to Marx.  Marx’s awareness can be detected in his many critiques of ‘utopian’ socialists during his lifetime, from Robert Owen to his Critique of the Gotha Programme (of the German Social Democratic Party, SPD). But Marx describes workers taking control of (rather than power over) society on very few occasions, with his most prominent account featured in news articles published (later) by Engels as The Civil Wars in France (1871).

This was Marx’s account of the rise and fall of the Paris Commune (1870).  Importantly, what he describes in these articles is a delegate-based anti-statist workers’ council or commune system (the word ‘commune’ meaning grassroots council).  ’Councils’ were both local (geographically-centred – the rural village) and vocational (workplace or activity centred – e.g., a weavers’ collective) to ensure different elements of society were heard, but significantly that no-one living off the private expropriation of production (performed by others) would be (easily) heard.  This was a reversal of the prior situation where a separate class of politicians (who expropriated or represented expropriators, and even proprietors of private ‘labour power’) formed the state and government. 

Furthermore, when Marx was asked if the ‘stage’ between pre-capitalist and communist societies could be by-passed or skipped, he eventually nodded to a positive answer regarding the development of existing Russian ‘communes’ (in a letter to a Narodniki).  To be clear, I consider him hinting that ‘industrialisation’ and ‘urbanisation’ were not prerequisites to the fulfilment of some objectified ’inevitable’ historical progression working ‘at the backs of people’ towards ‘socialism’ and then ‘communism’ in a compulsory stadial trajectory.

As ‘communes’ already existed in Russia they could form the basis of an emancipated society, without a deranged detour through ‘capitalism’!  However, Marx still thought that the experience of capitalism would be more likely to produce a social revolution, given the nascent conservatism of the rural commune – put another way, more advanced industrial countries should see a revolution first given the (contradictory) life conditions they generate.  Also, given capitalism’s existence (historical arrival, even by accident) hopes of a direct transition from peasant communes were, simply, after the fact even in the mid-Victorian era.  The social form that gave rise to such hopes (the peasant village eulogised by the Narodniki) was already disappearing, specifically in the advanced and developing industrial nations who had the power to colonise and suppress every other type of social form or mode of production. 

Nevertheless, and this is a salient point, I would argue that for most (if not all) of his political life Marx was what would be known, in both 19th and 20th centuries, as an ‘anarchist’!  The point of the Paris Commune’s mandatory delegation system was to ensure there would be no separation between a (professional) political class and the rest of the population.  Thus, parliamentary ‘representation’ with its political leadership (elites or vanguards) was simply not good enough since it would reproduce one of the fundamental social / political divisions which Marx wished to see the back of.

Indeed, one way of outlining how Marx understood the ‘politics’ of capitalism, compared to feudalist and ancient slave modes of production, was that capitalism makes what was obvious in the others (direct political domination) an inconspicuous, or ‘hidden’, process (via indirect economic domination under the ‘guise’ of ‘fair’ trade – see Ellen Meiskins Wood, 2002).

But how did the previously noted transition in meaning, from the 19th century radical left / conservative right to the 20th century conservative left / radical right, take place?  The answer, not surprisingly, was via successful social revolution in the early 20th century!  The conceptual and analytical problem here is that all too often activists (those present at the time) and commentators (contemporary or later) have focused attention on the ‘trees’ whilst failing to see the ’wood’!  Hence, we end up with histories and analyses of ‘The Russian Revolution’ (1917), ‘The German Revolution’ (1918-19), ‘The Hungarian Revolution’ (1919-20), but don’t hear much about ‘The Irish Revolution’ (1916), the Syrian democratic constitution (1919-20), ‘The Finnish Revolution’ (1917-22) nor ‘The British Revolution’ (1918-22).  Generally, a global move towards universal suffrage, imposed from below as part of a working class revolution in political practice (namely, direct democracy), gets overlooked. 

The dominant analytical time frames and intellectual interests tend to be centred on what can be described as moments of coup d’etat (significant but fleeting changes within forms of political ‘representation’) which merely punctuated much broader social changes.  With the latter including changes in working practices, shifts in artistic practices and possibilities in communication, but also developments in social roles and recognition – the rise of married women in the workplace, the emergence of state welfare recipients (like working-class ‘pensioners’ in Britain), the emergence of ‘childhood’, and the extended legal reach of the state (such as compulsory purchase of land, military conscription, and nationalisation of banking). 

One way of taking a wider survey of the workers’ revolution is to frame it in terms of all those socio-politico-economic changes taking place between the start of the Great War (1914) and a final capitulation of ‘traditional’ (pre-fiat money) capitalism in the Wall Street Crash (1929); a fifteen year period after which things can never go back to the way they were before though the desire to do so (right-wing radicalism) continues to be felt as an echo – the march of the Zombies.

Whether we understand ‘the revolution’ as having succeeded (the eventual emergence of the Soviet Union as a ‘workers’ state’) or failed (the crushing of the German Revolution by the freikorp in 1919), by the early 1930s states (and/or public, centralised institutions associated with them, such as central banks) are everywhere taking the lead role in forming (and/or reforming) the most advanced ’capitalist?’ economies.  From here on, I place a question mark on ‘capitalism?’ to indicate the far-away hills distance of the classic liberal model or mode.  Both the ideology and practice of classical ‘liberal’ political-economy was ’dead’ but also ‘alive’ as a zombie.

Whereas before 1914 capitalist enterprises mostly got on with the job of reproducing, disciplining, exploiting workers in an autonomous manner (with little to no state intervention), by the early 1930s the state becomes, increasingly, an integral part of the social process, including the production of surplus value (profit) via a national organisation of surplus labour time (e.g. how to manage unemployment).  States did take different forms, such as ’total‘ states (a singularity, as in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany) compared to ‘hegemonic’ ones (pluralities dominated by mass cultures and technocratic control), but the main task of all states / governments was to reproduce (provide subsistence to), discipline, and (successfully) exploit workers directly as the key means of sustaining the wage-labour mode of production. The purpose of the modern nation-state, after all, is to ensure the compliance of the population (whether worker, manager, capitalist, or politburo member) under its territorial control with the accumulation of capital.

By exploitation, of course, I include the ideological elements of emotional exploitation (something Gramsci picked up on as hegemonic cultural domination): “Heave away lads, put your backs into it, for the benefit and sake of the nation!”  A new ‘social contract’ between political elite (the state) and the people (workers) was being founded, and in many experimental forms – Soviet Communism, Italian Fascism, Japanese Imperialism, Irish and Finnish nationalism, German Nazism, the American New Deal, Jewish Zionism, and ‘Greater’ Britishness (re-modelling the Empire as ‘Commonwealth’).  The last of these was even mooted, at one point, as a new country, called Greater Britain.

Some of these were ethno-nationalist (Nazism / Zionism) whilst others were pan- or trans-nationalist (the Soviet federation and British unionism), but almost all (excepting the smaller nations) led to expansionism (ultimately, war).  In contrast with the era of joint-stock ‘liberalism’, state-control of economic and social life was now in the driving seat.  Many of these subsequently failed (losers to others in war) and the leading ideologies emerged as those of (Western) ‘Keynesianism’ and (Eastern) ‘Communism’, with a common connection in ‘state-led’ social formation.  It is not inaccurate to describe the outcome as socialism, with socialism as the natural religion (‘binding’) of capitalist alienation.

In this sense, ‘a’ social revolution did take place in the early 20th century, but one with a compromised, synthetic outcome.  In Gunn and Wilding’s (2022) Hegelian terms: mis-recognition pertained.  Workers gaining universal suffrage in Britain was ‘a revolution’, but one that is almost always overlooked!  Sometimes the achievement of suffrage is deemed a mere ‘concession’ by a ruling class determined to retain their power through more subtle methods (the hegemonic control of education and broadcast media, as pinpointed by Gramsci’s early analysis of Italian Fascism).  But to rob the period and Gramsci of their ‘openness’ produces an historiography which makes the ruling class ‘oh-so clever’, as if it was their ‘Revolution’. 

More tellingly, the same social revolution produced a crisis in surplus value production (and the rate at which accumulation could proceed) – the Wall Street Crash both questioned the emerging fascist conceptions of a ‘New Man’ (much admired by elite figures such as the British Royals: Edward Prince of Wales and Albert Duke of York) whilst also hastening change.  As Thomas Piketty’s (2018) empirical data has demonstrated, before 1914 capital accumulation grew at a rate faster than wage growth, but throughout the mid-20th century the reverse was true (wages grew faster than profits).  ‘Capitalism?’ had been saved by socialist collectivism (the amalgamation of multiple capitals into a singularity), but at massive economic and social (status) cost to the conventional ruling class and its practices.  Workers, in their role as waged workers (subjects central to the accumulation system), had imposed their interests and gained decision-making power within the capitalist state mechanism, even if their so-called ‘class consciousness’ remained ‘corrupted’.

In his overview of Keynes’ theoretical work, and reformation of capitalist strategy, Negri, in Revolution Retrieved (1988), coins the term positive Keynesianism to refer to the immediate post-war period (1945-1973) when state welfare benefits and full employment policies were used to encourage and entice employees to work hard and raise their productivity.  This ever-rising productivity was central to the strategy and was baked-in to a social necessity for endless economic growth and, so long as the economy could be grown at a sufficient rate, the fact wage earners (as property owners) were making distributional ground on recipients of profits, rents and taxes was an acceptable trade-off, especially as any class relying on unearned income was on the back foot.  But with ‘stagnation’ in the 1970s the situation grew desperate for profiteers, rentiers and public servants (tax-takers) meaning something needed to be done – the rise of the right-wing radical was witnessed just as open ‘class conflict’ surfaced or re-emerged.

This conflict produced a shift in the social contract, but not one from Keynesianism back to Liberalism, despite the hopes of the radical right-wing ideology known as ‘Neoliberalism’.  Rather, Negri describes the shift as one towards negative Keynesianism.  That is, rather than the state taking a reduced and fading (or to use Marx’s phrase, vanishing) role in ‘the economy’, which is what Neoliberals like Thatcher may have ‘thought’ was going to happen (or wished would happen in a return to the ‘classic’ era), negative Keynesianism maintained levels of state intervention in social life (and its prominence in guaranteeing the reproduction, discipline, and exploitation of the working class).

Instead of positive encouragements (material benefits; socialised myths of ‘we are all in it together’), negative Keynesianism ‘liberated’ the representatives of monied-capital only by ‘oppressing’ worker dissent to capital’s imposition that people remain ’waged labour’.  Militarisation of society (higher prison populations; investment in security, securitisation, and surveillance), the piling on of indebtedness (for housing, education, and health), and creeping isolation (social individualisation and insulation: gated communities; financial ‘independence’) were the negative Keynesian modes of operation.

So, what is the importance of the above analysis of social change over the last 100 years with regards to studying Marx’s Capital?  On the one hand, when we read Marx via his original writings his anti-statist (radical) position must be kept in mind – his anarchism means he was against political systems containing social divisions between rulers and ruled.  He would have been appalled by the ‘Soviet’ regime produced not just by ‘Stalin’ (that is too easy a cop-out) but Bolshevism from its inception (in 1892). Marx would have recognised the ‘council communist’ and even ’liberal democratic’ revolution that occurred in Russia in Feb (or March) 1917 as progressive whilst reserving criticism for remnants of expropriator influence and power. 

Whilst Bolshevism did get a ‘populist’ upper-hand on (the more ‘reformist’) Menshivist movement (largely related to ending the war immediately), leading to the ‘October Revolution’ (a coup d’etat), the dismantling of the Soviet (‘council’) system and democratic ‘reforms’ happened very quickly under Lenin’s centralisation of political institutions.  The democratic arrangements of Feb-Oct 1917 may not have led to a ‘non-statist’ system, as Marx would have desired, but they could have produced a different outcome for both Russia and Germany in the 1920s (Luxembourg did not feel the time was right for the kind of ‘coup’ attempted by workers in Germany).  Probably the ‘revolution’ would have developed more along lines of what happened in the Western world.  Marx reserves his ‘ire’ for statist politicians of all shades in his political writings, as well as those who try to ‘force’ history and recognition forward (e.g., the professional ‘revolutionary’)!

On the other hand, a standard objection to taking Marx seriously is that, given all the social and technical ‘change’ that took place during the 20th century, surely Marx’s writings are limited to the kind of 19th century capitalism he witnessed (of the classic liberal type)?  Namely, he is good at excoriating Mr MoneyBags, the woefully selfish carpetbagger and child-exploitative industrialist of Victorian slum cities, but modern capitalist corporations are operated by equality, diversity and inclusion-qualified executives who are socially aware and just don’t operate in the same way as the Victorian businessman!  I would point out that whilst Marx is often associated with writing a ‘grand narrative’ (an overarching account of the large sweep of history, a la The Communist Manifesto) his study in Capital is highly specific. 

Capital is an examination of just one type of social relation (or mode of production) – the wage labour / capital relationship.  Marx’s work analyses (breaks down) this relationship and identifies its complex and multifarious derivative forms – that is, if we find ‘the commodity’ (which is produced and appears everywhere in daily life – part of our immediate experience) then we will also find both mutual recognition and value (defined as socially necessary labour) – anyone producing ‘commodities’ must recognise others as equivalents (owners) and produce at a socially-recognised rate (e.g., items per hour).

If we then find that human ‘labour power’ is one of the commodities available for purchase, then we will find ‘surplus value’, which is produced via ‘absolute’ and ’relative’ processes, and so on.  The argument in Capital Is not an ‘historical’ story but Marx’s way of laying out a conceptual ‘unfolding’.  One difficulty, compared to earlier classical political economists, is in getting the order of conceptual presentation correct, so that the reader does not go off on the wrong foot by starting with something which is ‘derivative’ (e.g., ‘profit’).

In summary, Capital is a study of one kind of social relation, and wherever that social relation (waged labour) is found then Marx’s analysis remains applicable, no matter how technologically-advanced or different a ‘society’ might happen to appear.  The main question, therefore: is ‘our society’ still based on waged labour (capital)?  If so, then Marx’s Capital is [remains] relevant. The flesh of the elephant may have fallen away, but to the trained anatomist what stands before them is still an elephant.

Publication Note:

I wrote (started) this article in February 2024, but it then lay dormant and unfinished (on my cloud drive) until September 2025. Reading my friend Werner Bonefeld’s (2023) book (A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion Routledge) inspired me to return to it and at least publish, in a still unfinished form (the referencing is incomplete; if / when I get the time I will return to this element).

References:

Bonefeld, W. (2023) A Critical Theory of Economic Compulsion: Wealth, Suffering, Negation London: Rutledge.

Gunn, R. & Wilding, A. (2022) Revolutionary Recognition

Negri, T. (1988) Revolution Retrieved

Piketty, T. (2018) Capital in the 21st Century

Wood, E. M. (2002) The Origins of Capitalism: A Longer View

by doctormcgrail

AI? The Technology of Small Boat Vagabondage

In 16th century England laws were enacted to prevent dispossessed peasants from roaming the countryside and pouring into town centres.  Rules against beggars were enforced using draconian measures such as cutting or branding miscreants, and deporting them to their place of origin, their parish of birth.  The Poor Law system was established on the basis that benefits (alms) would only be given to the impoverished within the boundaries of their birth parish, thereby effectively confining dispossessed peasants to impoverishment within the district where they were ‘dispossessed’.  Identifying such authorised beggars was made possible by forced ‘badge’ wearing, like yellow Star of David identification in Nazi Germany. And the idea gives food for thought regarding the use of ‘badging’ within contemporary online education!

What caused the 16th century crisis of vagabondage in England was not just ‘technology’ (new farming methods and implements) but a new social relationship, which changed the balance of power between producer peasants and expropriating ‘superiors’.  The nature of the latter also went through change, with the ‘stewards’ of ancestral common lands being either ousted and outlawed completely (the dissolution of the church and monastic estates) or converted into an absolute owner of ‘private’ property.  Though technical change (following the Black Death and population decline) played a role, this initially gave the whip hand to the peasant labourers, who were in short supply (Black Death in 1348 > Peasant Revolt in 1381).  Labourers incomes rose in 15th century England.  With the old ‘relationships’ in crisis, the (ruling class) reaction was to change the connection between (direct) producers – the peasants – and the means of production – the land.  Dispossession (propertyless-ness) became the defining characteristic of capital accumulation in creating a class of waged labourers destined to scour the earth in search of sustenance and survival – first in England, then Ireland and Scotland, before the ‘colonies’ in East and West became the main means of ‘absorption’.

In the 21st century, what, if anything, has really changed?

On the one hand the bourgeois ruling ‘sensibility’ still decries roaming beggars and vagabonds, although the land over which such dispossessed people ‘roam’ is much larger – it is the globe.  Yet, on the other, the very same ‘sensibility’ lauds advances in technology as either part of the ‘inevitable’ march of progress or as the saviour of the system – a key means of ‘restoring’ the profitability of companies forced to increase productivity on an infinite basis, an important aspect of which is to compete with companies using cheaper labour power in distant realms.  Of course, cheaper workers is a sign of already existing abundant supply in those realms and not just skill or technological differentiation.  There is a constant imbalance which both pushes and draws the available labour power from one pole to the other.  Vagabondage (and its systems of badging, branding, placing in stocks, and incarceration) has become global, though there is no global equivalent of England’s 16th century absolute monarch.

What of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) as a new technology entering this process?  It has been claimed it will lead to another ‘industrial revolution’ with far reaching consequences for those in ‘middle class jobs’, that is, within the ‘metropole’.  Of course, if this is the case, then pressure on ‘wages’ could be relieved as far as employers are concerned – there will be an excess supply of skilled labour power where it is needed.

But application of AI will be across all industries, increasing output from regional and national firms, ultimately turning them into ones which need global markets as they outgrow their national context.  The pressures on the existing system of global vagabondage would be clear, and this is where a lesson from the past would need to be learned.  The old Poor Law system collapsed because it became untenable to keep workers in their parish of birth.  First, it chocked off the supply of labour power from where it was most needed and, second, it raised the costs of maintaining an ‘industrial reserve army’ (reliant on ‘benefits’ or revenue expenditure) out of local taxation in an already underdeveloped economy.

A drive towards greater ‘growth’ in the economy is a contemporary, common mantra, and one under which it is presumed (claimed) that ‘growth’ will benefit all classes.  But the historical record of neo-liberalism demonstrates this to be a myth, with successive ‘booms’ not only leading to cyclical busts but heightened levels of inequality between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ (precarious) workers.  Gordon Brown’s ‘longest boom’ was followed by the longest recession and period of austerity.  On what basis do proponents of growth claim that a new spurt of ‘economic growth’, based on AI technologies, will somehow, miraculously, lead to an alternate outcome (greater equality) this time around? Or, more predictably, will it lead to just another ‘bust’?  Isn’t AI going to exacerbate the current migration of labour power as it restructures the world by garnering even more skill and wealth in a few, already overdeveloped, places? The moral of the tale: if you don’t fancy dealing with a migration crisis then stop accumulating ‘capital’, because that’s not progress.

by doctormcgrail

On Becoming a Critical Thinker?

There are many courses within higher education (HE) which claim to turn students into “critical thinkers”.  The focus is on skills and techniques students can learn, adopt, or adapt such that they “become” a critical thinker, as if such a designation (or identification) was a personal possession and/or that the individual student’s transformation, chrysalis and butterfly like, could be “embodied” – the action of perpetual “critical critic” (Marx – marginal notes to The German Ideology) being captured by the learner.

What such an approach to ‘critical thinking’ forgets is the extent to which criticism is a social act (and event), and not a personal outcome.  Hence, if primacy for the ability to criticise is given to the pertaining social conditions (including individual actions interacting, not simply ‘determinist’ structures) to what extent will any adopter (learner) of critical abilities and skills lose these capacities with changes in their social surroundings, such as ‘leaving university’?

Take a student coming to university from a culture, family, or society ‘A’, where criticism is frowned upon and suppressed (internally as much as externally to the individual).  Upon arrival at university in culture / society ‘B’, they find themselves in a social setting where criticism is encouraged and allowed to flourish.  The student learns techniques and skills of interpretation, contrast, hermeneutics, statistical analysis, or research which enables them to emulate the activities associated with being a “critical thinker”.  By the end of their time at university they have ‘become’ a critical thinker, or at least it seems that way.

But then the student moves back to culture / society ‘B’ (or family context) or onwards to culture ‘C’ (the waged hierarchical workplace) where criticism is limited, disallowed, and even protected against (in some settings) by using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).  Soon enough the skills of ‘critical thinking’ may be abandoned or left behind!  The ‘learner’ unlearns what they were able to use in the ‘freer’ culture and may no longer ‘be’ or remain a critical thinker.

Is it arrogant of further and higher education institutions and their teachers to ‘think’ that they can turn students into perpetual motion ‘critical thinkers’ based on the mediation / transference of not just ‘critical’ techniques, skills, and abilities (on a ‘banking model’ basis – Freire, 1970) but upon temporary experience of a rather unusual or atypical environment?

Or, to what extent can individual (knowledge-embodied) students carry over and inculcate the practices of the university (as a temporal suppression of commercial ‘pressure’) into wider society and/or their culture ‘A’?  Certainly, the ‘belief’ system of so-called Western liberalism, focused on the individual learner as scholastic commodity, has held dearly to the latter conception as a core method of colonisation (distribution of the ‘learned’) for more than 200 years.

Considering these questions, perhaps it is not the educator who imparts ‘critical thinking’ as a technique, but the forms of social relation the individual ‘learner’ moves between and negotiates which either promotes or denies critical thinking’s very possibility.  Educators need to keep this in mind and, as bell hooks might remind us, reflect on how their actions are changing the social world (or not) rather than how their lesson is changing their ‘students’.

References:

Freire, P. (1970) The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. [Penguin Classics]. London: Penguin Books.

by doctormcgrail

Why place a baby in an oven?

It seems inconceivable that anyone would put a baby in an oven, let alone one still alive.  Yet, this was a claim made in relation to the Hamas-led terror attack on Israel between 7th and 9th October 2023.  Leading Zionist activists, such as Ben Shapiro, even showed photographic evidence of the aftermath – the charred corpse of a baby – in their social media posts.  These posts came at the same moment that US President Joe Biden stated he had seen evidence (photographs) of babies having been decapitated by Hamas.

Unfortunately, two different claims from an Israeli journalist at the scene were confused to produce what turned out to be a false claim, that 40 babies had been decapitated.  The separate original announcements were that a decapitated baby had been found and that there were 40 dead babies.  Soon enough, a retraction or roll-back had to be released, though much more quietly, without the fanfare. 

To what extent do such instances of misinformation detract from the reality of what happened?  It might not – let me be cautious – but with historical hindsight such misplaced claims often turn out to be the work of hysteria and propaganda which undermines later consideration of the veracity in what was claimed.  An initial reaction which aims to unify and rally a community behind a specific direction of travel may only sustain such ’unity’ within a dwindling mass of dogmatic adherents as those at the edges slowly fall away, either confused or enlightened.

When the Red Army first arrived at Auschwitz in January 1945 the very first media report highlighted a conveyor belt to which inmates had been attached, then electrocuted, and finally burned and turned to ash in an industrial killing process.  The Nazis had tried to destroy:

“the traces of the electric conveyor belt, on which hundreds of people were simultaneously electrocuted, their bodies falling onto the slow moving conveyor belt which carried them to the top of the blast furnace where they fell in, were completely burned, their bones converted to meal in the rolling mills, and then sent to the surrounding fields.”

(Polevoi, Pravda 2 Feb 1945)

This ‘conveyor belt’ never existed but its reporting certainly drummed up support for what the Red Army (and Allies) were doing – the ’cause’ to eliminate ’evil’. Furthermore, no film footage was taken at the time of liberation, so the Soviets took all the children they had found in the camp back to Auschwitz a month later to produce the iconic footage of children showing their prisoner tattoos through a barbed wire fence. If an opportunity had been missed, then ‘a’ reality had to be recreated. This recreation may have been near to the truth (holding verisimilitude) but it also opened the door on Holocaust denial – the authorities were not telling the ‘truth’!

With regards to the Hamas-led terrorist attack of 7th October, the now retracted claim about 40 beheaded babies continues to circulate widely on social media with an afterlife of its own.  When I went to primary school in the 1970s the story of German troops skewering Belgian babies on their bayonets remained in circulation half-a-century later.  Needless to say, the story wasn’t true and just an early piece of World War 1 ‘allied’ propaganda.

Mainstream media (MSM) outlets are more cautious – they face oversight and judicial review. Thus, in a list of victims published by Israeli news service Haaretz (on 23 Nov 2023), there were only 17 Israeli victims under the age of 18 years, with the youngest (where age is stated) being 4. No ‘babies’ were listed. This list covers both civilian and service victims of 7th October and military personnel killed in the subsequent war (which continues to mount in early Dec 2023). The list is not (currently) comprehensive, but whilst whole sections display the names of Thai overseas workers and Nepali students, there are (still) no ‘babies’.

Such victims may remain ‘nameless’ due to the death of their parents / families and rules on privacy, but at this point (9 weeks on) we should expect at least some of their names and stories (despite their young age) to be notified, to start appearing, in a ‘special section’. Not least because the ‘story’ would be central to the Israeli side in discussions around justifying their actions.

Accepting the photograph of charred remains as genuine, then some babies must have been murdered – but how many, and how many met horrible deaths such as beheading or being baked alive?  And should we care whether the latter were the ‘rule’ or the ‘exception’?

Lucky to be Alive

In the aftermath, UK’s Channel 4 interviewed a couple in Ofakim (the town furthest east reached  by the Hamas-led encroachment), who had been held hostage by terrorists for 18 hours.  The woman (and a neighbour) fed her captors chicken and rice and dressed their wounds, putting her survival down to an ability to talk the couple’s persecutors around, which seems strange given the terrorists original murderous intent.  The couple then pointed to a corner in the room where they managed to survive – they don’t know how! – once the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) arrived.  After surviving 18 hours at the hands of terrorists, the closest they came to death was when the IDF began pummelling their house.  It was riddled with bullet holes.  Where these created by the terrorists firing ‘out’ or the IDF firing ‘in’?  Reasonable conjecture would immediately say ‘both’.

Did the IDF know that an Israeli couple were being held captive in the property? Not knowing would excuse their actions; but could they have checked or undertaken a risk assessment? Alternatively, did their decision making amongst the chaos and panic place their desire to kill the enemy above the need to preserve the lives of their own citizens? Was it just a case of ‘there is fire coming from that building so we need to take it out?’ And did it matter ‘who’ could be inside?

Not so Lucky

This Ofakim couple were not alone in being held hostage in their own home, and neither were Channel 4 in finding accounts of ‘standoffs’ between Hamas and IDF forces. The following is from a BBC report about the loss of two 12-year-old twin girls (Yannai and Liel Hetzroni-Heller):

“Israeli media has reported the children, who were British-Israeli, were held hostage by Hamas gunmen in a building that caught fire during a stand-off with Israeli forces.”

This line sits unobtrusively within an article that places the blame squarely on Hamas, who only came to the girl’s kibbutz to “kill, murder, maim Jewish children, babies, parents and old people” (their father, quoted by the BBC – my emphasis to make a connection with the above claims). Yet, this example also begins to indicate a pattern, with the most dangerous period for many Israeli hostages being the arrival of their IDF rescuers.

Apache Hellfire

What about places well inside the territory taken by Hamas and other terror groups (plus a few criminal gangs and marauding civilians from Gaza), where the IDF could not reach and would not reach for (up to) another 36 hours?  Max Blumenthal (in an article on The Grayzone) refers to accounts, reported by Haaretz, of IDF Apache helicopter pilots being sent up to eliminate the enemy without clear instructions about where to go or intelligence on how to identify the enemy, to target them as distinct from their own citizens.

On the ground was confusion, with uniformed Hamas fighters working alongside non-uniformed attackers from other groups, plus the presence of kibbutz security guards carrying guns whilst in civilian clothing.  Terrorists hijacked local Israeli cars (having arrived by paraglider or on foot) and transported kidnap victims in those same cars (and in one case a ‘golf cart’).  Where cars could not travel they marched hostages back to Gaza in lines.  Yet, as Blumenthal notes, the Apache pilots were under pressure to unload the entire “belly” of their helicopters  They did this, returned to base, reloaded, and returned to do the same.  But who were they aiming at?  An obvious question needs to be asked, to which there is no clear nor easy answer – how many Israeli citizens were killed by IDF forces?  And what kind of death did they meet?

Why place baby in an oven? Why call a missile ‘Hellfire’? Not always but sometimes simpler explanations provide a more obvious answer. Hellfire missiles burn and scorch their living targets to death – instant immolation. Of course, the alternative account ‘could’ still be the true one. And the counter argument from Israeli journalists is that Hamas’ crimes are being played down by any attempt to question how lives were lost and that some could have been from an “exchange of fire”.

But a key point is that we don’t know (at the moment), and may never know, due to the febrile atmosphere and the way in which alternate narratives emerge. Thus, can the Israeli-American account be trusted any more than that of the “Hamas-run” Ministry of Health? Are the Israeli couple in Ofakim really part of a ‘conspiracy theory’ (and asking the questions I ask has been deemed as touting ‘conspiracy’!) to reduce Hamas’ culpability, or are they just telling their story as they experienced it?

Just as babies in 1914 Belgium had to go onto the end of bayonets, babies in 2023 Israel have to go inside ovens. It is such imagination (and not evidence for such events taking place) which drives forward the actions of ‘justified war’. And as David Hume noted, it is reason which serves the passions and not the other way around (i.e., whatever your passion, you will find a reasoned justification for it). The central issue for the establishment of peace is always how to change people’s ‘passions’ – what is it that different people desire and how can their desires (plural) be made common – a shared passion producing a shared vision. It would appear that a secular ‘religion’ (rebinding of the community) is required. But as the Anti-defamation League know only too well: baby ‘libels’ pull people in opposing, divisive directions.

by doctormcgrail

Affliction of the Grade-seeking Student

How might students behave if grades and marks are removed from their course assignments, yet they are still able to obtain the necessary credits for ‘progression’ to the next level in education?  Would their approach to learning, or their ‘philosophy’ of learning, change as a result?  In this article I am going to explore this issue based on experience of designing and then teaching an Access Social Sciences course (for the last half decade) where these very parameters were met.  As this process involves memoir and reflection, and is not a piece of ‘research’, points made in speech marks are not direct quotes but simulations that approximate and typify what (real) students wrote or said.

Returner Adult students often come with poor prior experiences of education, feeling unconfident about their learning abilities and weighed down by negative feedback or outcomes from previous learning experiences, typically in but not confined to a secondary ‘school’ context.  In designing a new Access course (Centre for Open Learning, University of Edinburgh), permission was sought and a decision taken to allow first semester (Aug-Nov) courses to award 10-credits (SCQF Level 7 / QCF Level 4) without assignments being ‘graded’.  The emphasis for students was placed, after admission via interview, on attendance, participation, peer engagement, and assignment submission.  For teachers, it was on ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) and developing abilities.  Students were expected to complete two courses, from a combination of Access Humanities, Social Sciences, Art & Design, and (later) Languages.  The most popular pathway was a combination of Humanities and Social Sciences.  With the latter combination, each course was designed with 5 assignments of 500 words each, and the assignments were purposely staggered so, from the student’s perspective, two assignments never came in the same week.  The course submissions would ‘leap-frog’ each other: Humanities Assignment 1, then Social Sciences Assignment 1, Humanities Assignment 2, and so on.

Given the nature of Access, with a single Programme and just two course choices feeding all the undergrad degrees in relevant areas (30+ possible degrees in the core social sciences, like politics and sociology, not including law and business), the Access courses had to be interdisciplinary and focused on enhancing key academic literacies.  The Humanities course would focus on subjects such as literature, philosophy, history and art history.  In terms of early assignments within Humanities, students are encouraged to develop argumentation and logic skills with regards to structuring writing, such as knowledge of the substantive points they are making.

In the Social Sciences course I (along with a colleague) designed the 5 assignments around core elements (‘paragraphs’) of a scientific paper, namely, writing from observation, summarising the work of others, turning visual ‘data’ content (graphs, maps) into text, writing responses to analytical questions, and evaluating competing arguments.  Thus, by the time students reach second semester and are expected to write full length essays (1,000 then 2,000 words) they have already written the core component parts (‘paragraphs’) of a classic social science essay and developed some necessary skills (describing qualitative evidence, reading graphs, evaluating claims).  Whereas second semester submissions (the full essays) are graded in the traditional manner, the first semester ones are not – they are all viewed as being ‘formative’ with tutors providing as much (or more) feedforward as feedback.  Tuition aims to be encouraging by highlighting the positives to be carried forth.  The question, then, is ‘how do students respond to the first semester assignments when no grades are being awarded?’

Generally, students have shown initial appreciation – the dread of being ‘graded’ is avoided – but as the course progresses not having access to ‘grades’ becomes an increasing concern for many (though not all) students.  They want to be treated in a more conventional educational manner.  In essence, they begin to ‘map’ their co-ordinates and need to know ‘where’ they are – ‘am I meeting the required grades?’  But the overall effect of ‘holding back’ grading to a later date is not my focus here.  That specific point is part of a wider issue on sense of progression through the programme of study.  What I have chosen to focus on is the way in which students’ prior knowledge and assumptions about the purpose of assignments influences how they tackle the ‘work’ and their own ‘learning’.  In other words, how are they thinking about negotiating and navigating an ‘assignment’?  And, of course, does the fact it’s not being ‘graded’ make a difference, especially at what could be described as a sub-conscious level when they are not being confronted directly by, and thinking about, the issue of ‘non-grading’?

How can I possibly know what the students are thinking when they tackle assignments?  Assignment 2 has a self-reflection exercise built into it.  Before getting into the details of the self-reflection it is best to give readers an idea of the early course content and where the assignment lies (see Table 1).

Subject MatterAssignment (word limits)Literacies / Skills
Block 1: CriminologyMedia observation: Background information (150) and Detailed description (350)Accurate descriptive writing (of something chosen by the student).  Detailed account which is non-judgemental nor prejudicial (i.e. avoids biased language).
Block 2: AnthropologySummarising Exercise: Abstract / summary of chosen 1,000 word extract (350) and Self-reflection (150)Summarising of 1 (out of 4 possible) ‘extracts’ available, followed by self-reflection on process involved (why they chose the article they did, and what problems its summarisation posed, including in relation to other options).
Table 1: Rubric for the first two assignments.

Assignment 2 is related to the second block on anthropology, though the assignments are not defined / confined by the subject matter of the block they are related to.  Thus, with Assignment 2, the students are given 4 ‘extracts’ (all roughly 1,000 words in length).  They are advised to read all the extracts before making a choice, and not simply plumping for the one that ‘looks’ most appealing to them.  This is one way of extending the disciplinary subject matter studied as only one extract is on anthropology with the remaining three being on sociology, social policy and psychology. 

The extracted papers differ in style, content, and research methodologies used (historic review for sociology, qualitative interviews and life-mapping for social policy, ethnography for anthropology, and experimental review for psychology). Two papers are heavily referenced, with many Harvard-style citations, but the others draw on just a few works.  Specific content varies across mother baby interactions, homeless women compared to securely housed women, the rationalisation of religion and modernity, and the cultural significance of marriage and kinship.  This provides the students with a wide range of parameters to consider when making their ‘choice’ – which extract should I use as the basis of my assignment submission?  They need to consider if a paper is ‘interesting’ to them, easy to read (or not), contains many complex terms they are unsure about, how will they handle in-text citations (do they refer to authors’ mentioned’), should they convey detailed examples or case studies or just go for an over-arching narrative?

The self-reflection then asks students to explain their reasoning (thinking) when making their choice, plus what they found most difficult about summarising the piece they chose.  It is this element which has provided a rich vein on not just ‘why?’ students made the choice they did, but also what they ‘think’ the assignment and, hence, the assessment and feedback processes are about.

Assessing the ‘summary’ is a standard task in developing the students’ written English (grammar and punctuation, ensuring expression reflects the points intended), aiding accuracy and integrity by clarifying what the extract was saying, and highlighting where students misread or misunderstood any study guidance (e.g. simple things such as forgetting to include ‘word counts’).  The self-reflection, by comparison, allows for far greater ‘conversation’ between the student and myself with regards to their learning goals and their awareness of what underlying skills they should focus on, and how they should do that.

Referencing extract ‘choice’, the most common reason provided is that of interest – students will choose the piece they are attuned to in terms of subject matter (babies, marriage, homelessness, rationalism).  The second most common reasoning is ability, especially in terms of what has ‘just been studied’.  That is, the anthropology extract is popular because the previous week’s work was on anthropology and kinship.  Some students see the other extracts as containing more ‘risks’, being on subjects not yet covered by the course.  Style (or ease of reading / readability) then follows – there is perceived benefit in going for the piece which is easiest to ‘understand’.  And the next one is what I like to call negative theology.  If theology is about getting to know God and what God wants, then negative theology is about discovering what God does not want, hence, what should be avoided – the process of elimination.  One student stated that he found all the pieces “boring” and had no “interest” in any of them, however, he found the one on babies the least interesting and most boring, and knew from the start he would not do that one.

Having discussed choice, many students continue their reflection by offering an underlying incentive to their method (of choice).  This can be summed up by one student statement: “I wanted to choose the piece I would have the best chance of making a good job of”.  Similar statements have included: “I felt I could handle this extract more than the others and achieve a better result“.  Such positions are repeated often, yet it should be clear to students (and readers) that there is no consequent grading.  The sense of doing the assignment is that ‘one should always do ones best work’, specifically thinking in terms of the ‘outcome’ – what the submission, as opposed to the process, achieves!

In conclusion, many students continue to associate learning and education with grading – the status and ‘marks’, potential positive feedback and praise, which is attached to their product.  What this leaves to one side is the process the assignment involves and the alternative ways in which students can or could think when no grading is entailed.  Occasionally, there are one or two students who latch on to the potential and benefits of doing something “more challenging” and of “testing myself” especially as work is not being graded. However, such cases are rare – few and far between.  For the majority, despite the contemporary (positive reinforcement) approach taken by course designers, teachers and markers, their education remains steeped in ‘banking model’ (Freire) conceptions of learning – the aim of doing an assignment is to “do well”, meaning achieve a good or high ‘grade’, even when grading is not being undertaken.  And this aim appears to take primacy over all the other actual (via action) benefits of education: self-exploration, learning to learn, testing and challenging oneself, posing questions, and seeking ‘critical’ conversations (with tutors).  Course designers can reconstruct their curricula, course content, and assignment goals, but that doesn’t change the underlying social meanings students hold or carry (from wider society) when coming back into education.

by doctormcgrail

AI? Aye, aye! Hyperbolic claims from Snooze-inducing Technologists

We’ve heard it all before. A new technology is going to ‘revolutionise’ everything, from the way we work to the way we play, learn, and relate. Yet, funnily enough, according to the ‘visionaries’, the basic social and political features of our current conditions won’t change. These aren’t going anywhere – the profit motive, unequal access to resources, the consumer ‘me too’ infantilisation, and the job as a lifetime of ‘confinement’. The boss may have fewer employees, the teacher many more students, whilst the taxi driver goes the way of the coal miner, but social and political inequality will persist, despite the ‘tech’ solutions, just at more extreme levels than ever before (at the moment we only have 1% of the world’s population ‘owning’ – controlling – 50% of human wealth, so there’s some way to go yet in making things more unequal).

In education, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to, apparently, improve the intelligence and writing abilities of my students.  Thank goodness – some improvement at last!  Here was my colleagues and I fighting a constant losing battle, but ChatGPT has it.  Except, it isn’t going to improve their writing even though it may enhance the punctuation in their submissions and neatly, correctly present non-existent papers in their reference lists.  The main concern is that it should help those who no longer have the time to study (part-time work if their working class, and off ‘entrepreneuring’, with family excess cash, if they’re not).  Instead of learning they will learn to ‘cheat’, though we won’t call it that anymore nor frown upon it because everyone will be at it (thereby meeting a Kantian definition of moral behaviour – as long as everyone can do it than it’s ‘okay’).

The bar for acceptable communication will be ‘raised’ as every student becomes a 1950s factory manager able to delegate their inability to spell to a ‘personal digital secretary’, who will take care, uncomplainingly, of such inconveniences and ‘lackings’.  Humanoid robots (androids), the personification of AI beyond old-hat avatars, will take a pink-skinned form of ‘being’ and, thereby, project the power of their possessors via volumes of blonde hair and scarcity of raiment.  Everything will change expect anything that could threaten the social and political order and of importance to the alienated labour that produces AI in the first place.

Perhaps AI will read Adam Smith and Karl Marx and conclude they have been badly misrepresented and poorly interpreted.  But since this has already been done by humans and few have listened, what difference will it make for a machine to ‘say so’?  Will the claim now be ‘fact’?  More likely, the machine will be ‘reprogrammed’ until it comes up with the ‘correct’ answer.

Or AI assistance will aid surgeons to perform twice as many operations as before, though this will actually lead to a quadrupling of cosmetic procedures as every operation still has to be ‘paid’ for and provision will go to those with the most money and the means to afford such AI-assisted surgery. Plumper lips, thinner waistline, larger pecks it is then! Thank goodness for AI since the demand from ageing wealthy pensioners for a ‘lift’ (of some kind) needs to be met.

So, is AI a utopian dream or a dystopian nightmare?

Manuel and Manuel (Utopian Thought in the Western World, 1979) noted that the best utopias startle whilst remaining feasible; they lie between a boring extension of the present and a fantastical leap into the impossible. From what I have read and seen of most AI ‘commentary’ so far, their contemporary predictions and utopias largely fall into the ‘boring extension of the present’ category. They presume waged labour (capital) as the mode of production with its on-going (endless) creation of surplus value (profits, rents, taxes, interest payments) as the ‘natural’ basis of human life, rather than seeing the system as a mere artificial ‘social construction’ of scarcity and an endless requirement to perform unnecessary ‘work’. Despite there being enough food to feed the UK three-times over (in any one year), food banks are popping-up like magic mushrooms to alleviate the conscience of the commodified and ration the access to subsistence of the recently de-commodified. But that’s just the way it is! AI will, no doubt, reconfirm this situation as fact (once re-programmed, of course). Everyone will hold the same social ‘posts’ as before but use ‘revolutionary’ AI to sustain their miserable renting-out of their own backside at ever higher levels of productivity (output per hydro-bot-flesh-thingy).

If this is the future with AI then it is mundane and the so-called ‘predictions’ of its impact are like watching endless (on loop) re-runs of Shelley’s Frankenstein. Been there, done that. Should the narrative makers of AI switch their focus to King Kong (genetic modification gone wrong) and make that ‘fantastical leap’ to the impossible? Or can we, collectively, imagine better, be that bit more imaginative on the social front and startle whilst remaining feasible?

References:

Manuel, F. & Manuel, F. (1979) Utopian Thought in the Western World Oxford: Basil Blackwell.