Category / Contemporary Controversy

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

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

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.

by doctormcgrail

The Non-Sense of Intersectionality

The concept of ‘intersectionality’, first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw, has been around since 1989.   Quite a long time then?  Well, it depends on perspective.  As The Washington Post notes:

“Considering its recent prominence, it’s surprising to realize that the term has been around only since 1989.” [my emphasis]

So, a short time from the Post’s perspective.  Admittedly, I hadn’t come across the concept before 2019!  And this goes to show how quickly ‘intersectionality’ has gained ground compared to the usual speed at which new academic concepts infiltrate popular consciousness.  In the last few years intersectionality has gained rapid traction in many areas, whether through social movements like #MeToo and Black Lives Matter (BLM), or ‘affirmative action’ discussions.

For instance, the trade union I am a member of (the UK’s UCU) send out lists of available CPD sessions where members can catch-up on the latest equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) discourse, and understanding ‘intersectionality’ now features prominently.  Furthermore, whilst the large interdisciplinary social science foundation course I teach for the UK’s Open University (OU) was first published with no mention of ‘intersectionality’ in 2014, a recent ‘makeover’ and ‘update’ in 2022 added the concept – course writers clearly felt it had to be added in.  Clearly, I was not alone in my previous (pre-2019) ignorance.

Conceptual Fashion

These examples demonstrate the concept’s ‘currency’ and ‘essentiality’ when teaching entry level social science students – ‘we’ (the academy) need to teach this because how could ‘they’ (the students) not possibly know about intersectionality?   This is the case even if the concept might not (yet) have centrality within the teaching materials and course design.  Hence, the ‘addition’ or ‘add on’ approach.  That is, in the OU course, intersectionality is housed within a broader section on ‘identities’, sociology of identity, and identity politics, rather than being a core concept to the entire course.

As a tutor, my experience of intersectionality’s introduction to new students, and/or its adoption by more experienced students, has not (so far) been inspiring.  Namely, intersectionality is not being understood nor applied properly (to my mind, nor others!), and what I have witnessed is the dangers any sociological concept faces when gaining rapid universal adoption – it faces being misapplied and misunderstood as it is transformed into new ‘contexts’ (not considered by a concept’s originators).  Again, it is not just ‘me’ who has discovered this, since intersectionality also features in YouTube videos aiming to explain ‘why’ the term is not applicable to certain ‘groups’ (e.g. white women ‘allies’ who only have ONE element of discrimination – gender – and not TWO)!

I admit to being no expert in the field of ‘intersectionality’, but I can sum up what I take to be the original intention.  Crenshaw’s classic example refers to a black woman being unable to find employment because: (a) only white women work in the office while; (b) only men work on the factory floor.  Thus, a black man can get a job on the floor and a white woman a job in the office, but a black woman is unable to obtain either job.  The black woman falls foul of both forms of identity discrimination, related to race and gender.  Her dual identity (as black and as a woman) compounds her experience, demonstrating how different identities ‘intersect’.  The concept came from the United States where ‘crossroads’ are commonly known as ‘intersections’.

Here comes the reality!

But now for a couple of educator experiences on the arrival of ‘intersectionality’ in some alternate contexts.  I was teaching on an Honours level course which does not itself feature nor mention ‘intersectionality’, but where students are being encouraged to undertake an independent literature review.  The students are expected to develop a synopsis for a project and then develop a literature review (though they do not go on to do any primary research).  They have to combine theories from the course (such as attachment theory and actor-network theory used by sociologists) with their own subject ‘content’ and also make reference to recent (up-to-date) academic journal articles (and relevant contemporary approaches). 

Somewhere along the line, one of my students had come across ‘intersectionality’ and decided to use this contemporary concept within their project.  Yet, the content and focus of the project was on animal welfare, veganism, and hegemonic masculinity.  Consequently, part of the project proposal homed in on ‘the intersectionality of a chicken’!  It turns out that a female chicken is doubly exploited for her meat (being a chicken) and for her eggs (being a female chicken).  Cockerels need not worry about the latter form of exploitation, and intersectionality is not applicable to them.  My advice to the student was that ‘intersectionality’ was not the best conceptual tool for their specific project, and that it would be better to drop its usage!

Considering the concept of ‘intersectionality’ is rooted in identity politics I don’t think Crenshaw would be too impressed with the extension of her concept to the world of chickens.  After all, do chickens have ‘identities’, even if ‘we’ (humans) identify ‘them’ with resources such as meat and eggs?  Is the chicken more of a symbol, or signifier (to use an alternate concept), as opposed to sitting at the ‘intersection’ of its very own multiple possible ‘identities’?

Misinterpretation and misapplication aside, there is then the thorny issue of ineffective teaching.   Not mine, I might add, but via mass online distance-learning materials.  This is something I experience on the OU foundation level course, where ‘intersectionality’ has been ‘tacked on’.  Probably because the concept is, simply, ‘in vogue’.  Intersectionality is deemed something that has to be ‘talked about’ and not left out but, nonetheless, what good is this aim if the process is not given the necessary space for proper consideration and consolidation but also criticism?

In introducing the sociology of ‘identities’, the OU course uses the case study of sectarianism in Northern Ireland.  This is presented as a ‘single’ identity issue (the division between ‘British’ unionists and ‘Irish’ nationalists) and the concept of an interface space (where the two communities rub-up against each other) is referred to (e.g. Belfast’s Peace Walls).  Of course, many foundation students soon have the two communities ‘intersecting’ rather than ‘interfacing’, and try to apply the concept of ‘intersectionality’ (which requires two identities: black, woman) when only ONE identity division is being covered.  The confusion appears to pivot on what is meant by an ‘identity’: (a) a position within a polarised divide (so white and black are two different identities); or (b) the division itself, such that age, race, gender, sexuality, and economic class are the ‘different’ identities being discussed.

There is a sense in which the concept of ‘intersectionality’ should be applicable to the jobless working-class Irish-nationalist who is doubly disadvantaged by having two ‘negative’ identities (as far as the social history of Northern Ireland is concerned) compared to the middle-class Irish-nationalist.  Make the working-class Irish-nationalist a woman and we even have a 3-dimensional figure, with elevator-polarity in addition to horizontal ‘crossroads’.  But do such examples ever work quite as well or in the same way as Crenshaw’s original American-culture example?  Significantly, what are the limits (in terms of application) of the concept of ‘intersectionality’?

Intersectionality – It’s not for you!

When I teach students about social science ‘theory’ I try to emphasise two important aspects of theories.  First, universal theories about humans don’t necessarily tell us much about actual humans because the humans in question are the product of a highly specific social context.  For instance, people motivated by money are produced in a society dominated by money – and ‘money love’ is not a universal human trait.  Obviously money is a socio-historical creation and not part of ‘nature’.  Second, theories exist for a purpose – they have to be ‘useful’ to people.  I give the example of a joiner / carpenter (since this was my own father’s trade).  The joiner’s toolbox contains a hammer, saw and chisel.  If the joiner were to choose a saw to hammer a nail into a wall the customer would be bemused – they would note that this is the ‘wrong tool’ for the job at hand.

So it is with social sciences.  Some theories, such as prices being determined by ‘supply and demand’ are not only ‘bland’, making sweeping statements in relation to ‘scarcity’ which exists in ALL earthly human societies, but also ‘useless’ as they don’t explain why ‘scarcity’ exists in our (capitalist) society.  Food can be in abundance in a capitalist society and there still will be hunger and even starvation (as noted by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations or Mike Davis in his Late Victorian Holocausts).  We need better and more specific theories to interpret and understand scarcity in a capitalist society.  The wrong tools lead to a poor understanding and pieces of research or analytical work.

But how does ‘intersectionality’ measure up?  As the YouTube videos promoting intersectionality note, it is not something a white woman can claim to ‘suffer’ the consequences of, unless she happens to (also) have an LGBTQi ‘identity’ – another plane in which she exists.  If she happens to be ‘hetero’ and ‘cis’ then she does not have ‘intersectional’ status.  But as noted above, it didn’t take long for ‘everyone’  to get in on the act and start making claims about their own ‘intersectional’ status!  Even the committed vegan (and male standing against hegemonic masculinity) wanted to push the concept on a proxy basis for the victim of their consideration (chickens).

Of course, if the status of being ‘intersectional’ only applies to a minority of people in what sense is the concept an ‘applicable’ tool for the rest (the majority)?  Well, don’t they become the ‘privileged’ in so far as they do not ‘suffer’ the consequences of intersectionality?  Doesn’t the theory make their role one of ‘ally’ (restricted to aiming for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar)?  At the same time, they are ‘called upon’ to do something about their own ‘privileges’, especially in becoming ‘aware’ of the concept of intersectionality (often by misusing Raymond Williams’ concept of unlearning).  Because how can ‘we’ change the situation, the world, without being aware of the problem, and that ‘we’ are the problem (not just part of it) because of our ‘privileges’?

Intersectionality, as a concept, has its social role to play and, also, I do not deny the dialectical situation of labour being the source of the labourer’s own subordination to capital (a la Holloway or Bonefeld) – that ‘we’ are our own problem and our own solution.  But there is a need to come back to the question of the toolbox – when and where?

How effective is Intersectionality as a theoretical tool?

In Crenshaw’s originating example ‘skin colour’ was a major factor of the ‘concrete’ type of racism which evolved in the United States.  It is such a major factor in US life that Whoopi Goldberg ended up claiming the Holocaust was not a ‘racist’ act, but one of mere white-on-white violence!  Colourism (if I can call it that without causing offence) has become synonymous with racism (the key form racism takes in the US).  Skin-colour racism has also played a major role in other societies, such as France and Britain, and whilst writing this article Britain’s first Black MP, Diane Abbott, published a letter in the Guardian making similar claims to Goldberg – that Jews, Travellers and the Irish have not suffered racism all their lives, merely ‘prejudice’.  Criticising Goldberg’s and Abbott’s position does not mean skin-colour is to be ignored as a major factor in racism in societies other than the US (including Nazi Germany) but that the ‘major’ form racism takes can differ and often does.  In Rwanda and Bosnia it was ‘tribal’ and ‘ethnic’.  In Scotland, Ireland and Great Britain it was ‘cultural’ (Lallans versus Gaelic) and ‘religious’.  A first question then is ‘to whom’ does the concept of intersectionality apply in different contexts?  And quickly moving on, a second question is ‘to what proportion’ of the population does the concept apply?

The two questions are interrelated, hence a ‘context’ approach may be more useful.  In 2020, Black Americans made up 12.2% of the population, whilst Hispanic and Latino Americans made up 18.5%, and Asians 5.6%.  Additionally, Native American (0.7%) and Hawaiian (0.2%) made up another 1%, with 4.1% declaring themselves Mixed race.  If, for convenience, I treat all these groups as ‘people of color’ (POC), then POC accounted for 41.3% of the US population in 2020.  Divide this in half to give a rough estimate of ‘women of color’ (WOC) and one possible figure for individuals affected by colour-based ‘intersectionality’ in the US is 20.5% (one in five of the population).

By contrast, in Scotland, the last released Census (2011) gave the following figures: 96% of the population identified as White (84% White Scottish; 8% White British; leaving 4% as White Other); and 4% identified as Non-white, as either Asian (2.25%), African (0.56%), Black or Caribbean (0.12%), Mixed (0.37%) and Non-white Other (0.27%).  Taking the POC at 4%, then WOC make up 2% of the population.  This is a substantial difference from the situation in the US.  This does not mean that the concept of intersectionality is not meaningful to women of colour in Scotland and their allies.  It does not mean that inequality issues (such as women of colour not having the same opportunities as white women) should be ignored or forgotten about.  But it does mean that the application of the concept using the same ‘categories’ does not make the same social sense.  Aren’t there more people to be concerned about, that it can be applied to?

What if the focal ‘category’ was shifted from skin-colour to LGBTQi categories?  In Scotland, under the same 2011 Census, 95% of the population identified as ‘Heterosexual or Straight’.  The LGBTQi population faces the same issue with regards to intersectionality as those of POC – if a man is white, male and gay (though not white, trans-male and gay) then they may not fall into an ‘intersectional’ population.  Gay white men can be ‘allies’ but can’t presume they are affected in an ‘intersectional’ manner.  Those affected by intersectionality may be larger than 50% of the LGBTQi total (the female-male divide is fairly predictable), but not by much.  This is still nowhere near the kind of percentage of population affected by intersectionality as in the US (20.5%).

If that kind of level of ‘impact’ has to be reached, then which categorical distinction in Scotland would have to be examined?  What, in this context, makes social sense?  Most likely it would be one of ‘white-on-white violence’ (to use Whoopi Goldberg’s terms).  Relating the issue to White ‘Other’ (white immigrants; or Roma /Travellers) would still produce very low figures (White Other = 4%; White Other women = 2%).  One possibility could be Scotland’s Irish population.  Roughly there are 800,000 Roman Catholics in Scotland (16% of population), with the majority coming from 19th century immigration and having an Irish background.  Hence, Irish-background women (of any colour) might be the largest group (400,000) affected in an ‘intersectional’ manner.  However, figures for Roman Catholicism and Irish do not neatly align.  Furthermore, much Irish immigration goes back 100-160 years and many people will now consider themselves ‘White Scottish’ since they are fourth, fifth, or sixth generation.

Why is this important?  Marx on The Jewish Question

My criticisms here relate to the standard issue of what is being crowded out?  With the rise of one thought in our public ‘brain’ (discussion) other thoughts simply get squeezed out.  There are 250,000 children living in poverty in Scotland.  Some of these children will face poverty due to the unfair treatment of their parents and, hence, intersectionality affecting their mother will play a role in the children’s poverty.  I can add to this evidence that POC are more likely to suffer poverty (using the Scottish Government’s BAME definition).  This is a statistical likelihood.  Hence, to say POC children are more ‘likely’ to be brought up in poverty is a ‘true’ statement.  However, given the characteristics of Scotland’s general population (96% identifying as ‘White’) the vast majority of children in poverty are ‘White’ and are not affected by concerns of intersectionality – a small number of children out of the total will have mothers (meeting the gender identity element) who are also Black or Lesbian (as examples).

This context reminded me of Marx’s 1840s paper On the Jewish Question.  This is a much misunderstood work as I have seen Marx accused of being anti-Semitic because of it.  For those who don’t know, both of Marx’s grandfathers had been Jewish Rabbis, though his father was  forced to convert to Christianity as Prussian laws at the time stated lawyers had to be Christian.  What upsets some are that Marx appears to argue against the emancipation of the Jews.  Those advocating for change, such as Bruno Bauer, where arguing to give Jews equal legal status with Christians, such that government posts would be open to Jews without the need to ‘convert’.  This would bring about legal equality for the Jewish population, in line with the ‘republics’ of the United States and France, which had no state religion.   Bauer argued that the Prussian state (headed by a Christian monarch) was not like those of the US and France, and the desired social change (on the Jewish question) would require a much wider overthrow of the old state (otherwise the ’emancipation of the Jews’ wouldn’t make sense).

Marx, in turn, was criticising Bauer’s assertion that the overthrow of the religious state would make the essential difference.  Marx was not arguing against Jewish emancipation but the notion that freedom could be brought about by ‘legal’ means in the form of the liberal (property-owning) ‘rights of man’ (the constitution of a new political state).   More interestingly, Marx ties the emancipation of the Jews to the emancipation of all from economic servitude within civil society – the realm of commodity exchange.  Marx’s question here is ‘what would be the point of giving Jews legal equality when we already know, via the American and French Revolutions, that this outcome does nothing about social inequality?  As such, even with their new found ‘legal equality’ the vast majority of Jews (and majority of others) would find themselves oppressed by their isolation within and domination by markets and money.

In such a situation, when particular wrongs have been replaced by wrong-in-general (Marx’s formulation), the notion of a hierarchy of oppression (or negative-archy of the ‘most oppressed’), as in the feudal state, no longer makes sense.  Marx, unlike Max Weber, did not see ‘social class’ as different groups of people jostling for ‘market positionality’ or ‘social status’ (see Gunn’s 1987 ‘Notes on Class’).  The proletariat are defined as a ‘class’ (mode of production) which brings about the end of ‘class’ (as a form of social status).  Dividing people by levels of oppression doesn’t really question the source of oppression.

Conclusion

If we want to liberate people from the deleterious effects of ‘intersectionality’ then shouldn’t we do this by liberating everyone (ourselves included) from the oppression of commodification, from ‘money’ (capital)?  And how do we do that?  Crenshaw’s original example was about ensuring black women have equal access to or opportunity in finding ‘jobs’, but she doesn’t take criticism much further; from Marx’s perspective that is tantamount to arguing for an equal opportunity to be exploited.  How do we question the ‘scarcity of everything’ argument (because someone’s always going to come bottom) and tackle the real source of social division and inequality – the forced sale and purchase of labour power?

by doctormcgrail

Greta Thunberg on the Failure of Capitalism

Amol Rajan, Media Editor at the BBC, interviewed Greta Thunberg (Tuesday 18th October 2022) about her future – though really her “future in politics”, because without her ‘politics’ would Rajan or the BBC have been that interested in this 19 year old?   Thunberg is a political celebrity, famous for being a teenage climate activist who convinced her generation to go on ‘school strike’, and thereby have attention paid to them.

Thunberg (to use the ‘academic’ surname convention since I don’t know her personally) has done an amazing job in foregrounding not simply issues of climate change and climate justice but in asserting the highly moral standpoint that mistakes made today (including failure to adapt social processes quick enough) will be paid for by future generations (obviously her own generation and younger).  But what I like most about Thunberg is her (often) straight forward expressions regarding the human condition.  Despite her age, or perhaps because of it – just as a 3-year-old child does not understand the principle of ‘private property’ when picking things up in a shop – Thunberg sees what her elders, socialised through decades of ‘reasonable’ discourse and ideological ‘underpinnings’, cannot.

The BBC eventually advertised the interview (on their catch-up service and News websites) by quoting Thunberg’s response to Rajan’s query about her going into politics (or, what would have been a more accurate phrasing, her staying in politics)?  What Rajan meant, of course, is the possibility of Thunberg becoming an elected politician (she has never been elected and is thus defined as an ‘activist’) and, by inference, Rajan meant her becoming a ‘professional’ politician.

Thunberg’s immediate reply was unequivocal – “I don’t want to go into politics … [because] … it’s toxic”.  She did qualify this with an “at the moment”.   However, what Thunberg meant by the toxicity of politics was not that clear from my position as part of the audience.

Did she mean the typically cited ‘polar’ oppositions of ‘party’, identity, or ideological politics at the moment, with their highly divisive characters, postures, and positions (radical / conservative; left-wing / right-wing; liberal / authoritarian) as compared to a more ‘consensual’ form that ‘politics’ could take?  Or was Thunberg referring to the wider issue of politicians’ insularity (in the ‘swamp’) from the mass of people (from whom they claim a mandate) with their propensity to fail, spin, and U-turn until they serve established interests?

What I disliked about Rajan’s question, and what I would reject in the way it was posed, is the implication that Thunberg, somehow, is not already ‘in’ (involved with) politics?  The question itself – a highly leading one – presumes that ‘politics’ must take a (or one) rather peculiar form (one which Rajan is used to) which essentially refers to electoral and ‘representative’ politics as ‘politics’ in a universal sense. 

It should be obvious to any neutral observer that Thunberg is already a ‘politician’ – she is involved in politics as an active citizen, indeed, in ideality, as everyone ‘should be’!  Why then would she need to ‘go into’ that peculiar form of politics – the very activity Thunberg describes as ‘toxic’?  So far, Thunberg seems to have managed quite capably, admirably, and better than most elected / professional politicians in not being ‘a representative’ of anyone other than herself as a quintessential human being.

In this context, Thunberg’s point that even ‘she’ (in spite of all that has happened, including the way she has been thrust into the public eye) wouldn’t consider a move ‘into’ that politics (because of its toxicity) is a damning criticism of what is notionally and nominally referred to as our ‘democratic political system’.

The Failure of Capitalism (Round 1)

There was, however, an even more interesting question pitched by Rajan, drawn rapidly from his journalistic scabbard, in response to one of Thunberg’s expressional pronouncements.  Thunberg referred to “the failure of capitalism”!

Now, it may have appeared that this point or ‘claim’ came out of the blue – a shock not only to the BBC producers, but presumably to their attendant, prospective audience.  The phrase “failure of capitalism” isn’t just a question of ‘political bias’ – it goes way beyond that – since the presumption, the doxa, of British culture is that capitalism is just part of nature (not least since this is what standard, establishment ‘economics’ teaches from high school onwards – a position grounded out of socially-constructed education systems since the early 19th century).  Surely, Thunberg was trying, now, despite past successes, to defy gravity with mention of such an idea?

However, the claimants of returns on capital could rest easy, since Rajan was ‘on the ball’, and managed to demonstrate he was prepared for his quarry.  Perhaps from watching previous coverage of Thunberg, Rajan knew or guessed that this kind of craziness may well come up.  Even though Thunberg slipped the phrase “the failure of capitalism” into a longer answer – as if, for her, it was as clear as day that capitalism has failed – it was the point within Thunberg’s response that Rajan quickly returned to (and had to return to).  Consequently, he asked, in reference to the failure of capitalism, “hasn’t capitalism lifted 850 million Chinese out of poverty?”

In my own opinion, this question led to the weakest response from Thunberg, who merely reiterated the point that ‘we’ (as a human collective) still must do something to prevent future catastrophe.  Yep, I get the underlying point – this is no time to be talking about capitalism versus socialism versus ‘utopianism’ versus whatever.  Even if Chinese capitalism has lifted the poor out of their poverty (let’s accept the premise), ‘we’ are still left with foreboding and impending doom!

The step Thunberg did not take was to question Rajan’s claim or assertion directly.  If Rajan doubts she is not already ‘into politics’ he just needs to take note of her ability to avoid a journalist’s question (a question possibly intended to distract, mislead and unbalance) and to plough on in getting her key point across (in a media interview).  If Thunberg hasn’t received media training, then she has learnt from the school of trial, error, and hard knocks.  Her approach was superior to anything I would have done in the situation, in being pulled sideways to counter the attack.

Rajan’s clever assessment of what he needed to ask (in reply to Thungerg’s claim) highlights the ‘political balance’ approach of the BBC built into their interview technique.  This is not something you would get on Fox, GB News, or any politically-biased media outlet.  If someone, anyone, states ‘on telly’ that capitalism has failed, such an assertion needs to be countered and questioned, immediately, and with evidence to the contrary.

Thunberg let Rajan’s re-assertion of the advantages, achievements, or greatness of ‘capitalism’ go – she side-stepped the implied point.  It was possibly not worth fighting – not in this interview – when a more positive message about impending doom is going to achieve more from her perspective.  Of course, that does not mean ‘we’ should let Rajan’s claim stand!

Businesses Don’t Make Great Coffee – People Do

Having sought refuge in the United States, as early as 1941 Raya Dunevskaya developed and published her analysis of the Soviet Union as an example of ‘state capitalism’.  In doing so, Dunevskaya referred to a discussion by Marx on what would happen if national capital was reduced to the control of a single capitalist (a monopoly system – so no competition, nor internal struggle within the class of capitalists).  He was asking the question in relation to his own analysis – that is, would it still apply?  And the answer was ‘yes’ – the nature of capitalist exploitation, in the social form of the purchase of waged labour (at the cost of its reproduction) and this labour’s expenditure in the production of ‘surplus’ product, would not change one jot.

Of course, on this reckoning, both the Soviet Union and Communist China were similar state capitalist regimes, though with national, cultural, and historical variations.  It is not, however, wrong to call them socialist regimes, in so far as they focused on furthering ‘national’ capital (or ‘commonwealth’) at the expense of individual capitalists and ‘individuals’ per se.

In short, mainland China was ‘capitalist’ long before the ‘economic’ (but not ‘political’) reforms of the 1980s.  Mao’s China (and Mao continues to be a revered figure within China) expunged ‘peasant’ China – the ‘old order’; firstly through forced industrialisation (the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s) and then through forced socialisation (the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s).  Some of these policies were disastrous, leading to mass famine through agricultural failure – but, there again, the Irish Famine of the 1840s never did that much damage to the British Empire.  But like all ruling classes attempting to hang on to power, the Communist Party of China found itself having to reform or adapt itself to new conditions.  This began with a ‘falling out’ amongst ‘communists’ (with the Soviet Union), followed by Nixon’s visit to Mao’s China in 1972 (a ‘defrosting’ of relationships), before the ‘economic’ reforms under Deng Xiaopeng from 1982.

This produces a first counter point to Rajan: you might as well congratulate the Chinese Communist Party for lifting 850 million people out of poverty!  Indeed, any Chinese government official would make this point.  Just like everyone else, such officials are prone to see the world as of their own making.  Furthermore, Rajan made this point to Thunberg when the ‘West’ is growing distrustful of China – there is fear about the progress China has made, that it isn’t playing by the ‘rulebook’ (as understood by the Western establishment), and hasn’t been doing so for a long time, or forever – and ‘now’ it dawns on Western ‘analysts’ that the Chinese have their own agenda!  Thence, if the Chinese are not, and have never been, playing by the capitalist ‘rulebook’, what do you put the economic transformation of China down to?

Next, what Rajan means by ‘capitalism’ needs to be considered?  I don’t think he is referring, in ‘capitalism’, to the accumulation of ‘capital’ as money, consumer goods, industrial goods, nor even wage relations – the requirement for capital to purchase wage labour to expand itself (the final one being the definition Marx uses in Capital: A Critique of Political Economy).  What Rajan means is the ‘freedom’ to trade outwith the bounds of government controls and regulations, with the implication that producers and purchasers are ‘free’ to make their own ‘rational’ decisions, since the latter is the kind of populist and spurious definition given in bog-standard Western education.

But capitalism is, ultimately, about capital, a concept defined dualistically by Adam Smith to mean: (a) all the material goods in society produced by previous labour (effort), from houses, to bridges, fridges to cars, computers to forks … ad infinitum; and (b) an amount of money which provides a return (or income) to its owner.  The problem for Rajan is that Smith doesn’t bother to define ‘capital’ and its accumulation until Book 2 of The Wealth of Nations.  So, what is Book 1 about?  I think the order of presentation is important – Smith is putting the most significant elements of the new commercial system, emerging in the 18th century, first.  Smith is giving something else priority over a need to discuss the emerging (new) commercial society in terms of ‘capital’.  What can that be?

Famously, Smith opens his opus with the ‘Outline and Plan of the Work’ where he clearly states that “labour” is the annual fund which provides for all the necessaries and conveniences of life!  In Chapter 1, Smith then emphasises how it is the “division of labour” which gives rise to increasing wealth (whether of material goods or services).  In Chapter 4, Smith challenges the claim that profit on stock is a payment for the labour of direction and management – no it isn’t, he notes, because there are many profiteers of stock (capitalists) who never see, never mind manage, the businesses they benefit from.  And in Chapter 6, Smith starts by making the point that owners of stock “share” in the wealth produced by waged labourers – that the wealth is produced by the workers is obvious to Smith.  That Smith does not then ‘do more’ with this analysis, in a political sense, is what ‘shocks’ Marx – the key point is in black and white, but Smith seems to overlook what is he is stating.  Labour is the source of wealth creation, and the direction of labour (its division) is nothing but another division of ‘labour’.

If someone is going to direct things (and be lauded and rewarded for it) then another person will have to be ‘directed’.  And whilst meritocrats attempt to come up with justifiable reasons why one person should fall into the director camp, and another into the directed one, these justifications are often specious, baseless, and intellectually weak (e.g. Marx highlights their ‘childishness’ in Chapter 26 of Capital).  However, the point stands – labour is the source of wealth, and Chinese labour, not ‘capitalism’ has lifted 850 million Chinese out of poverty.  It was, to use an expression of Marx drawn from the Bible, through the ‘sweat of their brow’.

Finally, Rajan has to consider that China has a (probable) population in 2022 of 1.3 billion.  It is about to be surpassed by India (by 2025).  Taking 0.85 billion (850 million) from 1.3 billion leaves 4.5 billion.  In other words, what about the other 450 million people in China?  Have they not been lifted out of poverty, and if not ‘why not?’

The Failure of Capitalism (Round 2)

What the ‘failure of capitalism’ means has very different connotations and implications for different speakers. For Thunberg it is a ‘system’ leading to global disaster, but for Mr Pension or Ms Moneybags (of the City), the ‘failure of capitalism’ means a failure to earn, specifically a ‘return’ on their funds, and thereby to receive an income.  The failure of capitalism occurs when capital fails to ‘earn’ a return – to make a profit.  Given that profits (properly, surplus value) are not a singular fund which can be neatly and fairly divided, the concept of multiple, competing ‘capitals’ comes to the fore.  When profits decline, capitals are set at one another’s throats, whether at a national, group (corporation) or individual level.  Even in 1767, Sir James Steuart realised that profits can be earned ‘relatively’ (one person gets richer at another’s expense).

One important developmental element of capitalist societies in the 20th century was to keep the wider system ticking over by ensuring there are sufficient numbers of ideologically supportive individual ‘capitals’ – a loyalty purchased through effective rewarding for their efforts.  Mass capitalism has witnessed the broad accumulation of individual pensioners, pension schemes, homeowners, independent investors as sources of larger and larger investment funds.  But the accumulation crises of the 20th century also highlighted how things break down when profitability declines – there isn’t enough to meet every claim on, and expectation, about the ownership of capital.

At this moment in time, it might not seem as if there is a ‘profitability’ crisis when large oil companies are earning super-profits due to the Russia-on-Ukraine War and subsequent embargoes (there are calls for governments to impose windfall taxes so ‘all’ can benefit from this ‘windfall’ – a private benefit seen as a positive externality or outcome which is not due in any way to the actions of the oil companies).  But, such super-profits in on location (on type of capital investment) simply doesn’t make up for the losses in profitability elsewhere – in short, living by profit (and especially in small business) appears impossible.  Many businesses are folding left, right and centre due to rapidly rising energy and fuel costs.

The response of capitalism to such crises has pretty much always been the same – laying workers off, and increasing ‘productivity’ amongst those remaining in work (automation for Ford’s era, and ‘artificial intelligence’ in ours).  But such increases in productivity have meant rising consumption of organic materials, namely, fuels. 

In short, Thunberg’s failure of capitalism (the impending doom of continuing to use fossil fuels) turns out to be the exact same failure as that of Mr Pension and Ms Moneybags – their ‘failing’ leads to pressure to extend the use of ‘machinery’ in replacing animate power (labour) with inanimate power (natural resources).  The claim has always been that this ‘trade off’ produces wealth (commonwealth) since use of labour would never have produced the ‘standard of living’ we ‘enjoy’ today.  But no such universal benefit has ever existed – after 250 years of capitalism (‘commercial society’) many workers and their entire families are no more than one pay cheque away from using the ‘food bank’ (charity) to exist.

Therein lies Thunberg’s ‘failure of capitalism’ and Rajan’s need to refer to ‘China’ to defend the capitalist system.