Category / Understanding Capital

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

More Money to Save the Planet?

One of the stranger ‘pleas’ I heard recently was related to the need for “more money” to save our environment (or ‘save the planet’).  My own immediate reaction – probably odd to most – was that the very last thing we need at the moment is to demand more “money” (or look ‘to money’) to save our environment or the planet – involving more money in the process is possibly the worst thing humanity could do!

On the surface, the plea may seem very reasonable, even ‘sound’.  Human beings are, rather than ‘the planet’, at an extinction threshold.  If we keep on our current pathway and continue to pump gases from fossil fuels into the atmosphere then by the end of the 21st century habitation of large swathes of Earth’s surface (by humans at least) will be impossible. Human (and animal) populations will decline; standards of living and quality of life will fall.  Something needs to be done, and quickly!  

Certainly, resources need to be switched from ‘doing X’ (performing environmentally damaging processes) to ‘doing Y’ (encouraging environmentally friendly processes).  This switching is, in everyday parlance, understood in terms of the requirement for ‘monetary investment’ and greater flows of ‘capital’ towards the desired outcomes.  In short, ‘capital’ should be pulled from environmentally amoral and life-endangering investments and put into ethical, environmentally-sustainable ones.  What could possibly go wrong with that ‘transfer’ of money from bad to good purposes?  

One question, of course, is ‘who’ should do the switching and thus control the new investment?   Well, sadly, at the moment, the head of one of the world’s largest (sovereign) oil companies is now being touted as a ‘leader’ in the field of renewables investment!  This appears perverse, with the poacher being made the game keeper, but it is asserted by those in authority that such individuals (existing planetary ‘leaders’) have the requisite experience to manage such large amounts of money and investments, and conduct the orderly transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy investment.  A radical environmentalist may simply upset the capital ‘investors’ who need to be brought on board, whereas a poor person just wouldn’t have the contacts nor soft skills required.

But there is a more fundamental question and that has to do with contemporary (fetishized) human understandings of what ‘money’ is and how it operates.  Pleas about ‘needing more money’ to save the planet, to my mind, start from the position that ‘money’ is (somehow) something neutral, as if money is just a resource which is ready and wants to be ‘spent’ on any number of alternate things (fossil fuels, guns, or warships, versus flower growing, chocolate, or children’s clothing).

This is such a naïve conception of ‘money’ as a resource (‘capital’ as a possession) which completely overlooks that ‘money’ is, in fact, a social process – a relationship of exploitation in which one person commands the efforts of others.  But, also, ‘money’ is a contradictory process in which the desire to dominate is never satisfied, can never be satiated, and must, instead, relieve itself via constant money-pot ‘growth’ (the accumulation of yet more capital).

Money as an Accumulation Virus

Rather, ‘money’ needs to be thought of as being a virus.  Like coronavirus (Covid-19), money invades cells not with the aim of eating up the available resources and stopping there, but with the aim of multiplying itself, several times over.  The virus just keeps on going until it kills its ‘host’, yet to avoid its own termination in such a calamity it finds escape by movement to other bodies, and yet more cells.  Thus, whilst as much virus can be destroyed within one day (within a single body), as is created, this is fine so long as sufficient newly created virus escapes to invade other bodies.  And so the epidemic progresses, so long as the number of bodies (and cells) invaded continues to grow.

Similarly, ‘money’ invested in environmentally friendly processes may at first seem like they are doing something positive, in switching an economy over to ‘renewable’ energy sources and processes, but for how long will these processes remain ‘renewable’ or ‘sustainable’?

After all, the point of money – the meaning of its social existence – is not to be ‘spent’ but to be secured, saved, consolidated, and accumulated via endless expansion.

In the Moore and Aveling translation of Capital, Marx refers to the capitalist as ‘Mr Moneybags’ because the capitalist doesn’t have a persona of their own but is rather a mere representative of capital (money).  Now, when Mr or Mrs Moneybags makes an investment, s/he is not interested in spending or expending his/her money – s/he does not want it whittled down or away in processes of Bohemian squander!  Rather, his/her aim is to first, sustain the value of money (in the face of inflation or nominal devaluation) and, second, expand and grow its value.  The goal is accumulation (more money), not expenditure.

Thus, an environmentalist campaigner pleading with Mr or Mrs Moneybags to spend their ‘hard earned’ cash on saving the planet without return just doesn’t make sense!  The planet will, now, only be saved with money if Mr or Mrs Moneybags can make an investment with a decent (socially-acceptable – compared to the ‘market’) return.

This sums up what ‘money’ is, and what it seeks (virus-like) to do.  Of course, the mystery of ‘where’ the return (the growth in money) comes from has been known about since the days of Richard Cantillon (writing in the 1720s), as cited by Adam Smith (1776) in the Wealth of Nations.  It arises from the “sharing” (Smith’s term), by the money-owner, in the output created by the waged labourer.  This is a political relationship of both social and natural subordination which the Moneybags, as a family, must sustain ad infinitum if they are to remain ‘the Moneybags’, with attendant social status (praise and recognition) and political means of control.

Making such a relationship the central plank of a plea to ‘save the planet’ is truly topsy-turvy.

My Carbon Capture Plant isn’t Making a Profit?

In the 1930s state-backed employment programmes were often criticised as simply getting men to dig holes so they could be filled in again (‘endless labouring’).  The social goal was to keep the men ’employed’ (busy) and, thus, out of political rebellion.  There was expenditure of taxes (money) with no ‘return’ other than the broader one of ‘saving the system’.  Ultimately state-managed investment had to return capitalism to profitability, and it did so by cheapening labour-power reproduction costs (through mass social housing, health and education, public transport, and utility schemes).  But a key price paid was the requirement to raise labour productivity (to lower commodity values) through the application of machines (technology) driven by, guess what, fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas).  An unknown and indescribable cost (at the time) which was easily pushed away, into the future.  Of course, that future has now come around.

Consequently, ‘green’ capitalism has to deal with a necessary transition away from the system’s reliance on ‘cheap’ fossil fuels (to using renewables) or, alternately, find an effective means of reabsorbing the atmospheric pollutant problems caused by fossil fuels (via technologies like ‘carbon capture’).

Money flows into such schemes looking for its entitled ‘return’ and there is, indeed, a ‘return’ to be had (the exploitation of waged labour power to be undertaken), but money invested in carbon capture cannot then envision a quick end to its own business model – the need for fossil fuel pollution becomes part of that very model.  A balance by the chief executive officer of a sovereign oil fund may have to be struck between both processes – the production and absorption of greenhouse gases.

Money Saves Itself

Using or demanding ‘money’ to save the environment forgets that all capitalist enterprises have ‘dual’ aims – they need to do something worthwhile for society.  They need to do something meaningful, such as remove carbon from the atmosphere or provide health services, or tables and chairs, since it is only through such processes that they can achieve their other, more essential or existential, goal, namely, the preservation of ‘money’.  But the latter implies more growth, and consumption of Earthly resources.  There is, in that sense, no ‘sustainable’ position in the investment of ‘money’ as humanity hurtles forward.  The key human (as opposed to ‘monetary’) existential question is: how do we save the planet without, in spite, of ‘money’ – without ‘capital’ investment?  Since that is the only way to save not just ‘the planet’ (which isn’t really going anywhere) but ourselves.

by doctormcgrail

Exploiting “low science capital”

The university access programme I teach on (for several years now) is currently being expanded to cover (natural) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) courses. Previously it only covered arts, humanities and social sciences. The expansion is to be welcomed since there should be routes into the ‘natural sciences’ for adult returners at any university and not just the ‘cultural’ realm. Plus, it would be good to have more interplay between natural and social scientists (and, of course, sciences).

The inaccurate ‘adoption’ of natural scientific ideas within social science and theory (or discourse) has been widely and famously criticised, via well-known examples which now include late-19th century ‘Social Darwinism’ (or evolution understood as ‘survival of the richest’) and the late-20th century Alan Sokal ‘hoax’, involving Sokal’s submission of a tongue-in-cheek paper to the postmodern journal Social Text (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/). Whilst media coverage of the latter focused on the journal’s editors not being able to tell genuine from false ‘social science’ (or ‘sociology’), Sokal’s subsequent work made it clear that, as a physicist, what most upset or concerned him was inaccurate appropriation of natural scientific concepts by those who didn’t understand (nor desire to understand) them and, instead, turned such concepts into mere “jargon”, or as The Atlantic magazine put it, in 2018, “jabber”.

The argument of the physical or natural scientists is that their concepts are based in a reality which human ‘thinking’ can reflect (correspond to) but not construct, and hence it is folly to claim that concepts rooted in properties external to human will – the properties of the physical world, such as the presence of oxygen in the atmosphere – are somehow ‘socially constructed’. In this fashion Sokal did contemporary social sciences a service by simply reminding us of Thomas Reid’s aim in developing Scottish Common Sense philosophy, which was to save philosophy from becoming “ridiculous” (Broadie in The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid).

Of course, what is good for the goose must be good for the gander!  Hence, it is always interesting to see natural scientists adopt what are socially-constructed languages, concepts and belief-systems!

As part of my department’s expansion of access routes into natural degrees, new staff with natural ‘science’ qualifications (I’ll drop the pretence that social sciences are treated as ‘science’ from this point on) had to be recruited, along with a new Head of Educational Transitions. So far, so good. On completion of the recruitment process the candidates were introduced to the wider department – a procedure that involved presentation of personal statements about what the new staff hoped to achieve. There should be nothing surprising in this induction process, but what caught my eye was reference, by one presentation, to how the target audience of prospective students was to be understood or, if you prefer, framed; this was as individuals with “low science capital”.

If the phrases “low science knowledge” or “little scientific understanding (and/or awareness)” had been used then I would not have perceived a problem. But the word “capital” in the phrase indicated the adoption of societal “jargon” (or ‘jabber’) by a natural scientist who doesn’t know what the word means, other than what it means to ‘laypersons’ (not social scientists) around them in everyday general use, no doubt where the term has been ‘picked up’. But capital is not, you (will) see, within Sokal’s definition of ‘science’, that is, pertaining to:

“an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in “eternal” physical laws”.

(Sokal)

What my colleague intended, at heart, was that there are students or potential students with little (maybe ‘no’) understanding of science, and that their role (our department’s role) is to build such knowledge and awareness through education. These students would, no doubt, also lack skills and ‘academic literacies’, or general attributes and capacities (mental and physical) which can be built upon, via practice and repetition (say, in doing lab work and writing reports), in an effort to turn them into ‘scientists’. This is all well and good.

However, usage of the word ‘capital’ managed to sneak in, like a Trojan Horse, a whole set of other connotations. On gaining their new attributes, capacities and skills, our trained up students will go forth (with these additional elements and extensions to self) to exploit them (and themselves) as ‘capital’. After all, what does it mean to have ‘low capital’, whether of the scientific or any other variety (social; financial; industrial; cultural)? That is, we won’t be turning students into scientists per se, but scientists for sale! They will be employable scientists, scientists on the market, and scientists with a ‘load of’ or ‘lots of’ capital.

This usage of the term ‘capital’ is not surprising, nor should it be. It is typical of early 21st century Scotland where the sociological terminology of sociologists like Pierre Bourdieu has been broadly adopted and spread into popular culture, including mainstream mass research events like the BBC’s ‘class calculator’: a website where you fill in your details and the computer informs you which (of 7) social classes you ‘belong to’, based on your self-reported accumulation of capitals – social, cultural and financial.

Where ‘scientific capital’ fits into this realm of capitals I am uncertain, but it probably sits somewhere between cultural and financial. The cultural bit is that you can ‘talk’ science and therein impress potential employers, who also happen to ‘talk’ science and see themselves (well, a younger version of themselves) in the ‘candidate’ (i.e. you) – ‘cultural capital’, by the way, never gets beyond thinking in terms of hierarchical systems as the candidate is always flogging themselves to someone or something, like ‘the market’. The financial bit is that once you’ve landed a job in ‘science’ you are more highly valued than you were before. Neither quite explain ‘science capital’ since there is an aspect of just enjoying the knowledge, which somehow has to be treated or recognised as ‘capital’! Nevertheless, no matter which ‘type’ of capital we are considering or thinking of they all share one thing in common, namely, that all forms of capital are possessions. The student who studies ‘science’ will end up possessing science and move from having “low” to “high” science capital.

But the cultural context to this usage of the term ‘capital’ merely indicates the folly of the culture.

Capital as a Social Relation, and not a ‘Thing’

The whole of Chapter 1 of Marx’s opus Capital (1867) can be thought of in terms of making one core point: capital is a human relationship and not a ‘thing’ (to be possessed), but the social process (relation) which produces capital also entails commodity fetish whereby relations between people appear (or take the form) of relations between things.  Marx makes the joke about never having seen a coat walk into a shop and exchange itself for a roll of linen.  What is actually taking place is the exchange of labour (effort) of the tailor in return for that of the weaver (a la Adam Smith’s labour theory of value, presented at the start of the Wealth of Nations). It might look as if the tailor ‘possesses’ coats for sale, but it is really the tailor who is possessed by the need to continuously produce coats, which they have no personal need for, just in order to ‘exist’.

The duality (relation-appearing-as-thing, and vice versa, thing-appearing-as-relation) does not exist purely ‘in the mind’. Hence, Smith provided two definitions of ‘capital’. First, he defines capital as all the ‘things’ in society, produced by humans (i.e. not natural products like metals in the ground or wild fish), covering buildings, bridges, machines, existing stock (raw materials), etc. As Isaac Rubin notes, this is the ‘wrong’ definition – it describes the appearance of ‘things’. Basically, capital has to, at some point in its reproductive cycle, take the form of useful (wanted) ‘things’, though these can include intangibles such as insurance, a story, a song, a poem, or an idea (a patent). But this ‘form’ taking is always momentary and passing to what capital is – a relationship. Second, Smith defines capital as a ‘fund’ which produces a ‘return’. For Rubin this is the ‘correct’ definition and reveals the fundamentals about what capital is – a human relationship where, to use Smith’s phrasing, one person ‘shares in’ the effort of another.

A Quick and Easy Example

Let’s say you go out with a friend for a drink and they end up in such a state that they need to stay the night with you (sleeping on your sofa). In this instance your sofa is nothing but a useful object. The next day the two of you go out again and the same thing happens. You enjoy your new routine and before long you have a new housemate.

At this point you decide that you don’t mind your friend staying with you, but they are going to have to give you something for the use of your sofa, namely, ‘rent’ in the form of money (say £10 per night – the amount does not matter). At this point your sofa goes through a magical transformation into a piece of capital. It is no longer a merely useful object – having a use value – but has taken on the means of raising or making a ‘return’ (in the monetary form) in the form of ‘rent’ (which meets Smith’s second definition). The sofa, despite being owned by you with no change to its material form, now has an exchange value attached to it. The sofa is now a piece of ‘capital’ – or part of a social relationship of monetary exchange – which ‘earns’ you £10 a night. Of course, it is your friend who has to ‘earn’ the £10 each day to pay you the ‘rent’. It is the changing form of your relationship with your ‘friend’ (now in inverted commas) which has translated the sofa from simple useful object to piece of capital. The sofa’s definition as capital rests on a particular and peculiar kind of social relationship and not on its material form. It has to be noted, since this is very significant, that your ‘friend’ is no longer your friend (or just your friend) because your relationship is now one of landlord to tenant!

Thus, capital is a social relationship and not a ‘thing’. Students, or anyone, with ‘low science capital’ do not lack possession of a ‘thing’ but stand ‘low’ in a social relationship where they can get very little (or nothing at all) in exchange for their skills (their labour power). Subsequently, aiming to raise or enhance such a person’s ‘science capital’ (make them a saleable commodity) is a different goal or purpose than wanting to advance their socially-useful knowledge in a ‘universalist’ sense (to the betterment of ‘humanity’ or society as whole, or even to their own emancipated sense of self). Rather, the goal in discussing ‘low science capital’ is to feed the market with what the market (a peculiar form of social relationship) wants and, of course, raise the ‘return’ that can be had on any ‘investment’ made in such science education and science students (even when they themselves are to be one of the many ‘beneficiaries’ of their own exploitation).

Moral of the Tale

As Sokal notes, inaccurate appropriation of scientific concepts compounds human ignorance. This point backs up Adam Smith’s reflection on the negative influences of the division of labour, which are apt to make us all stupid and ignorant. It is also a reminder of the need for a broad-based ‘generalist’ education as one means of overcoming the social problems of the (social) division of labour.