Starmer's Six Promises

Starmer has tried to ape Tony Blair with his credit card sized list of six promises. The first thing to say is why would anyone believe any promise that Starmer makes? He is an inveterate liar, who lies with such alacrity that he doesn't even seem to realise he's doing it. Whatever he says, today, he's likely to deny ever saying tomorrow, as with his statement on LBC that Israel had a right to commit war crimes by cutting off food, water and energy to Gaza!

The only potential counter to that is that these six promises are so vapid, so meaningless, and lacking in ambition that even Starmer would be hard pressed not to be able to stick with them, but even that can't be relied on, such is the lack of credibility of the man, and his Blue Labour Party. After all, he won the leadership by committing to stick with the programme of Jeremy Corbyn, all of the elements of which were very popular with voters, according to every poll undertaken. Yet, within weeks of becoming Leader, Starmer started dropping them one by one, and went from being the champion of liberal Remainers, to being the arch Brexiter, distinguishable only from Boris Johnson by his desire to outflank him to the Right!

The six promises are:

1. Deliver Economic Stability

2. Cut NHS Waiting Times

3. Launch a new Border Security Command

4. Set Up Great British Energy

5. Crack Down On Anti-Social Behaviour

6. Recruit 6,500 Teachers

What a pathetic list. Where is the ambition in that, even compared with the pledges offered by Blair in 1997? The Blairites used to talk about “aspiration”, but there is no sense of aspiration in this list whatsoever. It basically expects workers to settle for a continuation of their lot of the last 15 years since the global financial crisis, let alone anything more aspirational. In terms of encouraging workers to vote for Labour it is hardly inspirational, is it? The Corbynite agenda that Starmer originally committed to, was itself, only the kind of routine social-democratic programme of a 1960's Wilson government, but even that was too much for Starmer, as he has collapsed into petty-bourgeois reactionary nationalism, as witnessed by his welcoming into the party of far-right Tory MP's, like Elphicke.

Let's take this flaccid list, and see just how limp it is. What does promise 1 even mean? It doesn't even commit to economic growth, which would require, the opposite of stability. Stability means accepting the current low level of economic activity, in other words, it is the stability of the graveyard. Let's be kind and assume that Starmer and Reeves do not actually mean stability, but mean economic growth without the drama, and wild swings, associated with the last few years of Tory government, as seen with Truss. But, then, this is meaningless too. They might as well say that they are promising that the weather will be stable and slightly better under a Labour government.

For it to mean anything, they would have to set out how they were going to ensure such stability and improvement, but they fail to do that. It is an “aspiration”, but a pretty timid one, and yet, still one they cannot guarantee. They can't guarantee it, because the growth of capitalist economies, and their stability, is largely outside the control of governments, particularly national governments, and even more so the governments of small, and declining nation states like that of Britain. Those national governments can certainly damage the growth of their economies, as for example, has occurred with Brexit, or as occurred with the Truss government's attempt to apply the petty-bourgeois ideology that lies behind Brexit, and brought down the wrath of the global ruling class, and its control of the financial markets upon it, but they cannot, conversely, aid the growth of those economies.

Moreover, what does such stability or economic growth itself mean? Stability and growth for the benefit of whom? If it means that the economy is “stable”, and “grows”, on the back of workers having to accept a continuation of their current condition, whilst, on the other side, profits continue to grow, and an increasing proportion of them is paid out as interest/dividends to shareholders, how is that of any benefit to workers, as against the interests of those speculators and other parasites, and so why would workers have any reason to vote for it?

The same is true of the second promise. Its pathetic, compared to Blair's promise to treble spending on the NHS, which he did, but which mostly went to benefit all those companies that built hospitals, supplied expensive equipment, as well as all of those highly paid NHS bureaucrats, whose empires expanded significantly, whilst the newly built hospitals couldn't function, because there was no funds to employ nurses! But, given that Starmer has adopted the programme of reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism, and Brexit, how is this to be physically achieved, given that the NHS relies on foreign workers, doctors and nurses, coming to work in it, and since Brexit that supply of workers has been slashed?

Moreover, to achieve it would require much greater spending on the NHS, and yet, Starmer's first promise, and the refusal by him and Reeves to countenance any increase in either taxes or borrowing to finance additional spending, means that Blue Labour cannot increase spending to achieve any of these promises. The only other answer, apart from it being just another lie, is that they intend to impose even more on NHS workers, to work longer hours, for even less money! Again, why would workers vote for that?

The third promise is one that is, of course, fully consistent with Blue Labour's reactionary nationalist, Brexitory agenda. But, that agenda conflicts with both the first and second promises. If Blue Labour wants to promote economic growth and stability, the most effective means of that is to re-join the EU, and, at the very least, to re-join the Single Market and Customs Union at the earliest opportunity, including accepting all of the requirements for free movement and so on. But, Starmer's jingoistic, sovereigntist agenda, reflected in this promise, as he continues to appease the racists and bigots, stands four-square in opposition to a rapprochement with the EU. It is a thoroughly racist promise that seeks to place the blame for the problems of British capitalism, problems made worse by Brexit, on to foreigners and immigrants.

The promise to set up Great British Energy is likely to go the way of other such promises by Starmer. The name itself, is, again, a sop to the jingoists and petty-bourgeois nationalists. The only reason for thinking that Blue Labour might actually carry it out, as with the renationalisation of the railways, is that these industries are in such a dire and chaotic state, and there is widespread public support for such policies. Its likely that large sections of capital would be at best indifferent to such state ownership too.

In the EU, state ownership of utilities and railways is commonplace, and acts in the interests of capital in general. In fact, the shares of many of these companies, in Britain, are already owned by foreign state owned enterprises! But, as workers in the state sector are currently seeing, and as was seen in the state owned coal mines, in the 1980's, in Britain, this is no benefit to workers themselves. They do not exercise any control over them, the bosses who lord it over them, are the same bosses who yesterday, and tomorrow, will be running large, non-state businesses, and the state can mobilise far more power than any private business against its workers when it comes to negotiating pay and conditions.

The fifth promise is again vapid, but is really a promise to find scapegoats, and to put more resources into the police and other bodies of armed men, required to put down the revolts of workers, as they resist attempts to make them pay for the actions of the state in bailing out the gambling losses of the ruling class. Starmer has shown himself to be a Bonapartist and totalitarian in the way he runs Blue Labour, and that tendency will be heightened if he gets his hands on government office and ability to use the state.

Finally, he promises to recruit 6,500 teachers, which is again simply an aspiration, without telling us how he will fund it, given the commitment not to raise taxes or borrowing, given the commitment to Brexit, and opposition to free movement and so on. Even so, even compared to the promises made by Blair, in 1997, it is thoroughly lacking in any kind of ambition or aspiration. In the end, it comes down to a belief by Blue Labour that the Tories are, now, so hated, that voters will vote against them, or at least stay home, enabling Blue Labour to win by default.

That belief is almost certainly correct, though, in certain seats, the hostility or just indifference to Starmer, may see Liberals or Greens sneak in, or take enough votes to deny Labour the seat, and Blue Labour will win a large majority in the election. But, that is very short-sighted, and dangerous. A Blue Labour government is likely to quickly disappoint those that voted for it, even with this flaccid agenda, and it will quickly turn on a working-class that is finding its feet once more. The economy is likely to grow, but it will have nothing to do with Blue Labour's policies, but is down simply to the resumption of the long-wave cycle, and the uptrend commenced in 1999, and constrained after 2010. Blue Labour will not face a working-class and labour movement like that of the 1980's, and 1990's, or even early 2000's.

Nor will that working-class, as it rises from its knees, be alone, as the same process unfolds across the EU and North America. But, the workers must be clear in their objectives, of what they are for, rather than just what they are against. Otherwise, as seen in the last decade or so, the beneficiaries will be the populist Right that offer simplistic solutions, but solutions that ultimately are no solutions at all. The most pressing need is to rebuild the organisations of the working-class, from the ground up, to build international workers' solidarity, to recognise that “The Main Enemy Is At Home”, and to replace the current leaderships with a new generation of internationalist, socialist, revolutionary leaders. 

Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 16 of 19

A period of long wave crisis began around 1914, as the previous period had led to a significant strengthening of the working-class in Europe, of rising relative wages, falling relative profits, and a consequent overproduction of capital. It is what created the sharpened conditions that emphasised the need for a single European market and state, which was the basis of WWI, and II, as European capital confronted a rising US capital, and later a rising Japanese capital.

European capital, broke at its weakest link, in Russia, with the 1917 Revolution, and, then, with the revolutions of 1918, in Germany etc., though these latter failed, and failed, again, in Germany, in 1923. In Italy, in the 1920's, the workers began to flex their muscles along the lines set out out, in Part 15, by occupying their factories, and placing production under workers' control. In the US, Taylorism arose, as a managerialist adjunct to Fordism, a professional middle-class manifesto of scientific management, but which the US trades unions also adopted, in opposition to the old incompetent management of the private capitalists.

The needs of the dominant form of property, large-scale socialised capital, cried out for such rationalisation, but, as in 1848, the bourgeoisie shrank back in horror at the working-class, which was the apparent agent of its implementation, as had been most visibly observed in Russia, after 1917. And yet, that process of the role of the state in bringing about this rationalisation over the heads of the workers, provided an obvious solution for the ruling class. As Marx and Engels had noted, in Anti-Duhring,

“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists.

But, the exploitation becomes so palpable here that it must break down. No nation would put up with production directed by trusts, with such a barefaced exploitation of the community by a small band of coupon-clippers.”

(Anti-Duhring p 358)

And, the biggest trust of all is that of the capitalist state.

“The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.”

(Anti-Duhring, p 360)

One means of these trusts performing that function, therefore, becomes “national socialism”. As with Stalinism, Nazism requires a totalitarian regime. It imposes the objective interests of large-scale socialised capital, over the immediate interests of the ruling class owners of fictitious-capital, for higher interest/dividend payments and asset prices, but, in so doing, not only saves their system from proletarian revolution, but serves their long-term interests, by creating the basis for increased profits, and so out of which can be paid increased amounts of interest/dividends, rents and taxes.

In Italy, in the 1920's, the response to the workers was the regime of Mussolini, in Britain, as the workers engaged in the mass strikes of 1920, and the General Strike of 1926, not only is the state mobilised against them, but a similar rise of fascist auxiliaries is seen, and the same is seen in Germany, and France, and in the US. The role of Stalinism, and its class collaborationist policy of the Popular Front, undermined these struggles of workers, in the 1920's, and contributed to their defeat. So, the ruling class in these instances, did not need to resort to fascism. Even in Germany, where it was led to do so, later, in the 1930's, it acted to slap down the fascists, in the 1920's, when they attempted their putsch.

And, the reason for that is the difference between fascism, as a movement of the petty-bourgeoisie, whose interests are contradictory to those of the ruling-class, and National Socialism, which exists to implement the measures of rationalisation and so on, objectively required by large-scale socialised capital, by the state, over the heads of the collective owners of that socialised capital (the workers), and in the interests of the ruling class. Those measures of rationalisation and so on, in the 1930's, included the formation of a European single market and state, which Nazism took on in WWII, as a continuation of that requirement manifest in WWI.

In Asia, Japan, as rising imperialist power, took on that role, in its occupation of China, Korea, and so on, as it sought to establish a similar large single market and state, in order to be able to produce on the same kind of scale as its main rival, US imperialism.

As Trotsky described, it is these basic laws of capital that drive towards the imperialist wars, such as WWI and II, not conflicts between “democracy” and “fascism”, or “totalitarianism”, as is, again, being portrayed, today, as the world marches towards WWIII, under a false flag of a war against Russia and China, the hypocrisy of which is most easily seen in the support of that “democratic imperialism” for the genocide being committed by its Zionist ally in Gaza, and by its support for, and arms shipments to numerous dictators, feudal regimes and so on, across the globe, such as that in Saudi Arabia. It is this which is the backdrop to that genocide in Gaza, and explains why western imperialism will not act to end it, why it will continue to arm it, and act as attorney for it, and why it is led to become ever more Bonapartist and authoritarian in its own regimes, in order to prevent any morsel of criticism of it.

Back To Part 15

Good Luck To My Best Mate Keith

My best mate, Keith Beardmore, has gone into hospital, today, for major surgery.  All our best wishes are with him, his wife, Jayne, and their son Tom.

I first met Keith, in 1975 when we were both doing a Day Release, Business Studies course, at Cauldon College.  It was a year after the Miners had defeated Heath's Tory government, and Keith was working for the NCB, while I was already a shop steward, at Royal Doulton.  He was sitting with his mates during a break, while I was sitting on my own, reading a revolutionary journal.  It was that which was the opener for conversation, but it soon transpired that we had a shared interest in Northern Soul, and the Golden Torch.

Within just a few years from that, I was best man at his first wedding.  Not long after, his wife's grandmother, who lived on The Gower died, leaving a house that we went on holiday to.  As Keith remarked some time later, "its a wonder we don't all come down with Yellow Jack", given that it was even colder and damper than the old terraced house I grew up in.

In the 1970's, and early 80's, Keith supplied me with dozens of cassette tapes, he'd recorded of Northern Soul, and Funk, from the 20,000 or so records he had as singles or LP tracks.  After my kids were born, I missed out on going dancing for some time, other than in the house, doing dives forward rolls over the furniture.  But, when Dave Evison, started his Sunday Northern Soul show on Signal Radio, I was a regular listener, whilst Keith with his encyclopaedic knowledge of Northern Soul, was winning the weekly competitions with incessant regularity.

It wasn't long before, we were out on the floor again, going to Keith Minshull's birthday party at the Clough Hall Inn, just down the road from where I lived, where we met up with a number of other people from our past, and some from the present, like Andy Myatt, whose son was in the same class as my son at school.  Soon, we were going regularly to the Keele All-Nighters, which we did for most of the 1990's.

In the last ten years, although Keith lives half the year in Spain, we have continued to see each other most months at Moorville Hall, and kept in touch via e-mail.  So, after half a century of friendship, I know that Keith will face his current challenge head on, and come out on top.  See you soon, mate, and we'll be back "Out On The Floor".

Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, What Is Happening In China? - Part 2 of 4

In 1929, Pravda reported that a guerrilla force, under the command of Zhu Deh, was heading towards Chao-Cho. Pravda's report, in small type, had no accompanying analysis or detail, but was a bland, non-committal piece of reportage, enabling the ECCI to take credit for any success and disown any failure. It was a continuation of the dishonest and schizoid behaviour of publicly warning about putschism, whilst requiring silent support, from its members, for the organisation of armed insurrections, in the unfavourable conditions of counter-revolution.

Trotsky responded to the report by demanding that the CPSU and Pravda give the required background and analysis of what was happening in China, so as either to support or condemn it.

“What is the meaning of this struggle? Its origins? Its perspectives? Not a word is breathed to us about it. If the new revolution in China has matured to the point that the Communists have taken to arms, then it would seem necessary to mobilize the whole International in the face of events of such gigantic historical importance. Why then do we hear nothing of the sort? And if the situation in China is not such as puts on the order of the day the armed struggle of the Communists for power, then how and why has a Communist detachment begun an armed struggle against Chiang Kai-shek, that is, against the bourgeois military dictatorship?” (p 226)

The reality, of course, was that there was no rise in the level of revolutionary activity, or rebuilding of workers' organisations and, confidence. The workers were in defensive mode, as the bourgeoisie stabilised itself. The workers had, correspondingly, abandoned the Communist Party, that had betrayed them, with its alliance with the bourgeoisie and KMT.

A similar thing can be seen with Ukraine-Russia. The pro-NATO and pro-Putin campists alike present fairy-tales about the corrupt, right-wing regimes they both support, and the ridiculous idea that what exists, on both sides, is a national “bloc of four classes”, or popular front, welded together by the threat of external domination, and in which the war is actually being waged by the working-class for its own class interests. As in all wars, it is certainly workers who, as soldiers in the bourgeois army, do the fighting and dying, but it most certainly is not for their own class interests, as against those of the bourgeoisie that sends them to die and suffer mutilation, and whose state determines the conditions under which they fight.

In 1929, the Comintern had entered the ultra-Left, sectarian Third Period, in which, in contrast to the previous opportunism of the Popular Front, the Stalinists now presented everyone outside the CP's as some kind of fascist. In this scenario, the permanent rise of the revolutionary wave meant that any advance, by opposing class forces was merely temporary. Trotsky quotes Zinoviev, who, by this time, along with Kamenev and others, had left the United Opposition, and returned to the Stalinist fold.

“It is no accident that Zinoviev who, in distinction to the other capitulators, still pretends to be alive, has come out in Pravda with an article which shows that the domination of Chiang Kai-shek is entirely similar to the temporary domination of Kolchak, that is, is only a simple episode in the process of the revolutionary rise. This analogy is of course bracing to the spirit. Unfortunately, it is not only false, but simply stupid. Kolchak organized an insurrection in one province against the dictatorship of the proletariat already established in the greater part of the country. In China, bourgeois counter-revolution rules in the country and it is the Communists who have stirred up an insurrection of a few thousand people in one of the provinces.” (p 227)

This same lunacy was seen in Germany, where the victory of Hitler was greeted with the response, “After Hitler, its our turn.”

“We think, therefore, we have the right to pose this question: Does this insurrection spring from the situation in China or rather from the instructions concerning the “third period”?  We ask further, what is the political role of the Chinese Communist Party in all this? What are the slogans with which it mobilized the masses? What is the degree of its influence upon the workers? We hear nothing about all this.” (p 227)

Back To Part 1

UK Nominal Wages Rise 6% Year on Year

UK nominal, or money wages have risen 6% year on year. Although that figure is the same as the previous month, it comes at a time when consumer prices are rising at a slower rate, as the effects of monetary tightening by central banks take effect. On that basis, real wages rose by 2.3%, year on year, last month, compared to 2%, in the previous month, and 1.7% the month before that. This is in stark contrast to the claims by the Bank of England, last year, and seized upon by catastrophists and speculators that UK workers were going to see a sharp fall in living standards, as wages failed to keep pace with prices!

In fact, this is the tenth month in a row that wages have risen faster than prices. Although the UK went into a technical recession at the end of 2023, even on the basis of GDP/National Income, it was only very slight, and has already been reversed in the first quarter of 2024. However, as I set out last year, the GDP figure is misleading, because of the effect of inflation, and the consequent tie-up of capital, which gives the illusion of a fall in revenues, as part of the produced surplus value is used to replace consumed constant capital, rather than being realised as money profits. The increased growth in the UK, especially with all of the constraints imposed by Brexit, means that labour will continue to be placed in a strengthened position, and real wages will continue to rise, no doubt leading to the Bank of England seeking to enable firms to compensate, by raising their prices, to protect profits, leading to another rise in inflation.

That comes as the US economy continues to surge, and its own prices and wages to rise defying the predictions of an end to inflation. Even Europe, hamstrung from its self-imposed injury from boycotting Russian food and energy, which caused its economy to stagnate last year, is looking stronger as 2024 proceeds. A tick up in economic activity in the US and Europe, and UK, as well as signs of economic activity rising in China, is mutually reinforcing, despite the attempts to curtail global growth, via trade wars, being pursued by Biden and the US.

As I wrote some time ago, higher interest rates are not a mean of reducing inflation. To reduce inflation requires that the standard of prices not be devalued, which means not increasing the currency supply excessively. It is the policies of QT introduced by central banks, at a time of rising output that has slowed inflation, not higher interest rates. Higher interest rates were designed to slow the economy, and, thereby, to increase unemployment, stopping the rise in wages, which in turn feeds into demand for wage goods, and so further economic expansion. But, as I set out more than a year ago, that was not going to work in the current environment, and phase of the long wave either.

Real interest rates remained negative after inflation for a long time, after central banks began raising them. That meant that an incentive to consume both productively and personally continued. Raising interest rates to a positive level would have required raising them above CPI, which would have cratered asset prices, causing a new global financial crisis. As it is the rise in interest rates caused asset prices to fall by around 30%, and up to 40% in real terms, though, as the idea that central banks may start to cut rates has taken hold, those asset prices have recovered, at least in nominal terms.

One means of those rising rates slowing the economy, via reducing household consumption was expected to be the effect on mortgage rates. As households faced much larger monthly mortgage payments, it was thought that this would mean they had less money to spend on other forms of consumption. It didn't work out like that. Firstly, higher monthly mortgage payments meant that new buyers could offer much less for houses, causing house prices to fall. So, for these buyers they had the same amount as before to spend on other things. Secondly, in conditions of labour shortages, workers have been able to respond to higher mortgage and rent payments in the same way as for any other prices, by requiring even higher wages.

But, also, for many years, following 2008, savers were offered negligible rates of interest on their savings. In the last year, banks were forced to significantly raise their nominal rates on savings accounts. Although, these remained negative, whilst inflation was running at 10% plus, and led to banks offering relatively high, fixed rates on savings for 1,2 and 3 years, in the expectation that rates could go higher still, when, in fact, inflation began to drop, they found themselves tied into these fixed savings rates, which had now become noticeably positive. For example, NS&I, last year offered a one year fixed rate savings bond, paying 6.2%, which with CPI, now, running at 3.2%, means a positive 3% rate of interest.

Consequently, many people who had savings, have found that they have gone from getting no interest on them, to now receiving sizeable amounts, and that is money that they now have to spend. Some of those that had turned to becoming buy-to-let landlords, as a result of the negligible amounts of interest on their savings, now have a significant incentive to sell those properties, and just stick the money in the bank. Even with banks having reduced their savings rates to around 4%, a buy-to-let landlord with £300,000 tied up in properties, would get £12,000 in interest, if they sold the properties and put the money in the bank, with no hassle, and no prospect of sustaining large capital losses, when asset prices crash.

With Minimum Wages having risen, and the pensions Triple Lock in place, there is a lot more increases in household revenues to come. With the economy picking up, and labour shortages growing, wages, particularly in the private sector, are likely to rise faster than prices for some time to come. The laggard is the state sector, where, despite the much higher levels of unionisation, workers have seen their pay rise much less than in the non-state sector, largely because of the ineffectiveness of union bureaucrats that have persisted with useless and demoralising one-day protest strikes, rather than all out strikes. That is unlikely to continue in the next year, as a new round of pay negotiations runs into the existing unresolved negotiations. Workers, now, in a stronger position are unlikely to put up with that, and begin replacing those leaders with a new leadership, a process that also needs to be carried forward into the Labour Party.

Wage-labour and Capital, Section III - Part 5 of 5

At the end of the year, the worker has consumed their wages, to live, and must sell their labour-power, once again. Capital, by this process, has not only had the value of its stock of constant capital preserved and transferred into production, but has had that stock, thereby, physically replaced. It has also had its stock of wage goods (variable-capital) physically replaced, which is now ready to employ labour, once again, in the coming year. In addition, it has had its own personal consumption needs met, by the workers' surplus labour, and with enough left over for it to also buy additional factories, machines, materials, and to employ additional workers, so as to produce even more profit in the next year.

“Thus Capital presupposes wage-labour; wage-labour presupposes capital. They reciprocally condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other.

Does a worker in a cotton factory produce merely cotton textiles? No. He produces capital. He produces values which serve afresh to command his labour and by means of it now to create values.

Capital can only increase by exchanging itself for labour-power, by calling wage-labour to life. The labour-power of the wage-worker can only be exchanged for capital by increasing capital, by strengthening the power whose slave it is. Hence, increase of capital is increase of the proletariat, that is of the working class.” (p 31).

This forms the objective basis of the ideas of social-democracy. For Sismondi, he could only see this exploitation of the working-class, and so opposed the development of capital. He did not see that this very process, by also developing the forces of production, and creating an expanding working-class, also creates the conditions for ending that exploitation, by transcending the limits imposed by capitalism. It was reactionary moralising, and the same continues, today. For example, its manifest in moralising attitudes that try to impose the standards of developed economies on to developing economies, whether in relation to employment of children, welfare, or environmental standards.

Yet, the developed economies did not, and could not abide by such standards when they were industrialising, and can do so, now, only because of a long period of accumulating the proceeds of past labour, into vast amounts of labour-saving fixed capital that has raised social productivity, and rate of surplus value above that in developing economies. Imperialism, itself, utilises such moralising to its benefit, because, of course, small, domestic producers cannot meet these developed world standards, which leaves open vast reserves of labour-power to be employed by multinational capital, in those countries, in large, modern factories, with high levels of productivity, which can meet those standards.

“The interests of the capitalist and those of the worker are, therefore, one and the same, assert the bourgeois and their economists. Indeed! The worker perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour-power and, in order to exploit it, it must buy it. The faster capital intended for production, productive capital, increases, the more, therefore, industry prospers, the more the bourgeoisie enriches itself and the better business is, the more workers does the capitalist need, the more dearly does the worker sell himself.

The indispensable condition for a tolerable situation of the worker is, therefore, the fastest possible growth of productive-capital.” (p 30-31)

And, that is true so long as capitalism persists, but, so long as it persists, although it creates these most favourable conditions, and rising living standards, as described by The Civilising Mission of Capital, the fundamental contradiction, inherent within it, means that it is subject to repeated cyclical crises. The solution to that resides in going beyond capitalism to socialism, but the road to that socialism resides not in a reactionary attempt to hold back or resist capitalist development as the petty-bourgeois moralists and “anti-capitalists” seek to do, but to embrace its progressive elements, and to push them forwards.

As Marx put it in his Speech On Free Trade,

“But, in general, the protective system of our day is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution. It is in this revolutionary sense alone, gentlemen, that I vote in favour of free trade.”

So long as capitalism exists, these contradictions persist. The best conditions for workers, within it, are those in which capital expands freely and rapidly, but those conditions imply, also, the continued and more extensive exploitation of labour, and to inevitable crises and periods of unemployment, stagnation and misery, as well as towards now threatening humanity with nuclear extinction.

“To say that the interests of capital and those of the workers are one and the same, is only to say that capital and wage-labour are two sides of one and the same relation. The one conditions the other just as usurer and squanderer condition each other.

As long as the wage-worker is a wage-worker, his lot depends upon capital. That is the much-vaunted community of interests between worker and capitalist.” (p 32)

Back To Part 4

Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 15 of 19

As noted in an earlier link to a previous post, every moment of time contains a past, present and future. The process of deindustrialisation, in the 1980's/90's, in developed economies, increased the social weight of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, as its already sizeable numbers increased by another 50%. It was this that enabled, in the late 1980's, that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie to exert its influence inside the Conservative Party, in Britain. Thatcher went from being a representative of conservative social-democracy (neo-liberalism), and prominent advocate of a European Single Market, to being a reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist, increasingly the figurehead for a growing Euroscepticism inside the party.

The US already existed as a large, single market. Its Civil War, just as with the European Wars, most notably that of 1914-18, and its continuation in 1939-45, was fought precisely for this purpose of establishing such a single state and single market. But, neither was fully completed. As Engels noted, the federal nature of the US already acted as an impediment on the further development of capital, and the reality of that has been seen, as the forces of petty-bourgeois reaction, based around Trump, continue to utilise the division between the states and states' rights, as against the federal state. In the EU, the continued role of the separate interests of nation states, has held back its process of political union, and the strengthened position of the petty-bourgeoisie, has been significant in that, whether in the form of UKIP in Britain, Le Pen in France, or other similar forces.

It is precisely, in this realm of bourgeois-democracy, of parliamentary elections, that the strength of the petty-bourgeoisie resides, just as, in the past, as Lenin and Trotsky described, it was where the strength of the peasantry resided. It is in this realm that the numbers of the petty-bourgeoisie count, especially when supplemented by its attendant social layers from amongst the lumpen proletariat, the backward sections of the working-class, and so on.

With the working-class severely weakened, from the 1980's onwards, the main class battles have taken place between this reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, and its parties, against the ruling-class and professional middle-class, and its parties and its state. The bourgeoisie has been consistently losing those battles, because the one thing that enabled it to win them, since the 19th century, as described by Engels, in his later prefaces to The Condition of the Working Class, social-democracy, which enabled it to mobilise the votes of millions of workers, has itself been compromised by the failure of conservative social-democracy, and its hostility towards progressive social democracy, which it conflates with socialism. In fact, what would, at least temporarily, save that bourgeoisie, is progressive social-democracy, just as it did after WWII.

Progressive social-democracy, represents the objective interests of large-scale socialised capital, and, thereby, of its collective owners, the working-class. Those interests not only involve a continuation of the process of creating larger single markets, and globalisation, but of all the measures of increased planning, regulation and standardisation that goes with it, as described by Trotsky in the quote above. That is most certainly in the interests of the workers, and of the global ruling class, and hostile to the interests of the reactionary nationalist petty-bourgeoisie, as represented by the likes of the Tories, and now Blue Labour in Britain, as well as by both Trump and Biden in the US and so on.

So, why do these mainstream politicians pursue these positions, hostile to the workers and the ruling class? Precisely, because the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie has grown since the 1980's, to form such a sizeable electoral bloc, which, with the attendant layers of lumpen elements, and backward sections of workers, cannot be ignored by those parties, if they want to get elected, and careerist politicians do want to get elected, no matter what they have to say to achieve it. In Britain, the petty-bourgeoisie, alone, accounts for around 15 million votes, and made up the votes for Brexit, and for Boris Johnson.

But, as the experience of Brexit in general, and of the Truss fiasco, in particular, showed, this reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism can offer no way forward. Those that actually believe in it, inevitably fail, whilst those that don't, but who feel compelled to clothe themselves in it, not only also fail, but, in office, must betray those they tried to mislead, and must resort to bureaucratic and authoritarian means to implement the policies that reality, and the needs of that large-scale capital, imposes on them. It requires those authoritarian, Bonapartist methods, not only to sustain itself against that reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, but also against a rising working-class, for which it has no solutions, and upon which it has imposed the costs of its own failures, and requirement to bail out the ruling class's gambling losses.

Progressive social-democracy, going back to the latter part of the 19th century, as described by Engels, brought a significant increase in the concentration and centralisation of capital, but also a significant increase in the accumulation of capital, in a period of extensive accumulation. The same thing was seen after WWII. But, the 1920's and 30's highlighted the problem for the ruling class. This process of extensive accumulation, strengthens the social weight of the working-class, and all of the attendant measures of state intervention, of greater standardisation, regulation and planning, required by the large-scale capital, represent, as Marx and Engels describe, the encroachment of the coming socialist society on the existing bourgeois society.

The fact that the capitalists exist only as a bunch of money-lending parasites, whilst the day to day management of businesses has passed to an expanding, middle-class of professional managers and administrators, themselves largely drawn from the ranks of the working-class, shows to workers, in practice, that they do not need the ruling-class, and that rationally, they should simply exercise their own democratic control over their collective capital, as, indeed, they do in the worker cooperatives. The logic of that was set out in Anti-Duhring, that the ruling class, should simply wither away, having become just a class of “coupon-clippers”, living off the interest/dividends on their bonds and shares, an amount that should decline over time, as the workers simply allocate the additional money-capital required for investment out of their retained profits, rather than any need to borrow from the ruling-class.

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