Taaffe on killer robots

Paul Mason Post-Capitalism

Old ideas tend to resurface during periods of capitalist crisis and the appearance of the book by Paul Mason, economics editor of Channel 4, titled Post-Capitalism: A Guide to Our Future has rekindled the idea that new technology will somehow transform capitalism as we know it.

This is a pretty old idea and is based on the premise that the major factor determining economic development is the advent of new technology. Mason’s book has had a mixed reception and generated a fair bit of controversy but now the towering figure of Peter Taaffe, the Generalissimo of the CWI , has entered the fray to share his wisdom. Mason took note on Twitter…CWI leader Peter Taaffe discusses work by me and Rifkin.

Peter Taaffe: Pre-retirement Philosophising

In a rambling interview published on Socialist World Peter gives us some of his home spun philosophy on Will robots end capitalism? Peter is coming to the end of his very lengthy political career. As he points out himself when answering a question posed by Stephen Hawking that:

..as early as within 30 years. Machines will be more intelligent than humans, be able to develop by themselves, and possibly destroy and supersede humanity.

Peter reflects deeply and opines:

There is the danger of that. Maybe I couldn’t give you a timescale; I won’t be around by then. So I will not have to deal with the consequences of that question. However, humanity’s posterity will be much more intelligent than us as well.

Not as bright as an earthworm

Let’s get this one out of the way immediately because, fortunately, Peter is no philosopher of science. In fact he’s no philosopher at all. Machines have not one iota of “intelligence”. In order for anything to be intelligent it must be conscious and machines, no matter how sophisticated and complex, don’t think and can’t make rational decisions. The most high-powered modern computer doesn’t have the consciousness of an earth-worm.

Wittgenstein

As the philosopher Wittgenstein noted:

Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves likes) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious.

The whole discussion about the intelligence of machines superseding human intelligence is based on a misconception. The basic idea being that the human brain is a form of computer and therefore with the development of computer technology we are replicating mechanical versions of brains that have the attribute of human intelligence. However the human brain is not a computer, it is part of a human being that has sentience, consciousness, intentionality and, perhaps more importantly, an ability to make judgements about what is right and wrong.

A US drone, for example, doesn’t “identify” a target and then “decide” to attack it. It doesn’t “calculate” anything and it doesn’t “know” what it’s doing. Presently philosophers cannot even agree on what human consciousness is and how it arises. Given that no machine can have any of the crucial attributes of being human, including consciousness or intelligence, then the idea that they can be more intelligent than humanity in 30 years is pure Sci-Fi baloney or pop psychology for the uninformed.

Taaffe: Mason agrees with me and Marx?

What other pearls of wisdom does Peter give us? In relation to Mason’s book Peter comes out with an amazing statement:

What Mason begins to touch upon is fascinating. He in fact agrees with us, agrees with a Marxist analysis, that the process of production is reducing the costs of the capitalists to zero or near-zero. As a result, the lifeblood of capitalism, which is profitability, will be sucked out of the system. (!!!!)

Mason agrees with Peter Taaffe and with a Marxist analysis! Lest it be forgotten I am currently suspended as a member of the CWI (for a year and a half now) for alleged dogmatism (and ultra-leftism of course) for arguing that the current capitalist crisis is largely due to precisely this problem in the form of a falling rate of profit.

Peter, to the contrary, says there is “no problem” with capitalist profitability and that this current crisis is due to a lack of demand and deflation. For instance in 2012 Peter stated in a letter in reply to John Smithee:

‘Therefore this crisis is not primarily one of ‘profitability’, as John seems to imply. There are many and differing factors that can lead to or be the immediate cause of a capitalist crisis. The capitalists are presently swimming, literally drowning, in profits. In our Socialism Today article we underestimated the amount of unused capital, profits, stashed in the vaults of the big companies. Latest figures show that £750 billion is ‘fallow’ – not being invested by the capitalists – in Britain alone. It is a huge $2 trillion in the US! The capitalists refuse to invest because there is no ‘profitable outlet’. In this sense, it is a crisis of ‘profitability’. Not because profits have dropped or there is a ‘tendency’ for the rate of profit to decline. Both the rate and the absolute amount of profit have increased, it seems, even during this terrible crisis. (my emphasis) ’

So much for profitability being “sucked out of the system”? It may be possible for it to be “sucked out” sometime in the future when killer robots take over human civilisation but not now? In fact Peter said earlier this year that there was no problem with profits and that this had been “proved” during the profits debate in the CWI. Peter proved his point and “won” the debate with the suspension of myself and Steve Dobbs. Talk about having your cake and eating it too!

Marx: limits of capitalism

Anyway enough of this twaddle what did Karl Marx say about the limits to capitalist production based on mechanisation:

“At any rate, it is but a requirement of the capitalist mode of production that the number of wage-workers should increase absolutely, in spite of its relative decrease. Labour-power becomes redundant for it as soon as it is no longer necessary to employ it for 12 to 15 hours daily. A development of productive forces which would diminish the absolute number of labourers, i.e., enable the entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time span, would cause a revolution, because it would put the bulk of the population out of the running. This is another manifestation of the specific barrier of capitalist production, showing also that capitalist production is by no means an absolute form for the development of the productive forces and for the creation of wealth, but rather that at a certain point it comes into collision with this development. This collision appears partly in periodical crises, which arise from the circumstance that now this and now that portion of the labouring population becomes redundant under its old mode of employment. The limit of capitalist production is the excess time of the labourers. The absolute spare time gained by society does not concern it. The development of productivity concerns it only in so far as it increases the surplus labour-time of the working-class, not because it decreases the labour-time for material production in general. It moves thus in a contradiction.” (Capital Vol III Chapter 15 Supplementary Remarks on the Internal Contradictions of the Law of the Falling Rate of Profit)

Post-capitalism isn’t possible within the confines of value production and this is the key. The reason why it isn’t possible is because the system depends upon the extraction of surplus value from the working class which determines the rate of profit as its sole reason for existence. As Marx puts it:

The purpose of capitalist production, however, is self-expansion of capital, i.e., appropriation of surplus-labour, production of surplus-value, of profit. (Capital Vol III on the Internal Contradictions of the Law of the Falling Rate of Profit)

And it must be stressed that it isn’t technological innovation that leads to booms in capitalist production but rather the rate of profit which determines innovation. A low or falling rate of profit curtails productive investment and blocks innovation. Only when the rate of profit is restored through crisis does innovation in new methods of production take place. The motive force of capitalist production is the rate of profit and only once crisis cleanses the system of dead labour, of capital value, can a boom begin on the basis of new technology.

However as Marx astutely observed:

And thus the cycle would run its course anew. Part of the capital, depreciated by its functional stagnation, would recover its old value. For the rest, the same vicious circle would be described once more under expanded conditions of production, with an expanded market and increased productive forces. (Capital Vol III Chapter 15 on the Internal Contradictions of the Law of the Falling Rate of Profit)

We should realise that the falling rate of profit is capitalism’s Achilles heel. The widespread introduction of robots in production will doom capitalism in the longer term and the reason will be a trend decline in the rate of profit leading to an eventual plunge in the rate of profit with a renewed economic crisis that surpasses in scope anything we have seen before.

Yet it isn’t robots themselves that will be the killer of capitalism but the working class that will put the diseased system out of its misery. In the interview Peter comes out with a real howler though. He suggests that the industrial working class has experienced a long-term weakening because of new technology.

This is partially true only in the advanced economies. And even there it’s questionable. The industrial working class in the USA, for example, is still about the same size it was in 1940 even if the population is much bigger. It is immeasurably more productive however and hence potentially more powerful. On a world scale the industrial working class is actually much bigger and has been strengthened massively in the emerging economies.

The industrial working class, on a global scale, is about double what it was during the post war boom in the 1950’s and 60’s. What is required is a rearming of this class with an ideology steeped in the scientific method of Marx’s critique of capitalism. Alas Peter doesn’t even understand this science but still enjoys a good thought experiment before retirement.

Anyway he thinks:

That is why one important aspect of our struggle is to reach students in the universities, but also Left intellectuals, scientists, futurologists. If they are won over from that milieu, and commit to the stand point of the mass of the working class, they could play a prominent role as yeast for the working class movement, particularly in this era.

Maybe Peter has in mind climate scientists like Jess Spear, or the economist Kshama Sawant, in the USA? They certainly are products of an academic petti-bourgeois milieu but obviously we are a bit short on “futurologists”.

Peter finishes with a definition of the meaning of the term “robot” and gazes into the cosmos:

The word Robot comes originally from a word with a similar meaning to slave (from Czech, ’Robota’ – serf-labour, drudgery). So will our slaves revolt? Will there be a new Spartacus? Will there be a new slaves’ revolt which will overthrow human kind, or will we develop alongside of these machines, in a harmonious relationship and conquer the planets?

As Shakespeare wrote:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Robots can never revolt, but the working class certainly can and will! Yet it won’t happen if the ideas of socialists are dominated by science fiction but only when they are armed with the true science of Marxism.

Going “ga ga” over Bernie

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I’ve taken a bit of a break from blogging recently mainly due to a bit of ill health and the summer hols but there appears to be some trouble brewing at mill. A stooshie developing within the CWI over embroilment in the campaign of the senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders to seek the Democratic nomination as Presidential candidate for the US election in 2016.

“You cannot be serious” as John McEnroe famously screamed. Apparently it is serious as an Executive Committee member of the US CWI section, Socialist Alternative (SAlt), is on a Bernie Sanders campaign committee!

This really is a totally opportunistic ploy by SAlt and confirms my fears of a serious lurch to the right by the leadership of the CWI internationally.

SA have even had the gall to publish an article on their website

“Working People Need to Organize Against the Billionaire Class”

where we read:

“Sawant Gives Socialist Welcome to Bernie Sanders”

“On Saturday August 8 the most well known socialists in the U.S., Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Seattle Socialist Alternative City Councilmember Kshama Sawant, will share the same stage to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Social Security and Medicare.

“It’s very exciting to have Sanders join us in Seattle. It’s a great opportunity to build the socialist movement to take on the billionaires that are strangling our economy and democracy. The support Sanders is receiving is a resounding confirmation of what my election showed in 2013 – people are hungry for an alternative to corporate politics,” remarked Councilmember Sawant.”

Marxist veteran scratches head along with a number of SAlt members in the USA methinks.

It has to be pointed out that Bernie Sanders is about as much a socialist as Tony Blair was. In fact even the Wall Street Journal had to ask “If he is a “socialist,” who isn’t?” Very true as the WSJ clarifies:

“He caucuses with Senate Democrats and attends their policy lunches, his committee assignments count against the Democrats’ quota, he reliably votes with Democrats and he is seeking the Democrats’ presidential nomination. He is a Democrat.”

Not according to SAlt Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant:

“I appeal to the thousands of supporters who have donated or volunteered for my campaign to join me at the Sanders rally. Let’s make Saturday’s rally a show of force to the billionaires who think they can buy our elections. Wear your 15 Now or campaign t-shirts and let’s greet Bernie Sanders with a sea of red supporters. Let’s show him how strong the socialist movement is in Seattle!” declared Councilmember Sawant.

Luv a duck can you believe this twaddle? A sea of red supporters for ….for…..a Democratic nominee for the US presidential election!!

Obviously Sawant distinguishes between members of the billionaire, as opposed to the millionaire, class. I mean Hilary Clinton, the odds on favourite for the Democratic nomination, has a $1 billion campaign chest while little ole Sanders can only scrape together $50 million. Despite Saunders repudiation of corporate cash he’s actually a left wing prop for Clinton as has even been acknowledged by the ex-board member of Walmart herself. Clinton tweeted when Sanders announced his nomination:

I agree with Bernie. Focus must be on helping America’s middle class. GOP would hold them back. I welcome him to the race. –H

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) April 30, 2015

And Bernie tweeted back:

Thanks @HillaryClinton. Looking forward to debating the big issues: income inequality, climate change & getting big money out of politics.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 30, 2015

If the truth be told the reason why Sawant can greet Saunders with such rapturous enthusiasm is because income inequality, climate change and getting big money out of politics really are her big issues too.

When Sawant was elected as a councilmember in Seattle I welcomed the result mainly because she stood independently of the capitalist parties and as a socialist. Now Sawant appears to be getting into bed with the left wing of the Democratic Party and the leadership of SA seems to be joining her.

This is gross class collaboration and opportunism at its very worst and doesn’t bode well for the prospects of SAlt as a genuine socialist force in the USA but what is behind their fawning of Sanders?

Basically the idea is this. Saunders mouths radical phrases about being against corporate big business and their control of politics and this strikes a chord with working class voters. Bernie says we need a “political revolution” so:

“Socialist Alternative welcomes Sanders’ decision to run for President to help create, as he says, “an independent voice, fighting for working families” to “bring the fight to the Koch brothers, Wall Street, and corporate America.” His campaign will give Hillary Clinton a much-deserved challenge and will widen the spectrum of political discussion, injecting some working-class reality into the increasingly surreal and narrow parameters of official debate.”

This is utter trash as Sanders is an excellent foil for Clinton and far from injecting working class reality into the Presidential election campaign his antics are a major barrier to workers drawing the political conclusion that the two party system in the USA is fundamentally against their interests.

Almost recognising this SAlt say:

“ In our view, however, Sanders is making a fundamental mistake by running in the Democratic Party primary. Instead, we have argued that he should run as an independent to help build a political alternative to the corporate-owned political parties. There is a glaring contradiction between Sanders’ call for a political revolution against the billionaire class and attempting to carry that out within a party controlled by that same billionaire class.”

Absolutely correct but then Sanders has no intention of running as an independent candidate as SAlt even acknowledge that “such a step would go against Sanders’ stated intention and his general political approach, but it cannot be excluded.”

So in spite of this glaringly obvious contradiction the strategy of SAlt is to hold joint rallies with Sanders during his campaign to gain the Democratic Party nomination in the belated hope that, once defeated by Clinton, he’ll decide to run as an independent!

Nevertheless the idea is touted that by getting involved in Sanders’ campaign it will bring together social movements like the $15 and hour now campaign, Black Lives Matter and so on who would debate and discuss what policies would be the best ones for an alternative working class party(?). Otherwise Sanders’ campaign will just lead to demoralistion and disillusion. So:

“In this way, Sanders’ campaign could play a critical role in helping to lay the basis for a new political party, a third party, to provide an alternative to the increasingly unpopular Republican and Democratic parties. A broad left-wing or working-class party would be an organization which brings together different struggles and generalizes from them a common set of interests, a political program.”

Here we can see the bankrupt perspective of the CWI in political action. With a perspective that sees no way of building independent working class parties on their own they must stake all on the establishment of “broad left-wing or working class parties” which they will then enter to influence but where is the impetus for them to come from?

In the USA they have decided to stake all on a phony “socialist” member of a party of the billionaires who will, through some form of mysterious political osmosis, give birth to a new political movement of the American working class. Dream on.

The debate is on!!

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Kliman vs. Taaffe / Walsh: The debate will go ahead whether the CWI leadership chooses to defend its position or not

On Saturday 27 June at Birkbeck College Andrew Kliman will take up an invitation to debate the causes of capitalist crisis which the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) first issued in 2013 but has since repeatedly reneged upon. Last month, deputy general secretary Hannah Sell sent a message to Kliman on behalf of Peter Taaffe and Lynn Walsh stating that ‘we feel there are no grounds for us to participate in your meeting on 27 June.’ But the debate is between two theoretical positions, not two people. It will go ahead, whether the Socialist Party’s Executive Committee chooses to defend its flawed position before the 146 attendees, including dozens of Socialist Party members, or not.

Sell’s letter states that ‘Peter Taaffe and Lynn Walsh’s document taking up your analysis of the causes of the crisis was published in September 2013. You have never produced a reply’. But Kliman did reply just weeks later in a two part article published on his blog (http://akliman.squarespace.com/). What is the point of this lie?

The organisers of this debate do not believe in the capability of Taaffe and Walsh to prove that a fall in the rate of profit did not precipitate the current crisis. But we believe that their position, which is widely held in the bourgeois press, deserves to be represented in this debate.

Many Socialist Party members agree with their leadership’s analysis of the crisis and support its political conclusions. To represent these views, a proxy for Taaffe and Walsh will represent the leadership’s position as faithfully as possible based on the written documents and video footage which is available.

We recognise that this is not ideal. The organisers of the debate therefore extend our invitation to debate the causes of capitalist crisis to any representative of the Socialist Party or of its sister parties in the Committee for a Workers’ International.

There are several thousand members of the CWI internationally. Many of them hold important elected positions in governments and trade unions. Surely, there is at least one member capable of defending the economic perspectives of his or her party, against the opinion of a well-known Marxist economist, in a democratic public forum.

There are 146 confirmed attendees for the debate, either attending in person or participating from all over the world via a live stream. They are attending because they understand the importance of understanding the causes of the crisis and wish to discuss the answers to these key questions:

Was the 2007-8 crisis caused by neoliberalism and financialisation or was it a result of the central contradictions of capitalism?
What is coming: stagnation, recovery or an even worse recession, and how do Marxists predict and respond to capitalist crises?
Are corporations drowning in profits and cash hoards which could be spent on stimulus programmes to ‘save’ the economy from another crisis?
Are crises caused by inequality or by the inherent contradictions of capitalist production?
How do we build consciousness and prepare the ground for revolution? By winning reforms and building mass reformist parties, or by challenging the basis of the capitalist system itself?

We believe that the inability of the Socialist Party’s leadership to attend a debate with a noted Marxist economist on the doorstep of its headquarters is an expression of its political and organisational weakness. Its Bolivian section, Alternativa Socialista Revolucionaria, announced its split from the CWI in May (http://alternativasocialistarevolucionaria.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/documento-de-ruptura-de-la-seccion.html). Electoral success in the USA has been marred by dismal failures in the UK and South Africa, high profile resignations in Ireland and the consistent wrong footing of the CWI across the world in its vocal support for pro-capitalist left parties which rapidly capitulate to the ruling class.

The most advanced sections of the emerging global working class are crying out for a revolutionary programme which is articulated properly. Instead, the CWI leadership offers radical Keynesian policies and presents its informal alliances with union bureaucrats and bourgeois parties as victories when they are really admissions of defeat. The failure of the Socialist Party EC to attend this debate highlights its intellectual poverty, its terminal aversion to debates which are not stage managed and its inadequacy when faced with the political tasks of the 21st century.

The overwhelming majority of CWI members are dedicated class fighters in the best traditions of revolutionary Marxism. If any one of them would like to represent the CWI in this debate, we warmly invite you to contact us via the official Facebook event.

The debate takes place at Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, Room B36, and begins at 6.30pm.

We hope to see you there.

When cowards flinch

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Predictably the leadership of the Socialist Party have refused Andrew Kliman’s invitation to finally debate the causes of the capitalist crisis with him in London.

Unlike excellent SP rank-and-file members and ex-members, the SP leadership are quite good at bending facts when it suits them. Just to be absolutely clear, it was the SP who challenged Kliman to debate the causes of the capitalist crisis back in 2013. They then conducted an internal “debate” within their ranks that was totally confined to party members. The reason for this was almost certainly their inability to meet the arguments of a Marxist theorist in open debate.

Hannah Sell replies

Now assistant SP general secretary Hannah Sell has replied to Kliman’s invite to the June 27th debate as follows:

“Dear Andrew Kliman,

You wrote to the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party on 23 April, 2015 supposedly to invite Peter Taaffe or Lynn Walsh to participate in a debate with you on the causes of the capitalist crisis. Your email simply asserts that: “The debate will take place on the evening of Saturday, 27 June”. You have now started to advertise this event without first finding out if a representative of our party is intending to attend.

We will not be doing so. Peter Taaffe and Lynn Walsh’s document taking up your analysis of the causes of the crisis was published in September 2013. You have never produced a reply. In the meantime, however, we have had an extensive discussion on the issue within our party. A small group (less than ten) Socialist Party members who agreed with your views on these issues were given every opportunity to argue their case. Four members’ bulletins were produced on the debate, with a total of 77,410 words, 45,659 of which were written by comrades who agreed with your economic analysis. Eight regional democratic internal debates were organised.

All of the debates have been conducted in the traditions of our organisation with equal time for both sides and comradely discussion.

Despite this extensive discussion, the comrades putting forward your view were not able to win any wider support for their analysis within the Socialist Party. We are always willing to debate with political trends that represent a serious force within the workers’ movement. However, as this is not the case with your grouping, and there is no demand among Socialist Party members for another debate on these issues, we feel there are no grounds for us to participate in your meeting on 27 June.

yours comradely,

Hannah Sell
For the Socialist Party EC”

A worthy reply from a grouping (at the summit of the party) that has absolutely no confidence in its ideas whatsoever. There are a number of outright factual inaccuracies in this reply and some subtle distortions that I will deal with below. However if Andrew Kliman is not worth debating who will the SP leadership actually debate with? I can only think of two examples in recent history.

Comrade Delta

Martin Smith the “indispensable comrade” of the SWP central committee was debated by non-other than Hannah Sell in 2008 but the SP put up the video of the debate in 2012. Unfortunately comrade Delta (Smith) resigned from the SWP in 2013 after the awful truth about his violence towards women emerged.

It could be argued that Smith did represent a “serious force” within the worker’s movement (the SWP) although he definitely posed a serious threat to women everywhere.

Owen Jones

At Socialism 2012 Clive Heemskirk for the SP debated Owen Jones the author of Chavs. Jones didn’t represent a “serious force” in the labour movement. He is a journalist and writer. A member of the Labour Party, he was opposed to the idea of needing to create a new worker’s party. The main reason that the SP invited Jones to debate was because he was a personality on the left and appeared on TV a lot plus was a writer for the Guardian.

This brings me to the reason behind the refusal to debate with Andrew Kliman after the SP issued him with the challenge. The main reason that neither Peter Taaffe or Lynn Walsh will not turn up to debate with Andrew Kliman is because both of these leaders of the SP would simply be unable to win in a public debate with him.

Whereas Martin Smith was a pushover and Jones’ arguments were easy to counter, they are frightened of Andrew Kliman and they don’t like a fair fight. Especially when open to the movement as opposed to within the closed ranks of the party. This represents a chronic aversion to debates where the outcome is not assured in advance – even TUSC’s Facebook group must be made an official secret!

As for the letter from Hannah:

The invitation from Andrew is genuinely and not ‘supposedly’ inviting the SP to take part in the debate.
The document written by Peter and Lynn criticising Andrew WAS replied to by Andrew so this is just a factual inaccuracy.
Moreover Hannah suggests that, during the internal “debate” within the SP, the opposition were putting forward Andrew’s views. This is also untrue. The comrades who disagreed with the SP leadership on the causes of the capitalist crisis were putting forward their own views!

Andrew Kliman is a Marxist who has spent his entire working life attempting to defend the ideas of Karl Marx. His book The Failure of Capitalist Production is one of the most controversial books on the current capitalist crisis and will be remembered long after Owen Jones’ Chavs has been pulped.

The reason the SP will not engage in debate with him is because they risk being shown up in front of other SP members and activists in the movement for their lack of understanding of the causes of the crisis and of Marxist economics.

The invitation still stands and the event will go ahead. 138 people, including dozens of Socialist Party and CWI members, have indicated clearly that they would like to attend this debate. It is clearly still of great interest to the membership and the wider movement that the debate which the SP leadership promised back in 2013 finally takes place!

Do you accept the reason given by the SP leadership for not attending and refusing even to send a single representative to defend their views – even when so many SP members want to see this happen?

If you are an SP member who wants to understand what causes capitalist crisis then come along and find out why the work of Andrew Kliman is so important.

Andrew Kliman

“The Causes of the Capitalist Crisis: Andrew Kliman debates Peter Taaffe and/or Lynn Walsh (invited)”

Birkbeck

University of London

Malet St

Room B36

Sat 27 Jun 18.30-21.30

Open to all socialists and activists in the movement.

Time for discussion and questions.

Sponsored by Marxist Discussion Group (economics) and independent Marxists

“The Causes of the Capitalist Crisis: Andrew Kliman debates Peter Taaffe and/or Lynn Walsh (invited)”

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The American economist and author of the controversial The Failure of Capitalist Production is meeting the challenge to debate the causes of capitalist crisis issued by the Socialist Party of England and Wales.

As the Socialist Party declared in 2013:

“We have never avoided debates on important issues, and will not do so on this occasion.” It invited Kliman to two public debates, one in London and one in the U.S.

Now the Socialist Party have the opportunity to defend their conception of the crisis. Both Peter Taaffe, SP General Secretary and Lynne Walsh of the SP EC are invited. Andrew Kliman has confirmed his attendance travelling from New York to London for the challenge.

“The Causes of the Capitalist Crisis: Andrew Kliman debates Peter Taaffe and/or Lynn Walsh (invited)”

Birkbeck

University of London

Malet St

Room B36

Sat 27 Jun 18.30-21.30

Open to all socialists and activists in the movement.

Time for discussion and questions.

Mutilating Marxism a la Taaffe

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Peter Taaffe

As the UK general election draws near this is my 150th blog post and the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of England and Wales for 50 years (or is it 51?) Peter Taaffe has attempted to inject some gravitas into the campaign with a pocket critique of capitalism.

In Socialist plan or capitalist chaos the septuagenarian generalissimo has a stab at trying to express the essence of Marxism in relation to the capitalist mode of production. Needless to say Peter produces a complete abortion. It isn’t the world according to Karl Marx but a Taaffeian take on what he thinks Marx argued. Read this:

“Profit, said Karl Marx, is “unpaid labour”, that portion of the wealth which working people create but that they don’t receive in wages. This ‘surplus value’ is then divided into rent for the landlords, interest for the bankers and the rest pocketed by the industrial and other capitalists.

Most of this profit, in the heyday of capitalism in the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, was ploughed back, through investment in factories and other means of production. Only a portion was kept back for luxuries, to enhance the lifestyle of the ‘have yachts’. Their historical function, said Marx, was as “trustees” for the development of capitalist production. They achieved this for a time by investing this surplus into production, so ensuring that the system was driven forward.

However, capitalism reveals today that it has reached a dead end. It is no longer a progressive system as capitalist ownership of industry, and thereby the domination of society, exercises an enormous drag on the further progress of society. This is revealed strikingly in the facts and figures supplied by the capitalists and their media.”

One can only scratch one’s head at such waffle.

I get described as a dogmatist by Peter Taaffe and his coterie. I have also been said to believe in a catastrophic perspective for capitalism. Yet according to Peter today capitalism bears no resemblance to its youth, or even the period of the post war boom of the 1950’s and 1960’s. It’s at a “dead end” he says. What this means remains a complete mystery because if there has ever been a period when the capitalism has come to dominate on a global level it is now. Moreover, in general terms, the world capitalist economy has, since 1980, gone through its greatest general expansion in World history even if economic growth has been weak.

With the demise of the worker’s states and the rise of capitalism in the ex-colonial world, but especially in China and S.East Asia, world capitalist economic output is greater by many orders of magnitude in comparison to the 1950’s and 1960’s. Capitalist economists call this economic growth but Marxists refer to it as the accumulation of capital through the self-expansion of value.

As Marx explained

As Marx explained in Volume III of Capital:

“On the other hand, the rate of self-expansion of the total capital, or the rate of profit, being the goad of capitalist production (just as self-expansion of capital is its only purpose), its fall checks the formation of new independent capitals and thus appears as a threat to the development of the capitalist production process. It breeds over-production, speculation, crises, and surplus-capital alongside surplus-population. Those economists, therefore, who, like Ricardo, regard the capitalist mode of production as absolute, feel at this point that it creates a barrier itself, and for this reason attribute the barrier to Nature (in the theory of rent), not to production. But the main thing about their horror of the falling rate of profit is the feeling that capitalist production meets in the development of its productive forces a barrier which has nothing to do with the production of wealth as such; and this peculiar barrier testifies to the limitations and to the merely historical, transitory character of the capitalist mode of production; testifies that for the production of wealth, it is not an absolute mode, moreover, that at a certain stage it rather conflicts with its further development.”

If, as our sage suggests, capitalism is at a “dead end”, how has this come about, how is it manifested and through what mechanism?

In truth capitalism isn’t at a “dead end” at all it is in crisis. The financial crisis itself may be 7-8 years old but resonates still while much of capitalism remains in a global crawl.

Whether capitalism is in a Long Depression or, as some refer to it, a period of secular stagnation, remains a hot topic of disagreement amongst economists but the fact is that the world economy has not recovered from the crisis and trend growth is at a slower rate than before it. It is therefore at a stage of conflict with its own further development.

The mechanism of the crisis is exactly as Marx discovered; in the falling rate of profit. Not one bit of it says Peter.

“We read that profits are booming but they are not being invested back into production. Instead, they are stashed away in cash piles, amounting to a huge $7 trillion at least worldwide – more than one third of what the US produces in a year! Clearly, the capitalists are betraying their ‘mission’ to develop production and thereby society. Don’t take our word for it – look at what their friends in the media say!

The Financial Times, house journal of the big financiers, wails about “shareholder pay outs of up to $1 trillion to ‘blue-chip’ firms.” The same paper complains: “The buybacks [are seen] as rewarding company executives and their share option plans, and argue that a focus on shareholder returns at the expense of investment could damage the performance of the economy in the future.””

Peter appears to survive on a diet of press cuttings from the Financial Times and other bourgeois sources. Don’t take Karl Marx’s word for it read the Financial Times!

Marx the dogmatist explained the reason behind cash hoarding by the capitalists as being caused by the fall in the rate of profit:

“The market must, therefore, be continually extended, so that its interrelations and the conditions regulating them assume more and more the form of a natural law working independently of the producer, and become ever more uncontrollable. This internal contradiction seeks to resolve itself through expansion of the outlying field of production. But the more productiveness develops, the more it finds itself at variance with the narrow basis on which the conditions of consumption rest. It is no contradiction at all on this self-contradictory basis that there should be an excess of capital simultaneously with a growing surplus of population.”

To the contrary Peter puts the crisis down to the betrayal of the capitalist class for ditching their historic mission. Like they just decided it’s better to languish on a yacht than bothering to spend time going to the factory to see how the slaves are getting on. Their historic mission is to develop the productive forces but today’s capitalists aren’t like the frugal ones of old as they are now luxury loving yacht owners. At least the old capitalists built factories like when Peter was a lad. Nowadays they just don’t invest any money at all but hide it under their bed (or bunk).

This does beg the question. If profits are booming and profits are, as Peter says, the “unpaid labour” of the working class that are divided up between rent for the landlords, interest for the bankers and profit for the capitalists where are the booming profits coming from?

Profits out of thin air

In order for profits to be made commodities and services have to be produced and then they have to be sold. For them to be produced in the first place means of production have to be bought and labour power put to work. The capitalists must therefore advance capital in the form of investment if capital is to expand. Marx called this expanded reproduction. If profits are booming, as Peter suggests, this can only mean that capital is expanding and therefore we have growth in the economy.

It is true that productive investment is at a relatively low level in comparison with the pre-crisis period but that is exactly what happens in a crisis. If we apply Peter’s idea of capitalism being at a dead end then wasn’t it at a dead end in the Great Depression of the 1930’s when you had mass unemployment and masses of idle capital? World capitalism found a way out of that crisis through war before entering a period of global expansion.

Profits, Peter, don’t come out of thin air! And if they are booming that would mean that capitalism is healthy while it is anything but. Like an old man who has had a serious bout of flu the system staggers on unable to regain its vitality. The reason is due to the low rate of profit because it is the motive force of capitalist production. Were the rate of profit high capitalism would be in rampant growth but it isn’t.

I may be regarded as a dogmatist but at least I’m not saying, unlike Peter, that capitalism is in the end of days. What a catastrophist conclusion!!

Peter longs for the clarity of bygone days when the capitalists were good investors and hence progressive. If only they would come back everything would be great! All that money in the banks would be invested and everybody would get a £20 minimum wage instead of, as the Financial Times comments, “causing damage the performance of the economy in the future”! Meanwhile the capitalists would sell their yachts and live on gruel. That’s socialism for yah.

There is no such thing as the economy and, on the other hand, capitalism. There is the capitalist mode of production and that IS the economy. This is a basic concept Peter hasn’t even grasped.

This latest foray of Peter into the basics of Marxist economics just shows his total ignorance of Marxist ideas. He clings to the lead off sound bites and Marxist phrases that have served him so well, for sooooo long, but clearly he hasn’t got a clue what he’s talking about.

Oh and don’t forget to vote TUSC on 7^th May.

Taaffe is back denouncing dogmatists

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Peter Taaffe has something on the brain like a worm that is burrowing away causing mental spasms. This is accompanied by an irrational fear of dogmatism and dogmatists that can also make itself apparent whenever Taaffe tries to discuss the crisis of capitalism.

Main target Varoufakis

On this occasion Peter is addressing the fake Marxism of the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis in an article in Socialism Today. Varoufarkis is far from being a Marxist and is a typical Keynsian economist who uses left phraseology. Peter has Varoufarkis in his sights but he also has a secondary target at the same time as becomes apparent.

Peter displays his profound grasp of Marxist economics in his criticism:

“Varoufakis describes himself in his speech as an “erratic Marxist”. His analysis is certainly erratic and not in any way consistent with the demands of the working class and labour movement of Greece. There are scraps of ‘Marxism’ in his analysis, from Marxist economic writings, for instance, which are not at all completely correct. But even more alarming, given his prominent position in the government, is his conclusion that it is necessary to rescue European capitalism, from ‘itself’.”

While the article is supposedly about Greece it has to be one of the most rambling efforts in a long time from Peter as he delves into the history of the European revolution from 1914 to the Second World War onto the failure of the Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International to find explanatory analogies for who knows what? Peter is all over the place…literally.

Taaffe: “one-sided, non-dialectical fashion”

Then, all of a sudden, Peter lets fly:

“Varoufakis also states: “This determination to have the complete, closed story, or model, the final word, is something I cannot forgive Marx for”. But Marxism is not a closed system. It is a flexible method of analysis, tested and verified against experience. In the hands of a good worker it can be a useful and necessary tool, but with a bad worker produces a bad output. Moreover, dogmatists, who have very little in common with genuine Marxism, can interpret ideas in a one-sided, non-dialectical fashion. We have made clear in Socialism Today that we disagree with those who seek to mechanically impose some alleged ‘laws’ on living reality – such as the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which is not the explanation for the present crisis. Although we defend Marx’s basic proposition on the tendency of the rate of profit to decline, we profoundly disagree with this as the sole explanation, as some do, for the current crisis of capitalism.”

I wonder who the “dogmatists”, who have “very little in common with genuine Marxism”, are? Could Peter be referring to me and others? Probably but let me just burst Peter’s bubble of nonsense.

Marx “law of motion”

It must have escaped Peter’s attention that Karl Marx himself stated quite clearly in the preface to Capital Volume I in 1867:

“And even when a society has got upon the right track for the discovery of the natural laws of its movement — and it is the ultimate aim of this work, to lay bare the economic law of motion of modern society — it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal development. But it can shorten and lessen the birth-pangs.”

What a dunderhead Marx must have been attempting to mechanically impose alleged “laws” on living reality like, The Law of Value, The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation and The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall.

Yet all bow to the supreme wisdom of Taaffe because “we” defend Marx’s basic proposition he says. Marx’s basic proposition being:

‘’But proceeding from the nature of the capitalist mode of production, it is thereby proved a logical necessity that in its development the general average rate of surplus-value must express itself in a falling general rate of profit. Since the mass of the employed living labour is continually on the decline as compared to the mass of materialised labour set in motion by it, i.e., to the productively consumed means of production, it follows that the portion of living labour, unpaid and congealed in surplus-value, must also be continually on the decrease compared to the amount of value represented by the invested total capital. Since the ratio of the mass of surplus-value to the value of the invested total capital forms the rate of profit, this rate must constantly fall.” (Marx, 1894)

Moreover the rest of Peter’s rambling effluvia just expresses how desperate he’s getting. Those comrade dogmatists (suspended for publically questioning the all-knowing wisdom of the leader) who support the application of the explanatory power of Marx’s Capital to the crisis do not, as Peter lies through his teeth, believe that the falling rate of profit is “the sole explanation” for the current crisis.

The effect of the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is the underlying and indirect cause of the crisis. In other words an explanation for the crisis must, by definition, refer to the operation of the law but is not the “sole” explanation for it. Nobody, absolutely nobody, believes that the law is the sole explanation for the crisis. One reason Peter doesn’t name any of the dogmatists is because they don’t really exist but are a figment of Peter’s aging imagination or a suitable talisman to warn off the faithful.

Surely there can’t be more dogmatists being anointed within the ranks of the CWI? Heaven forbid.

I won’t labour the point but clearly Peter Taaffe has lost the plot. He hasn’t got a clue what the laws of motion of capitalism are as discovered by Marx.

If I am a dogmatist so be it because I’d rather adhere to the scientific dogma of Marx than the back of a fag packet explanations of the, all rounded, dialectical, good worker Peter Taaffe.

Two years on and Irish eyes are smiling

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Karl Marx once remarked that the mole of revolution could disappear for long periods and then, all of a sudden, reappear in the most unexpected places.

Readers of this blog should be aware of the polemic I have been waging for well over two years in relation to the erroneous economic analysis held by the leadership of the CWI.

In my view, and that of others, the leadership of the CWI are in a state of denial about the real cause of the ongoing capitalist crisis and maintain a vulgar non Marxist conception of it that is based on bourgeois economics . The leadership’s reaction to the criticism by me and others, both within and outside the CWI, was predictable.

First we were informed that there would be a comradely debate followed by the publication of the contending positions on the party website.

To the contrary, after a stage managed internal discussion, that was pre-empted by an atrocious public attack on myself and Andrew Kliman, a moratorium on further debate was declared. The CWI had spent far too much time, resources and energy on debating the irrelevant question of the cause of the capitalist crisis according to Philip Stott in Scotland.

Internal members bulletins were published although SP deputy general secretary Hannah Sell declared during the debate that she doubted whether many members would read them (?). Included were contributions from Philip Stott that denounced me as being an ultra-leftist, dogmatist, fundamentalist and so on.

Then in March 2014 comrade Steve (“you have a fetish” Peter Taaffe told him) Dobbs from London and me were suspended from Socialist Party membership. I was suspended for one year (which is now up) and Steve was suspended indefinitely. Ostensibly these suspensions were for anti-party activity of various sorts. In reality the reason behind the suspension was the inability of the leadership to accept criticism and especially their phobia about public criticism. They were also unable to defend their position robustly and were found wanting. They clamped down on public debate because the hapless economic arguments of the leading comrades were so logically flawed it would have meant they would have egg all over their faces in a public arena.

By beheading the opposition in early 2014, pour encourager les autres, the leadership must have thought the matter as good as dead? So it was back to business as usual within the party as the leading comrades resumed the chant “there is no demand!” a la Keynes. Meanwhile any public acknowledgement of the debate was all but extinguished until Peter Taaffe raised the “correctness” of the leadership’s position at SP Congress recently.

The opposition was bloodied but unbowed because we knew that our critique was consonant with Karl Marx’s Capital and upheld the key precepts of scientific socialism. The point being that the leadership had actually lost the debate both theoretically and politically despite few SP members supporting the opposition.

Our critique, on the other hand, was bound to be attractive to critical thinkers amongst the working class as a whole and would be bound to resonate within the SP at some point. The reason was that only Marx’s Capital can explain the capitalist crisis. In short it is only in the ideas of Capital that capitalism finds its ideal mirror. It is only within Capital that the conceptual tools exist that can equip socialists to understand the dynamics of the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930’s. And to propose socialist solutions to it.

Paul Murphy TD

Then, low and behold, Paul Murphy TD asks a question on Facebook this week:

“Anybody know of any work on establishing the rate of profit (in a Marxist sense) in Ireland?”

Paul was previously a member of the European Parliament. Having lost his European seat , where the SWP scandalously stood against him, he spectacularly won the by-election in Dublin South-West in October 2014. Paul has been a courageous politician on behalf of the working class and currently is under threat of jail for opposing paying the Irish water charge.

The initial response to Paul’s question was predictable with a number of flippant type comments but the conversation continued until Paul made the point:

“Without getting into a long debate about LTRPF, clearly establishing a rate of profit would be important if possible. In particular, I’m looking at the collapse of investment and connecting it to the rate of profit. I suspected that it might be too difficult to figure out in Ireland because of the nature of the economy and all the profits artificially channeled through here.”

Kliman “can I help?”

The American Marxist economist Andrew Kliman offered to help Paul out:

“Paul Murphy, I know how to look at the relation between the rate of profit and the rate of accumulation–I’ve done it for the US, and have a clear idea of what specific rates of profit to look at and such. The question is whether the data are there. But it might be possible to find something relevant without computing the rate of profit, just looking at the “mass” instead, for which I know there are data. What time span are you interested in?”

Paul replied:

“Looking at something like second half of Celtic Tiger to now – i.e. 2001 – present. The National Accounts show a collapse in investment from the moment of the crisis, a dip in total profits in the first couple of years of the crisis, but then a rapid recovery, with no equivalent recovery of investment.”

I contributed:

“The point I would make Paul Murphy is the historical comparison of the current ROP with the longer term trend. There may well be a limited recovery in the rate but is the long term secular trend downwards? There can be upsurges in the ROP for a number of years but how does it compare with the post war boom and the historical evolution of the ROP. Given that Marx stipulates that the LTRPF (sorry to mention it) is only DECISIVE over long historical periods and under specific circumstances e.g. the financial crisis.

Kliman responded:

“Here is US MNCs’ rate of profit on investment in Ireland. The components of the rate are better suited to the question than are the ones Burke uses for Ireland as a whole. There’s a slight downward trend in the US MNCs’ rate. Prior to the Great Recession, i.e., for 1983-2007, there’s no trend up or down at all. This means that while transfer pricing of US MNCs might have parked a lot of profit in Ireland, it didn’t have an effect on the overall rate of profit in Ireland (at least not a similarly constructed rate of profit).

On Bruce Wallace‘s point, I’d add that the LTFRP isn’t meant to explain the dynamics of investment during and after slumps. It’s meant to explain (in part) why the slumps occur. After a major slump, the rate of profit has to recover, by definition. But if the slump is serious enough, as this one was, that affects businesses’ confidence in the future. Since productive investment decisions are forward-looking, a major slump is going to produce a rise in the ROP without a concomitant rise in investment.”

On another thread an active SP member suggested I post a graph from Andrew Kliman as part of the discussion (I already had):

“I would post this but I’m not friends with him. Obviously investment falls with profitability.”

It is indeed OBVIOUS!!

The French novelist Victor Hugo, famous for his aphorisms, had one that was often repeated in the CWI old days to enthuse the cadre. It is very apposite in this case “One cannot resist an idea whose time has come”.

If the mole of revolution finds itself in the ideological sphere it will burrow into the most critical minds of those active in the struggle but it will express real world processes. In this case the ineluctable logic of Marx’s Capital has penetrated the consciousness of Paul Murphy TD even if he has yet to study that great work in any depth? Nevertheless the time has come for the ideas of Marx. I salute Paul’s curiosity and courage, he is on a path of inquiry that leads to incontrovertible scientific conclusions. I wish him well.

Paul has had the courage to ask the difficult questions that need to be asked. Inevitably, as night follows day, others will follow.

My message to the epigones is this. So much for the “moratorium” on “debate” because it hasn’t even really begun! The reason for this is clear, as even Paul Murphy TD has discovered. The rate of profit is the key to understanding the crisis even in Ireland.

Was Karl Marx just dreaming (?) when he wrote about the Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, that it was:

“in every respect the most fundamental law of modern economy, and the most important for understanding the most difficult relations. It is the most important law from the historical standpoint.” (Marx, Grundrisse p.800)

It is far from over:

“When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in.”

-G. W. F. Hegel, “Preface,” Philosophy of Right

Peter Taaffe on what Karl Marx said about capitalism?

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As the UK May general election looms the Socialist Party of England and Wales gathered in Congress to meet the challenge.

The SP general secretary of fifty years, Peter Taaffe, addressed the Congress on World Perspectives with a specific focus on the victory of Syriza in Greece in the context of the unwinding of the capitalist economic crisis. The contribution on Greece was abstract to say the least but what about Peter’s analysis of the economic situation? I paraphrase from the speech.

Is Taaffe daft?

On the world economy Peter explained that the recovery from the recession was one sided and there was no possibility of a return to decent jobs and better living standards. The Eurozone was stagnant and the German economy was struggling with only a tiny growth in economic activity. “Go and ask the German workers about that”? The Greek crisis could even bring the German recovery to an end. There was no possibility of economic development in the Eurozone of any kind.

The US is the only economy in the world that has actually experienced a recovery but even there (he had all the facts and figures but didn’t have the time to go into them), there was no chance of a return to the living standards of the past and it was noticeable that even Obama, Taaffe told us, had threatened a tax on the cash piles of US companies. This completely bears out the point the SP had made in relation to the profitability debate. There is no shortage of profits. Capitalism had made super-profits in the past period but there are no profitable investment opportunities at the moment.

The theoreticians of capitalism, Peter explained, complain that capitalism is not investing and in fact one of them (?) had said the biggest enemy of capitalism was capitalism itself (laughter in the hall). Isn’t that what Marx said? That capitalism carried the seeds of its own destruction?

Indeed Karl Marx did say something like this and he explained it in Capital Volume Three in Chapter 15 on the Exposition of the Internal Contradictions of the Law (of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall).

He made the point specifically in relation to capitalism’s FALLING RATE OF PROFIT.

What is completely obvious, having debated Peter face to face, is that he hasn’t got the first clue about Marx’s critique of capitalism. I doubt if he’s studied Marx’s Capital in any depth or understands Marx’s arguments. His ignorance of Marx’s Capital is breath taking.

What did he actually write?

This is what Marx actually wrote:

“The periodical depreciation of existing capital — one of the means immanent in capitalist production to check the fall of the rate of profit and hasten accumulation of capital-value through formation of new capital — disturbs the given conditions, within which the process of circulation and reproduction of capital takes place, and is therefore accompanied by sudden stoppages and crises in the production process.”

In other words periodic economic crisis is caused indirectly through the fall in the rate of profit and the capitalist’s response to this fall. Marx goes on:

“Capitalist production seeks continually to overcome these immanent barriers, but overcomes them only by means which again place these barriers in its way and on a more formidable scale.

The real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself. It is that capital and its self-expansion appear as the starting and the closing point, the motive and the purpose of production; that production is only production for capital and not vice versa, the means of production are not mere means for a constant expansion of the living process of the society of producers. The limits within which the preservation and self-expansion of the value of capital resting on the expropriation and pauperisation of the great mass of producers can alone move — these limits come continually into conflict with the methods of production employed by capital for its purposes, which drive towards unlimited extension of production, towards production as an end in itself, towards unconditional development of the social productivity of labour. The means — unconditional development of the productive forces of society — comes continually into conflict with the limited purpose, the self-expansion of the existing capital. The capitalist mode of production is, for this reason, a historical means of developing the material forces of production and creating an appropriate world-market and is, at the same time, a continual conflict between this its historical task and its own corresponding relations of social production.”

“The real barrier of capitalist production”, Marx explains, “is capital itself”.

This concept is completely beyond Peter Taaffe’s dumbing down of Marxism for the average SP member.

I could produce all the facts and figures (I have done repeatedly) but there is a very simple logical argument which proves that Peter is just totally daft but while we’re on the topic though here is the graph (always gets a good laugh from SP cadres) on US corporate profits and investment, profits in red and investment in blue up to the end of 2014. That’s the MASS of profit made by the US corporate sector by the way.

As can be seen US capitalism was making very good profits until they fell through the floor during the financial crisis accruing huge losses for the capitalists. They recovered strongly on the rebound from the crisis but what “previous period” is Peter referring to? Is it before the crisis of 2008-9? That is nearly six years ago. The current situation shows the US capitalists only making 1.4% gross profit in the last quarter of 2014.

He says that capitalism has made super profits in the previous period. Unfortunately Peter is so theoretically underdeveloped that he suffers from monolepsy. This is a debilitating condition which does not allow him to discern between contradictory aspects of the same phenomena. Peter can only think about “profits”. He doesn’t have a clue that there is a “rate of profit” based upon the rate of return on capital advanced (invested) and the “mass” of profit i.e. the amount the capitalist pockets at the end of the process.

Let’s take this idea a little further. I’m a time served electrician and I do know a thing or two about electricity. Every electrician knows that electricity has an electro motive force that is measured in volts and a current that is measured in amps. The volts represent the mass of electricity as it were and the current (amps) represents the strength of its flow. Were Peter applying his methodology to electricity it would go something like this:

“The facts and figures, that I don’t have time to go into, bears out the point we have made during the electricity debate. Despite the recent power cuts there is no problem with electricity generation. The national grid has been producing super amounts of electricity in the past period.”

Peter comes over as pretty daft when we look at his arguments with a modicum of criticality. The capitalists have been making super-profits “in the past period” he says. However now they won’t invest because there isn’t anything profitable to invest in.

How then can there be no problem with “profits” if the capitalist don’t have anything profitable to invest in? In other words if they are making super-profits and there isn’t a problem with profitability where are the super-profits coming from? If they were making super-profits in the “past period” (what particular period?) but won’t invest now because there is nothing profitable to invest in then they can’t be making more super-profits now, can they? Obama knows this so he’s thinking about taxing the super-profits of US companies which proves the point that there is no problem with “profits”!!

Such is the power of the dialectic. One may put forward completely daft ideas which become rational in the process of expressing them. How profound.

Peter has many positive attributes. Longevity is certainly one of them. A grasp of logic, on the other hand, is completely missing however; or any understanding of how capitalism works. This is a bit worrying given he’s been leading a “Marxist” political party as its general secretary for fifty years!

Charlie Hebdo and the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall

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In the wake of the massacre of Charlie Hebdo (CH) cartoonists and the four French Jewish hostages on 7th January some elements of the left has displayed its complete capitulation before the black reaction of fundamentalist Islam.

Incredibly, before the victims were even in their graves, a cacophony arose from so called socialists and revolutionaries that placed the blame squarely on the dead. The blogosphere and social media have been besieged by left wing keyboard warriors denouncing the racism, sexism, homophobia and islamophobia of Charlie Hebdo.

One, not that prominent, example is Socialist Fight who, with the minimum of research but the maximum of hyperbole, produced this under the title LCFI statement on Charlie Hebdo: Islamophobia is the racism de jour and wade in against the dead journalists and cartoonists, one aged 70 and the other 80, after a cherry picked display of one of CH’s front page cartoon covers:

“We defy anyone to say this is not a vile racist, Islamophobic, sexist piece of French imperialist propaganda. It has a double meaning which suggests that the young women are ‘finally’ angry because of their benefits being removed and did not mind being kidnapped and repeatedly raped.”

The real perpetrators behind the atrocity can be then identified. And the perpetrator is, of course, imperialism. Imperialism has inflicted far worse atrocities in the Middle East and Africa which is, as we know, a banal truism.

“The LCFI asserts that the roots cause of the deaths at the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris on 7 January is imperialism’s wars on Muslim lands, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria, etc. Marxists never equate the violence of the oppressor with that of the oppressed, we make no moral judgements on the people who have carried out these attacks and recognise the deaths caused by imperialism in these lands run into the hundreds of thousands, if not the low millions.”

The elderly staff of CH obviously provoked this attack and brought the wrath of the oppressed down upon their heads. Being ingrained racists, the septuagenarian and octogenarian victims at the CH offices, were obviously intimately implicated in the imperialist bloodbaths and so deserved to die. Such is the implicit drift of the statement .

Seymour the pedant

This grouplet have been joined, not quite so repugnantly, by ex Swappie Richard Seymour, who also peddles the racist slur:

“Now, I think there’s a critical difference between solidarity with the journalists who were attacked, refusing to concede anything to the idea that journalists are somehow “legitimate targets,” and solidarity with what is frankly a racist publication.

I will not waste time arguing over this point here: I simply take it as read that — irrespective of whatever else it does, and whatever valid comment it makes — the way in which that publication represents Islam is racist. If you need to be convinced of this, then I suggest you do your research, beginning with reading Edward Said’s Orientalism, as well as some basic introductory texts on Islamophobia, and then come back to the conversation.”

Ever the pedant is Seymour but then I’ve read Orientalism too and sure Charlie Hebdo did indulge in portraying Muslim figures in stereotypical Orientalist fashion but then again they were cartoons! All the figures in Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons were characterisations of one sort or another, including that of the French President Hollande with his penis exposed. This is because that is what cartoons are and particularly satirical ones. They aren’t supposed to be real depictions of the modern average French Muslim or anybody else for that matter.

CH are not alone in depicting Islamic fundamentalists as stereotyped cartoon figures of fun. Those in the Middle East fighting these killers use exactly the same technique and even Iran is about to produce this piss take:

Anyway enough of this straw man nonsense that amounts to a self-imposed fatwa on the critical faculties of some on the left.

What about the economics? This gets rid of all the claptrap about the meaning of satire or free speech that has been blogged to death.

Cockshott’s sober analysis

I’m indebted to Paul Cockshott who has shared a draft of an excellent short paper on the economic and geo-political background behind the rise of Islamic fundamentalism Equivocation in the face of black reaction . Noting that great religions arise as ideological machines of empire and that, if we are to understand them, we must see how they are bound up with the rise and fall of states, he delves into the economic driver for the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Modern Islamic states were born out of World War I and the revolutions that followed the disintegrating Ottoman Empire when mainly British and French imperialism divided the Middle East between them creating a patchwork of artificial states. The region has been the cockpit for geopolitical rivalry ever since.

Imperialism has indeed ravaged the region but who have been the winners and losers? After the war on terror and the US invasion of Iraq with the disruption of its oil industry, followed by the isolation of Iran and sanctions against it came a boom in the global demand for oil particularly from China and India. This has overwhelmingly favoured the Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. The oil monarchies are now richer per head than many European countries and far ahead of most of Asia.

Qatar for example has a GDP per head of $93,714 while France it is $42,500. Saudi Arabia is $25,962 while China is $6,807.

How does this work? This was explained many years ago by Karl Marx through the workings of the mechanism of differential rent.

The oil monarchies are wealthy because their oil always sells above its value. The value of a commodity, as Marx proved, is determined by the social average amount of labour time that is required to produce it but oil doesn’t sell at its value but at its marginal cost of production which is much higher than its average cost.

Oil practically bubbles out of the ground in the Persian Gulf and production costs are very low. The price of a barrel of oil is $60. In Saudi Arabia it costs $5 to extract and transport it giving the Saudi’s $55 profit. Meanwhile for the North Sea oil of the UK and Norway it costs $52 to extract and transport it with only $8 of profit. The drop in the price of oil as world industrial growth slows now makes US shale oil deposits completely unprofitable and amounts to a loss of minus $25 a barrel!

Since 2001 the revenues of OPEC have risen inexorably. The idea that imperialism is plundering the resources of the Middle East, as the Islamic fundamentalists argue, is clearly nonsense because the revenues of the oil monarchies have grown 4 times since 2001. The flow of oil from, and capital to, the Middle East inextricably links the advanced capitalist powers to the retrograde reactionary regimes of the oil monarchies who act as their proxies in the region.

Where do all the oil profits of OPEC come from? It isn’t from the exploitation of oil workers in the Middle East because this is a miniscule portion of the profit. No, through differential rent there is a redistribution of surplus value, extracted through the exploitation of workers in America, Europe and Asia, which is transferred to the OPEC countries. As Cockshott puts it “ labour produces the value that turns out as ground oil revenue in Arabia”.

It is no coincidence that the extreme reactionary movements of ISIS and Al-Qaeda trace their origins to Saudi Arabia. The main threat to the oil monarchies, with their obscene wealth and despotic regimes, comes from secular democratic or working class movements in the region and challenges from other secular Arab states. Thus the reactionary oil regimes fund and foment movements based on a conservative brand of Sunni Islam that militates against basic democratic rights or political freedom and can wage war within secular Syria, Libya or Iraq on behalf of the Sunni kingdoms.

The imperialist powers have a vested interest in maintaining the grip of the oil monarchies and this is the main reason that US imperialism aimed its aggression against the most developed secular Arab state of Iraq. The Sunni monarchy of Saudi Arabia and their US allies backed the early development of Al-Qaeda. There is also evidence that the US secretly supported ISIS against Assad’s Syrian secular regime. Turkey is also known to secretly back ISIS but surely this is a contradiction because Turkey isn’t an oil producer?

Cockshot explains this apparent contradiction. Turkey is the rump left after the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and is an established capitalist state that has pretensions to join the EU which has been repeatedly rebuffed. Now the capitalist class of Turkey have the government of Erdogan in power that is re-establishing Islam back into political life. As Turkey is a capitalist state it is subject to the laws of capital and its rate of profit has fallen.

Turkey’s falling rate of profit

Cockshott explains:

“The situation of Turkey is different. The ruling classes of Turkey can not rely on ground rents. Instead they rely on exploiting their own working classes. As such they are affected by the general law of development of mature capitalist countries, the rate of profit falls as the capital to labour ratio rises.”

The falling rate of profit is what drives competition between different capitals and rivalries between imperialist states to pursue expansionary policies to extend exploitation and enhance the market for their commodities thus acting as a counter-tendency to the falling rate of profit. The falling rate of profit in Turkey has propelled the capitalist class to consider an expansionary policy in the region.

As Cockshott puts it so clearly:

“This process gives rise to new ideologies on the part of the bourgeois state. It is no longer content with the secular modernism established by Attaturk, an ideology that was appropriate for a capitalist state that was in its early developmental stage. Once the stage of mature capitalism arrives, the ruling class rummages through the ideological toolbox of reaction to come up with an ideology that can justify expansion.”

Turkey, a close ally of the US, secretly backs ISIS because it eyes the possibility of expansion southwards into Iraq. For that it needs to put on the veil of Islam and begins to abandon its secular past in order for its proxy force of ISIS to do its bidding in northern Iraq.

The atrocity at Charlie Hebdo certainly took place against a backdrop of imperialist devastation of Iraq, growing right wing and racist movements in Europe but Marxists don’t just look at the surface appearances of the dynamics of geopolitical developments. We delve deeper to explain the laws that that drive a diseased capitalism to war, reaction and atrocity. Like any good detective we “follow the money”.

51.1%		United Kingdom
20.4%		Sweden
6.2%		United States
3.9%		Germany
2.8%		Austria
2.8%		India
2.2%		Netherlands
2.2%		Greece
1.7%		Belgium
1.1%		Norway

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