Distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes

International Working Men’s Association
London Conference – September, 1871

Considering the following passage of the preamble to the Rules:

“The economic emancipation of the working classes is the great end to which every political movement ought to be subordinate as a means”;

That the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men’s Association (1864) states:

“The lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defence and perpetuation of their economic monopolies. So far from promoting, they will continue to lay every possible impediment in the way of the emancipation of labour… To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes”;

That the Congress of Lausanne (1867) has passed this resolution:

“The social emancipation of the workmen is inseparable from their political emancipation”;

That the declaration of the General Council relative to the pretended plot of the French Internationalists on the eve of the plebiscite (1870) says:

“Certainly by the tenor of our Statutes, all our branches in England, on the Continent, and in America have the special mission not only to serve as centres for the militant organization of the working class, but also to support, in their respective countries, every political movement tending towards the accomplishment of our ultimate end – the economic emancipation of the working class”;

That false translations of the original Statutes have given rise to various interpretations which were mischievous to the development and action of the International Working Men’s Association;

In presence of an unbridled reaction which violently crushes every effort at emancipation on the part of the working men, and pretends to maintain by brute force the distinction of classes and the political domination of the propertied classes resulting from it;

Considering, that against this collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes;

That this constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to ensure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end – the abolition of classes;

That the combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economic struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists

The Conference recalls to the members of the International:

That in the militant state of the working class, its economic movement and its political action are indissolubly united.

Egypt, the Commune and Coriolanus; Marx and Shakespeare in Historic Times

When great events happen words wombed in dusty classics burst forth with new energy and resume the urgency with which they were written. It is impossible, in the face of history-making, not also to be drawn to history already made. In the Rustbelt’s little world Shakespeare created the words and Marx assembled the script of our human drama. I’ve revisited both since the events in Egypt began forcefully intervening into history sixteen (only sixteen? it seems a year, at least!) days ago.

While it’s impossible not to feel some comparisons with the Commune and Cairo’s Tahrir, I’m not making any analogies (really, I’m not!). All I’m saying is that in times of revolution Marx’s Civil War in France becomes an even more remarkable read, no more so than now. Here’s something that passed my eyes on an early morning bus ride, where nearly every paragraph read before sparkled to life…

‘In their reluctance to continue the civil war opened by Thiers’ burglarious attempt at Montmartre, the Central Committee made themselves, this time, guilty of a decisive mistake in not at once marching upon Versailles, then completely helpless, and this putting an end to the conspiracies of Thiers and his Rurals. Instead of this, the Party of Order was again allowed to try its strength at the ballot box, on the 26th of March, the day of the election of the Commune. Then, in the mairies [city halls] of Paris, they exchanged bland words of conciliation with their too generous conquerors, muttering in their hearts solemn vows to exterminate them in due time.’

Among other overtly political themes, Shakespeare’s Coriolanus holds a cold mirror up to the despot’s visage only to reveal ourselves, or part of ourselves- those dark places where power becomes its own justification, where power panders and we pander power. There is a whole lot in this work, one my father wouldn’t let me watch as a kid because of its incredible, brutal violence, for leftists to ponder. Who could watch the play now and not see a little of Ben Ali or Hosni Mubarek in Caius Martius? Or in the Senators, the ‘people’s tribunes’, Egypt’s pretenders who, in their own power desires, propel themselves on the people’s hunger for justice in rebellion against a master they once served? Again, these are not analogies, just the reiteration that certain struggles of our species are…ongoing.

The above (Act III Scene III) is from an excellent 1984 RSC production with Alan Howard in the lead, it is out there and worth finding. Readers might also be interested in John Filling’s essay The Body, the Belly and Blood in Coriolanus: From Shakespeare to Brecht through Marx.

Reading The Grundrisse; Thinking About Athens’ Rage

In Notebook IV of the The Grundrisse, written in mid-December 1857- 22 January 1858, in this selection by Marx with the weighty subheading :

Surplus labour or surplus value becomes surplus capital. All determinants of capitalist production now appear as results of (wage) labour itself. The realization process [Verwirklichungsprozess] of labour at the same time its de-realization process [Entwirklichungsprozess]

Marx explores how our work, through the labor process, becomes objectified.  How we become inhuman.  In its way it is a deeply horrifying passage.  Academics dismiss Marx’s political activism as somehow demeaning his theoretical work.  How ignorant.  Marx’s theoretical work was at the service of a struggle for emancipation, they can not be separated.  How could one begin to investigate the world of labor without also being confronted with its limits; the causes and the ways to transcend then?  It doesn’t make him less of a ‘scientist’.  Perhaps, in another person, it might.  But this is Marx and the artificial separations of the ‘sciences’ (broadly speaking) were a barrier to a genuine scientific understanding; a product of bourgeois utilitarianism at best, the conscious rejection of system in favor of technique.  At the service of capitalism’s reproduction , naturally.

Even now, for most, science and technology are synonymous.  Marx also rejected the notion of  ‘knowledge for knowledge sake’.  What else could that result in but esotericisms indulged in by elites (tenured professors, anyone?).  The point of knowing was and is to act.  But knowing itself is a great act for many.  It is often the first and final act of liberation.

People often complain of Marx’s one hundred word sentences; or worse his paragraphs that hold not traditionally to the single idea.  With enough commas, colons, semi-colons, dashes and quotes to spin even the most well versed heads Marx only acknowledges in form, masterly, the dynamism of his subject.

Marx’s birthday was celebrated, in many ways (some not so obvious) in Athens on that chaotic May 5.  The Old Mole retains and regains relevance all of the time.  We take it for granted in times of crisis, but in time of class peace too, Marx can be heard clearly if you listen.  The reason we still have so much to learn from Marx is that he asked the most radical of questions and set up to answer them, with his real genius, in word and in deed.  He was fond of his Prophet’s Beard; seeing further for Marx did not mean looking into the future, but further into the present (the place where past and future meet).

As hard going as this piece may seem it is rich, infinitely rich, in theoretical nuggets; brutal, exposing contradictions, puzzling formulations and damn powerful insights drawing on a whole world of experiences, investigations and activities.  Don’t think it’s too much to take in a sitting.  I read it through, stewed with it for a few days and re-read it again, and then again.  I’m still full of thinkings and questions and vistas to explore.

And, for reasons that I’m not quite sure, it is to Greece that I am made to think of.  What we are seeing is something more than a conflict over a budget; we are seeing an epochal struggle over the interests of labor (in all of those meanings).  The slogans, chants and screams of those Athens’ workers have made clear that theirs is a rage born of the conditions of their class; I have found myself moved, pulled into the fray and wishing to add my body to the throng.

Hell, read this and think of the shift you worked and the bills it doesn’t pay; or your unemployment running out (if you ever had it) while failed banks are reaping billions.  When the capitalists go into debt they do so on the assurance of a return on future surpluses; when workers go into debt they are selling the surplus they will produce in the future; they are slaves twice over.   The capitalists twice winners.  It’s a story 40 years old now.  In some ways. Greece is here and it has been for years.  It is no trite, oversimplification to say that their struggle is all of our struggle.

They have challenged us as the situation has.  The capitalist class have decided to use this crisis to consolidate their class power by rolling back the meager gains of workers even further.  Greece is just the first in a series of austerity budgets about to be unleashed on the European working class and if it can be battered through the notoriously combative and conscious Greek working class, no other national working class will resist.  This is the capitalists disciplining labor on a generational scale; they aim to change the balance of forces with this crisis further in their direction.  They are succeeding.

The crisis may not stem from a crisis of labor, but it will be labor that pays for the crisis.  And all of this is done by controlling the surpluses the workers themselves produced; the squandering and the constricting accumulation by the capitalist class.  What we are seeing in Greece is a battle for control of the social surplus; created by one class and expropriated by another.   I think Marx would have recognized it with crystal clarity.

It’s good to go back to the root a bit, even more so in times of crisis and confusion.   Too often we think about capitalism sans class, it seems even a fashion these days.  But it is class, rooted in how and why we produce, that continues to shape the politics and social scene of the day.  It is the interests of classes and those classes contain definite people, people with individual interests that are only guaranteed through broader class interests.  Those vastly different interests on display in the streets of Greece these last days come from some where deep, deep in the labor process.  It is born of slaves and of masters.

Think about the rage shown on the streets of Athens when you read this, the nihilism yes, but much more the solidarity; the sense of your self-expression, your self interests relying on the multitude about you.  Think about how willing the ruling class are to take the working class head-on with all of their power, the power of the state, but also the power based on their control of property, of capital, that Dead Hand that lords over the Earth.  Think of their confidence.  It comes from somewhere, somewhere deep.  So to the Moore then and to the roots, or some of them.

From the Grundrisse Notebook IV:

The new value, then, [is] itself posited as capital again, as objectified labour entering into the process of exchange with living labour, and hence dividing itself into a constant part — the objective conditions of labour, material and instrument — and the conditions for the subjective condition of labour, the existence of living labour capacity, the necessaries, subsistence goods for the worker.  With this second entrance by capital in this form, some points appear clarified which were altogether unclear in its first occurrence — as money in transition from its role as value to its role as capital.  Now they are solved through the process of realization and production itself.  In the first encounter, the presuppositions themselves appeared to come in from the outside, out of circulation; as external presuppositions for the arising of capital; hence not emergent from its inner essence, and not explained by it.  These external presuppositions will now appear as moments of the motion of capital itself, so that it has itself — regardless how they may arise historically — pre-posited them as its own moments.

Within the production process itself, surplus value, the surplus value procured through compulsion by capital, appeared as surplus labour, itself in the form of living labour, which, however, since it cannot create something out of nothing, finds its objective conditions laid out before it.  Now this surplus labour appears in objectified form as surplus product, and, in order to realize itself as capital, this surplus product divides into a double form: as objective condition of labour — material and instrument; as subjective — consumption goods for the living labour now to be put to work.  The general form as value — objectified labour — and objectified labour coming out of circulation — is of course the general, self-evident presupposition.  Further: the surplus product in its totality — which objectifies surplus labour in its totality — now appears as surplus capital (in contrast to the original capital, before it had undertaken this cycle), i.e. as independent exchange value, in which living labour capacity encounters its specific use value. All moments which confronted living labour capacity, and employed it as alien, external powers, and which consumed it under certain conditions independent of itself, are now posited as its own product and result.

Firstly: surplus value or the surplus product are nothing but a specific sum of objectified living labour –the sum of surplus labour.  This new value which confronts living labour as independent, as engaged in exchange with it, as capital, is the product of labour. It is itself nothing other than the excess of labour as such above necessary labour — in objective form and hence as value.

Secondly: the particular forms which this value must adopt in order to realize itself anew, i.e. to posit itself as capital — on one side as raw material and instrument, on the other as subsistence goods for labour during the act of production — are likewise, therefore, only particular forms of surplus labour itself.  Raw material and instrument are produced by it in such relations — or, it is itself objectively posited in production as raw material and instrument in such a proportion — that a given sum of necessary labour — i.e. living labour which reproduces (the value of) the consumption goods — can objectify itself in it, and objectify itself in it continuously, i.e. can always begin anew the diremption into the objective and subjective conditions of its self-preservation and self-reproduction.  In addition to this, living labour, in the process of reproducing its objective conditions, has at the same time posited raw material and instrument in such proportions that it can realize itself in them as surplus labour, as labour beyond the necessary, and can hence make them into material for the creation of new values.   The objective conditions of surplus labour — which are restricted to the proportion of raw arterial and instrument beyond the requirements of necessary labour, whereas the objective conditions of necessary labour divide within their objectivity into objective and subjective, into objective moments of labour as well as subjective (consumption goods for living labour) — therefore now appear, are therefore now posited, as the product, result, objective form, external existence of surplus labour itself.  Originally, by contrast, the fact that instrument and necessaries were on hand in the amounts which made it possible for living labour to realize itself not only as necessary, but also as surplus labour — this appeared alien to living labour itself, appeared as an act of capital.

Thirdly: The independent, for-itself existence [Fürsichsein] of value vis-à-vis living labour capacity — hence its existence as capital — the objective, self-sufficient indifference, the alien quality [Fremdheit] of the objective conditions of labour vis-a-vis living labour capacity, which goes so far that these conditions confront the person of the worker in the person of the capitalist — as personification with its own will and interest — this absolute divorce, separation of property, i.e. of the objective conditions of labour from living labour capacity — that they confront him as alien property, as the reality of other juridical persons, as the absolute realm of their will — and that labour therefore, on the other side, appears as alien labour opposed to the value personified in the capitalist, or the conditions of labour — this absolute separation between property and labour, between living labour capacity and the conditions of its realization, between objectified and living labour, between value and value-creating activity — hence also the alien quality of the content of labour for the worker himself — this divorce now likewise appears as a product of labour itself, as objectification of its own moments.  For, in the new act of production itself — which merely confirmed the exchange between capital and living labour which preceded it — surplus labour, and hence the surplus product, the total product of labour in general (of surplus labour as well as necessary labour), has now been posited as capital, as independent and indifferent towards living labour capacity, or as exchange value which confronts its mere use value.  Labour capacity has appropriated for itself only the subjective conditions of necessary labour — the means of subsistence for actively producing labour capacity, i.e. for its reproduction as mere labour capacity separated from the conditions of its realization — and it has posited these conditions themselves as things, values, which confront it in an alien, commanding personification.   The worker emerges not only not richer, but emerges rather poorer from the process than he entered.  For not only has he produced the conditions of necessary labour as conditions belonging to capital; but also the value-creating possibility, the realization [Verwertung] which lies as a possibility within him, now likewise exists as surplus value, surplus product, in a word as capital, as master over living labour capacity, as value endowed with its own might and will, confronting him in his abstract, objectless, purely subjective poverty.  He has produced not only the alien wealth and his own poverty, but also the relation of this wealth as independent, self-sufficient wealth, relative to himself as the poverty which this wealth consumes, and from which wealth thereby draws new vital spirits into itself, and realizes itself anew.  All this arose from the act of exchange, in which he exchanged his living labour capacity for an amount of objectified labour, except that this objectified labour — these external conditions of his being, and the independent externality [Ausserihmsein] (to him) of these objective conditions — now appear as posited by himself, as his own product, as his own self-objectification as well as the objectification of himself as a power independent of himself, which moreover rules over him, rules over him through his own actions.

In surplus capital, all moments are products of alien labour — alien surplus labour transformed into capital; means of subsistence for necessary labour; the objective conditions — material and instrument — whereby necessary labour can reproduce the value exchanged for it in means of subsistence; finally the amount of material and instrument required so that new surplus labour can realize itself in them, or a new surplus value can be created.

It no longer seems here, as it still did in the first examination of the production process, as if capital, for its part, brought with it any value whatever from circulation.  Rather, the objective conditions of labour now appear as labour’s product — both to the extent that they are value in general, and as use values for production.  But while capital thus appears as the product of labour, so does the product of labour likewise appear as capital — no longer as a simple product, nor as an exchangeable commodity, but as capital; objectified labour as mastery, command over living labour.  The product of labour appears as alien property, as a mode of existence confronting living labour as independent, as value in its being for itself; the product of labour, objectified labour, has been endowed by living labour with a soul of its own, and establishes itself opposite living labour as an alien power: both these situations are themselves the product of labour.  Living labour therefore now appears from its own standpoint as acting within the production process in such a way that, as it realizes itself in the objective conditions, it simultaneously repulses this realization from itself as an alien reality, and hence posits itself as insubstantial, as mere penurious labour capacity in face of this reality alienated [entfremdet] from it, belonging not to it but to others; that it posits its own reality not as a being for it, but merely as a being for others, and hence also as mere other-being [Anderssein], or being of another opposite itself.  This realization process is at the same time the de-realization process of labour.  It posits itself objectively, but it posits this, its objectivity, as its own not-being or as the being of its not-being — of capital.  It returns back into itself as the mere possibility of value-creation or realization [Verwertung]; because the whole of real wealth, the world of real value and likewise the real conditions of its own realization [Verwirklichung] are posited opposite it as independent existences.  As a consequence of the production process, the possibilities resting in living labour’s own womb exist outside it as realities — but as realities alien to it, which form wealth in opposition to it.

In so far as the surplus product is realized anew as surplus capital, enters anew into the process of production and self-realization, it divides into (1) means of subsistence for the workers, to be exchanged for living labour capacity; let this part of capital be designated as labour fund; this labour fund, the part allotted for the maintenance of living labour capacity — and for its progressive maintenance, since surplus capital constantly grows — now likewise appears as the product of alien labour, labour alien to capital, as well as (2) its other component parts — the material conditions for the reproduction of a value = to these means of subsistence + a surplus value.  Further, if we consider this surplus capital, then the division of capital into a constant part — raw material and instrument with an antediluvian existence before labour — and a variable part, i.e. the necessary goods exchangeable for living labour capacity, appears as purely formal, in so far as both of them are equally posited by labour and are equally posited by it as its own pranky-positions. Now, however, this internal division of capital appears in such a way that labour’s own product — objectified surplus labour — splits into two component parts — the objective conditions for new realization of labour (1), and a labour fund for maintaining the possibility of this living labour, i.e. of living labour capacity as alive (2), but in such a way that labour capacity can only re-appropriate that part of its own result — of its own being in objective form –which is designated as labour fund, can appropriate and extract this part from the form of the alien wealth which confronts it, only by reproducing not merely its own value, but by also realizing that part of the new capital which represents the objective conditions for the realization of new surplus labour and surplus production, or production of surplus values.  Labour has itself created a new fund for the employment of new necessary labour, or, what is the same, a fund for the maintenance of new living labour capacities, of workers, but has created at the same time the condition that this fund can be employed only if new surplus labour is employed on the extra part of the surplus capital.  Thus, the production by labour of this surplus capital — surplus value — is at the same time the creation of the real necessity of new surplus labour, and thus surplus capital is itself at the same time the real possibility both of new surplus labour and of new surplus capital.  It here becomes evident that labour itself progressively extends and gives an ever wider and fuller existence to the objective world of wealth as a power alien to labour, so that, relative to the values created or to the real conditions of value-creation, the penurious subjectivity of living labour capacity forms an ever more glaring contrast.  The greater the extent to which labour objectifies itself, the greater becomes the objective world of values, which stands opposite it as alien — alien property.  With the creation of surplus capital, labour places itself under the compulsion to create yet further surplus capital etc. etc.

In regard to the original not-surplus capital, the relation has changed, as regards labour capacity, in so far as (1) the part of it which is exchanged for necessary labour has been reproduced by this labour itself, i.e. no longer comes to it out of circulation, but is its own product; and (2) that part of the value which, as raw material and instrument, represents the real conditions for the realization [Verwertung] of living labour, has been maintained by it itself in the production process; and, since every use value by its nature consists of transitory material, but since exchange value is present, exists, only in use value, therefore this maintenance = protection from decay and ruin, or negation of the transitory nature of the values owned by the capitalists; hence, this maintenance means to posit them as values for-themselves, as indestructible wealth. Hence, this original sum of values has been posited for the first time as capital in the production process, by living labour.

Darwinism and Its Discontents

John McAnulty of Ireland’s Socialist Democracy reflects on Darwin’s anniversary year in a prequel to a longer study

The anniversary year of the ‘On the Origin of Species’ has seen a renewed interest in Darwin and in the theory of evolution and many celebratory articles have been carried in socialist journals.  Few go beyond celebration to look at the often strained relationship between Darwinism and Marxism or try to explain why, 200 years after the birth of Darwin and 150 years after the publication of the book establishing the theory of evolution, the majority of humans would still reject a rational explanation for their place in the world that has survived a century and a half of scientific study to emerge as the foundation of our understanding of biology.

Darwin’s theory of the origin of species is one of the fundamental and pivotal theories of modern science.  It presents a convincing mechanism for all the wide variety of living things, for their evolution over time, and for the interaction of living things and their environment that makes up modern ecology. Alongside its daughter science, genetics, it stands posed to massively increase our control over our own bodies, over disease and over the natural world in the coming century.

Yet it is in the 21st century that Darwinism has come under the greatest attack from the forces of religious fundamentalism and obscurantism.

The reason for this is quite simple.  Darwinism goes well beyond its status as a scientific theory.  By explaining the origin of species through a process of natural selection, Darwin removed the need for a god to fulfill the same function.  In the film “Creation” the point is dramatically underscored when Darwin explains the theory to a friend who exclaims in delight (and to Darwin’s horror) “wonderful – you’ve killed God!” The award-winning film has not been distributed in America.

Although it is not widely understood to be the case, support for Darwinism contradicts Theism – the idea of a God personally involved in creation and the day-to-day running of the world, and restricts the faithful to Deism – the possibility of a God as a vague ‘initial cause’  Not only that, the theory of evolution situated humans inside the animal kingdom, subject to the same evolutionary pressures as other living things. Understanding ourselves became a task for reason and rationality, rather than an appeal to religious obscurantism.

For much of the 20th century Darwinism was seen in opposition to Marx, as a defender of order against the opponents of capitalism.  Yet initially it was seen as a deadly threat to that order. These contradictory roles arose from the contradictory nature of capitalism itself.

Much of capitalist society rests on the application of rationality and science to production, to research and to the structure of society and the everyday working life of individuals.  At the same time capitalist society is dedicated to the irrational aims of defending class rule and subordinating human needs to the profit motive.

These contradictions lead to a contradictory approach to the question of religion.  On the one hand, application of rationality in the service of capital sweeps away all the pretences of social solidarity and of any obligation on the capitalist to treat the poor and oppressed as their brethren.  On the other hand, religions teach the poor to respect a class structure endorsed by god and to look for happiness and the satisfaction of their needs in the afterlife rather than the here and now.  The result is that capitalism tears down religion, and the background ethical issues that they distortedly express, only to support it as an abstract ideology. Religions themselves changed.  Protestantism arose partly from the need to break out of the constants of feudal society, especially the ban on charging interest on loans, and partly to free the merchants from being forced to donate to charitable works.

Today US Christian fundamentalism preaches that riches are a result of god’s favor, a message entirely opposite to the original biblical Christianity.  The role of religious obscurantism is seen clearly in the North of Ireland, where imperialism depends on the darkest forms of religious fundamentalism to form the leadership of the local executive and panders to their religious bigotry and kow-tows to their rejection of science in relation to both evolution and climate change.

Initially the origin of species was seen as too dangerous a threat to religion to be allowed to stand.  A sharp battle broke out between different factions of capitalism, with the most reactionary elements fighting to throw back science and impose biblical superstition.

The reactionaries were defeated and the victors immediately set about making Darwinism itself a reactionary ideology.  The new social Darwinism drew on the authority of Darwin to argue that unrestrained capitalist exploitation and savage repression of the working class were the result of our biological make-up – that society, like nature, is ‘red in tooth and claw’.

The rise of mass working class organizations made it much more difficult to advance these ideas, but they remain the staple diet of right-wing movements today and have been reborn in new currents that preach genetic determinism – the idea that social problems such as crime are the result of faulty genes.

The latest edition from this perspective is the theory of sociobiology – the idea that the prehistoric environment in some way uniquely fixed human character for all time.

Marxists reject these views.  We believe that all human activity has a material foundation, but we reject utterly the view of mechanical materialism – that activity at one level of reality determines our behavior at another level.

The bestiality and massacre throughout our history are part of our biological capacity, just as the acts of solidarity and self-sacrifice are. Any explanation that claims that we are forced by our genes to murder and oppress others is nonsense.   The oppression must be explained in its own terms, by the political ideology that drives it, the class aims expressed by the ideology and the underlying economic forces.

Marxists support a dialectical view of the world.  Nothing is uniquely determined.  If economic forces give rise to our political consciousness, it is then possible for our political consciousness to change economic reality.

The Marxist response to ‘social Darwinism’ is to argue that the laws used to explain one level of reality cannot be extended to another.  The laws of Physics apply to living things, but they are of little use in explaining the development and behavior of living systems . In the same way the laws of Biology apply to society, but explaining social behavior in humans requires the sort of social and economic explanation offered by Marxism.

This sort of understanding enabled Marx to be amongst the first to welcome and support Darwinism and Marxism to be in the forefront in opposing social Darwinism.  It was a political sophistication beyond the Stalinist gravediggers of the revolution.

They opposed social Darwinism by opposing the biological theory.  Stalin’s henchman, Lysenko, faked experiments ‘proving’ that animals evolved due to direct environmental pressure rather than genetic change. The result was that under Stalinism science degenerated into a dogma that persecuted individual scientists and distorted science to support a corrupt bureaucracy.   This had disastrous outcomes for workers – dogma applied to agriculture meant inevitable crop failures.

The greater strength and self-confidence of capitalist society allowed for a wider level of individual freedom amongst scientists.  That individual freedom did not mean that science was free.  At one extreme there was the witch hunts and repression of the McCarthy era in America, designed to make sure that the scientists produced weapons of mass slaughter without expressing any concern about their use. At the other extreme was the social structure of science and academic life, holding scientists to narrow specialisms, advising caution about drawing political conclusions – all the forces that allowed capitalism to avoid the clear conclusions of climate research and environmental degradation.

Marxism claims to go beyond science.   Because science is a social construct in the service of capitalism it will always be constrained by ideology that reflects the interests and worldview of capitalism.  This is clearly the case in the ideas of social Darwinism and is even the case in discussions within science – ‘the selfish gene’ is an idea loaded down with social metaphor.

From a Marxist perspective the mechanism of adaptation is an extraordinary powerful one.  Its power does not end with biological evolution.  Adaptation may be the main mechanism organizing the basic neural elements of thought and identity and is clearly an important element in many aspects of our behavior as we unconsciously fit into different social milieus.

What an adaptive process cannot deal with is human intention.   If humans were simply biological units personal consciousness would be superfluous and we would act as directed by selfish genes or on the basis of habit patterns grounded in our history as hunter-gatherers.

Adaptative mechanisms also lack direction. People often speak of evolutionary progress but a more realistic picture is of the ‘tree of life’.  Life constantly adapts and changes.  All living organisms are the outcome of that process.  All are equally adapted – the buttercup just as much as the human. Evolution does not ascend to humans or plan to produce humans. Biological evolution simply makes human society one possibility among many . Intentions, purposes, goals – they all come from humans themselves.

Marxists believe they can deal with these weaknesses by advancing the concept of dialectical materialism.  Human consciousness and society rest upon a material base.  These material conditions determine the way in which we think and out picture of the world but, because the relationship is dialectical, humans are not simply passive objects formed by the forces of production but active agents who can struggle to change the world and society they live in and, in the process of struggle, can burst the bounds of existing society to create a new one.

If consciousness determined being then a clear explanation of the theory of education and a greater level of education would be sufficient to see it established.  If being determines consciousness without any restrictions then the slow decay of the capitalist mode of production would also mean a slow decline of scientific understanding and a descent into religious fundamentalism and barbarism.

Marx argued that once being determines consciousness it is possible for consciousness to determine being – that through struggle the working class could save humanity and establish a socialist society where the savagery of class struggle would be suppressed and rationality would rule over superstition.  Then at last people could see clearly their relationship with the world of life in the long history of planet earth and the book “Origin of species” would finally come into its own.

A Little Marx for Midweek

This pithy gem was drafted by Marx in July, 1872 and passed at The Hague Conference of the First International as an article of the International’s statutes in September of that year.  It was a time of conflict in the International between Marx and his supporters and Bakunin’s anarchists which might go some way in explaining the sharpness of tone.

On the Establishment of Working Class Parties

Against the collective power of the propertied classes the working class cannot act, as a class, except by constituting itself into a political party, distinct from, and opposed to, all old parties formed by the propertied classes.

This constitution of the working class into a political party is indispensable in order to insure the triumph of the social revolution and its ultimate end — the abolition of classes.

The combination of forces which the working class has already effected by its economical struggles ought at the same time to serve as a lever for its struggles against the political power of landlords and capitalists.

The lords of the land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for the defense and perpetuation of their economical monopolies and for enslaving labor. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working classes.

As the European elections are coming up this week and the left is is figuring out its orientation to the institutions of the European Union I thought I’d share.  One thing I’ve always appreciated about Marx is his insistence on “the working class” rather than “the people” as his audience.  “The people” are, after all, divided by class and the class oppressed, the vast majority of “the people” is the working class.

It is also the working class which alone possesses the means (their collective labor) of a genuine- revolutionary and global- alternative to the rule of capital and of capitalists.  Organizing itself politically has been the essential element in the working class transforming from a “class of itself” into a “class for itself”.  Let’s ask Karl since he says it better than I could (his remarks about the value of association goes some way in illuminating the support among too many UAW workers for wretched contracts) –

“Large-scale industry concentrates in one place a crowd of people unknown to one another.  Competition divides their interests. But the maintenance of wages, this common interest which they have against their boss, unites them in a common thought of resistance — combination.  Thus combination always has a double aim, that of stopping competition among the workers, so that they can carry on general competition with the capitalist.  If the first aim of resistance was merely the maintenance of wages, combinations, at first isolated, constitute themselves into groups as the capitalists in their turn unite for the purpose of repression, and in the face of always united capital, the maintenance of the association becomes more necessary to them than that of wages.  This is so true that English economists are amazed to see the workers sacrifice a good part of their wages in favor of associations, which, in the eyes of these economists, are established solely in favor of wages.  In this struggle — a veritable civil war — all the elements necessary for a coming battle unite and develop. Once it has reached this point, association takes on a political character.

Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers.  The combination of capital has created for this mass a common situation, common interests.  This mass is thus already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself.  In the struggle, of which we have noted only a few phases, this mass becomes united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself.  The interests it defends becomes class interests.  But the struggle of class against class is a political struggle”

From Chapter 2.5: Strikes and Combinations of Workers Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy

Darwin, Marx, Engels and All That

Happy Birthday Chuck!  More importantly Darwin shares his birthday with the best nephew in the world.  Darwin, and Lincoln, don’t know how lucky they are.   I’ve spent a little of the last 24 hours checking out Darwin related stuff on the web though I keep telling myself that I am just going to pull The Descent of Man of the bookshelf for a real read.  Instead I brain puttered with Darwin in mind.  Here are some of the things I stumbled upon.

Youtube is awash in Darwin related videos.  Mark Steel has a fabulous lecture on Darwin and  David Attenburough has a nice documentary of two hundred years of Darwin as well.  Neil deGrasse Tyson has a funny speech on “Stupid Design”, Terry Eagleton has a nice, academic, speech on Faith and Reason.  Do your own search; any good ones send my way.

Splintered Sunrise celebrates Darwin Day with a piece on the limits of scientific thought among the leading politicians in the north of Ireland.  This being the US, one need not look that far for evidence of such limitations.  In Cincinnati, a hotbed of Biblical literalism,  last year the Cincinnati Zoo proposed a joint ticket venture with the Creation Museum (no, it is not a joke).   Fortunately even in that backwater on The Ohio the public outcry was too much and the Zoo relented.

And finally I found this article from The Friends of Charles Darwin website on the real story behind the supposed dedication of Das Kapital to Darwin.  It turns out not to be the case, the real case being much more interesting as you can read here.  As usual in Marx’s circle the “villain” is Edward Aveling.  The romantic in me occasionally wishes to whisk back in time and rescue dear Eleanor from the clutches of that hideous little man.

It is shocking to me that there is still a “debate” on evolution.  Of course Darwin didn’t get everything right.  No one does.  Still, when one steps back from all of the silliness and views Darwin’s accomplishments in context they are awe inspiring.   We know where we come from, more or less, which is a helluva long way to finding out where we might be going.  The light of science can truly be a candle in the dark.   Thank you Charles Darwin.

A Little Light Summer Reading

Reading Capital along with David Harvey’s online lecture course has been a highlight of the summer so far for me.  The latest lecture installed this week on the course site deals with chapter ten on the working day.  It is at about this point that Capital really gets cooking in my opinion.

If you haven’t read Marx’s masterwork, haven’t read it in some time or you have and it left you scratching your head check it out.  Harvey is a great guide for the journey and has given the movement a real gift.  I can’t recommend it enough.  Here’s the lecture on chapters 10 and 11.

Mandel, Wheen, Lenin, Marx

Crisis, over production and credit

I am currently reading Francis Wheen’s Marx’s Das Kapital: A Biography. It has strengths and weaknesses.  It is rich in character and sense of time and place.  Some of the books’ weaknesses are pretty profound. There are plenty of good Marxist reviews out there. Google them.

I would like to propose, for future reference, that you cannot write about Lenin unless you have actually read Lenin…and in context.  Lenin’s politics were the opposite of haughty elitism; one can not say that of most of his detractors.  I have a feeling that people will turn once again to Lenin as they seem to have started towards Marx as the workers’ movement finds its feet and reorients itself to power and its consequences.  The vistas opened up by State and Revolution, for example, are as emancipatory as any in Marx and Engels.  We will come to need our Lenin again; the experience of him and his generation is too rich in lessons, both negative and positive, for us to ignore.   Why would we wish too?

Still, this thin, welcome, volume is a nice introduction to the character and formation of Marx’s masterpiece. For an introduction into what Das Kapital actually says I recommend Mandel’s Introduction to Volume I in the Penguin Edition.

One of the finest Marxist economists of the 20th Century was Ernest Mandel. His studies and work rightly gained him enormous influence in the New Left and beyond. He never lost sight of certain central propositions of Marx that others, including accomplished Marxists, did. This anchor allowed him to go further than many in developing new ideas in the materialist approach to economy. He is miles ahead of Wheen in getting this stuff because, unlike Wheen, Mandel was a revolutionary. As such he understood the dialectic of learning includes action.

Here Mandel comments on the origins of capitalism’s routine and violent crises. It is entirely relevant, even necessary, for us to absorb and educate ourselves anew on these issues. I have been trying over the last years to make a determined study of Marx’s economic writings. It’s my conviction that the revolutionary left ought to spend a good deal more time than it does explaining just how capitalism works. To paraphrase the increasingly whacked, formerly Maoist now strictly cult of Avakian: “Marx Now, More than Ever”

So a little Ernest on this rainy Tuesday morning….

“The ups and downs of the rate of profit during the business cycle do not reflect only the gyrations of the output/disposable income relation; or of the ‘organic composition of capital’. They also express the varying correlation of forces between the major contending classes of bourgeois society, in the first place the short-term fluctuations of the rate of surplus-value reflecting major victories or defeats of the working class in trying to uplift or defend its standard of living and its working conditions. Technological progress and labour organisation ‘rationalisations’ are capital’s weapons for neutralizing the effects of these fluctuations on the average rate of profit and on the rate of capital accumulation.

“In general, Marx rejected any idea that the working class (or the unions) ‘cause’ the crisis by ‘excessive wage demands’. He would recognise that under conditions of overheating and ‘full employment’, real wages generally increase, but the rate of surplus-value can simultaneously increase too. It can, however, not increase in the same proportion as the organic composition of capital. Hence the decline of the average rate of profit. Hence the crisis.

“But if real wages do not increase in times of boom, and as they unavoidably decrease in times of depression, the average level of wages during the cycle in its totality would be such as to cause even larger overproduction of wage goods, which would induce an even stronger collapse of investment at the height of the cycle, and in no way help to avoid the crisis.

“Marx energetically rejected any idea that capitalist production, while it appears as ‘production for production’s sake’, can really emancipate itself from dependence on ‘final consumption’ …. While capitalist technology implies indeed a more and more ‘roundabout-way-of-production’, and a relative shift of resources from department II to department I (that is what the ‘growing organic composition of capital’ really means, after all), it can never develop the productive capacity of department I without developing in the medium and long-term the productive capacity of department II too, admittedly at a slower pace and in a lesser proportion. So any medium or long-term contraction of final consumption, or final consumers’ purchasing power, increases instead of eliminates the causes of the crisis….

“Marx visualised the business cycle as intimately intertwined with a credit cycle, which can acquire a relative autonomy in relation to what occurs in production properly speaking. An (over) expansion of credit can enable the capitalist system to sell temporarily more goods that the sum of real incomes created in current production plus past savings could buy. Likewise, credit (over) expansion can enable them to invest temporarily more capital than really accumulated surplus-value … would have enabled them to invest (the first part of the formula refers to net investments; the second to gross investment).

“But all this is only true temporarily. In the longer run, debts must be paid; and they are not automatically paid through the results of expanded output and income made possible by credit expansion. Hence the risk of a Krach, of a credit or banking crisis, adding fuel to the mass of explosives which cause the crisis of overproduction.”

A relatively recent DVD has been released of and about the late Mandel. I recommend it highly. It can be ordered from the States and our colder (and warmer) neighbors to the North at:

Ernest Mandel DVD

P.O. Box 85, Station E,

Toronto, Ontario M6H 4E1 Canada

e-mail: mandeldvd@gmail.com

phone: (416) 537-8925