Why we need a theory

The world we live in is a world of contradictions. The environment is in a state of decline, yet industry continues to pump pollutants into the atmosphere whilst non-polluting technologies are neglected. Thousands starve, while food stocks remain unused. We can communicate with strangers from all around the globe, yet no-one knows their neighbour. Automation could free us from involuntary labour, yet we are chained to the machine. We live amongst vast material possibilities, yet poverty is the universal experience – not just in the narrow economic sense but also in terms of the quality of lived experience. "Never in history has there been such a glaring contrast between what could be and what actually exists" (Ken Knabb, The Joy of Revolution).

Central to all these contradictions and reshaping all previous antagonisms is the global commodity-capitalist system. A system characterised by the production of commodities, wage labour and the market economy. A commodity is what is produced by the worker under capitalist conditions, its purpose to reproduce and enlarge capital (stored surplus value). The pursuit of ever increasing profits is the driving force behind the whole process – the fulfilment of people's needs is a secondary and not always occurring result.

Commodities are only available in exchange for other commodities, money being the universal commodity and measure of all others. Since all goods have been turned into commodities and access to non-commodified materials restricted, those without the means of producing anything to exchange must sell the only thing they have, their physical or mental labour-power. The logic of the market economy treats this labour like any other commodity; to be bought, sold and discarded as the market dictates. In effect the worker becomes a commodity. This transformation of living activity into an object creates an alienated or estranged world in which humankind does not recognize or fulfil itself, but is overpowered by the dead things and social relations of its own making.

Capitalist society is therefore split into two camps, the bourgeois or capitalist class (those who own and control the means of production – the land, equipment, machinery, buildings and raw materials necessary to create the things we need and use every day) and the proletariat (those with "nothing to lose but their chains"), broadly speaking the "modern working class" including the un-employed and unemployable. However the proletariat is not to be understood as a sociological category of people in such-and-such income group and such-and-such occupations, but as a social relation of capitalism. It is all those who have little or no means of support other than selling their physical and mental labour-power. The proletariat is the only class capable of ending class society, as it produces the material conditions of its own enchainment. However, both classes are subject to the laws of the market economy – our concern is with the social relation capital not the individual capitalist – the functionaries of capitalism are more and more disposable as individuals. While the rag-wearing classical proletariat of Marx's time has all but disappeared, at least in the developed countries, the fundamental division remains; power and wealth are becoming more rather than less concentrated under the control of a small minority. The modern proletariat is almost everyone; it is the working class which must destroy both alienated work and class.

The "official" history of the working class's struggle against capitalism is an inversion, what is presented as its greatest triumphs are in reality its most bitter defeats; Leninist "Communism" in the East and reformist "Socialism" in the West were both expressions of a general movement towards state-capitalism. The greatest tragedy of these times is that in the minds of the vast majority of workers the project for the dissolution of the commodity economy became associated with its exact opposite. "So the light darkened that had illuminated the world; the masses that had hailed it were left in blacker night… By usurping the name communism for its system of workers' exploitation and its policy of often cruel persecution of adversaries, it made this name, till then expression of lofty ideals, a byword, an object of aversion and hatred even among workers" (Anton Pannekoek, Workers Councils).

Though the call for a new society was never thoroughly extinguished; small and often profoundly isolated groups and individuals arguing the case for a social reorganization to bring free access and control of the means of production into the hands of the whole of humanity. "From each according to ability, to each according too need!"

The creation of such a society has two preconditions; firstly that technological production techniques have been sufficiently developed to be able to fulfil the material needs of the whole of society and secondly, that the majority of the population have an understanding of what needs to be done and want to carry it through. Revolutionaries are painfully aware that the first requirement has long since been reached but that the second is still far from being realized.

If we are to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past it will be necessary to develop a theory of revolutionary practice, a theory which seeks to "get to the root of all things" and improve them. It is not a matter of choosing from one of the pre-existing ideologies of the old workers movement and basing our world view around it, but a matter of finding the "moment of truth" in all the theories of the past and synthesising this with our experience of the present.

"Theory itself becomes a material force when it has seized the masses" (Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right)

DARREN POYNTON (Socialist Party of Great Britain)

The Russian Revolution recalled

From the November Socialist Standard

Even 90 years after the Russian revolution there are still some who claim that the event shines as a beacon for socialism. We were able to say at the time that whatever was happening in Russia it was not a socialist revolution.

In August 1918 the Socialist Standard pointed out that, while there were industrial towns in Russia, the country was largely agricultural with about 80 per cent of the population still living on the land. The answer to the question whether "this huge mass of people" (about 160 million), which indeed included some industrial and agricultural wage slaves, was "convinced of the necessity and equipped with the knowledge requisite for the social ownership of the means of life?" was "No!"; beyond the fact that the leaders in the November movement claimed to be Marxian socialists there was no justification for terming the upheaval in Russia a Socialist Revolution.

Our analysis of the situation was based upon Marx's definition of capitalism as a relation of wage-labour and capital and on the conditions necessary for that relation to be ended and replaced by socialism. Before "the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production", as the Communist Manifesto put it, can happen, there must be a sufficient development of the productive forces, and the class which has to sell its labour power in order to live – the working class – must fully understand what is involved and be ready to take the necessary political action.

The conditions envisaged by Marx to be necessary for the ending of capitalism and establishing socialism did not exist in Russia in 1917, so why have the events been claimed as socialist?

Russia in 1917

The country had suffered huge losses during the war against the more heavily industrialised Germany, the economy was in a mess and there were food riots. The Tsar had been forced to abdicate in March 1917 – while both Lenin and Trotsky were out of the country – and the situation was confused. There was a provisional government which included capitalist and landowning representatives. In July Kerensky became leader with support from the Committee of the Duma (the Russian parliament) but with increasing support from the councils of Workers and Soldiers – the Soviets. However he continued with the war despite its unpopularity.

There was widespread discontent with soldiers, workers and peasants reacting against the adverse conditions, which the Bolsheviks were able to take advantage of the discontent. They gained control of the Soviets using slogans like "All power to the Soviets", and crucially "Peace! Bread! Land!" In other words, this was what the war-weary, hungry workers and peasants wanted – they were not after socialism. That there was not a majority ready for socialism would not have concerned Lenin. The situation fitted his vanguard theory that the working class by its own efforts is only able to develop trade union consciousness and needs to be led by professional revolutionaries. There were enormous difficulties including the backward state of the country and the civil war; also the expected uprisings in other European countries did not take place. The development of capitalism was all that could happen and the Bolsheviks as the new rulers would have no choice but to do their best to aid it.

That it was a minority revolution is illustrated by the way in which Lenin dealt with the political situation. The All-Russia Soviet Congress had met in November 1917 and had passed resolutions in favour of peace, ending landowners' rights to possession of the land, and the setting up of a 'workers and peasants' government, headed by Lenin and dominated by the Bolsheviks, pending the election of a democratic 'constituent assembly'.

However when the Constituent Assembly was elected the Bolsheviks did not have a majority and it was dissolved. Trotsky's excuses for this are instructive – the election had taken place too soon after "the October Revolution" and news of what had taken place spread only slowly. "The peasant masses in many places had little notion of what went on in Petrograd and Moscow. They voted for 'land and freedom'". Precisely, for that, not socialism. So, not only did the Bolshevik takeover not have majority support, majority support for socialism not present either.

By the middle of 1918 the Communist Party (as the Bolsheviks were now called) had firmly established its dictatorship and freedom of the press and assembly were restricted. The All-Russia Soviet Congress had ostensibly taken all power to itself but this was a façade. The Congress elected the 200 members of the Central Executive Committee but the credentials of delegates to the Congress were verified by Communist Party officials. Lenin claimed that what he called "Soviet Socialist Democracy" was "in no way inconsistent with the rule and dictatorship of one person; that the will of the class is at times best served by a dictator" and this was approved by the Central Executive Committee in 1918 (Martov The State and the Socialist Revolution, p.31).

Labour discipline

Raising the productivity of labour was a priority. In an address before the Soviets in April 1918 (The Soviets at Work) Lenin declared that not only was it necessary to halt 'the offensive against capitalism', they also had to employ capitalist methods which included strict discipline at work. They should immediately introduce piece work and measures which "combine the refined cruelty of bourgeois exploitation and valuable attainments in determining correct methods of work." The previously stated aim of equal wages for all was abandoned and a "very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists" was agreed. State control was seen as the "means to establish the control and order formerly achieved by the propertied classes" and he chided those who considered the "introduction of discipline into the ranks of the workers a backward step".

In January 1920 the Bolshevik government abolished the power of workers' control in factories and installed officials who were instructed by Moscow and given controlling influence. Democratic forms in the army had also been abolished.

The need to use capitalist methods to control and discipline workers in order to increase production, illustrates the absence of the absolute pre-requisite for socialism – the conscious participation of the majority of the working class.

State capitalism

In 1921 the Bolshevik government adopted a New Economic Policy. In proposing it Lenin argued that permitting some private industry and allowing peasants to keep surpluses were not dangerous for socialism. "On the contrary, the development of capitalism under the control and regulation of the proletarian state (in other words 'state' capitalism of this peculiar kind) is advantageous and necessary in an extremely ruined and backward peasant smallholder country…in so far as it is capable of immediately improving the state of peasant agriculture."

Our criticism of Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks is not that they did not achieve what was not possible at the time, i.e. socialism. It is rather that they adjusted theory to suit the circumstances: seeing the necessity for capitalist development they claimed that state-monopoly capitalism was socialism. In Can The Bolsheviks retain State Power? Lenin wrote about the "big banks" as the "state apparatus" needed to bring about socialism. "A single state bank…will constitute as much as nine-tenths of the socialist apparatus".

It was also Lenin who said in The State and Revolution in August 1917 that the first phase of communism was usually called socialism, when Marx made no such distinction between the terms. (In the 1888 Preface Engels refers to the Communist Manifesto as the most international of all Socialist literature). In Marx's conception of the first phase of communism there was still common ownership, an end to buying and selling, and no money. (Marx mentions the possibility of labour time vouchers despite their obvious drawbacks). What happened in Russia did not qualify even as a "first phase of communism".

Contemporary Trotskyists still call their aim of state capitalism socialism. The former Militant Tendency (now called SPEW) think that nationalising 150 big corporations would express in today's language the demand in the Communist Manifesto for the "abolition of private property". They also support Lenin's vanguard theory that a revolutionary minority can by their leadership turn protest movements into a 'socialist' revolution. So it is hardly surprising that they claim the events in Russia in 1917 to have been a socialist revolution, blaming the backward state of the country, civil war and Stalin for what went wrong.

Both Lenin and Trotsky thought that democracy was not appropriate to their situation. Having taken power in a minority revolution they had to rule by force. This included the use of secret police – the Cheka. Trotskyists excuse Lenin's red terror on the grounds that it was the outcome of civil war necessity, likewise with the measures taken to deal with the problems of production. However, it was precisely the conditions and the absence of a majority for socialism that made capitalism the inevitable outcome.

The rule of Lenin supported by Trotsky paved the way for Stalin. The legacy of the Russian Revolution, of Lenin and Trotsky, is that socialism/communism has come to be identified with state capitalism. It was not a victory for the working class, but a tragedy since it brought socialism into disrepute and diverted attention away from the vital need to reject capitalism in whatever form.

PAT DEUTZ

The Next Frontier

Over the last few centuries, one region of the planet after another has been "opened up" to capitalist plunder. Often rival capitalist powers fought over the spoils of conquest. In the 19th century they had the "scramble for Africa." In the 21st they are scrambling to control the resources of the Arctic, which global warming and technological advance are making accessible to exploitation (Socialist Standard, September 2007).

Once the Arctic and Antarctic are brought fully under the sway of capital, what next? Won't that be the end of the story, the closing of the last frontier? There remains space, to be sure. But won't the costs of extracting resources and transporting them to Earth be prohibitive? So you might think.

In fact, the strategists of the six powers that now have active space programs – the United States, Russia, the European Union, China, India, and Japan – already have their sights on the commercial and military potential of the cosmos.

Helium-3

On 22 October India launched the Chandrayaan-1 satellite, and on 11 November it entered Moon orbit. One of its main tasks is to map deposits of Helium-3 (He-3). This isotope, used together with deuterium (H-2), is the optimal fuel for nuclear fusion: in particular, it minimises radioactive emissions. It is very rare on Earth – according to one estimate, only 30 kg is available – because the solar wind that carries it is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. The dust and rocks in the Moon's surface layer contain millions of tonnes of the stuff.

It has been calculated that a single shuttle flight bearing a load of 25 tonnes (currently valued at $100 billion) would meet energy demand in India for several years or in the US for one year, while three flights a year would suffice for the world (Guardian, 21 October; Tribune, 23 October).

The main problem is extracting the He-3 as gas from the lunar soil. This requires heating the soil to a temperature of 800ºC. in furnaces or towers, using solar power. (Silicon for solar cells is also abundant on the Moon.) To collect enough gas for one load, it would be necessary to process 360,000 tonnes of soil. Nevertheless, technologically this is believed to be feasible; modern furnaces do actually process such huge quantities of material. Some specialists question whether it would be economically feasible to strip mine the Moon in this way.

Despite uncertainties, Indian strategists hope that the Chandrayaan-1 satellite will enable India to "stake a priority claim" on He-3 resources when lunar colonization begins (SkyNews). India's main rivals in this field appear to be the US, which has "re-energised" its Moon program and plans to establish a manned base by 2020, and also China.

Enough for everyone?

Given the abundant supply of He-3 relative to foreseeable demand, why should India need to compete with other space powers for preferential access? Surely there is more than enough for everyone.

Yes, but some locations on the Moon's surface are much better for mining than others. Finding the best locations is the main aim of satellite exploration.

First, the nature of the terrain will obviously matter when building bases and installations, whether operated by human workers or robots. It will be a great advantage to have water (ice) available nearby.

Second, it will be least expensive to work in areas where deposits are richest, where the smallest amount of soil has to be processed for each unit of gas extracted.

Third, reliance on solar power for soil heating (and other purposes) puts a premium on those parts of the lunar surface which are exposed to sunlight for most of the time.

These are also the warmest regions (by lunar standards). An example is the Shackleton Crater at the South Pole. India is especially interested in this area, and it is also here that the US wants to establish its base.

Militarisation of the Moon?

Certain places on the Moon are already thought of as "strategic locations." Thus, the topography of Malapert Mountain makes it an ideal spot for a radio relay station. Near the Shackleton Crater, it enhances the strategic value of the crater area.

Considerations of this kind will become more important in the event of the Moon's militarisation. This may happen as a result of competition for land and resources on the Moon itself. Or it may happen simply as an extension of existing military preparations: lunar stations may serve as reserve command centres for wars on Earth.

Even if international agreements are reached to constrain the process of militarisation and divide the lunar surface into zones belonging to the various space powers, military threats may arise from "dual use" technologies. Let us suppose, for instance, that instead of mining He-3 a space power decides to generate electricity on the Moon using solar cells and transmit it on microwave beams to a receiving station on Earth. The problem – under capitalism – is that these same beams may equally well be used as powerful weapons against Earth targets.

There will also be potential conflict between the space powers and other countries that for one reason or another are unable to compete in this sphere. Like the club of nuclear weapons states, the space powers may constitute themselves as an exclusive club and think up a rationale for joint efforts to thwart "space power proliferation," that is, to prevent other countries from acquiring space capabilities. The two clubs will, of course, largely overlap.

Space programs and socialism

It is absurd for humanity to venture into the cosmos while still divided into rival states and still dominated by primitive mechanisms like capital accumulation. Even the first people in space, almost half a century ago, could see that our planet is a single fragile system.

A world socialist community will have to decide which elements of existing space programmes to retain and which to freeze or abandon. National programmes that are retained will be merged into global programmes, eliminating the wasteful duplication inherent in the competition among space powers. Ambitious programs of purely scientific interest may be deferred pending the solution of more urgent problems.

Attitudes in a socialist world toward reliance on space activities may diverge quite widely. Some people may wish to enjoy the benefits of a complex high-consumption lifestyle made possible by He-3 fuel for nuclear fusion and other off-Earth technologies. Others may prefer to avoid the irreducible risks of a space-dependent strategy and solve Earth's problems here on Earth, at least to whatever extent this proves possible.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

[Excerpts from a talk at Cooper Union, N.Y.C. November 23, 1973. This was originally printed in the Western Socialist, No.1, 1974. The talk was delivered by World Socialist Party comrade Charles P. Davis]

Our subject this evening is “Socialism - Utopian and Scientific.” Most relevant in the examination of this subject is history. Not the history you have studied at school nor the history with which current literature is so preoccupied. Currently a history titled “History as Mirror” comparing the fourteenth century and its horrible conditions with the twentieth century that we know contributes very little to understanding with a statement such as: “Chivalry was to the landowners ideology, their politics, their system - what democracy is to us or Marxism is to the Communists.”

The speakers that I have listened to at Cooper Union with their declaimers of being apolitical and their talks of historical developments with a collection of “we,” “our,” and “us,” spoke as if the world were made of one homogeneous non-political mass of mankind rather than those who own little but the ability to work for wages. Such speakers never impressed me as understanding their subjects.

As to being apolitical, that is some kind of myth. Man has need for food, clothing and shelter and the manner in which these needs are obtained is political. Saying one is apolitical is like saying one has resigned from the human race.

The view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the mode of production and exchange; in the consequent divisions of society into distinct classes and in the struggles of these classes against one another is called “Historical Materialism.”

Rise of the Utopian Socialists

The reactions the industrial revolution with the end of the old institutions of serfdom and feudal agriculture brought about a group of “socialists” such as Saint-Simon, Francois Fourier, Robert Owen and Weitling.

Viewing the agonies, the poverty and misery of the workers in the shops, factories, mills and mines, these men interpreted it all as a matter for morality, justice, humanity, altruism and philanthropy instead of what it was - a matter of compulsion of a system of society called capitalism - a system based upon “free” wage workers and a master class which buys the only commodity these workers have to sell in order for them to live - their labor power. It, labor power, is bought for the purpose of creating commodities which will yield profit from the values over and above that of labor power.

Exploitation is not a personal matter, it is a social fact. The contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation manifested itself then, as it does now, as an antagonism between proletariat and bourgeoisie.

So great was the struggle both in Europe and America that Robert Owen and Francois Fourier established communities, phalanxes, groups and cooperatives in this country with the blessings of many Americans including Albert Brisbane, the father of Arthur Brisbane, chief editor for William Randolph Hearst. Horace Greeley, like Albert Brisbane, supported Fourier until, when we saw the phalanxes established by Fourier falling apart, he ran successfully for Congress and introduced a measure for free land which was enacted.

One Heman Kriege, in the New York Volk Tribune, wrote: “According to the notions of the Fourierites, the working men in their phalanx would do from inclination what, in his present work, he does to keep himself from hunger. It would become, in a sense, his religion to make the capitalist rich. For that end, everything should be so arranged that the working man would be well fed, well housed, well dressed, perhaps even better than the slave in the south.” Arthur Schlessinger Jr. in “The Age of Jackson” says: “Fourierism in a way was a scheme to perpetuate capitalism by incorporating feudal satisfactions in the work and status into the new process of production.”

Now the Utopian Socialist idea that all of the inequities were due to the wickedness in the hearts of men was not a too unpleasant thought for the bourgeoisie. The American evangelists Moody and Sanky carried on a regular schedule of revival meetings in England. They were the precursors of Billy Sunday, Amie Semple McPherson, Billy Graham. And the Moody-Sanky success in England paved the way for the Salvation Army. In England, later, Thomas Carlyle - who is always quoted as the one who called Economics the Dismal Science - with others formed what was called Christian Socialism, a contradiction in terms as are such contemporary expressions as Marxist guerila, socialist state, and national socialism.

Historical Materialism

Historical materialism is the repudiation of religion and mythology and the recognition that the political, religious, philosophical and juridical institutions arise out of and correspond to definite stages of history. This was a consistent view of Marx and Engels from 1848, in their Communist Manifesto through 1892 with Engels’ preface to Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.

The reason the first draft of scientific socialism was called the “Communist Manifesto” was to avoid confusion with Utopian Socialism. It was sketchy but precise and as Engels wrote in a preface of the Communist Manifesto in 1888 after observing the changes that had taken place since 1848: “But then the Manifesto has become a historical document which we have no longer any right to alter.”

Here I must caution that the Communist Manifesto has nothing to do with what is now generally called Communist and which refers to Russia with its state capitalism, its K.G.B. - the counterpart of the F.B.I. - which the so-called Communists have used to their advantage in knocking off their dissidents. The “Manifesto” has no connection with those so-called Communists who, during the depression of the Thirties made it their business to disrupt peaceful meetings; the people who told workers that capitalism was collapsing, the ones who advocated every kind of reform from cheap bagels to better home relief; the ones who during World War II were staunch patriots after Hitler invaded Russia; who helped elect Jospeh McCarthy over LaFollette; who during the Johnson-Goldwater campaign suggested voting for L.B.J. as a “lesser of two evils.” The Communists would have us believe that what there is in Russia is “growing socialism” which will eventually become communism. And now we have a Chinese branch of that agony. Need I tell you how these organizations are peppered throughout with provocateurs to the detriment of the misguided individuals who have eyes but who see not?

Marx, in his preface to Critique of Political Economy discusses the Materialist Conception of History:

“In the social production which human beings carry on they enter into definite relations, which are determined independent of their will, productive relations which correspond to a definite evolutionary phase of the materialist forces of production. The totality of these productive relations forms the economic structure of society - the real basis upon which a legal and political superstructure develops with infinite forms of social consciousness. It is not the consciousness of human beings that determines their existence but conversely it is their social existence that determines their consciousness.”

The changes which human beings effect in the ways by which they satisfy their material needs are attended by changes in social forms, legal institutions, principles of state, scientific systems, moral and artistic ideas etc. But be it noted and it cannot be stressed too much that a scientific socialist never will agree that economic forces are the only forces that make history. What they have always contended is that among the factors of history, economic forces have the last word.

Revolt of the Godly

In Socialism: Utopian & Scientific Engels traces the role of the Catholic Church as the center of feudal Europe, the biggest feudal master, and shows how the class of merchant traders, financiers and manufacturers had to cast aside the Catholic Church in order to throw off the vestments of feudalism. Wycliffe, Knox, Martin Luther, Calvin, Erasmus, Melancthon, notwhithstanding their claims, were the stirrings of the breakaway from the Church. One has only to compare the number of days of obligation in the Church then and now. Industrialism could never countenance 220 days of interruption of the profit system. Martin Luther cast his lot with the aristocracy and this godly man, at the time of the Peasant Wars, suggested that the peasants be boiled in oil. As for Calvin, the work ethic and predestination was the answer to the problem of slave and master.

Engels shows how the rising capitalist class of England compromised with the feudal aristrocracy in 1689 and had to struggle again for political supremacy in 1832 - the Bill of Franchise Reform.

The 1832 act which had excluded workers from the franchise lead to the Chartist Movement and the publication of the Peoples’ Charter of 1838 - “The first working men’s party of modern times.” (Engels)

To the Utopian Socialist, history was of no consequence - humanity had to be saved. As Engels put it, however, we do not belittle the efforts of St. Simon, Fourier and Robert Owen. We point out, rather, that they proclaimed not the emancipation of the working class that produces the wealth but some vague idea of emancipating humanity. A benevolent ruling class or society of pure reason and justice, independent of time and place, they believed could arise in any stage of history.

To the Scientific Socialists socialism derives from history and has its roots in the development of industry and technology and social consciousness. Only a conscious working class majority can establish socialism but they will do so because humans always solve social problems when the conditions or means for their solution are at hand.

Materialist Conception of History

Down through the ages there have been various interpretations of history. For example, there are the theories which see in history the working out and realization of some sort of divine plan - like Hegel’s philosophy of history, which sees the whole historical development of society as the realization stage by stage of the so-called Absolute Idea. Again, there are the various theories which see history as moving through “cycles,” every civilization passing by some inescapable necessity through the cycle of rise, plentitude of power and decline - as in Spengler’s Decline of the West or Toynbee’s Studies in History. These are idealist theories and socialists are opposed to them. The idealism of such theories lies in the fact that they see the laws of development of society as a “fate” imposed upon society from outside, so that men and women are mere instruments of fate, the tools of external necessity. If such theories are accepted, then we are driven to fatalism. If what takes place is in the hands of God, or is decreed by fate, or follows by some iron necessity - it makes little difference in practice which you say - then it follows there is little we can do to determine our own destinies for ourselves.

Until the advent of Marx the various interpretations of history might be listed under five headings - religious, political, hero, ideas, and war. The elaborations found under these headings make interesting reading but they all contain serious shortcomings. The war or military interpretation of history, for instance, fails to recognize that war, a phenomenon that has been present in all phases of human development, is a result rather than a cause of events. With the coming of Marx and his theory of the materialist conception of history, history took on new meaning - it became rooted in the material conditions of life.

This interpretation of history holds that in any given epoch the economic relations of society, the means whereby men and women provide for their sustenance, produce, exchange, and distribute the things they regard as necessary for the satisfaction of their needs, exert a preponderating influence in shaping the progress of society and in molding political, social, intellectual, and ethical relationships. In his Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, Edward Aveling, Marx’s son-in-law defines this theory:

“The materialist conception of history is that the chief, the fundamental factor in the development of any nation or any society, is the economic factor - that is, the way in which the nation, or the society, produces, produces and exchanges its commodities…

“Now, whilst it (the economic factor) appears to be the fundamental one, there are others developed from it and reflexes of it, that also play their parts, acting and reacting upon their parent, the economic factor, and one another. The art, the science, the literature, the religion, the legal and juridicial formulae of a country, although they all spring directly from economic conditions of the country, have to be reckoned with.”

The most complete and most significant statement of the main elements of the materialist conception of history are formulated in Marx’s Preface to the Critique of Political Economy. There one learns that the subject matter of history is man himself, his economic and social conditions and not his ideas. The relations between men’s material conditions of life and their ideas are described in this general fashion by Marx: it is not the consciousness of men which determines their existence, but, on the contrary, it is their social existence which determines their consciousness. William Ebenstein in his Today’s Isms illustrates this concept:

“In a nomadic society… horses might be considered the principal means of acquiring and accumulating wealth. From Marx’s viewpoint, this foundation of nomadic life is the clue to its superstructure of law, government, and dominant ideas. Thus, Marx would say that those who are the owners of the greatest number of horses in such a nomadic society would also be the political cheiftans who make and interpret the law; they are also likely to receive the highest response and deference from the tribe’s members who own no horses. In the realm of ideas, the predominant social and cultural concepts would reflect the dominant economic position of the owners and horses. Even in religion the impact would not be missing. God might, for instance, be represented in the image of a swift and powerful rider, and the concept of divine justice and rule would be, in a sence, an extension and magnification of human justice as determined by the horse-owning chiefs.”

Even as the above horse-owning class determined the political, social, legal, and cultural institutions in its society, so, too, do we find, on looking back, that the landowners in a settled, agricultural society set its society’s values. Today in our industrial society the owners of the means of production are in the saddle and have been for the last two hundred years. No matter the formal and legal facades, this owning class, the capitalist class, rules contemporary society. This class conceives that “the ultimate purpose of the law, education, the press, and artistic and literary creation is to maintain an ideology that is embued with the sanctity and justice of capitalist property ownership.”

The misrepresentations and distortions of Marx’s writings are legion. They perhaps are paralleled only by the slanders and vilifications on Marx’s person. For instance, critics love to reproach Marx that the materialist conception of history disregards the influence of non-economic factors. This is not so. There is nothing in Marx’s theory to indicate such an assertion, though it is true that he failed sufficiently to safeguard himself against this charge, Engels repeatedly acknowledged that many interacting forces give rise to an historic event. Again, some critics would have one believe that Marx’s “materialism” is but a depiction of mans wish for monetary gain and comfort, of his desire for material goods, and this charge is sometimes coupled with the distortion that Marx was an advocate of the barracks, that is, the giving up of ones individuality and entrusting oneself to an all-powerful state bureaucracy. Again not so. Relative to this Erich Fromm writes in Marx’s Concept of Man:

This “description… fits almost exactly the reality of present-day Western capitalist society. The majority of people are motivated by a wish for greater material gain, for comfort and gadgets, and this wish is restricted only by the desire for security and the avoidance of risks. They are increasingly satisfied with a life regulated and manipulated, both in the sphere of production and of consumption, by the state and the big corporations and their respective bureaucracies; they have reached a degree of conformity which has wiped out individuality to a remarkable extent. They are, to use Marx’s term, impotent ‘commodity men’ serving virile machines. The very picture of mid-twentieth century capitalism is hardly distinguishable from the caricature of Marxist socialism as drawn by its opponents.”

The materialist conception of history is not only a theory about how to interpret history, but also a theory about how to make history. This theory was arrived at by Marx by applying the materialist world outlook to the solution of social problems. And in making this application materialism was no longer just a theory aimed at interpreting the world, of building a society free of the exploitation of man by man.

From our magazine The Western Socialist, Fall 1979

God and the Market

Commenting on the current world financial crisis former 1968 student leader and now a Green MEP, Daniel Cohn Bendit, said that “the belief that the market is god is over” (Guardian, 17 September). Someone who should know more about God, the Archbishop of Canterbury, hopes this is so as he thinks that the Market has become a rival to his god.

In an article in the Spectator (26 September) Dr Rowan Williams in effect accused “market fundamentalists” of breaking the First Commandment – “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”. He even called in Marx to back up this charge of idol worship:

“Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else. And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry.”

Dr Williams is said to be a learned man and he is right: Marx did see capital as the product of human labour which had come to dominate those who produced it (except that he saw this as applying to capitalism in general not just to “unbridled capitalism”).

This was in fact his whole “critique of political economy” (the subtitle of Capital), that the economic laws of capitalism were not the natural laws that Adam Smith, David Ricardo, the Rev Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill and the others thought but forces that came into operation only because society was organised in a particular way. Market forces were the result of human activity which had escaped from human control and which had come to dominate them as if they were a natural force.

Dr Williams may also be aware that here Marx was applying to economics the theory that Ludwig Feuerbach had applied to religion in his 1841 The Essence of Christianity. Feuerbach argued that, far from God making man in his own image, it was the other way round. Humans made God in their image and attributed to him the powers which they collectively possessed, and then bowed down and worshipped this figment of their imagination. If humans were to realise this and take their own destiny in hand there would be no need for God or religion. So, according to Feuerbach, the Archbishop’s god was also an idol.

The Archbishop was getting a dig at Marx in when he said he said he was right about this “if about little else”. But Marx once made a harsh comment about the Church of England, writing in the Preface to the first edition of Capital, that it would “more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income”.

It is interesting to speculate what the one article it would keep might be. At one time it would have been obvious – Article 38 that “the riches and goods of Christians are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same, as certain Anabaptists do falsely boast . . .” If he keeps on reading Marx maybe the Archbishop might be prepared to abandon this one too.

Chinese Bubble Bursts

China's manufacturing contracted by the most on record last month as the global financial crisis cut demand for exports, a second survey showed. A government-backed survey released on Nov. 1 also showed a record contraction, adding to concern that the world's fastest- growing economy may slump.

With export orders falling because of the global slowdown and rising raw material and labor costs, more than 68,000 small companies nationwide collapsed in the first half of 2008 and about 2.5 million jobs in the Pearl River Delta region may be lost by the end of the year, according to government and industry estimates.

As the economy has soured, dissatisfaction has grown: Since mid-October, there have been dozens of labor protests involving thousands of workers at major exporters, including several publicly listed companies. China needs to grow in order to keep generating enough factory jobs to maintain stability in the labor market, as millions of peasants continue to pour into Chinese cities in search of work.In Jiangsu province, the government extended unemployment benefits to migrant workers laid off from ailing factories; these workers had previously been shut out of public services because they don't have residency cards.

The Guangdong provincial government in the south is scrambling to set up a special fund to compensate laid-off workers in order to "protect against some of the financial and social problems caused by such closures."

In the eastern city of Wujiang, nearly 1,000 workers from bankrupt Chunyu Textile Co. received four months' salary on Oct. 27 after they swarmed the area's four main roads to draw attention to their cause. After more than 1,000 workers for home appliance maker BEP International Holdings gathered outside the factory to protest, district officials gave them $44 each late last month. The employees were also allowed to continue living in the defunct factory's dormitories for free. The same week, the government offered three months' back pay to the 900 workers at Gangsheng, an electronics supplier, after they staged a protest at a shop near their factory.

In the neighboring city of Dongguan, the local government handed out about $3.5 million on Oct. 21 to the employees of Smart Union — which sold its toys to Mattel, Disney and Hasbro — after the 7,000 workers staged a strike.Employees became nervous when the owners slipped three months behind on salary payments. The workers occupied the factory and the surrounding streets until government officials promised them they would be paid.

China's most revered companies, whose growth once seemed limitless, have reported surprising losses in the past few days. Air China , the nation's biggest international carrier, posted its first loss in seven quarters because of declining passenger numbers and wrong-way bets on fuel prices. Bank of China, the nation's largest foreign-exchange lender, said that as credit-market losses went up, its profit growth went down to its slowest in two years.

China's leaders have made a variety of moves to try to stabilize the economy — three interest rate cuts in six weeks, new export tax rebates, reduced costs for home buyers, and billions spent on infrastructure.

"…What the government fears most is workers making trouble…" Hu said. "….no one wants to hire you because they know about the blockade and now we have a bad reputation…" Jia said.