By Steve Halpern
Karl Marx wrote his classic work Capital in the late 19th century. These are the first two sentences of this fundamentally important work.
“The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.”
The key word to this passage is, appears.
Growing up in the capitalist world, we learn that there is a stark difference between the way things appear and the way they are.
When I was a child in Newark, New Jersey, teachers told me to stand up every day, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag. That pledge argued that this is “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
While I recited the words to that pledge, the government ordered the military to carpet bomb the people of Vietnam. Literally millions of Vietnamese men, women, and children died because of the organized war against their people. This is just one example of how appearances are different from the realities of the capitalist world.
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a prolific writer. She’s also an activist working against the destruction of the environment and opposition to the Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people. Her latest book written with Astra Taylor is End Times Fascism and the Fight For a Living World. There is an interview with Klein and Taylor about their book in a recent edition of the New York Times Magazine.
Klein also wrote the best-selling book Shock Doctrine about the effects of the capitalist political-economic system known as neoliberalism. To be honest, I haven’t read any of Klein’s books and have relied on quotations from her interview on Democracy Now and the internet.
In their book End Times Fascism Klein and Taylor argue that there are three groups that are driving this country to fascism. These are what they call, Religious end timers, Tech end timers, and Ethno-nationalist end timers.
In her book Shock Doctrine, Klein argues that shocks to the economy have enabled capitalists to push through an and agenda that compromises both the working class and the environment. Milton Freidman, one of the architects of neoliberalism, used the term shock therapy to describe the measures used by the Pinochet military government of Chile to drive through his reforms. Those reforms were harmful to both the working class and the ecology, but were lucrative to capitalist investment.
Certainly, Klein and Taylor have a tremendous amount of evidence to support their view. However, as the above quotation from Marx illustrates, in the capitalist world the appearances are different from the reality. The following quotation by Naomi Klein summarizes her perspective about what needs to be done.
“So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.”
David Harvey
David Harvey is a geologist and a college professor who has been teaching students about Karl Marx’s book Capital for about fifty years. His podcasts have an audience of over a million viewers. Those podcasts consist of Harvey’s view of how Marx’s works are relevant to the world today. Harvey also wrote a book about neoliberalism.
Unlike Klein, Havey argues that the policies known as neoliberalism didn’t happen because of shocks, but because of the natural functioning of the capitalist system. After the Second World War, capitalism in the United States dominated the world’s econ0my. About 60% of the commodities in the world were manufactured here.
This state of affairs gave the working-class real leverage to improve our standard of living. The capitalist system also needs to continually grow and create an ever-expanding market. As a result of this and the horrendous environments many workers faced, the movements of labor, civil rights, and women’s rights erupted.
These movements won real gains and there was a significant improvement in the standard of living for the majority of the population in this country. President Johnson even relaxed the controls on immigration because of a labor shortage here. However, dire poverty continued to be a fact of life for millions.
On the other hand, capitalism is a changing system where there is a continuous decline in the percentage of profit on investment. This decline in the rate of profit prompts capitalists to be continually obsessed with cutting costs.
This obsession with cutting production costs created a tremendous increase in investment capital. This explains why the stock market continues to rise while there is a decline in the standard of living for the majority of the population. There is also a continued destruction of the environment.
This explains why Marx argued that capitalism is continually at war with the two sources of wealth. These are labor and the land.
So, by the beginning of the 1970s President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Prices initially increased and the Federal Reserve Bank compensated by dramatically increasing interest rates. These measures prompted corporations cut their costs by automating jobs and investing in countries where the prevailing wages were about two dollars per day.
David Harvey summarized what was happening with his term, “accumulation by dispossession.”
One example of how this worked was the increase in price for a semester at Rutgers University. In 1972, tuition at Rutgers was $200 per semester. Today tuition at Rutgers for one semester is about $18,000.
So, during the times when U.S. capitalism was in its ascendency, universities received significant subsidies from corporate interests. Today when capitalism is in decline, the working class needs to pay considerably more for that same education.
Corporations eliminated literally millions of manufacturing jobs through automation and outsourcing. After the Second World War about 60% of the commodities in the world were produced in the United States. Today that percentage is about 15% while Aisia produces about 50% of the commodities in the world.
Most of the replacement jobs have effectively lower pay and fewer benefits. Yet, both Democratic and Republican Party politicians like to argue that they are creating jobs.
When we look at the labels on our clothes, most are made in other countries. When we look at the cars on the road, a large percentage are made in other countries. Basic food products like bananas and coffee are produced in other countries. When we look at the huge infrastructures required to bring these commodities to market, we get an idea of the tremendous potential power of the international working class.
We are ruled by abstractions
One of David Harvey’s arguments is that under the capitalist system we are all “ruled by abstractions.” What is he talking about?
We all need and want about eight things. These include food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to culture that includes music, art, theater, sports, etc.…
However, to get any of these things, we all need to have access to money. Money has no direct value. We would not want to eat money. Money is merely a means of exchange. In other words, our routine motivation to attain money from our jobs is, in a real sense, an abstraction.
Then there are the three IN’s. These are insurance, inflation, and interest to banks. These enterprises, as well as corporate law, advertising, and landlords never directly produce any of the goods and services we need or want. Yet we need to pay for all these enterprises. We do this with both the extraction of wealth derived from jobs where we work, and in the prices we pay for commodities.
Another of David Harvey’s observations is that while problems can be solved, we need a completely different political-economic system to resolve fundamental contradictions. While Harvey doesn’t elaborate on this, we can imagine what this would mean. What would the world look like if we had a government that made a priority of providing people with lifetime rights for our needs?
What would a socialist world look like?
The first sentence of this blog quoted Karl Marx who argued that his analysis of capitalism started with the commodity. Marx argued that in order to produce a commodity there needs to be constant capital (buildings, machinery, and materials), variable capital (labor), and surplus capital (profits, interest, insurance, taxes, advertising, rents, etc.)
A fundamental question Marx asked was: Who should control surplus capital?
In the capitalist world, surplus capital is controlled by capitalists who are motivated to maximize profits. The goal of a socialist world would be to provide everyone in the world with lifetime rights to everything we need and some of the things we want. These would include food, clothing, housing, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture that includes music, art, theater, recreation, and sports.
When we think of the enormous resources effectively waisted on enterprises that contribute nothing to the goods and services we need, we get an idea of how those resources could be used in a rational way.
Today, we all travel to our jobs wherever they are. In a planned economy there could be a mass transportation system that transports workers to enterprises that provide for our needs. Since this would require much less work, workers could retire at a significantly earlier age. The class sizes for teachers might be a maximum of five or ten students. The number of doctors could quadruple, and health care would be a routine fact of life for everyone.
All of these ideas are unthinkable to those who support the capitalist system. This is the context of David Harvey’s statement that while problems can be solved, we need a different political-economic system to resolve basic contradictions.
Why was Donald Trump elected President?
When we look at the decades of deteriorating standards of living due to neoliberalism, it should be of no surprise that millions of people want a change. However, today there is no grass roots mass political party arguing that workers and capitalists have fundamentally antagonistic interests.
So, millions of people who wanted a change were deluded in believing that Donald Trump represented that change. Since he has been in office, Trump’s policies have followed the politics of the democrats, but only more in a more vicious way. He, like the democrats has a mass deportation program. Like the democrats, Trump ardently supports Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinians. Like the democrats, Trump ardently supports the gross disparity of wealth in this country. His primary difference with the democrats is how he makes seemingly stupid remarks literally every day.
Both Jill Stein and Zohan Mamdani are attempting to reform the capitalist system. I do not question their motives. However, we have a 250-year history that gives us clear evidence that capitalism cannot and will not be reformed.
We need a labor party that identifies with the working class all over the world. This is not the perspective of either Naomi Klein or David Harvey. However, I agree with Naomi Klein when she argues that “no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.” For me, this can only mean advocating for a political party and a political economic system that makes human needs and not profits the fundamental priority.
No comments:
Post a Comment