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Tuesday, July 9, 2019
A witness to lasting ruin in Vietnam
Monday, July 8, 2019
Greek Elections No Surprise. Don't Blame the Workers
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| 2019 |
Afscme Local 444, retired
Myself and others have made it clear in our contributions to this blog that one of the major factors in the rise of Donald Trump, his election and the increased boldness and violence by white nationalists, fascists and Nazi’s, is the disgraceful role played by the heads of organized labor from the AFL-CIO down.
Myself and others have made it clear in our contributions to this blog that one of the major factors in the rise of Donald Trump, his election and the increased boldness and violence by white nationalists, fascists and Nazi’s, is the disgraceful role played by the heads of organized labor from the AFL-CIO down.
I write “role” as opposed to “no role” because it’s not that
they have done nothing which so many union members and unorganized workers
accuse them of. They do a lot; the problem is it is all aimed at suppressing
the potential power latent in the 14 million members of the organizations they
head. Whether it’s forcing concessionary contracts on workers that resist them
or openly sabotaging them and any potential movement from below that threatens
their leadership and class collaborationist policies, they are very active in
ensuring that when capitalism goes in to crisis, they move to prop it up, to
bail it out.
This is their policy on the job, in the economic sphere but
also in the electoral arena where they continuously support the capitalist
Democratic Party supplying human capital and money to the tune of billions of
dollars over decades. Their refusal to
provide an alternative has led to two important developments. One is the
abandonment of electoral politics altogether as 100 million or so eligible
voters in the US are so disgusted with the situation they have opted out. And
the other is among those that do participate, the election of the serial sexual
predator and racist Donald Trump.
As I have pointed out before (as have others on this blog),
an important if not crucial lesson we must learn from the recent successes in
education, especially West Virginia, is that these victories, some greater than
others, and the organizational form they took, were possible because the trade
union hierarchy was weaker. These teacher/educators uprisings didn’t take place
in states where this entrenched labor bureaucracy is stronger because they had
the power to suppress them.
Greece
Greece
What has this to do with Greece my fellow workers might
ask. Leadership, that’s what.
The Greek workers have just elected a center right
conservative party, New Democracy, to power ousting the left leaning Syriza and
its leader, Alexis
Tsipras. According to reports, the new Prime Minister and victor, Kyriakos
Mitsotakis, is a bit of a liberal but New Democracy also has some extreme right
wing elements in it. Syriza thrashed New Democracy only 4our years past based on a platform promising to take on the banks and against austerity.
Taking a lesson from the US Predator in Chief, Mitsotakis promises to “energize” the economy and to make
Greeks proud again through fewer taxes and inviting in foreign investors which
will create growth that will according to him, “….bring better salaries and higher pensions in an efficient state,”
It’s amazing that someone can repeat this same old worn out
mantra and with another slump or deep recession around the corner. Why on Earth would the Greek workers support this?
Well
it’s very simple. Syriza, a sort of coalition between various leftist and
radical formations had a meteoric rise to power even displacing the Greek
Socialist Party as the favorite of the Greek working class. In the 2012
elections, a period of continuing austerity and assault on the Greek working
class by the EU, the ECB and the IMF (the Troika), Syriza won 16% of the vote and
became the second largest party in the Greek parliament to New Democracy. This
situation has now been reversed with the recent elections.
Back in 2015, in ongoing battle and negotiations with the Troika, Tsipras decided to call a
referendum on whether or not to accept the most recent bailout conditions on offer the Troika. As anyone that follows politics knows, the IMF, the
World Bank, the ECB and other global capitalist institutions impose horrific
conditions on the populations of countries that borrow from them. Structural
adjustment is another nice sounding term that also extracts blood for money
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| 2015 |
From
all that I read, Tsipras believed the Greek workers would not take a chance at
refusing an offer from such powerful global institutions but they did. By a
vote 61% to 39%. The result of the referendum was a resounding "No" vote. New Democracy, last week’s
victor, lost its president who resigned due to the party's support of the Troika's horrific bailout offer.
Despite
running on an anti-austerity platform, Tsipras and Sytiza capitulated and
despite the “no” vote signed a bail out agreement with the Troika a month later
that was even worse than the one the Greek workers rejected in the referendum.
Sounds just like what happens when rank and file union members reject
concessionary contracts forced on them by their leaders and the bosses doesn’t
it. Workers get worn down at the prospect of having to take on their own leaders and withdraw from the union altogether. The Greek workers have responded in a similar fashion as the turnout in this election was only just over 50%. Like the union leaders though, Tsipras was not so much afraid of the Troika, he was afraid of the Greek working class that, through the referendum, asked him and Syriza to fight.
The
same process occurred with Trump. For all the talk of the white racist workers
that voted for him in McComb County for example, they had previously voted
twice for Obama. People close their eyes and ears to what they don’t like if it
might get food on the table and pay the rent. There are many black folk who
support Obama and simply ignore his murderous foreign policy, a continuation of
his predecessors or his immigration policy.
Life is more complicated than the US mass media would like us to think.
We
can see this throughout history in politics and in our unions where those
heading them betray the working class either consciously or simply through
false policies not understanding what has to be done. As Christopher
Hill, the British historian put it with regards to the revolutionists that
fought the feudal aristocracy and for a permanent political voice, they were
initially able only to go so far as their world view, that the king was king by
divine right, that he was god’s vicar was such an obstacle. It was their “stop
in the mind” as Hill put it. Then Cromwell came along and suggested they cut of
his head and see what happens. A new day was born. Our own consciousness is a
powerful obstacle to progress at times.
I am
not in the habit of attaching the name of a historical figure to my worldview.
I fear it because there are many others who adopt the same moniker. I accept as
accurate Marx’s understanding of the world and the method of historical
materialism. I reject Stalinism as socialism or Communism and respect Trotsky’s
defense of the Marxist method and his ideas against Stalinism that cost him his
life and the lives of most of his family; like all human beings he was a person of his time and made his share of mistakes.
To paraphrase Marx who once said that whatever I am I am not a
Marxist in order to separate himself from the abundance of groupings that
called themselves that, I identify myself as a revolutionary socialist.
Trotsky
wrote in 1938 two years before his murder by one of Stalin’s agents that The
historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary
leadership.
I think we can say without hesitation that the
evidence of how right he was 80 years ago is overwhelming. The leaders of the working class in the trade
unions and the political parties where they exist, are the obstacle to the
working class taking power and fulfilling the task that history has set for it.
For more on Greece, hit the Greece or EU tabs to the right.
For more on Greece, hit the Greece or EU tabs to the right.
Saturday, July 6, 2019
US Left. Its Lack Of Working Class Consciousness.
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| Memorial Day Massacre 1937/ Cops Kill Ten Workers |
This Blog recently published a piece on the Stonewall Uprising. In this we stated:
“The capitalist media tries to refer to the Stonewall events as “riots”. The idea behind this is to try and diminish the importance of Stonewall. Unfortunately many on the left also mistakenly use the term “riots”. Stonewall was an uprising of people who were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. They reached their breaking point and they rose up. The main lesson to be drawn from Stonewall is that changes for the better in US society comes from uprisings from below.
It was mass strikes and workplace occupations and street fighting that built the CIO and the trade unions in the 1930’s. It was mass movements on the streets and the urban uprisings of the Black revolt of the 1950’s and 1960’s that forced racist US society to make some concessions. It was the women’s movements on the streets of the 1960’s that made the gains for women. It was the anti war movements on the streets, in the schools and colleges and in the rank and file of the US military in Vietnam that undermined US imperialism’s slaughter in South East Asia”.
The Stonewall uprising, which was also against the Vietnam War and for better housing and jobs, brought about change for the better for all minorities who are oppressed because of their sexual orientation. It is an example to the working class movement. It is the duty of all worker activists and socialists to celebrate Stonewall and the courage of those who took on the state and changed things for the better for all workers and discriminated against minorities. Stonewall teaches us that change comes from movements from below not from lobbying or voting for capitalist politicians.
The present leaders of the trade union movement in the US have a different view. Some of them hobnob with the anti working class capitalist, racist, and sexual predator in the White House. Some of them prop up the most right wing faction in the capitalist Democratic Party against the rising pressure from its more left wing members. All of us working class activists can learn from the Stonewall uprising and from the struggles in the 1930’s and the 1960’s, which are referred to above. Along with this all activists in the working class movement must support the rights of all minorities and of women. We must do so for two reasons. We have the responsibility as activists in the progressive class in society to stand against all discrimination and special oppression.
We must also do so as the capitalist class, a tiny minority in society, can only rule if they divide the majority, the working class. The conclusion from this is the need to unite the working class. Only a united working class unity can end capitalism. As Malcolm X said “You cannot have capitalism without racism”. And I would add sexism, injustice, poverty, climate change etc. What is most certainly true is that you can’t overthrow capitalism without uniting the working class.
In this regard it is important to look at the capitalist media and the Stonewall uprising as well as identity politics and class politics. It is very interesting to see the coverage for Stonewall. The organizers of this Blog have a division of labor as regards following the capitalist media, which represents our enemy the capitalist class. It is my task amongst others to read the New York Times. (NYT) We are familiar with its slogan “All the news that’s fit to print”. The issue of course, is who determines what is “fit to print” and in which class interest do they determine what is “fit to print’.
The June 23 edition of the NYT had two thirds of the front of the Business section and two other full pages dealing with Stonewall and LGBTQ issues in one way or another. On June 24ththe NYT had two and a half pages on Stonewall and LGBTQ issues. On June 28th it had one full page. On June 29th it had two full pages on these topics. On Sunday June 30th, over half a page. On July first it had two and a half pages. And most interesting of all in June 30th, the Sunday edition, the entire editorial from top of the page to bottom was given over to Stonewall. Its heading was: “50 Years After Stonewall”.
I do not have the resources to get this information but it would be interesting to see how much coverage and what kind of coverage the NYT gave to the Stonewall uprising when it was taking place. I would not be afraid to bet that it was a very different ball game.
But what I want to deal with here is to try and explain how important it is to think about how we read the capitalist media, the voice of the enemy, the capitalist class. In this regard I would like to also refer to my opinion that the main weakness of the socialist left in the USA, and this includes DSA, of which I am a member, is its lack of class consciousness, in particular working class consciousness. The reality is that DSA, like most of the left, does not base itself on the working class as the progressive force in society. It does not base itself on the collective power and the collective brain of the international working class as the only force that can end capitalism and save life on earth as we know it and give a future to the human species.
This is partly because of the role of the capitalist media, its education system and its general propaganda machine from the so-called entertainment industry to its advertising industry etc. Look at this issue we are discussing and at the role of the so-called liberal NYT. I have explained that in less than a two-week period the NYT had 12 pages on Stonewall and LGBTQ issues. There is more coverage on this issue than any other topic over this period except the Trump presidency and the Democratic Party primary. There is a staggering amount of coverage. It is important to ask why, to what end. To answer this let us look at what the NYT considers is news that is “not fit to print”.
If you Google repression of workers organizing drives in the US or words to that effect you will see that time after time, in all parts of the country, there were serious attempts by workers and family farmers to organize that were repressed by the capitalist state and its hired thugs. In this assault, workers and farmers were killed. Just look at a few examples from many. On September 30th, 1919 African American farmers tried to form what they called the Progressive Farmers and Household Union of America. This was suppressed by military force and an estimated 100 farmers were killed by the capitalist state and its thugs. This September marks 100 years since that massacre. The New York Times doesn’t give over 12 pages to those events.
In 1921 there was the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia as miners tried to organize. An estimated 50 to 100 miners were killed by the capitalist state and its thugs. In 1937 in Youngstown Ohio there was what is known as the Memorial Day Massacre where between 10 and 16 steel workers were killed. Ludlow, River Rouge, The Everett Massacre, there are simply too many massacres to include them in this commentary.
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| Ludlow Co. Using machine guns 21 workers, women and children killed |
The US capitalist media commemorates none of these events, these killings of US workers, by the US capitalist state and its thugs. They are not commemorated because they undermine the boss’s propaganda about how democratic US capitalism is and how there are these wonderful American values. I am sick of hearing the Democratic Politicians whining about Trump that his degenerate behavior is not what “America is about……We are better than this”. But that is what America is about. Violence, genocide, slavery, shooting workers, deporting them and so on. These massacres of workers and farmers are a more accurate picture of what America is about.
But the most important and central reason that US capitalism and its media and propaganda machine do not commemorate these events is that it wishes at all times to deny the existence of the working class as a separate class with its own class interests. It also wishes at all times to hide the fact that the class interests of the working class are opposed to those of the capitalist class and that the working class has the potential to build a different society to capitalism, that is a democratic socialist society.
To return to the left in the USA and to my own organization DSA. US capitalism sees the increased power of women as they enter the paid workforce as never before. It also sees the increased demand for an end to all special oppressions. It especially sees the young people in society refusing to accept all special oppressions. It sees that it has to take this into account. It also sees that it has to separate this desire for change and these new movements for change from linking up with the working class struggles and developing a class understanding and analysis. So it promotes identity politics. It promotes identity politics to prevent class politics and consciousness from developing. Unfortunately many on the left have fallen into this trap.
Those of us who insist on standing on a class position, on developing working class politics and consciousness are accused of being “class reductionists”. This is to fall into the trap of the capitalist class and their liberal middle class defenders in the media and universities. Of course all working class activists must defend all specially oppressed minorities but this to be successful must be made part of the working class struggle against the capitalist class and its capitalist system.
Look at the rise of the Me Too movement. This reflected the rising struggle of women and their increased power as they have increasingly entered the paid workforce. This Blog 100% supports the fight of women and of all against being exploited and oppressed by those who have the power to do so. This Blog has had many articles on this issue. In these we have explained that the way to end this oppression and the inequality in pay and conditions is to organize democratic fighting trade unions. Where in all this coverage of the Me Two movement are there articles explaining this in the capitalist media? This is in spite of statistics showing that the gap between male and female workers wages is less the more an industry is unionized, that in general the struggle against racism, sexism and discrimination on the job is easier if you have a union. . The NYT carried one article that we could see that argued this case. This Blog sent an article to the NYT arguing this but it disappeared without trace.
Facts For Working People Blog would like to suggest to DSA that it open up a regular feature in its magazine and its Internet outlets to commemorate workers struggles and how we had to fight for our interests. This would be a step towards developing working class consciousness amongst our members and amongst the working class with whom we have influence. We propose to DSA that it now set up a special department to this end, that is to commemorate the struggles of the working class and to explain that it is only the collective power and the collective brain of the international working class that can prevent the developing catastrophe of capitalism from destroying life on earth as we know it through climate change, nuclear war and the degradation of the environment.
In a discussion we were having with other comrades, we shared out view on the issue of what is called today, intersectionality and what we knew as specially oppressed minorities. That can be read here: https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/search?q=intersectionality,+class+reductionism
Here are more posts dealing with the issue of class, class consciousness and identity politics:
A few comments on Politics, history and class.
The Divisive, Reactionary Nature of Identity Politics and Video
Marxism, Socialism and Identity Politics
Class Consciousness and the Struggle Against Capital
The reactionary, class nature of left Academia today.
Trumka, Trump and the White Worker
Why US big business prefers the term White Privilege to Racial Discrimination
Why do politicians lie?
Hillary and Michelle and the Ties That Bind
Friday, July 5, 2019
Two M's: Marx, Madison and the State
There is a reason that identity trumps class
in the US when it comes to the mass media and most aspects of life. Workers are
even referred to as 'middle class' here in the US, a bit of an insult I would
say. James Madison, the fourth president of the newly formed United States was
a capitalist, lawyer and from a landed slaveowning family. He was well aware of
the class struggle and feared it. Madison as a member of the colonial ruling
class warned his colleagues about the dangers of the working class that would
grow alongside capitalist production. The second half of the American
revolution, the US Civil War defeated the backward slaveocracy and consolidated
the nation state and the dominance of capital. le though
Marx, like Madison, understood the nature of class struggle but did not attribute class differentiation simply to some inherent ability and talent on the part of individuals. Unlike Madison he too understood the nature of the state and its role as an arbiter between competing capitalists and as an organ for ensuring the continuing exploitation of the mass of the population. Marx explained the nature of the state, a divine institution in feudal times, in order to assist the working class and all oppressed peoples to overthrow it in order to build a truly free, democratic and collective society. Marx made it clear, as Madison does, that the state is an organ of class rule and while the working class can wring concessions from it, it will ultimately and always defend the ruling class in any society. The state has class content.
James Madison, US Founding Father
"Men of greater ability and talent tend to possess more property than those of lesser ability, and since the first object of government is to protect and encourage ability, it follows that the rights of property owners must be protected. Property is divided unequally, and, in addition, there are many different kinds of property. and men have different interests depending upon the kind of property they own. For example, the interests of landowners differ from those who own businesses. Government must not only protect the conflicting interests of property owners but must, at the same time, successfully regulate the conflicts between those with and without property." my added emphasis.
"An increase in the population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a more equitable distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country, but symptoms of a levelling spirit as we have understood have sufficiently appeared, in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger." And again, in support of the argument for a property qualification on voters, Madison urged: "In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without land, but without any other sort of property. These will either combine, under the influence of their common situation, -- in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, -- or, what is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side." Madison
Our task must to be rescue the words of the Diggers and Levellers from obscurity and to locate them quite firmly in the context of working-class history and struggle; to seek inspiration from their words and actions; to ensure that all of these disparate voices are united under the common theme of working class resistance to poverty and oppression.
Copied from The Diggers and the Levellers at Libcom.org
Marx, like Madison, understood the nature of class struggle but did not attribute class differentiation simply to some inherent ability and talent on the part of individuals. Unlike Madison he too understood the nature of the state and its role as an arbiter between competing capitalists and as an organ for ensuring the continuing exploitation of the mass of the population. Marx explained the nature of the state, a divine institution in feudal times, in order to assist the working class and all oppressed peoples to overthrow it in order to build a truly free, democratic and collective society. Marx made it clear, as Madison does, that the state is an organ of class rule and while the working class can wring concessions from it, it will ultimately and always defend the ruling class in any society. The state has class content.
James Madison, US Founding Father
"Men of greater ability and talent tend to possess more property than those of lesser ability, and since the first object of government is to protect and encourage ability, it follows that the rights of property owners must be protected. Property is divided unequally, and, in addition, there are many different kinds of property. and men have different interests depending upon the kind of property they own. For example, the interests of landowners differ from those who own businesses. Government must not only protect the conflicting interests of property owners but must, at the same time, successfully regulate the conflicts between those with and without property." my added emphasis.
"An increase in the population will of necessity increase the proportion of those who will labor under all the hardships of life and secretly sigh for a more equitable distribution of its blessings. These may in time outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence. According to the equal laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former. No agrarian attempts have yet been made in this country, but symptoms of a levelling spirit as we have understood have sufficiently appeared, in a certain quarter, to give notice of the future danger." And again, in support of the argument for a property qualification on voters, Madison urged: "In future times, a great majority of the people will not only be without land, but without any other sort of property. These will either combine, under the influence of their common situation, -- in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands, -- or, what is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition; in which case there will be equal danger on another side." Madison
(see
more on the levelers below)
Karl Marx Philosopher, economist,
revolutionary author of the Communist Manifesto
“the bourgeoisie is forced to organize itself no longer locally but nationally, and to give a general form to its mean average interest”; this “general form” is the state, defined as “nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interest.” Marx
“The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” and political power is “merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.”
“the bourgeoisie is forced to organize itself no longer locally but nationally, and to give a general form to its mean average interest”; this “general form” is the state, defined as “nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interest.” Marx
“The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” and political power is “merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.”
**********************
Who were the Levellers?
The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterised the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649. The most prominent Levellers were John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, John Wildman, Edward Sexby and Colonel Thomas Rainborough.
What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion [or none] that they chose. This programme was published as ‘The Agreement of the People’.
These ideas came out of the social classes from which the Levellers originated; they were mainly skilled workers and peasants and the ‘petty bourgeoisie’. Since many of them had fought in Cromwell’s New Model Army they were used to discussion, argument and the free dissemination of ideas; it was this intelligent debate allied to the need for discipline that had led to the defeat of the Royalists and the victory of the republic.
The Levellers were essentially radical idealists; their demands could be seen as a form of early socialism [they were pretty much the same as the demands of the Chartists some two hundred years later], but they had little or no understanding of the workings of a capitalist economy. It is unfair, though, to expect this of them since capitalism as an organised form of social production would only assert itself much later in the development of Britain as an industrial nation.
Indeed, it is important to note that their views on the social order were not particularly progressive; these were rooted in the notion that prior to 1066 and the Norman Conquest a democratic society had existed in Anglo-Saxon times where the land was held in common by the people [perhaps this is in line with Karl Marx’s idea of the concept of ‘primitive communism’; that is, the form of social organisation that existed in pre-industrial society].
The victory of William the Conqueror in 1066 had enabled him to impose a form of foreign [that is, Norman] domination on the people. [1] This enabled him to reward his followers with huge swathes of land seized from the formerly ‘free men’ of England. This was particularly so in the North of England where opposition was brutally suppressed.
The Levellers argued that since God had created all men as equals, the land belonged to all the people as a right. Their programme was, then, essentially an attempt to restore the situation that they believed had existed previous to the Norman Conquest; they wanted to establish a ‘commonwealth’ in which the common people would be in control of their own destiny without the intervention of a King, a House of Lords and other potential oppressors.
The Agreement of the People was drawn up by a committee of Levellers including John Lilburne which was to have been discussed at a meeting of the commonwealth armies at Newmarket in June 1647. In brief this is what they asked for:
The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterised the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649. The most prominent Levellers were John Lilburne, Richard Overton, William Walwyn, John Wildman, Edward Sexby and Colonel Thomas Rainborough.
What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion [or none] that they chose. This programme was published as ‘The Agreement of the People’.
These ideas came out of the social classes from which the Levellers originated; they were mainly skilled workers and peasants and the ‘petty bourgeoisie’. Since many of them had fought in Cromwell’s New Model Army they were used to discussion, argument and the free dissemination of ideas; it was this intelligent debate allied to the need for discipline that had led to the defeat of the Royalists and the victory of the republic.
The Levellers were essentially radical idealists; their demands could be seen as a form of early socialism [they were pretty much the same as the demands of the Chartists some two hundred years later], but they had little or no understanding of the workings of a capitalist economy. It is unfair, though, to expect this of them since capitalism as an organised form of social production would only assert itself much later in the development of Britain as an industrial nation.
Indeed, it is important to note that their views on the social order were not particularly progressive; these were rooted in the notion that prior to 1066 and the Norman Conquest a democratic society had existed in Anglo-Saxon times where the land was held in common by the people [perhaps this is in line with Karl Marx’s idea of the concept of ‘primitive communism’; that is, the form of social organisation that existed in pre-industrial society].
The victory of William the Conqueror in 1066 had enabled him to impose a form of foreign [that is, Norman] domination on the people. [1] This enabled him to reward his followers with huge swathes of land seized from the formerly ‘free men’ of England. This was particularly so in the North of England where opposition was brutally suppressed.
The Levellers argued that since God had created all men as equals, the land belonged to all the people as a right. Their programme was, then, essentially an attempt to restore the situation that they believed had existed previous to the Norman Conquest; they wanted to establish a ‘commonwealth’ in which the common people would be in control of their own destiny without the intervention of a King, a House of Lords and other potential oppressors.
The Agreement of the People was drawn up by a committee of Levellers including John Lilburne which was to have been discussed at a meeting of the commonwealth armies at Newmarket in June 1647. In brief this is what they asked for:
· Power to be vested in the people
· One year Parliaments, elected by equal numbers of voters per seat. The right to vote for all men who worked independently for their living and all those who had fought for the Parliamentary cause
· Recall of any or all of their MPs by their electors at any time
· Abolition of the House of Lords
· Democratic election of army officers
· Complete religious toleration and the abolition of tithes and tolls
· Justices to be elected; law courts to be local and proceedings to be in English [not French!]
· Redistribution of seized land to the common people
· One year Parliaments, elected by equal numbers of voters per seat. The right to vote for all men who worked independently for their living and all those who had fought for the Parliamentary cause
· Recall of any or all of their MPs by their electors at any time
· Abolition of the House of Lords
· Democratic election of army officers
· Complete religious toleration and the abolition of tithes and tolls
· Justices to be elected; law courts to be local and proceedings to be in English [not French!]
· Redistribution of seized land to the common people
"[T]here had never been anything like such a
spontaneous outbreak of democracy in any English or Continental Army before
this year of 1647, nor was there anything like it thereafter till Workers’ and
Soldiers’ Councils met in 1917 in Russia" [2]
It is hardly surprising, given this programme of demands,
that the rich and powerful felt threatened by the Levellers. This is
particularly so, given that some of the Leveller demands, almost 400 years on,
have still not been met! Since Leveller demands went so much further than
Cromwell and other republican leaders could even begin to meet, then they had
to be crushed.
The outbreak of the second civil war gave them the opportunity to do this and so the movement which would have surely rid the people of the parasitical classes once and for all was brutally put down.
The final victory of the Parliamentary forces later in 1648 not only led to the execution of the King, but also the suppression of Leveller ideas for a time.
Leveller ideas, though, posed a real challenge to the power and authority of Cromwell particularly with their attitude to the situation in Ireland. The New Model Army had been set up to defend Parliament at home, not to act as a mercenary force which would advance the imperialist ambitions of the English ruling class. The Catholics in Ireland, it was argued, had a claim to freedom and equality which was just as valid as that which the Levellers were arguing for at home.
In ‘The English Soldier’s Standard’, it was argued that military intervention in Ireland would only mean that the Irish would become a subject people exploited by precisely those who the Levellers were struggling to overcome in England. The point was that influential levellers were implacably opposed to the reconquest of Ireland.
When significant elements of the New Model Army refused to embark for Ireland it was obvious that a crucial point had been reached. Radical elements had to be crushed in order for Cromwell to assert his authority. This was achieved at Burford in Oxfordshire where Fairfax and Cromwell surprised the Levellers and defeated them [albeit it with only a handful of casualties]. From this time [May 1649] the New Model Army was completely in the control of Cromwell.
This does not mean, though, that Leveller ideas were totally eradicated. On May Day 1649, the third and final version of the ‘Agreement of the People’ was published. This is the last collective statement of the Leveller leaders and is their most complete political programme. Its preface stated:
The outbreak of the second civil war gave them the opportunity to do this and so the movement which would have surely rid the people of the parasitical classes once and for all was brutally put down.
The final victory of the Parliamentary forces later in 1648 not only led to the execution of the King, but also the suppression of Leveller ideas for a time.
Leveller ideas, though, posed a real challenge to the power and authority of Cromwell particularly with their attitude to the situation in Ireland. The New Model Army had been set up to defend Parliament at home, not to act as a mercenary force which would advance the imperialist ambitions of the English ruling class. The Catholics in Ireland, it was argued, had a claim to freedom and equality which was just as valid as that which the Levellers were arguing for at home.
In ‘The English Soldier’s Standard’, it was argued that military intervention in Ireland would only mean that the Irish would become a subject people exploited by precisely those who the Levellers were struggling to overcome in England. The point was that influential levellers were implacably opposed to the reconquest of Ireland.
When significant elements of the New Model Army refused to embark for Ireland it was obvious that a crucial point had been reached. Radical elements had to be crushed in order for Cromwell to assert his authority. This was achieved at Burford in Oxfordshire where Fairfax and Cromwell surprised the Levellers and defeated them [albeit it with only a handful of casualties]. From this time [May 1649] the New Model Army was completely in the control of Cromwell.
This does not mean, though, that Leveller ideas were totally eradicated. On May Day 1649, the third and final version of the ‘Agreement of the People’ was published. This is the last collective statement of the Leveller leaders and is their most complete political programme. Its preface stated:
“Peace and freedom is our design; by war we were never
gainers, nor ever wish to be.”
In this version of the Agreement, there is a restatement of
essential Leveller ideas, though there is a divergence between them and the
aims of the Diggers to eradicate the ownership of private property. In all
other respects, the programme is not dissimilar to earlier versions; the
emphasis is still on universal [male] suffrage, accountable government,
religious toleration, civil rights, and so on.
Leveller ideas mainly appealed to the dispossessed in society; that is, those who were most threatened by what the Levellers were proposing were unlikely to be persuaded by appeals to the ‘common good’. Since the Levellers were unable to mobilise their followers to any great degree and, given their defeat at Burford, they lacked the ability to challenge the army or government, it is almost inevitable that they were unable to pose any future threat to the ruling class or [restored] Monarchy.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that Leveller ideas are irrelevant or were consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’. Both the Levellers and Diggers are of crucial importance to the development of working class history since they stand in the proud tradition of English radicalism and challenge to the ruling orthodoxy.
Like the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Chartists of a later period, the Diggers and Levellers posed a serious threat to the ruling class; their direct appeals to the poor and dispossessed resonate throughout the centuries – whilst the language and mode of expression may have changed, the essential demands of these radicals remain as vibrant and necessary today as they were when they were first put.
Some 450 years after the Diggers established their commune at Cobham, we still need to establish the common ownership of property and the development of society based on need, rather than profit. The words of Winstanley echo throughout the centuries:
Leveller ideas mainly appealed to the dispossessed in society; that is, those who were most threatened by what the Levellers were proposing were unlikely to be persuaded by appeals to the ‘common good’. Since the Levellers were unable to mobilise their followers to any great degree and, given their defeat at Burford, they lacked the ability to challenge the army or government, it is almost inevitable that they were unable to pose any future threat to the ruling class or [restored] Monarchy.
Nevertheless, this is not to say that Leveller ideas are irrelevant or were consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’. Both the Levellers and Diggers are of crucial importance to the development of working class history since they stand in the proud tradition of English radicalism and challenge to the ruling orthodoxy.
Like the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the Chartists of a later period, the Diggers and Levellers posed a serious threat to the ruling class; their direct appeals to the poor and dispossessed resonate throughout the centuries – whilst the language and mode of expression may have changed, the essential demands of these radicals remain as vibrant and necessary today as they were when they were first put.
Some 450 years after the Diggers established their commune at Cobham, we still need to establish the common ownership of property and the development of society based on need, rather than profit. The words of Winstanley echo throughout the centuries:
“When men take to buying and selling the land, saying ’This
is mine’, they restrain other fellow creatures from seeking nourishment from
mother earth…..so that he that had no land was to work for those, for small
wages, that called the land theirs; and thereby some are lifted up into the chair
of tyranny and others trod under the footstool of misery, as if the earth were
made for a few and not for all men.”
Our task must to be rescue the words of the Diggers and Levellers from obscurity and to locate them quite firmly in the context of working-class history and struggle; to seek inspiration from their words and actions; to ensure that all of these disparate voices are united under the common theme of working class resistance to poverty and oppression.
Copied from The Diggers and the Levellers at Libcom.org
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
US Labor History: When Rednecks Were Labor Activists
 |
| Source: PBS The Mine Wars |
July 2nd 2019
LeftHorizons UK
An excellent article appeared this week, in the Financial Times weekend magazine of all places, showing a glimpse of the shifting consciousness of the working class in America.
The impression is sometimes given over here that US workers are overwhelmingly in support of Trump and ‘Trumpism’, and none more so than the ‘rednecks’ in states like West Virginia. But as the Financial Times journalist, Edward Luce, pointed out, that common perception is far from the truth. Even the word ‘redneck’ has history. It is usually used today to describe those poor whites who cling onto racism in the hope of protecting their marginal advantages over poor black workers. But as the article points out, in West Virginia the red necktie was historically the token of the most militant sections of the working class, particularly the miners.
Indeed, West Virginia was the scene of the bloodiest-ever confrontation in US labour history, in 1921, when 10,000 striking miners fought a pitched battle with 3,000 national guards and private company forces, leading to dozens of lives lost and hundreds wounded. This was the famous Battle of Blair Mountain. So the state has a harsh history of class struggle.
Politics completely tied to big business
If you want to know why the state voted for Trump in 2016, you only have to look at the fact that West Virginia has one of the highest levels of deprivation in the USA. The per capita income of the state, at $25,000, is less than half the national average. A child born in West Virginia, Luce points out, “has a greater chance of dying from opioids than of becoming a doctor…One small town, Williamson, with a population of just 3,000, shipped in more than 20 million opioid pills, mostly oxycodone hydrocodone, in a seven-year period.” (Financial Times magazine, June 29).
The political system of the state is completely tied up with business interests. Mines have closed largely due to fracking not imported coal. Farming has also been blighted by fracking, with aquifers polluted, poor compensation paid for land seizures and big companies squeezing the profit-margins of small-scale suppliers. A handful of big agribusiness companies completely control the lives of small farmers and many are being driven to the wall, like something out of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. One farmer quoted by Luce refers to the big companies in these terms: “They control everything you do, without taking any responsibility for it…these companies are greedy bastards. They control West Virginia and Washington.” Not surprisingly, the fastest rate of suicide growth in West Virginia is among farmers.
State Democrats and Republicans indistinguishable
Like in traditional Labour-supporting areas such as the north-east of England, there is a perception among workers in the state that what they saw as ‘their’ party – the Democratic Party – has let them down, despite their unstinting support for it over many years. They aren’t wrong either: in West Virginia, the Democrats and Republicans are virtually identical; both are completely in the pockets of big business. The current Democratic senator and former governor, Joe Manchin, votes with Trump most of the time in the Senate. When he was governor in the early 2000s, Manchin slashed corporation taxes. “Partly as a result, West Virginia now comes last out of 50 states on surveys of quality of infrastructure. It comes close to the bottom on almost every other indicator, including lifespan and rates of college education.” Manchin is personally very wealthy, partly through his investments in coal, something that will not be lost on the mining communities in the state.
It was as a result of these levels of deprivation and the understandable feeling that they had been neglected that voters turned to Trump in the 2016 presidential election, giving him 68 per cent of the vote. Hillary Clinton was seen as just another creature of Wall Street, someone who one wag said “sounded like she was lying, even when she was telling the truth.” She got a miserable 26 per cent of the vote, which taking into account the turnout, translates to around one seventh of the electorate. Yet some polls show that if Bernie Sanders had been the candidate, he would have defeated Trump by 48 to 46 per cent.
“…what West Virginian once was…”
Given the history of poor investment in the state, it should not have been entirely surprising that the 2018 teachers’ struggles took off in West Virginia. When the teachers’ movement started they took up the red necktie because, as one of the organisers, Jay O’Neal told Luce, “We went ‘red’ because we wanted to harken back to what West Virginian once was.” Jay and fellow teacher, Emily Cromer, organised a strike against the pitifully poor conditions and squeezed wages and fought for all education workers, successfully winning improvements in wages and in education spending. And this was in a state with ‘right-to-work’ laws that worked against union organisation and recruitment.
The strike organisers used social media and appealed successfully for support among all education workers, students and parents. The strike organisers were forced to work around the official structures of their union because the ‘leadership’ of the union were either too slow or unwilling to act at all. The success of the West Virginia teaches was quickly followed by similar strikes of education workers across other states: Arizona, Oklahoma, Kentucky and elsewhere. Time Magazine even named strike leaders O’Neal and Cromer in their top 100 most influential people of 2018.
Democratic Party going through convulsions
The teachers’ strike was an indication of a new mood among workers in West Virginia. The Democratic Party in the state is now going through the same convulsions as the party is going through nationally, with younger, more radical candidates coming forward to challenge Manchin and big-business politics. It is now the ‘norm’ among Democratic Party presidential hopefuls to advocate universal health care and wealth taxes and anti-austerity measures, because it chimes with the sentiments now being felt by the big majority of the American population. How successful these ‘left’ Democratic candidates can be against a party machine organically linked to business and wealthy backers is another matter, but at least these movements are an indication of changes taking place right across the USA.
There has been a generalised upswing in strikes and struggles in the USA, something rarely reported in the British press. The number of strikes has increased dramatically. In 2018 there were more strikes in the USA than at any time since Ronald Reagan was president. There were ten times as many days lost through strikes last year than in 2016, when Trump was elected.
According to opinion polls, ‘socialism’ is more popular among younger people that ‘capitalism’.. The Democratic Socialists of America is now an organisation of around 70,000 members, overwhelmingly young people. There is a lot of room for discussion about what exactly this ‘socialism’ means, but these things are an undeniable indications of a shift in consciousness among American workers that has not been seen for generations. It is hardly surprising, with workers’ living standards having stagnated for decades that things are beginning to change. The surprise is that it has taken so long. As the Financial Times points out, even the rednecks are turning red.
For more on the teachers struggles here are three short and inspiring videos:
Monday, July 1, 2019
Hong Kong. The Stonewall Uprising. How change comes about.
I was going to write a piece today about the Stonewall Uprising. However there are the explosive events in Hong Kong. But a short comment on Stonewall. The capitalist media tries to refer to the Stonewall events as “riots”. The idea being to try and diminish their importance. Unfortunately many on the left also mistakenly use the term “riots”. Stonewall was an uprising of people who were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation. They reached their breaking point and they rose up. The main lesson to be drawn from Stonewall is that changes for the better in US society comes from uprisings from below.
It was mass strikes and workplace occupations and street fighting that built the CIO and the trade unions in the 1930’s. It was mass movements on the streets and the urban uprisings of the Black revolt of the 1950’s and 1960’s that forced racist US society to make some concessions. It was the women’s movements on the streets of the 1960’s that made the gains for women, it was the anti war movements on the streets, in the schools and colleges and in the rank and file of the US military in Vietnam that undermined US imperialism’s slaughter in South East Asia.
Today there is a majority in US society for higher wages, better benefits, better and affordable housing, free education, health care for all, gender equality, women to have control over their own bodies, action on climate change and against racism sexism and war. But neither of the two capitalist parties can deliver on these issues. Instead, capitalism and the capitalist parties the Republicans and the Democrats and their undemocratic political system with its gerrymandering and its undemocratic electoral college, and its legal system with its undemocratic so-called Supreme Court, the road to the wishes of the majority being implemented is blocked. In fact, the capitalist class and its parties are waging an offensive against the working class and the gains that were made in the 1930’s and the 1960’s.
This will not continue indefinitely. The wishes of the mass of the population will be expressed. Whatever triggers it, an economic slump, an environmental or climate change disaster, vicious police repression, gun violence, the taking away of women’s rights, whatever, the wishes of the majority will explode onto the streets and workplaces and schools and colleges of US society. The anger that exists will express itself. US capitalism thinks it can stop the rage that is building below the surface by laws and gerrymandering and its undemocratic electoral college and its undemocratic and packed supreme court. They are wrong the rage that is building in US society will explode to the surface. As the organizers of this Blog continually say “This country is going to blow”.
This is the lesson of Stonewall. This is also the lesson of today’s events, in Hong Kong.
Backed by the dictatorial regime in Beijing, of which it is a pawn, the Hong Kong administration tried to pass a law that would allow it to send people to mainland China to be tried in that regime’s courts. Up to two million people out of a population of seven million have demonstrated in the past weeks. They were met with the fist of the state apparatus, the cops. But today a smaller number of demonstrators took over the legislative buildings, trashed them, spray painted the walls and the symbols of the Hong Kong regime and left. This was an explosive movement. The state apparatus was unable to stop it. It demonstrated that whatever laws are passed, in whatever country, that when regimes go against the will of the masses they will face opposition, and if a regime insists on trying to impose its will, this opposition will not confine itself to debates in parliament or elections.
This Blog has been observing the developments in mainland China. We have pointed to the movement of 400 million people from the countryside into the cities and into the workplaces and into the working class. We have emphasized that this, part of which is the entry of hundreds of millions of women into the paid workforce, has resulted in a dramatic strengthening of the Chinese and the world’s working class. We have explained that the Chinese working class will put its imprint on events in that country and oppose the undemocratic regime and that when that happens it will have an effect worldwide. The events in Hong Kong will be noticed in main land China. They will show that the Beijing regime cannot impose its wishes at will. They will encourage and bring closer the movement of the working class in that country. Irrespective of the demands of the protesters in Hong Kong being confined to the call for the withdrawal of the extradition law what will have most effect on the consciousness of the Chinese working class will be the fact that the Beijing regime can be challenged.
World wide we have seen struggles. Sudan. Algeria. Turkey. The Czech Republic. Kazakhstan. Montenegro. Albania. Romania. Stirrings in Russia against the Putin regime. In many of the former countries of the Soviet Union people are seeing the limits of the capitalist regimes that followed the former Stalinist regimes and new movements are developing. In Latin America there are new signs of struggle. Likewise this can be seen in the US and in Western Europe. Yes there are confusions. Yes there is the rise of right wing forces. This is inevitable because the leaders of the workers organizations the trade unions and where there exist, the left parties, are not prepared to confront the source of the problems which is capitalism or in China the combination of a dictatorial regime and its moves towards capitalism.
The international working class is larger and stronger than ever before. It is the collective power and the collective brain of the international working class that has the power to change the lives of the world’s population, to stop and reverse the threatening catastrophe of climate change, to end mass poverty and inequality and undemocratic regimes. The building of a mass international movement based on this understanding is what is necessary. Such a movement can be built out of explosive movements from below which have changed things for the better in the past and which we can see around us today.
The G20 and the cold war in technology
by Michael Roberts
Last weekend’s G20 summit in Osaka resolved nothing substantial in the ongoing trade and technology war that the US is now waging with China. At best, a truce was agreed on any further escalation in tariffs and other measures against Chinese tech companies. But there was no long-lasting agreement reached. And that’s because this is a ‘cold war’ between a relatively declining economic power in the US and a new and dangerous rival for economic supremacy, China. Just like the last ‘cold war’ between the US and the USSR, it could last a generation or more before a winner emerges – and the odds are against the US this time, the longer the cold war lasts.
At the G20, Trump and Xi agreed a truce on existing tit-for-tat measures and will renew ‘negotiations’. Trump made a few concessions, allowing US companies to resume selling products to Huawei. So, presumably, Google, Android etc. will reappear on Huawei devices. And China will be able, presumably, to buy the processors and chips it needs from Intel, Qualcom and Micron. But there was no clarity on whether these concessions include what Huawei can sell to US companies (i.e. 5G networks).
But as sure as night follows day, the trade war will resume at some point, because the US’ key demands are just unacceptable to China, namely that China relinquish its drive to match US technology and agree to accept US supervision of its economic affairs.
The G20 may offer a brief respite for financial markets, but it will not alter the general downturn that the world economy is now experiencing, with the likelihood of a new slump in global production, trade and investment getting ever closer. Already global activity indexes in both manufacturing and so-called services sectors have slowed to levels not seen since the end of the Great Recession in 2009.
As of June, the JP Morgan global activity index suggests that world economic growth is down to a 2.5% annual rate – a figure often considered at the threshold of ‘stall speed’ ie anything below that rate would slip into a global recession.
The reality is that Trump cannot reverse the steady decline in America’s former manufacturing prowess and now China’s challenge to its technological superiority. Manufacturing employment in the US has fallen from around a quarter of the workforce in 1970 to 9% in 2015. This decline was not due to nasty foreigners cheating on trade deals, as Trump likes to argue. Most studies (not all) dismiss that thesis. A study by Autor et al reckons competition from China led to the loss of 985,000 manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2011. That’s less than a fifth of the absolute loss of manufacturing jobs over that period and a quite small share of the long-term manufacturing decline.
The biggest reason Trump can’t bring back home these manufacturing jobs is because they have been lost in large part to the success of ‘efficiency’ in the US Over the past three-and-a-half decades, manufacturers have shed more than seven million jobs while producing more stuff than ever. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported in The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs that “If you try to understand how so many jobs have disappeared, the answer that you come up with over and over again in the data is that it’s not trade that caused that — it’s primarily technology,”…Eighty percent of lost jobs were not replaced by workers in China, but by machines and automation. That is the first problem if you slap on tariffs. What you discover is that American companies are likely to replace its more expensive workers with machines.”
What these studies reveal is what Marxist economics could have told them many times before. Under capitalism, increased productivity of labour comes through mechanisation and labour shedding i.e. reducing labour costs. Marx explained in Capital that this is one of the key features in capitalist accumulation – the capital-bias of technology – something continually ignored by mainstream economics, until now it seems.
Marx put it differently to the mainstream. Investment under capitalism takes place for profit only, not to raise output or productivity as such. If profit cannot be sufficiently raised through more labour hours (more workers and longer hours) or by intensifying efforts (speed and energy – time and motion), then the productivity of labour can only be increased by better technology. So, in Marxist terms, the organic composition of capital (the value of machinery and plant relative to the number of workers) must rise secularly.
Against the view of mainstream ‘free market’ economics, historically, it has been government spending that has underpinned the development of unproven technologies. This has usually occurred under duress, with innovation during war a notable driver of development, leading to breakthroughs in materials, products and processes. The commercialisation of the jet engine, rocket motors, radar and modern computing can all trace their emergence back to World War 2 while the Cold War and the space race developed these to the point that launched the current technology age in the 1990s.
The space race was important as both sides in the cold war put to work their newly-acquired German scientists and engineers to drive forward their rocket projects. This culminated with President Kennedy’s Apollo programme. The US having been beaten by the Soviets to the first man into space, reacted by devoting immense resources to catching up. The space race at its peak involved nearly 400,000 people and drew in 20,000 private industrial firms and universities. Not only did the mission itself throw off numerous innovations — much of the technology needed to get to the moon did not exist when the programme was announced — but it created clusters of new high-tech industries across the US, building on the networks that had begun to emerge during the war.
This accelerated the development of numerous computing technologies, including the integrated circuit, mass data transfer and systems software. These were the breakthrough technologies that drove IBM and HP’s development into computing giants. Other engineers from the programme went on to found Intel and numerous other tech stalwarts. Without Apollo, it’s unlikely that Silicon Valley would have developed into the tech and economic powerhouse taken for granted today. Apollo also drove broader business innovations, including things that consultants have lived off ever since, like strategic planning, budgeting as well as new management and enhanced decision-making processes.
But as profitability in the capitalist sector fell from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, government taxation was reduced and so spending, especially state investment, was slashed. Technical advances in America increasingly depended on private sector innovation. But for the most part that was not forthcoming. America’s capitalist sector, like others in the major economies, opted to relocate more of their production overseas in search of cheap labour and then in turn export back to the US. That was expressed in investment in Latin America (especially Mexico) and later into China.
There was one exception – the US hi-tech sector. US technological advances are now completely dependent on investment in this sector. Everything in the US now depends on the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix and Google) plus Microsoft. Just these few companies invest a staggering 80% when measured against a share of US government spending on education, transport, science, space and technology. The scale of this expenditure dwarfs endeavours like the decade-long Apollo programme, where spending came in at approximately $150bn in today’s dollars — less than two years of current FAANGs plus Microsoft’s total investment expenditure.
The US hi-tech sector is the last bastion of America’s productive superiority. Investment bank Goldman Sachs has noted that, since 2010, the only place globally where corporate earnings have expanded is in the US. And this, according to Goldmans, is entirely down to the super-tech companies. Global profits ex technology are only moderately higher than they were prior to the financial crisis, while technology profits have moved sharply upwards (mainly reflecting the impact of large US technology companies).
If China is eventually able to compete with the FAANGS, then the profitability of capital in the US will take a big shift downwards, and with it, US investment, employment and incomes over the next decade. That is at the heart of the trade and technology war and why it will continue.
Last weekend’s G20 summit in Osaka resolved nothing substantial in the ongoing trade and technology war that the US is now waging with China. At best, a truce was agreed on any further escalation in tariffs and other measures against Chinese tech companies. But there was no long-lasting agreement reached. And that’s because this is a ‘cold war’ between a relatively declining economic power in the US and a new and dangerous rival for economic supremacy, China. Just like the last ‘cold war’ between the US and the USSR, it could last a generation or more before a winner emerges – and the odds are against the US this time, the longer the cold war lasts.
At the G20, Trump and Xi agreed a truce on existing tit-for-tat measures and will renew ‘negotiations’. Trump made a few concessions, allowing US companies to resume selling products to Huawei. So, presumably, Google, Android etc. will reappear on Huawei devices. And China will be able, presumably, to buy the processors and chips it needs from Intel, Qualcom and Micron. But there was no clarity on whether these concessions include what Huawei can sell to US companies (i.e. 5G networks).
But as sure as night follows day, the trade war will resume at some point, because the US’ key demands are just unacceptable to China, namely that China relinquish its drive to match US technology and agree to accept US supervision of its economic affairs.
The G20 may offer a brief respite for financial markets, but it will not alter the general downturn that the world economy is now experiencing, with the likelihood of a new slump in global production, trade and investment getting ever closer. Already global activity indexes in both manufacturing and so-called services sectors have slowed to levels not seen since the end of the Great Recession in 2009.
As of June, the JP Morgan global activity index suggests that world economic growth is down to a 2.5% annual rate – a figure often considered at the threshold of ‘stall speed’ ie anything below that rate would slip into a global recession.
The reality is that Trump cannot reverse the steady decline in America’s former manufacturing prowess and now China’s challenge to its technological superiority. Manufacturing employment in the US has fallen from around a quarter of the workforce in 1970 to 9% in 2015. This decline was not due to nasty foreigners cheating on trade deals, as Trump likes to argue. Most studies (not all) dismiss that thesis. A study by Autor et al reckons competition from China led to the loss of 985,000 manufacturing jobs between 1999 and 2011. That’s less than a fifth of the absolute loss of manufacturing jobs over that period and a quite small share of the long-term manufacturing decline.
The biggest reason Trump can’t bring back home these manufacturing jobs is because they have been lost in large part to the success of ‘efficiency’ in the US Over the past three-and-a-half decades, manufacturers have shed more than seven million jobs while producing more stuff than ever. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported in The Manufacturing Footprint and the Importance of U.S. Manufacturing Jobs that “If you try to understand how so many jobs have disappeared, the answer that you come up with over and over again in the data is that it’s not trade that caused that — it’s primarily technology,”…Eighty percent of lost jobs were not replaced by workers in China, but by machines and automation. That is the first problem if you slap on tariffs. What you discover is that American companies are likely to replace its more expensive workers with machines.”
What these studies reveal is what Marxist economics could have told them many times before. Under capitalism, increased productivity of labour comes through mechanisation and labour shedding i.e. reducing labour costs. Marx explained in Capital that this is one of the key features in capitalist accumulation – the capital-bias of technology – something continually ignored by mainstream economics, until now it seems.
Marx put it differently to the mainstream. Investment under capitalism takes place for profit only, not to raise output or productivity as such. If profit cannot be sufficiently raised through more labour hours (more workers and longer hours) or by intensifying efforts (speed and energy – time and motion), then the productivity of labour can only be increased by better technology. So, in Marxist terms, the organic composition of capital (the value of machinery and plant relative to the number of workers) must rise secularly.
Against the view of mainstream ‘free market’ economics, historically, it has been government spending that has underpinned the development of unproven technologies. This has usually occurred under duress, with innovation during war a notable driver of development, leading to breakthroughs in materials, products and processes. The commercialisation of the jet engine, rocket motors, radar and modern computing can all trace their emergence back to World War 2 while the Cold War and the space race developed these to the point that launched the current technology age in the 1990s.
The space race was important as both sides in the cold war put to work their newly-acquired German scientists and engineers to drive forward their rocket projects. This culminated with President Kennedy’s Apollo programme. The US having been beaten by the Soviets to the first man into space, reacted by devoting immense resources to catching up. The space race at its peak involved nearly 400,000 people and drew in 20,000 private industrial firms and universities. Not only did the mission itself throw off numerous innovations — much of the technology needed to get to the moon did not exist when the programme was announced — but it created clusters of new high-tech industries across the US, building on the networks that had begun to emerge during the war.
This accelerated the development of numerous computing technologies, including the integrated circuit, mass data transfer and systems software. These were the breakthrough technologies that drove IBM and HP’s development into computing giants. Other engineers from the programme went on to found Intel and numerous other tech stalwarts. Without Apollo, it’s unlikely that Silicon Valley would have developed into the tech and economic powerhouse taken for granted today. Apollo also drove broader business innovations, including things that consultants have lived off ever since, like strategic planning, budgeting as well as new management and enhanced decision-making processes.
But as profitability in the capitalist sector fell from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s, government taxation was reduced and so spending, especially state investment, was slashed. Technical advances in America increasingly depended on private sector innovation. But for the most part that was not forthcoming. America’s capitalist sector, like others in the major economies, opted to relocate more of their production overseas in search of cheap labour and then in turn export back to the US. That was expressed in investment in Latin America (especially Mexico) and later into China.
There was one exception – the US hi-tech sector. US technological advances are now completely dependent on investment in this sector. Everything in the US now depends on the FAANGs (Facebook, Apple, Alphabet, Netflix and Google) plus Microsoft. Just these few companies invest a staggering 80% when measured against a share of US government spending on education, transport, science, space and technology. The scale of this expenditure dwarfs endeavours like the decade-long Apollo programme, where spending came in at approximately $150bn in today’s dollars — less than two years of current FAANGs plus Microsoft’s total investment expenditure.
The US hi-tech sector is the last bastion of America’s productive superiority. Investment bank Goldman Sachs has noted that, since 2010, the only place globally where corporate earnings have expanded is in the US. And this, according to Goldmans, is entirely down to the super-tech companies. Global profits ex technology are only moderately higher than they were prior to the financial crisis, while technology profits have moved sharply upwards (mainly reflecting the impact of large US technology companies).
If China is eventually able to compete with the FAANGS, then the profitability of capital in the US will take a big shift downwards, and with it, US investment, employment and incomes over the next decade. That is at the heart of the trade and technology war and why it will continue.
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