A Philosophic Dialog

 “The Wonder,” film directed by Sebastián Lelio, 2022 (some spoilers…)

This is another one of those depressing Irish films, dwelling on the rural backwardness of the past, like the almost idiotic Banshees of Inisherin.  But unlike the absurd inanity of Banshees, this one is a philosophic film aimed directly at religious superstition.  It reflects the current enmity in Ireland against the Catholic Church for its various crimes – child abuse, dead orphans and ‘illegitimate’ children buried behind orphanages; anti-abortion fundamentalism, retrograde politics and hatred of women. In this story the echoes of the famine of 1847 hover in the background, though the scene is set in 1862.

The nurse and the 'holy' girl

It is the story of an Irish farm girl, Anna, who has stopped eating for 4 months and has become a beacon of holiness for locals and the faithful. She represents a miracle of the mortification of the flesh. A group of 5 village men – a local council person, a priest, a convinced religious man, a quack doctor and one free-thinker – hire a sophisticated professional nurse from London to watch the girl and try to understand how she is surviving on only water.  A nun is also hired, so they take shifts.

At first the nurse, played by Florence Pugh, observes the healthy girl carefully, taking notes, searching for hidden food, checking her vitals. The girl says she survives with ‘manna from heaven.’ What that mysterious substance is, is unknown.  The girl prays constantly, plays with the religious cards of various saints, reads her Bible, sings church songs – clearly a ‘devout’ soul.  The family – a deeply religious mother, father and sister - still have physical contact with the girl several times a day.  It is a mystery how the girl survives.

A former local who is now a newspaperman comes to the town to investigate what he considers a hoax, as it is impossible not to eat for 4 months without dying.  He tries to interview the nurse and asks her out to eat.  She rejects his advances for a while, though they eventually form a relationship.

The nurse then notices that the mother is passing food through kissing, like a mother bird feeding a baby bird.  She cups her mouth while doing so to hide the process.  The nurse forbids the family from touching the girl. In a later tearful scene, Anna admits the holy ‘manna’ is from her mother.  Anna also explains her dreadful motivation for the ruse.  She was raped by her older, deceased brother and this mortification is to free his soul from the burnings of hell, for the sex was her fault. The nurse is appalled.  After the feeding stops and the child starts to waste away, the mother refuses to encourage her to eat.  The nurse knows she will die.  The family want her to die as penance, to save her and her brother’s wicked souls.

Isolated Irish cottages - not always romantic...

The nurse hatches a radical plan to save the girl, which I won’t go into. The story is an arrow aimed at the heart of cruel and irrational faith, of Catholicism gone literal. The cursed low cabin on the heath hides a family of back-hills violence and archaic ideas.  They dwell in visions of a non-existent hell and sexual blame towards the ‘lure’ of a young girl. Though unsaid, they raised a son who raped his sister, so their guilt is to be expatiated too.

The film is too long, it’s slow and cramped at times. The odds of feeding someone adequately through passing a bit of food several times a day through the lips is dubious. The film shows the sophistication of people in the city versus that of isolated rural farmers somewhere north of Dublin.  The film is relevant because the split between country and city still exists; the fight between backward religion and materially-based science is still ongoing; the curse of male chauvinism and violence is also ongoing.  Social time has not aged well, as bogus miracles continue to happen.  Watch the film if you can.

Prior blog reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: "Abortion Referendum in Ireland," "The Immortal Irishman," "Sean O'Casey," "A Full Life: James Connolly," "Jimmy's Hall" (Loach); "Ireland - What's Up?" "1916 Rebellion Walking Tour, Dublin Ireland," "The Irish Literary Trail," "Black 47," "Rebellion," "The Dream of the Celt" (Llosa); "Without Apology."

The Cultural Marxist

May 29, 2023     

Part 2: Classical Marxism Strikes Again!

 “Capitalism in the 21^st Century – Through the Prism of Value,” by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, 2023 (Part 2)

These sections are the application of classical Marxism to imperialism, a theory of materialist knowledge, the class character and nature of the USSR and China, robot mechanization and more.  It is quite an original work, loaded with data.  It’s not just people speculating with a thin reed of facts.  These are my notes.

Imperialism

Imperialism is primarily a financial process.  It's four key aspects are:  1) currency seignorage – dollars/Euro/yen, etc.; 2) income from capital investments (foreign direct investment - FDI); 3) unequal exchange through trade; 4)  changes in exchange rates.  Technology levels (the organic composition of capital - OCC) are the center of their analysis, along with the labor theory of value.  Their definition of unequal exchange is when imperial capital appropriates surplus value from weaker countries through the exchange of high-technology goods (high OCC) for raw materials and low-technology goods. They note that unequal exchange is not exploitation, but a relation between differing capitals where countries replace national economic sectors. Their analysis centers on the G7 v. G20. Their figures show that G20 and G7 growth and profit rates have been declining from 1951 to 2019.  Importantly, they also show that the 'blocs' have not converged, but continued in a pattern of underdevelopment. They theorize they will never converge, with China the only partial exception.  Their charts show surplus value transfers to the imperialist bloc – the G7, even regarding China.  Their GDP figures show this is around 1% per year over 70 years re 11 countries in the G20.  The figure is cumulative and would be larger if looking at more countries. Regarding surplus value transfers to the G7 based on export profits, it is around 20%.

China is not imperialist or even sub-imperialist according to them, as it has transferred surplus value of 5-10% of GDP to non-Chinese firms since the 1990s.  This is partly because China's productivity is still 25% lower than the U.S. and others.  The authors do not deal with Minq Li's figures that show China exploiting labor in certain poorer southern Asian countries, or their increasing FDI in many companies in the West, including Germany.  For the latter, they say China's FDI is negligible.  This is not the opinion of others like Werner Rügemer who have studied Chinese FDI.

Much of what the authors examine is aimed at various shibboleths of the soft or reformist Left who do not use classical Marxist analysis.  They debate various erroneous views of unequal exchange, much of which is highly technical.  They look at Lenin's list of the features of imperialism, but point out it's not an actual unified theory - nor do they claim to have a complete one.  They challenge the lazy 'super exploitation' theory that workers in 'the West' exploit workers in the 'periphery.'  Each country - even outside the G7 - has its own capitalists exploiting their own national proletariat; while imperialist capitalists do the rest. They note that politically this theory works to divide the workers of the world, not unite them. In this way reformists hide the local national capitalists - class struggle is subordinated to the needs of the local national capitalist class. As 'globalism' continues, this is more and more erroneous. 

They challenge the impressionist view that exploitation and poverty are the same - exploitation is related to extracting surplus value, while poverty is a lack of use-values.  They confront the associated "periphery/center; 1^st world/3^rd world; North/South; East/West" geo-political economic view.  They call it a “giant step backward” theoretically, as it confuses capital exploitation with a 'rich/poor' dynamic, confusing poverty and exploitation.  This theory, according to the authors, argues that workers in the global south are more exploited - which they agree with - but not for the same reason.  Some super-exploitationists argue, oddly, that suppliers and lead firms from the “North” have harmonious relationships with 'the South' when the opposite is true. 

Re seignorage, the overwhelming majority of international trade and FX reserves are still in dollars.  The optimism over a reordering of the international financial order is premature.  Re capital investment, most direct financial investment flows in the G7 are within its own bloc, at around 70+% - not into the broader G20.  They conclude that currency exchange rates are based on a nation's labor and technical productivity, with nations gaining or losing depending on what country they are dealing with. 

Robots and Knowledge

Capital aims to replace workers with machines and the AI/ robot/ computer/ internet/ digitalization/ automation 'revolution' is part of that tendency.  This increases the fixed capital component of the organic composition of capital, which later tends to lead to a reduction in profits.  This is the bind capital is heading towards.  The authors contend that 'cheap labor' has run out so the best source of profits is technological updates and imperial exploitation.  Unfortunately cheap labor still plays a role within the G7, though perhaps not as cheap as some.  The authors doubt re-shoring, even with rising wages in places like China, Vietnam and Taiwan, as they are still much lower. For instance in China, labor's share of national income is decreasing.  

Apple's Foxconn plans to install 1 million robots.  Studies have shown that robotization reduces employment in lower-skilled work.  Others estimate that in the future 47% of workers' jobs are at risk.  Estimates of AI capacity show that job replacement will move up to higher skill levels.  Capital's 'great revolutionary role' (GC/MR) is the development of the productive forces and computerization is part of that. This does not lead to a crisis of under-consumption, as liberal economists like Jeffrey Sachs maintain.  This concept leads to the politics of a universal basic income.   The authors discount any fantasy that robots will take over the world, do 100% of jobs, become physically adept, 'conscious' and creative, or engage in dialectical thinking.  It is another form of techno-optimism we have seen before.  A lot of robotization actually goes into military uses.  Sorry Sci Fi!

The authors take direct aim at another semi-Marxist sacred cow, that mental labor is not labor, but 'immaterial' labor.  Hence it is not involved in the profit cycle though it creates 'knowledge commodities.'  This is the outlook of some workerist Marxists who think white collar and service workers do not create value. Software, chemical formulas, patents, copyrights, recorded music, movies and all other intellectual property are part of the former. Marx pointed out that an employed hotel bell-hop is providing productive labor, as do myriad of other employed service workers. The authors do not consider this 'rent' – knowledge commodities are sold on the market, gaining surplus value for a capitalist.  Services are also sold. The concept of rent is extraneous.

The authors insist that 'thinking' is a metabolic, energetic, material act – that there is no real barrier between 'manual' and 'mental' labor.  This split is a false dualism inherited from idealist conceptions.  They place mental work in a 100% materialist context.  Knowledge is the product of a material process in the body and every job – manual and 'mental' - demands some level of knowledge.  Minds interact with the world dialectically, transforming conceptions – they do not just reflect the world like a passive mirror as some earlier Soviet Marxists thought.  “Consciousness constitutes a special property of highly-organized matter” is a better beginning.  

By making this argument, they contend that machines will never think like humans.  Machines use formal logic – yes/no – and computing out of pre-existing databanks, while humans, interacting on a material, physical level with the world, use dialectical thinking, which involves creativity, qualitative change, potentialities and new ideas.  Machines cannot understand that something can both be true and not true; or that a coin can land on its edge.  They do not understand the interpenetration of opposites, the movement of contradictions and quantity into quality.  They authors also argue against quantum logic as being able to approach human thinking; or that mental labor and knowledge is value neutral or only individual. They posit that class struggle exists in the realm of knowledge - a concept rejected by bourgeois scholars.  They argue against Negri that 'surplus value' is created throughout society by consumers.  Free labor is used by capital, but not compensated, so it is outside the Marxist labor paradigm.  It actually presages something else - socialism.  

Socialism

The authors detail the characteristics of the transition from the dictatorship of the proletariat - or workers' state - to socialism and communism as envisaged by Marx and Engels.  The 8 necessities are: 

•         Loss of state power by capital and its armed men. 

•     Workers democracy replaces capital, partly based on recall of leaders and average wages for officials.

•         Common ownership of the bulk of production and credit.

•         Planning of investment and production instead of relying on the anarchic market.

•         High and rising level of technology and productivity, lowering work hours.

•         The gradual replacement of commodity production by production for use.

•         The gradual ending of wage labor and money as means of exchange and value store.

•         The progressive withering away of the state – armies, police, prisons, bureaucrats.

They look at the USSR and China as case studies.  They conclude that the Soviets never reached socialism and that China is in a 'trapped transition' between capitalism and socialism.  In the USSR workers' democracy was not instituted.  A higher level of technology and rising productivity existed for a time, then stagnation occurred.  Commodity production revived in the USSR, while wage labor and money still existed.  Nor did the state ever wither away or even head in that direction.  Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and the whole Bolshevik Party thought that socialism could only come about on an international basis.  That also did not happen.  The authors do not say it but the USSR remained a transitional workers’ state, a dictatorship of the proletariat in a distorted form, as the Party replaced the working class, still surrounded by a sea of capital.  

Re China, the authors consider it is not a capitalist country.  The commanding heights of production and finance are in the hands of the state;  the CCP controls and directs the economy even in parts of the capitalist sector; the Chinese 'Red” Army still holds military power and has never been overthrown or dissolved; international investment is controlled and limited, as are the finance markets; the renminbi is not an international convertible currency.  In this transitional situation, the economy can be geared towards production for profit or for use; to go backward or forward.

Of the 8 qualities, only 1, 3 & 4 are in operation in China right now according to the authors.  China is not moving 'towards socialism' - the danger is sliding back towards capital. Yet even before the Deng reforms, growth was strong. Life spans increased from 35 to 63.8 in that period. From 1949 to 1978 one source say growth at 9-11.4%; others put growth at 2.4% and 6.7%.  The Maoist adventures of the “Great Leap Forward” and the Cultural Revolution crashed productivity and growth, but then productivity recovered. China has now raised 850 million out of poverty, unlike its capitalist counterpart India.  The economy is not dominated by the market; by investment based on profitability; by foreign investors or corporate bosses. The statistics for state ownership, investment and stock all heavily favor state assets.  In China the CCP formed a popular front bloc with internal capital - and even some external capital - unlike the USSR.  'Socialism with Chinese characteristics' represents a stagnation of social progress for the working class and any real movement towards socialism.   

The Chinese capitalist sector is still large, which accounts for the constant see-saws by the CCP towards and away from 'liberalization' and neo-liberalism; and periodic economic crises like the present real estate crash.  The authors refute the theory of state capitalism put out by Maoists, Schactmanites and anarchists – a new stage of  capitalism unforeseen by Marx and Engels!  It actually leads to the conclusion that capitalism still has some life in it in a completely new stage in history!  Marx considered capital to consist of multiple capitals, not one, even in a national context. Capitalism cannot exist as one capital, a state. They contend the theory is based on formal logic not dialectics... though I fail to see even that.   

Lastly, von Mises used to accuse socialists of being unable to plan their economy, as planning would be too complicated.  With the advent of data-driven software, world connectivity, AI and sophisticated algorithms this objection has become moot.  Huge companies like Wal-Mart, Blackrock and Amazon are planned down to the T.  Estimates are that the technology now exists to make planning and real time production and consumption data take the place of the capitalist price mechanism on a national and even international scale.  

(The End.)   

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Long Depression” (Roberts);  “The People's Republic of Wal-Mart,” “The Law of Worldwide Value” (Amin); “The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty-Bourgeoisie,” “From the Factory to the Metropolis” (Negri); “R.U.R. and the Insect Play,””Rise of China” (Li); “The Capitalists of the 21^st Century” (Rügemer); "Four Futures" or the words “China,” “USSR,” “Robots.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 25, 2023

Morbid Symptoms

 Modern Rhinoceroses

If you ever read or seen the play Rhinoceros by Eugene Ionesco, you might know what I’m talking about.  It was included in the post-war “Theater of the Absurd” along with plays by Genet, Beckett, Adamov and others. It was a reflection on Ionesco’s youth growing up in Romania, a country which gradually became overwhelmed with anti-Semitism and fascism prior to WWII.  He saw it happen in its human form.

The most startling parts of the play are when ‘normal’ neighbors, friends, even family members suddenly turn into rhinos.  And I don’t mean ‘Republicans In Name Only.’ They become ‘beasts’ and ‘semi-beasts’ associated with ultra-right politics. I friend of mine recently told me that an old friend, formerly a leftist radical of some kind in the Socialist Workers Party, has announced she is now a Republican. I told her that is not an isolated incident.  I also know a former friend of mine who used to be in Progressive Labor Party, who is now a Trumper and has found BeJesus to boot.  That is evidently part of the package.  She’d been an atheist, an Obama supporter, then a Sanderista.  I know other former Sanders supporters who also became Trumpers – perhaps only for a while. If people are personally close, this is especially troubling. 

Recently I had to ask a local peace activist in Vets For Peace why he was praising a vicious white nationalist like Tucker Carlson. (He’s ‘anti-war.’) I’ve had to query bunker Stalinists on why they are supporters of a militarized right-wing capitalist like Putin. Former Sanders supporter Tulsi Gabbard cheers Hinduvata lord Narendra Modi. Other anti-war activists are hoping anti-working class and anti-Kurdish reactionary Recep Erdogan wins the election in Turkey as part of their geo-political game. Some ‘leftists’ side with the Iranian mullahs against the women’s and workers’ movements in the recent upheaval.  They claim it’s all a CIA operation. An erratic dodge like RFK Jr. is now some kind of hero.  Even a racist dweeb like the Air National Guard leaker gets plaudits.  Not your grandpa’s whistle-blower!

I guess living off a steady stream of hating liberalism and the Democrats makes some think becoming a Republican, a reactionary or a geo-politician is an act of liberation! It’s actually a fatal reaction.  Some of these ‘leftists’ support anti-abortion movements claiming abortion is ‘genocide;’ or troll vegetarians and vegans like any good Republican.  Others praise the ‘truth telling’ of billionaire Elon Musk. This is the angle of many post-left podcasters on Youtube.  The fall of Glenn Greenwald is a sterling example.  In 2021 he labeled Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson as 'socialists.' Libertarian podcasters like Jimmy Dore denounce woke and accuse people of being ‘cucks,’ echoing Republican memes.  Joe Rogan, the bro-Libertarian dude, is now some kind of inspiration. The list is long.

All of this is related the growth of ‘red-brown’ alliances – seen in a mild form in the recent anti-U.S.-war rally in D.C. jointly endorsed by the People's Party and the Libertarian Party, with some questionable neo-fascists also present. Prominent U.S. anti-war activist Medea "Media" Benjamin attended too.

WELLNESS?

But there is another strain in this – the wellness movement.  A nuanced understanding of capitalist medicine and health leads to solutions that are not always related to taking drugs or getting an operation, i.e. ‘western medicine.’  Healthy food, quality exercise or work and other OTC methods supplement visits to a hospital or doctor.  However the wellness movement went further than that in reaction to the CoVid contagion.  Part of it came out against all drugs, all vaccines, all methods – even masks - not related to homeopathic ones.  It’s sort of a modern version of Christian Science or faith healing with new-age updates.  Statistics later showed that after the creation of CoVid vaccines by ‘Big Pharma” those not getting vaccinated or masking died at far higher proportions than those inoculated and masked.  This occurred mostly in Republican, southern and prairie / mountain counties.  Additionally, not getting the vaccine or wearing a mask made CoVid spread even easier, so it was irresponsible to the community not to get inoculated. 

Science and community-consciousness are not strengths of the far-Right; they are far stronger in magical thinking – miracle cures, bowls, crystals, BeJesus, pleasure and me, me, me.  You’ll remember that retrograde liars like Alex Jones peddled tons of quack cures on his show, including boner pills, and he was not alone.  Dr. Oz is another, both endorsed by reactionaries like Ron Paul and Trump.  Stewart Rhodes (3%ers) actually got his start in the Ron Paul campaign for president in 2008.  When Trumpers pretend to lecture Marxists on the evils of Big Pharma you gotta laugh.  The problem with Big Pharma is it is capitalist and its purpose is to make profits off disease.  But that does not mean that science, bigness or everything U.S. pharmaceutical companies produce is rotten. Big Pharma should become social property instead, which would halt their profiteering and their problematic drugs. The intellectual property of those vaccines should have been widely available across the whole world for free.  As it is nearly 7 million died of CoVid world-wide, with 1,125,209 dying in the U.S. alone.  Hundreds are still dying every day, still the 4^th cause of death in the U.S. Those are official figures but the U.S. saw almost 800,000 extra deaths over those 2 years too, not due directly to CoVid.  So it contributed to other deaths uncounted in the official stats.

Fascists try to integrate with environmentalists and anarchists around deep ecology or animal rights – even Earth First harbored some.  Some ‘anti-imperialists’ are libertarian reactionaries and want to cuddle up with clueless liberal anti-war types.  The Right haunts Nordic mythology, which used to be a harmless cultural enjoyment. The Boogaloo Bois during the Floyd upsurge were an example of a suspect ally – pretending to be ‘anti-cop’ and on the right side. Some leftists endorsed right-wing anti-mask or anti-vaccine protests.  Even the clown ‘Qanon Shaman,’ covered in Nordic tattoos and wearing a Buffalo/Viking headdress sometimes sounds like a hippie new ager.  Fact-free and low-fact conspiracy theories become the main method of analysis. Both sides swallow their own propaganda. Right and left populism became one, because they’re both “Agin'the Guvmint.”  But do they have the same purpose?

This blog has covered variations of the ‘red-brown’ alliance – MagaCommunism, Naz-Bol or National Bolshevism, ‘3^rd’ Position Ideology, anarcho-capitalism (Anarchopulco!), the Trumpen-Left, modern Brown Shirts, autonomous Nationalists, social nationalism and abstract ‘anti-government’ attitudes that come from two directions.  These are names for a phenomenon in which socialistic and fascistic types or ideology blend, combine or work together - and some transition into rhinoceroses.  For instance it is the present practice of the Communist Party of Russia to work with Russian ultra-nationalists.  This harks back to a vast error in Germany prior to Hitler’s takeover.  The Communist Party thought that they could take power after the Nazis, all the while seeing the Social-Democrats as the main enemy.  They formally worked with the Nazis on occasion through a joint organization, both opposed to the Social Democratic government. Sound familiar?

All of these are “morbid systems” of a social structure and movement disintegrating.  Never again.  No blocks with the Right!

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive using these terms:  “Against the Fascist Creep,” “Tongue in Speak,” “The Brown Plague” (Guerin); “The Black Hundred,” “Who is Ron Paul?” “It Can’t Happen Here” (Sinclair Lewis); “Fascism Today,” “Kill All Normies” or the “Anti-Fascist Series.” 

The Cultural Marxist

May 22, 2023

Data Matters & Chatters

 “Capitalism in the 21^st Century – Through the Prism of Value,” by Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, 2023 (Part 1)

This is similar to the title of Thomas Piketty’s 2014 book on wealth disparities and the similarity might be intentional.  The authors seek to look at modern capital, not wealth, through the eyes of Marx’s theory of value - so I see it as a poke at Piketty for ignoring actual capital.  This is a data-driven book, it’s not merely ‘theory;’ just as Piketty’s book dealt with data on European taxes, wealth and inheritance in his look at inequality.

The authors first deal with nature as a source of value, along with labor.  This was also Marx’s position.  How to evaluate nature’s economic value is the problem.  They contend that nature in all its forms cannot be ‘priced’ or turned into a commodity, as neo-classical capitalist economists contend, due to its many-sided involvement in economic life.  Plans like carbon credits and carbon taxes, carbon capture and offsets have all failed, and can only do so in the future. The capitalist method presupposes that the cheaper or ‘freer’ nature and raw materials are in ground rent, the higher the profit margin.  They especially take aim at neo-classical Integrated Assessment Models (IAM) as deeply complacent.  The real solution is a planned economy, where production is not broadly ‘degrowth’ but done for world-wide human needs, eliminating or reducing useless, bourgeois and toxic commodities instead.

The authors next deal with money, explaining Marx’s conception of money versus those of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).  According to Marx, money’s value is based on abstract labor, and includes surplus value as a result. It is part of the labor theory of value.  MTT contends that the state creates money, not labor power operating under capitalist production.  This theory – first proposed long ago by Proudhon and the Chartalists, then echoed by Keynes and Graeber – is ahistorical, as it contends the state created money to pay taxes with the rise of the first state.  Yet under capital, taxes come after production, not before, and profits precede government-issued money.  MMT in effect ignores capitalism, and believes unemployment can be solved by the government printing more money – providing jobs at minimum wage so as not to compete with regular businesses.  It is a deeply reformist and deceptive theory, propping up capital and its government.

Regarding crypto it is essentially a speculative instrument.  It cannot become a stable form of payment for at least 4 reasons.  One is that crypto currencies like Bitcoin© use immense amounts of electricity to ‘mine’ blockchain ledgers, so they actually have costs, which in some countries are quite large. China actually banned cryptocurrency mining in 2021.  Two is that it has limits on size. Versions of digital coins like Libra by Facebook© would privatize money and put control of currency in the hands of massive corporations.  Digital currencies issued by national central banks could compete with their own non-digital versions, weakening their value.  The authors reject these technologies at this point.  They will certainly not usher in ‘anarchism’ or 'anarcho-capitalism' via digital cash either.

Inflation

The authors have developed a Marxist theory of inflation that combats both monetarist and Keynesian perspectives.  It is based on their analysis of the period between 1960 and 2019, 59 years.  Monetarists in the Federal Reserve and other central banks think that lowering the money supply by raising interest rates will stop inflation.  Facts have shown that this is not true, as this method will actually cause a recession or slump.  Nor do they blame price rises on wage rises – as do Keynesians and some Democrats.  Wage demands actually follow price rises, as Marx pointed out years ago and as every worker knows. There is even one pop theory that says 'inflation expectations' create inflation, which if you think about it for a second, is pure psychological idealism. They also deal with several other theories put forward by other Marxists. 

The authors think that inflation is mostly based on increasing or decreasing combined purchasing power (CPP) of both capital and labor. It secondarily relies on the input of money by the state, which they combine as the ‘value rate of inflation’ (VRI). A reduction in profits involves a lowering of the CPP.  If it falls, inflation generally increases. To them profits, surplus value and labor play the key roles in inflation.  Since 1979 labor’s share of the VRI has been decreasing.  Inflation rose until 1979, then fell until 2019 and rose again in 2022.  This should reflect a current profit-squeeze, and according to Roberts' figures on his blog, it is heading in that direction.  They point out that the government’s CPI is lower than the VRI, hiding part of inflation.

Oddly, Roberts seems to be on both sides of the current ‘price gouging’ issue - showing how oligarchic business sectors extract higher prices and profits; and denying that price gouging plays a major role over time.  He says statistics do not show that these kind of ‘monopolies’ and oligopolies have done this over many years, which after 1979 saw price deflation or stagnation.  International competition also exists to put a crimp on price gouging. The oligopolies obviously pick their moment!  And perhaps, due to the failure of regulation and their market power, they have built-in and on-going price gouging. 

CRISES

Marx never had a full-fledged theory of crises under capital, but the authors claim you can put one together using his writings in Capital and Theories of Surplus Value.  Most prominent is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, which underlies periodic slumps, busts, recessions, depressions and the like.  It is built into capital’s unstable functioning, based on the differing amounts of variable labor and constant technology involved in production – i.e. the ‘organic composition of capital.’  An increase in technology cuts into profits after a while, as labor is the only source of surplus value. There are countervailing forces like increasing labor exploitation and productivity, imperial looting and wage cuts, so the ‘tendency’ is not automatic. 

The authors disagree with Rosa Luxembourg’s take on Marx’s analysis of this tendency.  She said that imperialist exploitation would permanently delay its effect.  Through their data-driven look at the economy since 1945 they see profit's statistical role in every recession and every rebound - and even prior to that.  They also see over the whole period, through ups and downs, that the rate has fallen over time.  This is one of the motivations for capitals’ heavy move into speculation in financial markets… a derivative effect of the productive economy.  It is also one of the causes of mergers and takeovers of smaller and weaker capitalist entities by larger ones.  Liberals, Keynesians, anarchists, conservatives and even some Marxists ignore the central role profit has in a profit system.  That is odd. It is part of how labor exploitation is hidden in order to mystify bourgeois economics. 

Another source of capitalist business cycles / crises is the depreciation of fixed capital - equipment, buildings, tools, vehicles, software, etc. – estimated by Marx at the time at about 13 years. The authors challenge other Left theories of crisis based on 1) financial anarchy; 2) under-consumption and 3) overproduction of capital goods as opposed to consumer ones. On the first they counter that Marx in Capital, Vol. III carefully delineated between productive capital and fictitious, unproductive capital, with the latter based on the former.  The ‘financial anarchy’ financialization theory of people like Jack Rasmus or Michael Hudson confuses and then reverses the two, substituting debt for value. Interest on debts is not productive, it is a rentier device; as is the ownership of stocks, bonds, derivatives, crypto-currencies, etc. It represents stagnation in the productive economy.

Clearly due to the overconsumption of coffee

UNDERCONSUMPTION?

Monthly Review is the former home of the ‘underconsumption’ theory, though they’ve been pretty quiet about it lately. The authors confront the theory via Bertell Ollman by pointing out that both Marx and Engels empirically rejected it in Capital, Vol II, as low wages leading to ‘under-consumption’ of commodities was not the cause of crises.  Underconsumption by workers is continuous; crises are periodic; they do not match.  The authors’ charts show that most consumption in the U.S. is in fact not from workers or the public but from business investment.  Nor do consumption falls predate recessions – in fact rising wages predate recessions 11-1 since WWII in the U.S. 

Underconsumptionists argue that the 2008 financial crisis was caused by inequality; yet statistics by many sources over many years show that rising inequality does not cause credit booms and subsequent busts.  Inequality is a consequence of increased exploitation over a falling rate of profit – unemployment, low wages, foreclosures, union-busting, privatization, deregulation, reducing corporate taxes are all part of the neo-liberal attack to prop up that rate.  Those pre-2008 toxic ARM mortgages were a speculative Wall Street and banking scheme to increase profits.  Almost nobody could have paid the interest when the rates exploded.  

Underconsumptionism is a deeply reformist theory that claims raising wages will prevent capitalist crises.  It is not based on the labor theory of value; in fact it ignores profit and capital accumulation as the main motivators for capital.  Higher wages mean lower profits –a situation inimical to any businessman and the reason this issue is one of class struggle, not capitalist crisis resolution.  The theory is Keynesianism dressed up in radical clothes and actually undermines the fight for socialism.   

(End of Part 1 review.)   

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Long Depression” (Roberts); “The Deficit Myth” (Kelton); Capital in the 21^st Century” (Piketty); “Debt” (Graeber); “Zombie Capitalism” (Harman); “The Anti-Capitalist Chronicles” (Harvey); “The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx” (Callinicos); “In Letters of Fire and Blood” (Caffentzis): “Monopoly Capital” (Baran & Sweezy); “Marx and the Earth” (Foster/Burkett); “Ecological Revolution”(Foster); The Robbery of Nature” (Foster/Clark); “Dead Epidemiologists” (Wallace).

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 18, 2023

Deceptive Docurama

 “The Last Czars” – Docudrama produced by Jane Root, 2019

This is an attempt at explaining the fall of the last Czar – Nicholas II – by highlighting the Rasputin scandal and the possible survival of the youngest daughter, Anastasia.  The series includes valuable real footage of the revolution, the war and the royal family.  But it’s also pop history.  So how does pop history work?   

First you have to have some professors and writers on hand to give the whole thing a feeling of accuracy and gravitas.  This series uses 5 or 6.    

Then you have actors depict the terrible revolutionists as terrorists – anarchists and bombers like the unnamed People’s Will.  Anarchy is a phrase used a number of times, once as title of the 3rd episode. You mention a bewildering plethora of revolutionary organizations,  naming only one, the Bolsheviks.  As if there were hundreds that were relevant, which means you are supposed to be irritated about all the ‘anarchic’ opinions out there when people finally get to have their say. 

Then your actors and talking heads focus on Rasputin as the key figure in causing discredit on the Romanovs, due to his possibly sexual relationship with the Czarina and his magic with her hidden hemophilic son.  They hint that Alexandra was a neurotic, popping opium pills (?) and her nervousness was transmitted to the little boy, which made his bleeding worse.  Rasputin functioned like a therapist to this woman, who comes across as a religious, empty-headed, small town housefrau. 

Nicholas is portrayed as a nice but weak man, listening to the vicious Grand Duke Sergei, his neurotic wife, Rasputin and his own ‘feelings.’  He loves his family and had a romantic and sexual relationship with his wife, unlike many royalty. But he adopted a hardline stance throughout.  This nice man spent his coronation at a party after thousands of peasants were trampled to death on the celebration field; sent the Baltic Fleet to the Pacific in a failed fight with the Japanese in a war to expand the empire; ordered troops to fire on demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in front of the Winter Palace; executed 15,000 revolutionists after the 1905 insurrection and became the useless commander of the Russian armies in WWI, which sustained millions of casualties.

Nicholas repeatedly tolerated Rasputin throughout, even though most reports said Rasputin was running a sort of unofficial Christian sex cult.  Of note, Rasputin, the peasant, was against WWI initially.  Official and royal St. Petersburg all opposed Rasputin, which is what led to his assassination by a wealthy Prince.

Then you would focus on the character of Yukov Yurovsky, a Bolshevik who fought in WWI and led his unit off the battlefield.  Yurovsky was in charge of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg, and carried out their execution. The bloody basement where the royals were executed as White armies approached haunts the series. The last episode of the whole series of 6 is called 'The House of Special Purpose' about this place. This is meant to show the brutality of the Bolsheviks – not the brutality of a revived Czarism if they had been rescued and restored.   As it was, the Civil War was a massive and bloody horror show backed by imperialist aid, foreign troops and White Czarist restorationists.

Then you claim that if Nicholas had only listened to his smartest advisor, Stolypin, the dynasty would have been saved.  Saving the dynasty seems to be a theme.  Those ‘poor’ Romanovs was also a theme of some of the 2017 displays at the Winter Palace put on by the Putin government, so the theme goes beyond this docudrama.  In extends across the capitalist countries to this day.

And finally abstractly mention the conditions of the workers, peasants, intellectuals and soldiers in pre-revolutionary Russia, and keep the emotional, up-close narrative concerned with either Rasputin, the loving family, the children, their nice tutor and the false Anastasia.  The former is boring and black and white, while the latter are in color and emotionally touching.

This is basically a poppy, pro-royalist tale, with a side of history.  It is nevertheless a good series for a leftist, as it shows the incompetence of inherited power.  Sometimes these people are just plain laughable.  This love of royalty is still reflected in the ‘modern’ age, as in the recent archaic coronation of the doddering King Charles III attests, along with the continuing presence of royalty and theocracy across the world.  Of note, the Thai royal family holds political power with the help of a military junta.  The Saudi royal family is named the inherited rulers in the Saudi Constitution.   Television and movies peddle this nonsense non-stop in the 'West' too, including the series 'Bridgerton' which has raised dark-skinned people to royalty.  'Not My King' should not have to be a current slogan, but it is.  

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Hermitage and Winter Palace,” “Red Star” (Bogdanov); “October” (Mieville); “Petrograd District,” “What Is To Be Done?” (Chernyshevsky); “People’s History of the Russian Revolution” (Faulkner); “Petersburg” (Biely).

The Kultur Kommissar

May 15, 2023        

Another Banned Book?

 “Black Cloud Rising” by David Faladé, 2022

This story is based on real events during the Civil War.  The Union’s ‘African Brigade’ (later named the 36^th U.S. Colored Troops) moves through the tidewater areas of lower Virginia and upper North Carolina, below the James River and above Roanoke Island.  In a 3 week ‘raid’ it frees 2,500 slaves, commandeers or burns slaver and rebel property and battles Confederate bushwhackers.  It’s led by a fierce one-armed Abolitionist, General Edward Wild and its key character is a ‘black’ sergeant and adjutant of mixed ethnicity, Richard ‘Dick’ Etheridge.  Both are real personages.  The soldiers have been recruited in the ‘sand banks’ and slave quarters of the peninsula and outer banks, so know the slaves and the owners.  It is their personal ‘coming home’ – with rifles. 

They march south the length of the Great Dismal Swamp in the Albemarle area and connect with a group of “Maroons” who have been living in the swamp, an admixture of Native Americans and escapees.  The swamps, wetlands and bayous are all around, called ‘pocosin’ by the locals.  They arrest one head of the local bushwhackers, who is whipped by an old slave woman at his own ‘whipping pole,’ with Wild’s approval.  They occupy the largest settlement, Elizabeth Town, for a week, which now teams with freedmen and black soldiers.  The local white folks, even the Unionists, are trying to figure out if this situation is permanent or if it will all revert back to slave-time ‘normal.’  Etheridge himself is trying to understand his mixed parentage and how it will play out as slavery is disbanded on Roanoke Island, his home, along with his father’s.

A Freedman’s colony had been established on Roanoke, where his mother now lives.  It is presided over by a worrisome bunch of ‘white’ Union Zouaves, who are stealing even from freed folk.  They sell to a Copperhead who secretly sends goods to the Confederate irregulars. Etheridge’s half-brother has joined the bushwhackers in hiding, while his father is making money off the Union army. (Of note, the majority of North Carolinians would have voted against secession and war if given a chance in 1861.) Etheridge’s girl arrives in Elizabeth Town to escort an injured relative up to Norfolk and tells him the tale.  Wild’s brigade is surrounded by enemies.  Friends and allies are dubious, the mission is in doubt, the girl vulnerable and the military fortitude of the African Brigade and ‘black’ soldiers in question.

The 'Raid'

ISSUES

That’s the setup.  Faladé called General Wild a ‘zealot” in an NPR interview.  This might be due to him being tough on slavers and rebels like Sherman.  One character who has no mixed ethnicity is angry at Etheridge for being a ‘race’ traitor of some sort.  What this all hides is that many so-called ‘black’ people were and are really of mixed ethnicity, as are some so-called ‘white’ people.  So behind the story is a skin color politics that complicates simple-minded ethnic binaries.  And also behind it is the author’s hostility to John Brown-style radicalism.  There were personal ties between former slaves and former and present slave-owners, which made some soldiers like Etheridge more considerate.  He is hectored by two black non-coms for not being harsh enough. One tactic used by General Wild in the book is to detain the wives and daughters of the Confederate guerillas.  Is this true or is it the author’s way of showing Wild a 'zealot?'  It is reported that Wild took ‘hostages’ but their sex is not indicated.

Etheridge’s relation with the European-American officers in the Brigade improves as they travel back through hostile territory, especially after firefights and a theft incident involving 4 soldiers.  He has a melodramatic confrontation with his whitish half-brother and a continuing problem with a rogue fellow soldier that gets deadly.  He breaks military rules for personal reasons and gets away with it.  There is a conflict with another Union unit made up of white men.  Faladé shows that the light-skinned fishermen on the Outer Banks had no slaves, but they supported ‘sovereignty’ and so supported the Confederacy.

General Wild

In 2021 the struggle was finally recognized in Elizabeth Town by the State Historical Society and a road marker installed.  Locals still seemed upset over the ‘harshness’ shown by General Wild, as he publicly hung a young bushwhacker.  The slaver guerillas had night-ambushed and killed several Union officers and attacked his command on a continual basis. They had promised to kill any black soldier they captured and they did. They hung some escaped freedmen along the road, including a baby.  This local dislike of Wild 150+ years later tells you something about the so-called ‘modern’ South. 

Wild helped Robert Shaw get light-skinned officers for the 54^th Massachusetts, the unit in the film Glory.  Wild’s 36^th Colored Brigade participated in several other battles, the Petersburg campaign and the occupation of Richmond.  At the battle of Wilson’s Wharf, Wild’s command defeated an attack by Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia led by cavalry General Fitzhugh Lee – the first pitched battle between the two forces.  He later oversaw the Freedman’s Bureau in Georgia as part of Reconstruction.  

The book reads well and quickly.  It is not a battle story, so much as a story about soldiering and the effects of slavery.  Faladé is a professor of English at the University of Illinois.  He has written other books about Etheridge’s time in the Coast Guard at Pea Island.  Roanoke is just south of the Wright Brothers’ Kitty Hawk and also the location for the ‘Lost Colony’ of European settlers.  It, however, plays a background role in the narrative. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “The Good Lord Bird,” “The Civil War in the United States” (Marx, Engels); "Why the South Lost the Civil War," "Lincoln" (Spielberg); "Struggle & Progress," "The Neo-Confederate States," "Blockaders, Refugees and Contrabands," "The Bloody Shirt," "Guerillas, Unionists and Violence on the Confederate Home Front," "The Free State of Jones," "Andersonville Prison," "James-Younger Gang," "Southern Cultural Nationalism," "The Civil War in Florida," "A Blaze of Glory," "The State of Jones," "White Trash," "Drivin' Dixie Down," “Monument,” ‘A Confederacy of Dunces.”

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog

May 11, 2023