April 2013
Number 100
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Now is the time for a radical departure
A
s a philosopher famously wrote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This is vividly confirmed by the present leadership of the Labour Party and the ICTU. The result of the Meath East by-election is evidence enough of the likely prospects of the Labour Party at the next general election. It will be reduced to a few rural TDs, concerned mainly with with their personal fiefdoms, and some pockets of middle-class support in the
cities and towns. Whole swathes of urban working-class districts will be no-go areas for the Labour Party. But then, anyone with the slightest knowledge of recent history could have told them that. It was inevitable that this would be the outcome of the Labour Party’s policy of propping up Fine Gael and the establishment. The leading elements of the trade union movement also appear to have forgotten, or are ignoring, their own experience of recent decades. “Social partnership” castrated the
Insincere apologies offered and accepted by corrupt governments are nothing more than theatre. It is an insult to the memory of those martyred on the Mavi Marmara and to the people of Gaza themselves. I would certainly ask any sane people to consider if it were their brother, their father, their husband who was murdered, would an apology and money be sufficient for you?—Ken O’Keefe (humanitarian aid worker and former US marine, survivor of the Gaza Flotilla), on the Israeli prime minister’s apology to Turkey.
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Inside this 100th issue
When are we going to talk about class page 2 Bourgeois economics NATO membership Cypriots paying the price page 3 The new pope page 4
Financialisation, the euro and the crisis page 5
Family, private property and the state page 6 William Thompson: political economy and co-operative communism page 8 Can we learn from Cuba? page 10 A modest exposure page 12
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trade unions in the private sector, and Croke Park I and II will see them experience a similar fate in the public sector. Membership can only decline more, further weakening trade union organisation. The establishment continue to witter on about how we have “turned the corner” and are on the way back, that most of the heavy lifting is behind us and we can face the future knowing that we are all marching together to a better place. The recent data on economic growth—a very dubious concept in the first place—shows that this state had gone back into recession by the end of 2012 (just in case you missed the recovery). Despite all the talk about corners being turned, we find that the economy is going backwards. Gross domestic product is lower than it was in 2009; gross national product (which doesn’t include the e ect of movements in profits by transnational corporations) is back to where it was in the middle of 2010. Investment in the economy has fallen by €21 billion, personal consumption by €7.1 billion, and government spending by €5.6 billion. Economists point to the “green shoots of recovery” because exports are up: that is to say that we will export our way out of the crisis. Yet exports have grown only relative to the drop in imports: exports are €11.7 billion, while imports have dropped by €15.8 billion. The strategy is to reduce the wage base for both the state and private employers, reduce government spending, reduce government consumption of goods and services, and finance government services from an increased call upon working people’s wages, thereby reducing their capacity to consume. They are “shedding” more and more workers from the public service, who in turn will have to rely upon the state. The private sector is not capable of creating enough jobs for the growing numbers of unemployed. Globally, monopoly capitalism has vast amounts of capital that cannot be invested because capital will invest only where it expects it can realise a profit. It does not invest in the common good, or to promote national economic prosperity. Its bottom line is simply profit. But the global economy is stagnant, so capital is being built up with nowhere to go other than into speculation. This is why we have the stock markets booming while all around the rest is stagnant. This is why the Irish establishment and the mass media point to a growth in property prices as a sign of recovery, rather than a sign of speculation by investors and desperation by families who need a home. Rather than staggering down a path like lemmings to permanent debt servitude, a lifetime of precarious employment, generational mass emigration, we need a new departure. We need a national transformative strategy, one that harnesses capital to the needs of the people rather than harnessing people to the needs of capital—a strategy for challenging monopoly capitalism, not for saving it. [EMC] page 2 SOCIALIST VOICE
THE QUESTION REMAINS: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO TALK ABOUT CLASS T
he result of the recent election in Meath East again shows the totally inadequate response from the left in the Republic to the crisis, whether it be the Labour Party or Sinn Féin. It has to be said, however, that those two parties have long deserted their working-class roots, particularly Labour, which was resoundingly humiliated by the people of Meath East because of the party’s backing of the most severe austerity that our people have suffered since the failed revolution of 1916. This writer, who listened to the daily public announcements of the candidates, kept hoping that one of them would eventually mention the sheer inequality of wealth in our society, especially income inequality. The very low turn-out shows that people are becoming more apathetic to mainstream politics, because of the lies and deceit that the three main parties have continually fed them. One has only to recall the brass neck of the former Workers’ Party TD Pat Rabbitte, who cannot be kept o the television these days. I refer to his comments on “This Week in Politics” last December. When asked about the Labour Party’s broken pre-election promises that constituted the party’s lame attempt to incorporate “fairness” in its manifesto Rabbitte retorted in typical bullish fashion: “Isn’t that what you tend to do during an election?” Here are some examples of what was spoken about during this election. In 1962 the wealthiest 1 per cent had 125 times the wealth of a median household; in 2010 the ratio was 288 to 1. In the 1970s the pay of a CEO was about 30 times that of a typical worker: today it is more than 200 times. From 1978 to 2011 severance pay for
private-sector workers grew by 5.7 per cent; for CEOs it grew by more than 725 per cent. Despite a strong body of equality legislation, several groups remain particularly vulnerable to discrimination and exclusion, including single mothers, children, Travellers, people with disabilities, migrants, asylumseekers, and the homeless. In accordance with the Human Rights Framework, Ireland should be particularly mindful that policies should not exacerbate the situation of such groups and should take positive measures to help these vulnerable sections regain their equal footing with the rest of the society. A number of recent measures are of concern in this respect, especially the reduction in child benefit and benefits for job-seekers, carers, single-parent families, persons with disabilities, and the blind. The e ect of these measures will be exacerbated by reductions in funding for a number of social services that are essential for the same vulnerable people, including disability, community and voluntary services, Travellers’ supports, drug outreach initiatives, rural development schemes, the RAPID programme, and Youthreach. By adopting these measures Ireland runs a high risk of excluding those most in need of support and ignoring the needs of the most vulnerable. In particular, because of multiple forms of entrenched discrimination, women are especially vulnerable to the detrimental effects of reductions in social services and benefits. Independent experts note the commitment in the Programme for Government to refrain from further reducing social protection benefits but urge the state to take immediate steps to ensure that the situation of the most excluded and disadvantaged groups does not deteriorate further as a result of these measures. The question remains: when are we going to talk about class? [PD]
Cypriots paying the price
W
hile there has been much talk of “haircuts” for the Russian oligarchs whose deposits are supposedly stashed away in Cypriot banks, this is only a transfer of wealth from one cabal of gangsters (Russian) to another cabal of gangsters (ours, in the form of the EU). There was money from the Russian oligarchs in Cyprus because it is one of many such bolt-holes for dirty money. The International Financial Services Centre in the Dublin docklands is another. Dirty money never stays long in one place. The “haircuts” will apply mainly to the Cypriot business community. While the banks in Cyprus were closed and working people had trouble getting cash, two banks—Laïkí Trápeza (People’s Bank) and Bank of Cyprus—left their branches in London open throughout the two-week crisis, with no limits on withdrawals. The Bank of Cyprus, which owns 80 per cent of Uniastrum Bank in Russia, placed no restrictions on withdrawals in Russia. The deal imposed on the Cypriot people, like the “Programme for Ireland,” is nothing more than a robbers’ charter: to rob the people, to hand over the people’s wealth to foreign bankers, in particular German finance capital. The people of Ireland, like all the peoples trapped within the European Union, need to realise that the EU is not for serving the
interests of working people, nor can it be transformed into a more democratic body. The EU needs to be challenged, and defeated. The opportunism of Cypriot and other European left forces is now bearing bitter fruit. What is happening to the people of Cyprus exposes once again the true nature of the European Union. It is important that Irish workers’ organisations express their solidarity with the working people of Cyprus and that the Cypriot people are not alone at this critical moment in their history. The struggle against the EU is the cause of all working people. [EMC]
The growing treat of NATO membership
In late February the secretary-general of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, visited Dublin for talks about this state joining NATO. The visit was part of NATO’s strategy of extending its influence and control over formerly neutral states. It is making overtures not only to Ireland but also to Sweden and Finland. It is all part of its strategy of encirclement of Russia and China. The shedding of neutrality piece by piece by the Irish establishment reflects their deep commitment to EU and American interests over those of the Irish people. Such an approach, and the visit itself, did not come about by accident but is part of a softening-up process by Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Fianna Fáil to ensure that this state becomes a “full partner” in the defence of western interests. This is also why we have had such bellicose statements from Gilmore about NATO’s proxy war in Syria.
The state of bourgeois economics
MUCH LIKE our political elite, the global elite of economic thinkers are living on a different planet. The list of recent winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics—and, more importantly, the reasons why they were given the award—are so far removed from the economic troubles of the day that it is barely believable. It would appear that the prize for economics is as politically biased as the prize for peace, which recently went to such notable warmongers as Obama and the European Union. Reading the list would make you say, Crisis? What crisis? Which is probably the point. Amidst the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression, and with a growing popular understanding of the changed dynamics of the system towards an even more unstable financialised, monopolised and unequal society, such topics as “for their analysis of markets with search frictions” are winning the award. For completeness’ sake, here is the list of winners since the systemic crisis burst onto the scene:
2008: Elinor Ostrom, “for her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons.”
2009: Oliver Williamson, “for his analysis of economic governance, especially the boundaries of the firm.” 2010: Peter A. Diamond, Dale Mortensen, and Christopher Pissarides, “for their analysis of markets with search frictions.” 2011: Thomas J. Sargent and Christopher Sims, “for their empirical research on cause and effect in the macro-economy.” 2012: Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd Shapley, “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design.” As if to emphasise just how big an apologist for the system bourgeois political economy has become, Williamson’s work applauds the role played by larger monopolies in internalising transaction costs, which can
pass savings on to consumers and reduce risk and instability in the system—this in a world where a pair of runners is made for about $1.50 but sold for about $150, and where the hoarding of commodities creates massive costs in spikes and artificial inflation of prices. Or the latest winners, Roth and Shapley, for their work on showing how supply-and-demand markets can be successfully “modelled” to match up anything from organ donors to single men and women, and presumably the world’s resources and produce. Almost a sick joke when you consider the mess “supply and demand” has made of housing allocation in this country. And just to show how much the Nobel prize committee have their finger on the pulse of reality, when asked to comment on the debt crisis Alvin Roth simply replied, “That’s not the kind of economist I am.” So why leave the economy to economists! [NL] SOCIALIST VOICE page 3
T
he election of a new pope, like that of most if not all of his predecessors, does not add much to the Catholic papacy. The cardinals chose as their new leader a man from almost “the end of the world”—the first non-European for almost 1,300 years and the first member of the Jesuit order. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, becomes Pope Francis—the first to take that name. It appears that the electors in the Sistine Chapel opted for compromise. But the cardinals’ choice risked running into immediate controversy over the new pope’s role in Argentina’s history. In his book El Silencio a prominent Argentine journalist alleged that Bergoglio connived in the abduction of two Jesuit priests by the military junta in the so-called “dirty war.” He has twice refused to appear in open court in cases involving torture, murder, and the theft of babies from the regime’s prisoners. Historically, the Church has been a fountain of conservative ideology in an otherwise changing word. It has been at hand to oppose any move that challenged the status quo. A source of particular political anathema to Church leaders has been any move towards workers’ control and communism. Pope Pius X was known as a thoroughly anti-modernist pope, using Church power to maintain the line of tradition against the forces of modernity and liberalism. He opposed democratic institutions and created a secret network of informers to report on the suspicious activities of priests and others. For Pope Pius XII, communism was a greater evil than Nazism—and as a result he signed a concordat with Hitler in the hopes that this relationship might help stem the rising tide of communism. Many believe that Pope John Paul I was murdered in order to prevent him from learning or revealing embarrassing facts about the Church. Pope John Paul II was also one of the longest-reigning popes in the history of the page 4 SOCIALIST VOICE
A NEW POPE Church. He tried to steer a course between reform and tradition, often siding more strongly with the forces of tradition and reaction, much to the dismay of progressive Catholics. The Church gave support to the “Solidarity” movement in Poland. Lech Wa sa, who publicly displayed Catholic piety, confirmed the pope’s influence, saying: “The Holy Father, through his meetings, demonstrated how numerous we were. He told us not to be afraid.” Pope Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger on 16 April 1927, is now “Pope Emeritus” of the Catholic Church. He served as pope from 2005 to 2013. Cardinal Ratzinger, a former theology professor and Bishop of Munich, was fifty-four when he was named to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office charged with upholding orthodoxy. He criticised the overreach of bishops’ conferences. His first few years as head of the congregation dealt much with liberation theology, a movement centred on the poor and one that Ratzinger believed had ties to Marxism. In the 1950s and 60s liberation theology had arisen principally as a moral reaction to the poverty caused by social injustice in that region. Clerics who supported liberation theology were often told to toe the line in front of visiting popes and bishops. It was all right to criticise the forces of the left, but any opprobrium for the right was to be spurned. In liberation theology, the pope declared, the “people is the antithesis of the hierarchy, the antithesis of all institutions, which are seen as oppressive powers. Ultimately anyone who participates in the class struggle is a member of the ‘people’; the ‘Church of the people’ becomes the antagonist of the hierarchical Church.” Ratzinger continued to persecute gay people around the world. He sentenced millions to poverty and death in sub-Saharan Africa through the Church’s antediluvian teaching that condoms don’t prevent the spread of HIV and its promotion of abstinence-only sex education. He tried to stop stem-cell research, which might help in the cure of such diseases
as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and Parkinson’s. Ratzinger personally welcomed the holocaust-denying Richard Williamson back into the Catholic Church while comparing atheists to Nazis, and when he was a cardinal he refused to defrock a priest who had molested two hundred deaf children. In 1985 the Vatican silenced the Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff, at the time a Franciscan priest and a scholar of liberation theology. Often called the “father of liberation theology,” the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez faced several Vatican investigations in the 1980s for his writings. In 1983 Raymond Hunthausen, a progressive American bishop, allowed a mass for Dignity, a group for gay and lesbian Catholics, in his cathedral, which resulted in complaints to the doctrinal congregation. A month later Ratzinger published "On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” This warns of “deceitful propaganda” from prohomosexual groups and instructs bishops not to accept groups that “seek to undermine the teaching of the church, which are ambiguous about it, or which neglect it entirely.” The letter refers to homosexual orientation as an “intrinsic moral evil.” Charles Curran, a moral theologian who led the American resistance to Humanae Vitae in the late 1960s, was investigated by the congregation for his teachings on sexual ethics and in 1987 was fired from his teaching position at the Catholic University of America in Washington. In 1998 the Vatican criticised the book Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism by Jacques Dupuis, a Belgian theologian. After three years of investigation, in 2001 the Vatican backed away from its initial finding of “serious doctrinal error” in the book but said there were “ambiguities and difficulties on important points which could lead a reader to erroneous or harmful opinions.” Pope Benedict, as pope emeritus, is where we came in. He was succeeded by Pope Francis on 13 March 2013. [MA]
Financialisation, the euro and the crisis
Costas Lapavitsas et al., Crisis in the Eurozone (London and New York: Verso, 2012; ISBN 978-1-84467969-0). Building on his work as a leading member of the renowned Research on Money and Finance group, Costas Lapavitsas, a leftist political economist, has written a significant book on the euro crisis. Many of his ideas are interesting and worth considering. For example, he has argued that the euro-zone crisis is a crisis of financialisation, which he maintains (like the Monthly Review school) is a new stage of contemporary capitalism. The arguments have been well rehearsed in Socialist Voice since 2008 and basically centre on the notion that the rise of finance and the sphere of circulation have expanded in recent decades, with a more sluggish growth in the sphere of production. This is turn has altered the conduct of the
basic agents of capital accumulation, whether they be transnationals, banks, or workers. Financialisation, Lapavitsas maintains, is a new mechanism of profit-extraction from the sphere of circulation (profit derived from income flows and money stock). An interesting and perhaps controversial feature of his thesis is that in mature financialisation, nonfinancial firms show evidence of a growing detachment from banks. There is, in effect, the ascendancy of selffinance among monopoly-capitalist firms. This is counter-intuitive to the more traditional interpretation of “finance capital.” Thus, big monopoly capital has actually been relatively independent of the banks, Lapavitsas claims, and instead has relied on internal funds, such as equities and securities, to foster accumulation. This is true, it seems, of both the United States and Germany. The latter case is particularly interesting, as the German economy has historically been a bank-based system with a high degree of infusion between the banking sector and capitalist firms. When we move to banks themselves, in these circumstances they are clearly making less profit by lending to non-financials. They have therefore had to find other avenues, which have been principally through open-market transactions (lending to other banks) or making profits by turning to workers through increased lending. Lending to the latter, however, has not been for normal consumption purposes (Lapavitsas maintains that borrowing to consume because wages are low is not accurate): rather the lending has been mortgage lending for houses. Again national differences are important; in Germany, while there was an increase in inter-bank lending, housing loans have not increased dramatically. Germany, therefore, has financialisation in a different way from the United States or Britain. Turning to the EU, financialisation is seen to work through the role of the common
currency. The euro acts as world money or as a reserve currency to compete against the dollar and to enable European big business and banks to operate in the market with extra strength. The euro also acts as a domestic monetary standard within the euro zone. This dual function, between the international and the domestic, is seen by Lapavitsas to create a clash and to result in crisis. Within the European Monetary Union the international role for the euro has to be squeezed out, as otherwise it creates financial instability. For this to happen there would need to be no systematic divergences in inflation rates, no systematic imbalance in current accounts, and therefore no violent shifts in capital flows. But all three of these conditions have been negated, as seen by the diverging trajectories between the core and the periphery, for example differences in competitiveness and current-account balances. (See “Blame the EU,” Socialist Voice, June 2010.) While the thesis is significant in shedding light on the specific institutional features of the euro crisis, it is not clear whether it extends far enough into explaining the underlying reasons for the crisis. The crisis affecting the euro zone is a product of capitalist organisation of the economy and not, in totality, a crisis of the euro—which is a proximate cause. If the euro collapsed and EMU states resorted to independent monetary and currency structures, the problems affecting many of these states would not dissipate. The euro problem arises out of the slump in global capitalism. The accumulation of debt, whether in the state, banking, the private sector, or households, is imposing downward pressure on the ability of capitalist economies to turn around quickly, even after cutting jobs, shutting businesses and ending investment in an attempt to reduce the cost of capital. The crisis is most pronounced in the “periphery” because these countries have historically had weaker capitalist economies. There is also a problem with the Lapavitsas argument about austerity. Like many on the left, the book argues that European austerity is counterproductive. Cut-backs in public spending will mean a longer, deeper recession, will worsen the burden of debt, will further imperil banks, and may soon spell the end of monetary union itself. While austerity is certainly not unproblematic for capitalism, the process can reduce the costs of production to a point where the possibilities for profitable investment are restored. Certainly, this end goal could take years to occur, but the indicators so far suggest that some restoration of profitability is taking place: the current accounts of the periphery are nearly in balance, and the exports of Ireland and Greece, for example, have risen significantly (because of a significant decline in unit labour costs). Austerity is not some misguided notion undertaken by ill-informed politicians but a class project designed to restore profitable accumulation. [NC]
SOCIALIST VOICE page 5
CLASSICS
Frederick Engels The origins of the family, private property, and the state page 6 SOCIALIST VOICE
I
F YOU’RE looking for an accessible but informative introduction to dialectical materialism, this is an excellent place to start. It was recommended to me recently as being just that: a highly useful insight into the Marxist way of thinking. However, this book is not simply confined to those fascinated by the theories espoused within it. A riveting guide to anthropology is presented, with the conditions surrounding the advent of civilisation receiving a particularly good analysis. Engels certainly set himself a hard task by choosing to explain such a novel subject. But there can be no doubt that he achieved it, ensuring that the book deals with exactly what it says on the cover. Engels discloses in the preface that Marx had been planning to publish such a book shortly before his death in 1883. Marx had intended to respond to the excellent work of the American anthropologist Lewis H. Morgan in his book Ancient Society, published in 1877. The aim was to link Morgan’s research on human development with Marx’s “materialist conception of history.” Engels strives throughout the book to fulfil this objective. An abundance of information is used in the book. Although Engels mainly deals with the results of Morgan’s research, he refers to works by many of his contemporaries, including John Lubbock, John F. McLennan, and, in particular, the Swiss anthropologist Johann Bachofen. Engels starts off by succinctly summarising Morgan’s definition of the three “great epochs of human progress,” namely savagery, barbarism, and civilisation. He then continues to analyse the origins of the family. What is striking is how different the family of today is from the family of the era of barbarism, and how much development it underwent in the interim. Most people, including myself before having read the book, would ignorantly suppose that the nuclear family, founded on the institution of marriage, has always been in existence: we see it as the natural, obvious structure of human kinship. Engels conclusively shows that this is not the case. He scrutinises four stages in the development of the family and describes the economic and social factors that contributed to its progress through these stages. Engels pays particular attention to the old mother-right that existed in the early forms of family, whereby consanguinity (the sharing of a common ancestor) could be proved only through the mother line, because at the time both men and women had multiple partners and within a single community, the gens. Engels shows that as the gentes became more settled and produced more than they needed to sustain themselves, this surplus produce began to be acquired as private property, instead of the common property that had always existed within the gens. The men took control of the surplus produce, and the concept of inheritance was born. The produce was solely their property, and the men sought to pass it on to their children. Women were prevented from marrying more than one person at a time, in order to facilitate
this, and so the age of monogamy and “civilisation” was born. The female sex became inferior, and the women were at the command of their husbands. Engels points out that this is the very first division of labour—between men and women for the purpose of child-rearing, with women confined to the home. It is therefore true to say that when mother-right was in force during the age of barbarism there was equality between the sexes, but with the inception of civilisation the role of women was greatly diminished. Morgan used the Iroquois peoples as a case study during his research to demonstrate the origins of the family, because they had not yet reached the stage of civilisation. Engels draws attention to this and gives a clear understanding of how the gens (the form of the Iroquois family) functioned. Common property, group marriage and unquestionably democratic, participatory systems of governance all existed within the gens. Engels refers to this as “primitive communism.” Although not terribly advanced, there is social harmony and equality between the sexes. Following from this, Engels analyses the defining characteristics of the early civilisations, particularly in Ancient Greece and Rome. Slavery, monogamy, inheritance, descent according to father-right and elitist parliamentary systems (the Senate) were now all in vogue. Social harmony is absent, and the origins of class divisions are present, between those who own property and those without it. Engels describes the steps that led to the formation of the state, which, he concludes, is the rule of one class over another, pure and simple. It is a conclusion reached taking into account the scientific and historical evidence, an utterly convincing argument. Engels succeeds in explaining the origins of the family, private property and the state and exposes them for what they really are: not natural institutions that have existed indefinitely along with humankind but institutions that have developed from economic and social conditions, disposed to creating class divisions among the people, innately fostering antagonisms, inequality, and disharmony. The materialist conception of history accurately accounts for the cold, hard facts, and Engels presents both the latter and the former with unswerving precision. This work deals mainly with three concepts: family, private property, and state—concepts seldom discussed in historical publications of any kind, where they are normally taken for granted. What Engels shows is that these three fundamentals that form the bedrock of civilisation, upon which our entire modern society is built, have been and will always be subject to constant change; and the study of their development gives one a fascinating insight into why our world functions the way it does. It is this sort of knowledge that empowers people, that allows them to think critically about their environment, that makes them question the conventionally unquestionable. This book is a highly informative and yet thoroughly engrossing read. [SOD]
NOTICE BOARD
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l Trade Union Left Forum www.tuleftforum.com Saturday 6 April 11 a.m. Culture: above the fray or part of the struggle? “Introduction to Marxism” series ▶James Connolly House (43 East Essex Street) Saturday 13 April 2:30pm Film show In honour of Hugo Chávez Tocar y Luchar [To Play and to Struggle] 4 pm The Revolution Will Not Be Televised Admission free New Theatre (43 East Essex Street) Progressive Film Club
PUBLIC MEETING Marching to oblivion The political economy of the Croke Park Agreement Thursday 9 May 6pm Guest speaker: Colin Whitston (National College of Ireland). Other speakers to be confirmed ▶TEEU head office (6 Gardiner Row)
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This is the place for H Irish history H politics H Marxist classics H philosophy H feminism H trade union affairs H environmental issues H progressive literature H radical periodicals Connolly Books is named after James Connolly, Ireland’s socialist pioneer and martyr SOCIALIST VOICE page 7
Thompson published a number of important papers, held enormous influence with his contemporaries, and was radically ahead of his times in his views on economics, women, religion, education and the burgeoning trade union movement and on how society could be best structured to meet the needs of the many.
William Thompson: political economy and co-operative communism
N
ot much is written about William Thompson these days— a few articles here and there and the biography by Richard Pankhurst published more than fifty years ago. Yet he was considered by his contemporaries to be as important to political economy as Adam Smith and as important to the cooperative movement as Robert Owen—indeed Owen credits Thompson with systematically developing the economics of the co-operative movement. It is claimed that Thompson popularised the word “competitive” as a description of capitalism and also the word “socialism” in debates in London with such notable political economists as John Stuart Mill. Socialists in Ireland, who may not have read Thompson’s writings directly, will at least be aware of Connolly’s admiration for him, describing him as Ireland’s first socialist and a forerunner of Karl Marx. Connolly devotes an entire chapter to him in Labour in Irish History. If we were to attempt to estimate the relative achievements of Thompson and Marx we could not hope to do justice to either by putting them in contrast, or by eulogising Thompson in order to belittle Marx, as some Continental critics of the latter seek to do. Rather we should say that the relative position of this Irish genius and of Marx are best comparable to the historical relations of the pre-Darwinian evolutionists to Darwin. As Darwin systematised all the theories of his predecessors and gave a lifetime to accumulating the facts required to establish his and their position, so Marx found the true line of economic thought already indicated, and page 8 SOCIALIST VOICE
used his genius and encyclopaedic knowledge and research to place it on an unshakable foundation. Thompson brushed aside the economic fiction maintained by the orthodox economists, and accepted by the utopians, that profit was made in exchange, declaring that it was due to the subjection of labour and the resultant appropriation by capitalists and landlords of the fruits of other people’s labour. Given that Ireland is not shy of celebrating or promoting “our greats,” why so silent on Thompson? Maybe because Thompson was a radical in every area of thought, never compromising his views for fear of retribution. It is hard to see how someone like Thompson could be celebrated by this state other than in a way that stripped him of his political radicalism. His critique of capitalism, his scathing attacks on political power and privilege, his views on religion and on women are all still valid, relevant and dangerous ideas that from the establishment’s point of view are best kept buried, much as they have consistently tried to bury the radicalism of James Connolly.
His life William Thompson was born in Cork in 1775 to a wealthy merchant family, very much part of the Anglo-Irish establishment. Thompson’s father involved himself in politics and became mayor of the city. When his father died Thompson inherited his estate at Glandore and his trading fleet. Acknowledging his position of wealth, Thompson described himself as belonging to the idle class who live off the labour of others. Tragically, he su ered from poor health all his life and was to die in 1833 at the age of fifty-eight. Despite this relatively short life,
Major works Thompson’s four main works are An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness, Applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth; Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery; Labor Rewarded: The Claims of Labor and Capital Conciliated, or How to Secure to Labor the Whole Products of Its Exertions; and Practical Directions for the Speedy and Economical Establishment of Communities on the Principles of Mutual Co-operation, United Possessions and Equality of Exertions and the Means of Enjoyments. Unfortunately, these books are not the easiest to come by any more, but they can be bought on line. An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth was Thompson’s first major work in political economy, and it contains his most comprehensive critique of capitalism and his proposals for a co-operative society as an alternative. He condemned the narrow mechanical approach taken by political economists but also the naïvely utopian and moralist approach of philosophers and attempted to combine a scientific and ethical critique of the system, concentrating on how wealth is created and also how it is distributed. This major work condemns the existing system as wasteful, exploitative, and ultimately unproductive in concentrating wealth in the hands of the few and keeping the many in poverty. Thompson identifies exploitation (those who create wealth not receiving the full value of what they create) and competition as the essential features of the system, which drives the rich to maintain their wealth at the expense of others. But Thompson did not reduce economics merely to wealth-creation and distribution: he saw how it influenced a society’s morals, education system and political processes and ultimately the state. In An Inquiry Thompson identified many of the themes and analysis Marx and Engels would tackle half a century later and elucidated these in a number of central principles: 1. Wealth is produced by labour. 2. The aim of production should be to distribute its product to create the greatest possible happiness. 3. This will be achieved by distributing wealth equally to the greatest number. 4. The greatest incentive to work is to receive the entire use of the value you created. 5. Exchange should be voluntary to the producers of the articles. There is no doubt that Marx read and was influenced by Thompson. Common to them
both is the use of the labour theory of value and of exploitation in understanding the creation of surplus value, wealth, and consequently inequality and mass unhappiness. But the similarities don’t end there. Thompson understood how one’s class determines one’s interests and influences one’s actions. So, for Thompson, “the Industrious Classes are now learning their own importance; they will soon speak out; and thenceforward, they alone will regulate human affairs, essentially their own affairs. The idle will lose the support of public opinion, and as a class will cease to exist.” Thompson showed that he understood the class nature of the state when he defined the state as “the aristocratic law-making committee of the Idle Classes,” and he foresaw a time in a future society based on co-operative production when “almost all the occasions for the exercise of the ordinary functions of Government would have ceased.” Consequently, Thompson argued against Robert Owen, who sought favour with the establishment and support from the state for the co-operative movement. Thompson saw this is a pointless distraction, as he understood why it would not be in the state’s interests to do so. Unfortunately, however, this led Thompson to advocate small start-up co-operatives, which, like many communes throughout history, are doomed to fail because of the scale of production, the coercive role of the state, and personality problems. For Thompson, public opinion was merely the “opinion of the influential classes of society,” not the majority classes. And he railed against the power, material and ideological, of religious institutions, describing priests as “rapacious parasites” and tithes as “the most pernicious of taxes.” In this way he also di ered from co-operatives of the Saint-Simon tradition, which sought to employ religious dogma for their own ends. Laws and morals should instead be based on the promotion of the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. It is understandable, therefore, that some commentators (Joseph Schumpeter, Stanley and Beatrice Webb, Thorstein Veblen and others) have described Thompson as the founder of scientific socialism. Certainly to lump him in with Owen, Fourier and SaintSimon in Engels’s category of utopian socialists would be simplistic and plays down his role in placing the co-operative movement firmly within a scientific critique of capitalism. Thompson did not disconnect the economic system from everything in society around it, making his critique one of society in its entirety. It is little wonder that he also ably and vocally campaigned against one of the most glaring injustices and abuses of his day: the subjugation of one half of the human race, women. Thompson was shocked and disappointed that many of the utilitarian (precursor to liberal) thinkers of the day, including James Mill, defended the denial of the franchise to
women. An Appeal is a response to, in particular, Mill’s support for the oppression of women. Mill justified this on the grounds that women’s interests were taken into account either by their fathers or their husbands, and so—like children—they were represented indirectly, a position Thompson utterly rejected. Thompson had struck up a friendship with the radical socialist Anna Whealer, goddaughter of Henry Grattan. Indeed he begged her to put her name to the book, which he felt was a product of her mind and experiences and would have a greater impact coming directly from her, almost as a belated follow-up to the ground-breaking Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft, published in 1792. An Appeal described a woman under capitalism as an “involuntary breeding machine and household slave.” Thompson described marriage thus: “Each man yokes a woman to his establishment and calls it a contract.” In An Appeal he tears apart Mills’s argument of a “fair contract” and the assertion that women’s interests were taken into account by their male sponsor. He also described in great detail the injustices suffered by women in society, from the denial of the franchise to the world of work and wealth and fundamentally their lack of civil, legal and political rights. He pleaded: “Women of England, women, in whatever country ye breathe—wherever ye breathe degraded— awake!” He also called on men to support the women’s cause, calling on them to be consistent and to be rational. In 1827, after three years’ work, Thompson published Labour Rewarded as a response to Thomas Hodgskin’s Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital, in which Hodgskin criticised the capitalist system and supported the early formation of trade unions yet defended exploitation through the expropriation of surplus value as the natural order of things and argued that a more competitive system would reduce the exploitation of labourers. Labour Rewarded is less theoretical than An Inquiry but builds on its essential principles. This was more of a call to workers to take up the political struggle to build cooperative communities, “to cast aside the little expedients of the day and of the year, and to seek for a radical, permanent cure of the evils that afflict society.” Thompson, unlike Owen, believed passionately in democracy, and democratic practice was the key to his vision of cooperatives. It was not good enough to follow blindly the instructions of a patron or sponsor: Thompson extends this beyond the community and on to provincial, state and national legislatures, describing a system of government designed to secure maximum freedom with minimum coercion. For Thompson, laws should be “as mild, simple and as few as possible.” Thompson’s final significant work, Practical Directions, is just that: it is a guide to the building of a co-operative community.
Thompson had for some time engaged in advocating the establishment of small cooperative farms and communities, sometimes with as few as two hundred participants, with a plan to increase this to two thousand. This was in sharp contrast to Owen’s grander schemes. But Thompson mourned the fact that there were no manuals or guides for families to start from. This he rectified. In 1830 his Practical Directions was published, containing detailed advice on crop rotation, immediate necessary buildings, the size of buildings, longterm structures, and decision-making procedures, adding much to his life’s work in critiquing capitalism. Thompson was seeking, as far as was possible, to remove the random element and mistakes from the building of co-operatives and to make the process of establishing a community into a science. But this was not a paradise. Thompson was honest and clear enough to say that this would require hard work and a very meagre standard of living for the early period, only building up its internal resources over time to provide for an easier life and more comforts. Unfortunately, e orts to establish sustainable communities along these lines eluded Thompson. His own farm, though run efficiently and a lot fairer than most, did not turn into a co-operative; the Ralahine community in Co. Clare would soon fall to the gambling addiction of its sponsor, John Vandeleur; and Robert Owen’s grander projects would also collapse under the weight of debt. The co-operative movement grew and thrived in the form of trading businesses, as opposed to communities, which consequently dampened the radical socialist and democratic edge that Thompson provided. This was arguably to find expression most immediately in the Chartist and trade union movement and then, globally, among the advocates of Marxism. Death and legacy William Thompson died on 28 March 1833 at the age of fifty-eight. Unwell but active to the end, he was writing to co-operative journals and friends up to a couple of weeks before his death. Ever the radical, and not afraid to challenge authority, he specified in his will that no priests or religious people were to bury him. This caused consternation at his religious funeral and burial, forced upon his remains by his family. Unfortunately, feuds and legal challenges prevented his will from being fully implemented, and so the co-operative movement did not receive the generous bequests he had left it. Some of Thompson’s family succeeded in dragging the will through a lengthy court process, with no real winners. William Thompson was truly a remarkable man, a radical and a socialist, as important to political economy as Adam Smith, as important to the co-operative movement as Robert Owen, and without doubt a significant influence on Karl Marx and James Connolly. [NL]
SOCIALIST VOICE page 9
International
Can we learn from Cuba? (or where to go from here?)
T
he replacement of a failed centralised planning system in Cuba with market socialism caused flutterings in the dovecotes of the infantile left, for whom “market socialism” is a contradiction in terms. Cuba has deserted the Marxist camp, to initiate a return to capitalism. Mass redundancies in the state sector, expansion of the private sector and reductions in welfare hand-outs enabled the capitalist press to trumpet the glad tidings that Cuba was on the way back to capitalist “normality.” Yet another proof that communism doesn’t work, they said, seeing the latter as being synonymous inevitably with repressive control of economic life by centralised planning regimes. Cuban leaders, from President Raúl Castro down, are adamant, however, that the pragmatic socio-economic changes instituted by Cuba are necessary to further develop socialism there and to safeguard the egalitarian achievements of the continuing Cuban Revolution, especially in the areas of health, education, and general social wellbeing. What are European socialists to make of this consideration? Can the Cuban experience change the way we theorise and advance a socialist project that languishes in the context of a massively hegemonising capitalism that subverts all possibility of radical change? “After the revolution . . .” prefaces many a fond leftist wish-list. Such cant cuts no ice with workers, to whom such a vague happening is incredible, especially when we cannot show how such a revolution is to occur, what form it page 10 SOCIALIST VOICE
is to take, and how the transition from such a undefined scenario to a just and credible postrevolutionary order is to be achieved. For Marx, socialism was to be the product of the dialectic of history, not of the vendors of visions. Furthermore, defining postrevolutionary institutions bespeaks a top-down technocratic elitism that stifles the creative revolutionary impulse. Utopian visions, embodying the notion that history has a final destination, where social conflict and politics will disappear, are self-marginalising leftist fantasies, pie in the sky for workers. Instead, a future scenario showing concrete measures leading out of the maze of the status quo is urgently needed. Once such a transition has been accomplished, society can decide on subsequent moves. This transition must aim to create a new order in which common ownership of all productive infrastructure lays a solid basis for further radical change. Unless the present system can be effaced by a such a credible and workable alternative it will sputter on, collapsing finally into human and environmental chaos, riven by its own internal contradictions. Does the purist leftist vision of an immediate stateless, marketless world—and thus no money, wages, or prices, in which goods are freely produced and exchanged, where the economy is governed by the maxim “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”—offer such a credible, alternative vision? And if not, why not? Consider the complexity of our electronic era, in which millions participate in the production of a single computer, for example. Each individual performs, under orders, only
the tiniest number of the millions of tasks involved. How do bosses know how much plastic, for example, to produce? How many electronic components? The number of such issues is almost infinite in the modern world economy, with millions of different products and billions of workers and consumers. Hence the issue of economic calculation arises, facing us with two logical possibilities. In a market economy, prices systematically inform firms how much of a thing people are willing to forgo to get another thing. In this way, quantitative information is generated about how people value those things. Only by knowing how people value millions of different things can producers make rational decisions about what they are going to produce. A decentralised system could never continually generate and disseminate so much information without the use of prices in some form. Alternatively, in a centrally planned economy, society’s production decisions would be delegated to computerised central planners, who would assemble all the necessary information before calculating social needs. But something must perform the economic calculation function that prices perform for a market system and planners perform for a centrally planned system. An economic calculation mechanism is essential to any realistic future scenario. Why not a centrally planned economy, then? Centrally planned economies succeeded when communism came to poor, rural countries like Cuba, Bulgaria, or Romania. They industrialised quickly, wiped out illiteracy, raised educational levels, promoted equality between men and women, ensuring
that the majority were housed and had health care. Beyond that, the system faltered. Citizens of socialist countries felt the scarcity, shoddiness and uniformity of their goods to be inconveniences, and violations of their basic socialist rights. To compensate for failures of the system to deliver, black economies developed, so that ever-increasing areas of economic activity spun out of social accountability. Criminality and quasicriminality, corruption and parasitism flourished in this milieu, along with social discontent. Cuba and the eastern European economies had economic calculation mechanisms. But they failed to live up to expectations. Why? The better ability of market economies to avoid the problems plaguing centrally planned systems is instructive. It arises from one fact: within legal limits, firms freely enter markets, choose their products and production methods, and interact with other firms and individuals. They may close down if they cannot succeed on their own resources; or they may obtain access to autonomous sources of capital in order to test and implement new production procedures, untrammelled by planning restrictions. Greater scope for improved products and processes, and constant technological improvement and growth in productivity, ensue. Such firms adapt their output to customers’ needs. Customers choose between the output of different producers: no agency defines production goals. Centralised agencies, however, can never define every desired characteristic of every product. So, they fail to satisfy the demands of consumers. Firms cannot be truly autonomous without a capital market, as demonstrated by the failure of Hungary’s market-oriented reforms. Constant state support of loss-making firms to prevent bankruptcies made inefficiency systemic. Firms operated without budget constraints, exerting limitless demand for materials and capital goods, thus producing shortages and production bottlenecks. Constant bail-outs were the price the Hungarian leadership paid to avoid such failures.
Profit, the Marxist ‘motor of the system’ is integral to the picture.
In 1989, faced with the failure of the country’s centrally planned economy, Poland’s leading economists concluded that socialism would be saved by making publicly owned firms autonomous and cohesive with a socialised capital market. The absence of the latter to ease snags caused by the budget constraints of a market system was critical. When capitalist spending exceeds income, lenders and investors make good the shortfall. Without a capital market, that option doesn’t exist. The Polish vision was of autonomous firms, financed by autonomous banks or investment
funds, all competing and interacting in a market—but all socially owned. This would have entailed a fundamental reorganisation of the political economies of eastern Europe—and of most traditional notions of socialism. However, the swift replacement of eastern European Soviet-style central planning with free-market capitalism cancelled that evolution. In Cuba, though, high levels of democratic participation and popular support for socialist revolution were alloyed with the empirical understanding that the latter could be advanced only by the development of autonomous firms operating within a fully socialised market. Profit, the Marxist “motor of the system,” is integral to the picture. Profits relay information to capitalist firms and entrepreneurs about satisfying society’s needs most efficiently. Hunger for profits leads firms to maximise their socially desired outputs while economising on their use of inputs. Thus considered, profits are an ideal co-ordinating device. This holds as long as an item’s market value measures its social value. Capitalism distorts prices for crucial goods that don’t relate to their actual social value, natural resources, interest rates, luxury items, wages, etc. However, the prices of most of the millions of commodities function as reliable guides to their relative social values. Profit-seeking makes capitalists produce things people desire in the most efficient way possible. Wrongly valued commodities—labour, nature, information, finance, risk, etc.—produce the irrationality of profit. Capitalist firms maximise profitability by efficiently producing things people want—but also by impoverishing workers, ravaging environments, defrauding consumers. Such is capitalism! But how can a profit-maximising system enforce the profit-repressing norms needed to promote the common welfare—in other words, transform into a system that allows autonomous firms to produce and trade goods for the market, making surpluses that cannot be appropriated by capitalists? Could profits be socialised—i.e. be efficiency indicators, rather than a motive force? The precondition of such a system is the socialisation of the means of production, structured so as to include the existence of a socialised capital market. How would such collective financing work in a notional postcapitalist transitional situation? A public common fund would “buy” all privately owned financial assets at their market price, payment being credited to the “bought-out” party’s bank account. The public common fund would then own all formerly privately owned financial assets, while all the financial wealth of individuals would be converted into bank deposits (the banks now being in common ownership, the PCF now owning all their shares). No-one has lost wealth: they have simply cashed in their financial assets. But “casino capitalism” has been abolished at a stroke. The consequences are revolutionary.
Society’s means of production and credit are now PCF assets; individuals’ financial wealth balances are now its liabilities. The PCF can now re-establish a socialised capital market, with socialised banks and investment funds owning and allocating capital among the means of production. So, revolutionary transformation to a more egalitarian system would not have to be apocalyptic, nor involve total collapse of the old order and its replacement with something entirely unrecognisable. Firms are now owned by society as a whole, along with any surplus they generate. As firms still buy and sell in the market, they still generate surpluses (or deficits) that measure their efficacy. As no individual owner actually pockets these surpluses, no-one is interested in exploiting the profit-driven false valuation of goods that is endemic to capitalism. The accrual of interest to individuals’ bank deposits can be capped at a certain threshold of wealth. The social surplus could be paid out to everyone as a social dividend. Individuals would be free to start businesses; once their firms reached a certain size, age and importance they would have to be sold by their owners into the socialised capital market. Such firms could be workers’ co-operatives, as in Cuba, collecting their entire net income, after paying for the use of capital; or they might be “owned” by part of the socialised capital market, with a management selected by that entity, counterbalanced by worker participation. Managers and “owners” could be evaluated on the firm’s surplus, but they would have no claim on profits. Future performance could thus be “objectively” predicted, by the socialised capital market. Such arrangements deny the priority of profit over social needs, and do not rule out further change in humans’ interaction with each other and the environment. They describe an evolution from the present capitalist order to a new status quo, with essential similarities to the new socialist economy evolving in Cuba, as it grows from a jettisoned central-planning phase to a fully realised social market. The steps towards such a socialist economy could only be the expression of the will of a sovereign people. Ireland differs from sovereign, independent Cuba in that it is a member of a dogmatically neo-liberal European Union, to which it has surrendered most of its economic sovereignty. A European Union of Sovereign Socialist Republics is nowhere in sight, even on the most distant political horizon! Ireland could only develop its own socialised market outside the euro zone and the EU itself. The ability to delineate a sovereign national territory as a domain of political action is fundamental, because only citizens of a particular nation-state can acquire power. This understanding must inform the immediate agenda of Irish socialists. But a genuinely serious socialist programme must also describe a credible transition to a socialised market economy, for which that national sovereignty is a necessary precondition. [TMS] SOCIALIST VOICE page 11
BOOKS
Women and the European Union (2009) by Deirdre Uí Bhrógáin €2.50
A modest exposure
Jack Mitchell, Gib: A Modest Exposure: An Epic Poem by Jack Mitchell. Dublin: Nuascéalta, 2013. Available as traditional print (€5.99) or e-book (€2.99) from Amazon.
21st-Century Anti-Imperialism Andrew Murray’ James Connolly Memorial Lecture, 2010 €2.50 (£2.10)
Twenty-five years ago an unarmed trio of IRA volunteers—Mairéad Farrell, Dan McCann, and Seán Savage—were murdered by a British death squad in Gibraltar. The European Court
n Manifesto
New from Manifesto Press in Britain Building an economy for the people An alternative economic and political strategy for 21st Century Britain Edited by Jonathan White.
of Human Rights found the British government to be guilty of “unlawful killing.” The murders caused widespread popular revulsion. They moved the Scottish academic and critic Jack Mitchell to write Gib: A Modest Exposure, which, according to an introduction to this third printing of the poem by Gerry Adams TD, “follows in a fine tradition of satirical writing and epic poetry which over the centuries has drawn attention to the disastrous consequences for the Irish people of British occupation of Ireland.” Adams cites Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” in this regard. The significance of Gib: A Modest Exposure extends beyond the time and circumstances of the Gibraltar murders. The literary critic Séamus Deane, in his preface to the first edition of the poem, says it generates “a renewed sense of the manner in which, at the political level, the law and order represented by courts and governments can generate more powerfully than any other force the savagery that marked that day in Gibraltar and the hypocrisy that tried thereafter to conceal it. The poem . . . makes us gaze at the real face that hides behind the curtain both in the courtroom and in the centres of power.” An afterword by Niall Farrell, brother of Mairéad, reflects on the political situation twenty-five years later. “The IRA’s guns have fallen silent,” but not those of the British. “Together with fellow imperialist powers its bloodlust has become more brazen. From Afghanistan to Yugoslavia, especially from Asia to Africa, imperialism of assorted nationalities has joined forces to kill and conquer.” Jack Mitchell—literary critic, teacher, translator, writer, and political activist—was born in Glasgow in 1932 of Ulster unionist stock. He taught English and Irish literature at Humboldt University, Berlin, German Democratic Republic, and retired to Galway, where he died in 1997.
Contributions from: Mark Baimbridge; Brian Burkitt; Mary Davis; John Foster; Marjorie Mayo; Jonathan Michie; Seumas Milne; Andrew Murray; Roger Seifert; Prem Sikka; Jonathan White and Philip Whyman £6.95 (+£1 p&p) ISBN 978-1-907464-08-9 www.manifestopress.org.uk
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