CHAPTER
10
THE
HUMAN, SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF CAPITAL
Sub-standard
products and commodity fetishism
We have discussed
in chapter 9 the fact that capitalist production is only set in motion
in order to produce surplus value (i.e. profits) for the capitalist class.
We have also seen that these profits are obtained from the surplus products
created by workers at no cost to the capitalist, which are then sold in
the various markets for money. It was established that under the capitalist
system commodities and services are created primarily for their exchange
value rather than their use value. This capitalist motive, which dominates
the production of useful objects for the rest of humanity, also affects
the whole of social life. It means that the vast majority of human beings
are seen by capitalists in two basic but opposed ways. First, ordinary
working class humans are often viewed by each individual capitalist employer
as nothing more than surplus labour-producing commodities, the bulk of
whom should be paid as little as possible in order to maximise the amount
of surplus labour/surplus value available to him or her. Second, outside
of their own work-force, ordinary humans are primarily viewed by capitalists
as a vast market of potential purchasers of their commodities or services;
as punters rather than people.
Both these views see
human beings as exploitable material either at work (as workers) or in
purchasing (as consumers). The negative effect of the capitalist pursuit
of profit upon working conditions is dealt with in a later section, here
we shall consider what happens to human beings as consumers of commodities
and services. The pressing desire to sell the products and services, obtained
from working people, leads the capitalists to institute a number of variations
to the production of useful products and services.
Poor
standards
The first change introduced
by capitalists is in relationship to the quality of useful products and
how long they last. It is obvious that if a capitalist makes long-lasting,
high quality products then the capitalist will reach the limit of surplus
value extraction when everyone who wants a certain commodity, and can
afford one, has in fact got one. The capitalist would then have to wait
until the long-lasting commodities eventually wore out. So, with some
exceptions, gauging the lowest acceptable level of quality and durability
enters into the capitalist production equation at the design stage. Yet,
as with many other things, it is working people themselves who regularly
receive the public blame for shoddy standards and poor workmanship. However,
as anyone knows who has worked alongside working people, the overwhelming
majority are prepared to take considerable effort to produce good quality
products and services if they feel the system of production treats them
fairly. In fact they are more often than not poorly paid, given insufficient
time, provided with inferior materials and often inadequate tools by the
owners of capital, or their managerial agents. These are all the ingredients
needed for below par production and services.
Capitalists have long
realised that substandard essential items will soon need to be replaced
by another one. One of the most glaring examples of this was with regard
to the development of the automobile. It is well known that cars built
after the second world war were for a considerable time being designed
and built to ever decreasing standards. Paint work, carpets, seats and
the bodywork were all wearing out rapidly and the reason why was not hard
to discover;
"There seems
to be no doubt that the bodywork of present-day cars could be made to
last much longer than they now do, but manufacturers are fully aware that
if they make their cars too durable, future sales will suffer; consumers
will naturally tend to keep their cars longer before turning them in if
the bodies have well-resisted corrosion and other types of damage that
mar their appearance." (quoted in 'The Waste Makers'. Vance Packard
Pub. Pelican 1960. page 96/97)
The consumer research
group that Vance Packard quoted did not appear to make the obvious connection
that corrosion also affected the safety of cars. In this case consumer
safety was also being sacrificed by the excessive fragility designed into
motor vehicles as a deliberate policy to ensure future profits. The situation
became so bad that government intervention was eventually required to
increase the safety of new and second-hand vehicles. The second-hand supply
of vehicles was dealt with by the introduction of a legal certification
of roadworthiness (the M.O.T. in England). It is obvious that an engineering
product which was made to the highest standards would last considerably
longer than the three years from new which became the estimated time for
serious automobile defects to have set in. Even before this time many
components will have failed and have to be replaced. In this way the remedial
costs of keeping these substandard motor vehicles on the road has been
off-loaded to the purchaser rather than being the responsibility of the
capitalist producer.
The same goes for
most of the ancillary components of the car. Tyres for example, were once
designed and manufactured to last 20,000 to 30,000 miles and now only
last 10,000 to 20,000 miles. True, they may have more work to do given
the competitively increased power output of vehicles, but they could be
made to last longer and still be safe if capitalist production did not
have its eye zealously fixed upon profits. Exhausts systems are an even
greater scandal where capitalist after-market manufacturers are more than
happy that every two years each car owner must queue up to pay for another.
However, the car is not the only capitalist commodity purposely built
not to last. Substandard commercial and domestic buildings became so bad,
in the post-second war period, that guarantees (in practice often worthless)
were demanded by mortgage companies before extending loans on houses and
commercial property.
From clothes to washing
machines, from furniture to polish, every commodity produced by capitalists
(even the ones laughingly called consumer durables) is calculated to last
only so long, with a view to its replacement as soon as can be made reasonably
acceptable to the consumer. This is a fact which has spawned trading standards
agencies, numerous consumer affairs programmes on television, and exposures
of the worst capitalist offenders. Such exposure, however, has not even
blunted the edge of the deliberate production of shoddy, short-life goods
and services by capitalist industry. Among the few exceptions being those
luxury commodities produced for the capitalists and the otherwise rich
themselves
Built in obsolescence.
Another way for capitalists to get their hands on further portions of
surplus value and to overcome problems of relative over-production, is
to make an existing product obsolete by bringing out a newer version.
The new model may not be functionally better than the old one - in fact
it could be worse - but as long as sufficient consumers can be persuaded
it is different, or better, then more sales will follow. The same goes
for deliberate superficial changes in colour or design. The new, updated
commodity may be the same underneath or even inferior but if it is redesigned
or given a different finish and sufficient consumers can be manipulated
into an unneeded purchase, then the unpaid labour stored up in the new
commodity can be realised and stashed away in a bank or reinvested for
even greater returns.
Second purchases.
An additional way to realise more surplus value and to overcome relative
over-production is to persuade consumers to make a second (or even third)
purchase of a certain commodity. In this way people can finish up with
two or three cars, two or three Television sets, 'High Fi' or Stereo units,
or to put it in more general terms - far more of each commodity than can
be sensibly used. Many of these second and third purchases can remain
essentially unused before being finally discarded. Or, as in the case
of many second motor-vehicles, additional use is invented to justify the
additional purchase. Of course the use of this - buy another one - method
of continuing to obtain surplus value depends upon a relatively affluent
working class or middle-class who have sufficient disposable income to
be able to buy more than one of each commodity, so it tends to be developed
furthest in the advanced capitalist countries.
Consumer Credit.
The capitalist method of production is so geared to producing masses of
commodities in order to realise the surplus value locked up in them that
it has to encourage people to develop a fetish about owning as many commodities
as possible. This is done by constant advertising and where it is successful
it creates a demand for commodities even where there is insufficient money
to purchase them. Where the citizens of a capitalist society are unable
to purchase commodities from the capitalists quickly enough, because of
their restricted income, then a section of the capitalist class has devised
the means of overcoming this by the mechanism of hire purchase or advancing
personal loans. This immediately opens up the possibility of the two kinds
of capitalist becoming a further parasitic influence upon the working
class and lower middle-class citizen.
First the industrial
capitalist is able to get rid of more commodities containing the surplus
labour of working people and secondly the finance capitalist is able to
charge interest rates for the duration of the loan and thus obtain monthly
the small amount of surplus value (disposable income) which the ordinary
working citizen has managed to hang on to. The combined effect of all
these capitalist mechanisms is not only to rob the working class of any
surplus money and to put them (often catastrophically) in debt, but also
to use far more of the world's resources than would be needed if useful
items were produced to last and produced only in such numbers that were
really essential.
Lies and deceit.
The economic aspects
of the capitalist system of production analysed in the previous chapter
revealed a number of fundamental contradictions, along with the negative
characteristics of exploitation and oppression. These flaws in the social
and economic foundations of capitalist society also reveal themselves
as cracks and distortions in the social and political structures supported
by these economic foundations. An important effect of this, we should
understand, is with regard to truthfulness. If the first casualty of a
capitalist military war is the truth of what it and its opponent is up
to, then this is no less true of the socio-economic class war. The dominant
class and its supporters rarely tell the truth about their system. They
constantly lie, or select from the total experience of life, those aspects
which are favourable to its image and suppress those which are not.
If the board members
of a capitalist firm decide to sack workers in order to increase its profits,
they rarely if ever, reveal the real reasons for their decisions. Instead
they blame 'market forces'; the 'need for corporate re-structuring'; or
the 'high level of the currency'. Essentially the same thing happens when
capitalists close a factory and move it to a low wage country. They cannot
bring themselves to tell the truth, for the truth would EXPOSE THEM FOR
WHAT THEY REALLY ARE and it would be unpalatable for everyone, as well
as themselves. As an anti-capitalist student psychologist, Phil Brown,
noted in regard to business executives in general;
"They are taught
to have no emotions concerning the suppression of workers, planned unemployment
and the like, but are urged to feel self-fulfilled in their managerial
functions and their supposedly individually creative lives." ('Toward
a Marxist Psychology'. Phil Brown. Pub. Harper Colophon, page 5)To enhance
a personal career by 'downsizing' or 're-structuring' a company is commonplace
for most top executives. This, in effect, means gaining personal financial
advantage and job satisfaction out of causing misery and devastation for
thousands of working people. No normal mental state nor average morality
could reconcile these two facts. Capitalists and the agents of capitalists
must, by the circumstances of their life, develop an abnormal or schizoid
type of personality. Capitalists and pro-capitalists must constantly deny
any part of capitalist reality which is ugly, and there are many more
as we shall see later, or where this is not possible, deny that such realities
result from the capitalist system. There is therefore, within the capitalist
class, and its supporters, an individual and collective schizophrenia
or psychosis.
On the one hand, most
of them subscribe to broad religious or egalitarian social values but
on the other hand they practice narrow self-serving individualism. Capitalist
ideology upholds a superficial equality, but in reality its advocates
practice a fundamental inequality. These contradictions render most of
them incapable of even declaring exactly how much they earn; a phenomena
which extends all the way down to the middle class supporters of the capitalist
system. On the one hand they are privately pleased with how much of the
surplus value they have at their disposal, or even greedily want more,
but on the other, with poverty and low pay all around them, they are too
afraid and ashamed to publicly confess the amount they get. Does the average
reader know how much television presenters are paid; how much pop and
movie stars get; how much Judges and Directors of capitalist firms, or
Banks obtain? On the few occasions such people are publicly questioned
in this way, they invariably avoid a direct answer. They just cannot bring
themselves to utter the figure of the obscene amount of annual surplus
value they are creaming off. Yet we know how much industrial and shop
workers earn; we know how much teachers and even head-teachers earn. The
figures are constantly available in union and association journals and
on job centre notice-boards. (Occasionally and by way of rare exception,
English football players and snooker players had their multi-million pound
earnings made public in 2002.)
The capitalist class
and its supporters in government practice the utmost secrecy in practically
all areas, and as often as possible enforce that secrecy with the power
of the state. They promote the fiction that this is to protect business
from their competitors, or the state from enemy states. However, it has
more to do with the fact that they are afraid to let their own citizens
know the truth about their combined actions in their own countries and
throughout the world. The derangement which such behaviour creates manifests
itself within capitalist society in the form of lies, distortions and
systematic delusions about the importance of the role of the individuals
who comprise the capitalist class. It is also evident in a paranoid level
of fear and hatred toward any form of criticism which approaches truthfulness.
Most members of the capitalist class are in a similar position to many
alcoholics in that they are in complete denial about what they
are up to. They deny they are lying; they deny they are selfish;
they deny they are cheating; they deny they are exploiting; they deny
they are oppressive and they deny there are unsolvable problems for the
rest of society because of the domination of capital.
Similar symptoms affect
the political representatives of capital in all their various shades.
It is almost impossible to get a straight answer out of any politician
as they wriggle and squirm to avoid the telling the real truth about the
part of the capitalist system they uphold. Indeed, in the 21st century,
they collectively conspire to avoid uttering the word 'capitalism' when
describing the economic and political system they uphold. The well known
phenomena of being 'economical with the truth', which all politicians
practice - a euphemism for lying - has now been professionalised into
a separate discipline of 'spin doctoring'. Under the distorting effects
of capital modern politicians have become the 'pimps' of finance capital
and their spin doctors have become the 'pushers' and 'dealers' of capitalist
ideology. As such there is a growing hatred for their existence. Their
role is that of intellectual 'hustlers' who try to keep ordinary citizens
duped, doped and confused by the ideological 'substance' they peddle.
Working people and
anti-capitalists need to thoroughly understand this about the capitalist
class and its supporters - all of them! The capitalist class and its political
supporters are by the very circumstances of their lives rendered incapable
of telling the truth about their system or their activities. Therefore
we must expect lies, deceit, denials, fabrications and downright secrecy
as the norm; truth and honesty as the exception. To find a truer picture
of the capitalist system as a whole working people need to sift through
many falsehoods, see past the frequent crocodile tears, and have excellent
crap detectors. For the distorting effects of capital are no less acute
within the social and ecological spheres of life than they are within
the economic and political, even though they are often skilfully covered
up. Indeed, the effects of the capitalist pursuit of profit surface in
greater numbers within these areas, and in many cases the effects are
more difficult for them to permanently conceal.
The economic decisions
of the capitalist elite are discussed in the secrecy of boardrooms, exclusive
clubs, and government secret papers, but the results of these decisions
can often be much more difficult to hide away. Discoloured rivers, industrial
diseases, factory closures, open cast sites, de-forestation, intensive
animal rearing, atmospheric pollution, homelessness, chemical contaminated
food, among many others, are all, as we shall see, effects of the pursuit
of profit. The catastrophic effects of capital in crisis, such as factory
closures, commercial dislocation, scarcity of essential commodities and
accelerating poverty, noted in the previous chapter, are only seismographic
peaks in the daily output of destructive capitalist activity. Many of
the crucial political decisions taken by the capitalist system's political
supporters are likewise taken behind closed doors in secret enclaves and
otherwise hidden away from public scrutiny.
Capitalism is a mode
of production which has extended beyond its initially European base and
created a system that has drawn other countries and other peoples into
its network of productive economic relations. To begin to understand the
world as it is today and how it effects the working class separately and
as a whole we must begin to understand something of the history of European
Imperialism.
Imperialism
and its legacy.
Capital has for a
long time been commercially global. It has sought and obtained resources
and sources of surplus value from all corners of the world. From its initial
bases in a number of European nation states, capitalists, with guns in
hand, spread beyond their own borders and began to seek markets, commodities
and raw materials from around the world. This development led to the phases
which were known as colonialism and imperialism. To find new sources of
profit, the merchant capitalists mentioned in the previous chapter, or
their agents, toured the world in armed ships seeking new goods and raw
materials for sale in the markets of Europe. Looting, capture and trade
sufficed for this stage of capitalist development. Looting and capture
was obviously quite a direct way of obtaining surplus production, but
trade could actually involve even better returns, as this summary of the
activities of the early Dutch merchant traders, indicates.
"Pepper and spices
could, for example, be sold first in Malacca and later in India to yield
sufficient cloth to buy more pepper and spices...the surplus in pepper,
spices and Gold could then be realised either on Asian markets or on the
Amsterdam market....This circuit was designed so that the spices sold
in Europe represented pure profit..." (Kahn and Llobera 'The Anthropology
of Pre-Capitalist Societies. Pub. Macmillan. Page 188.)
Later, the British
also developed a ruthless triangular form of merchant trade; shipping
goods to Africa in exchange for slaves; taking the slaves to America to
exchange for cotton; and transporting the cotton back to Britain in exchange
for money. However, Industrial Capital required much more than a seagoing
ship and a moral-less captain who could navigate. We have noted that capital
requires a working class to exploit - to put to long hours of work in
order to extract surplus value from them. The working class in Europe
had been created by forcing the agricultural labourers. yeomen and small
farmers off the land, so that in order to live they were compelled to
work in the new factories. This was necessary because the ordinary working
person of that period, if offered work, would according to a contemporary
writer "..tell you they must go to look for their sheep, cut
furzes, get their cow out of the pound, or take their horse to be shod.."
In other words they would shun such exploitative work and make up any
excuse to avoid it. Self-employed workers of this kind had therefore to
be forced into working for capitalists. This was done by enclosing the
common land and pulling down whole villages; by appropriating Crown Lands
and land belonging to the church. And about this particular brutal process
we can read;
"History has
drawn a curtain over those days of exile and suffering, when cottages
were pulled down as if by an invaders hand and families that had lived
for centuries in their dales or on their small farms and commons were
driven before the torrent...Ancient possessions and ancient families disappeared."
(J.L. and B Hammond 'The Village Labourer'. Volume 1. Pub. Guild Books,
page 100.)
Drawing a curtain
over the suffering and oppression caused by the global effects of the
capitalist system is a well practised art of the capitalist class and
its supporters. After the capitalist class had forcibly destroyed the
existing feudal social and economic system of Europe and substituted its
own, they next desired to expand beyond their own frontiers, and leave
their countries of origin. To go beyond looting and piracy they had to
find or create a working class. However, European capital only found in
these far off lands hunter/gatherer peoples and small peasant type farmers
who, as in the previous case in Europe, were none too keen to work for
someone else when they could work for themselves. For these reasons Capital
in its early Imperialist stage had to make use of slaves (forced labour)
prisoners (forced penal labour) and part-time peasants (casual and forced
corvee labour). Having coerced European working people off the land and
into the factories of Europe, the capitalist class then systematically
attempted to force hunter-gather, pastoralists and peasant farmers off
their land in the non-European countries it conquered. A process which
in various disguises still goes on to this day.
The methods have changed
from the use of 'hut' taxes or 'head' taxes and forced changes in land
tenure, to the modern multi-million dollar World Bank loans to build roads,
airfields and dams, but the clearance of ordinary working people from
the land is still happening. In this way European Capital in its Imperialist
phase has had (and continues to have) a major negative effect on human
and social affairs in the world, an effect which fuels resentment and
opposition. This period was also one in which strong capitalist states
competed against each other for control and conquest of the world's economic
resources. Imperialist competition led to the domination of many ancient
and native cultures, such as India, by the British, Portuguese and French;
Africa by the British, French, Portuguese and German nations. Here is
the reasoning of one of the most aggressive British Imperialists of the
time who, for a time, gave his name to the African territory of Rhodesia.
"My cherished
idea is a solution for the social problem, i.e. in order to save the 40,000,000
inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial
statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to
provide new markets for the goods produced in factories and the mines.
The empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If
you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists," (Cecil
Rhodes. Quoted in Worsley, 'The Third World'. Pub. Weidenfield & Nicolson.
page 28.)The 'surplus population' were the unemployed and low-paid workers
of Britain and Europe who were beginning to question their situation and
the 'new markets' were a means of realising the surplus value locked up
in the surplus products produced by the workers of Europe. Rhodes, an
astute member of the British capitalist class, saw Imperialism as not
only a source of great profit, but as a way of releasing the revolutionary
pressures building up against capital. The subsequent savage oppression
and exploitation of the world's native peoples was the price extracted
from humanity by European capitalists, in order to counteract the revolutionary
potential of the working classes of Europe and continue exploiting them.
It is this developed global oppression and exploitation which is now the
common (albeit varied) experience of ordinary working people the world
over. A common experience which was the basis of the previously noted
famous call by Marx of "Workers of the World unite, you have nothing
to lose but your chains". The capitalist class extracted surplus
labour from its work-force in the advanced countries and utilising armed
privateers and Navies extracted surplus labour from the indigenous peoples
it subdued and conquered. The form of this appropriation of surplus labour
differed depending upon whether the European capitalists were extracting
raw materials, minerals, or agricultural products. As already noted, in
some colonised countries the surplus value was extracted by using slave
labour, in others by convict labour, in yet others by a feudal type serfdom
(Corv'ee labour) and in some by the creation of a working class. Those
who enforced the terms of production and surplus production used varied
means, from settling Europeans in some countries, to the manipulation
of native hierarchies in others. However, the various means were always
backed up by the gunboats and troops of the occupying capitalist country.
Such differences give to the ex-colonised countries varying histories,
differing class structures and variety in how these imperial elites relate
to the capitalist class in the advanced capitalist countries. But these
varying histories and differing class structures are just localised adaptations
on the unified theme of oppression, exploitation and the extraction of
surplus value by the international capitalist system.
The following is a
rough outline of how colonialism and imperialism developed from mercantile
capital and also how it expanded. It is very easy to demonstrate that
it was the capitalist class within each European nation which led this
imperialist drive for the links are direct. This fact is nowhere more
clearly illustrated than in the form these imperialist conquests took
in the case of Britain. Most often a private limited company would be
formed and named specifically to spearhead the invasion of the country
or area to be exploited. The British South Africa Company was formed to
conquer and exploit the material and human resources of the southern part
of Africa. The Royal Niger Company was formed to exploit the rich resource
of the Niger region of Africa. Thus the British East India Company was
created to extract profits from the Indian sub-continent. It is perhaps
difficult for the present generation in Europe to grasp the extent of
this ruthless pursuit of capitalistic profit by the conquest of foreign
lands and peoples. The terms, German Imperialism, French Imperialism and
British Imperialism, Dutch and Portuguese Colonies do not convey the sheer
numbers of countries and peoples involved or the horrors perpetrated upon
them. The next few pages simply list those forcible seizures by just one
Imperialist country - Britain - so the reader can begin to grasp the scale
and try to imagine the horrors which attended such acts of brutality.
Europe
South
America
| Name
|
Method |
| Ontario |
Conquered from France |
| Quebec |
Conquered from France |
| New Brunswick |
Ceded by France |
| Nova Scotia |
Ceded by France |
| Manitoba |
Settlement |
| British Columbia |
Ceded by France |
| Assinibola |
Annexation |
| Saskatchewan |
Annexation |
| Alberta |
Annexation |
| Athebasca |
Annexation |
| Kewatin |
Annexation |
| Ungava |
Annexation |
| Mackenzie |
Annexation |
| Yukon |
Annexation |
| Franklin |
Annexation |
| Newfoundland |
Annexation |
| Bermuda Islands |
Annexation |
North America
Asia
Oceana
Africa
West
Indies and Central America
| Name |
Method |
| Jamaica |
Capitulation |
| Honduras |
Treaty |
| Bahamas |
Cessation |
| Caicos Islands |
Cessation |
| Leeward Islands (7) |
Settlement |
| Windward Islands (5) |
Cessation |
| Trinidad |
Capitulation |
The official language
describing how the territory was seized varies, but all the terms amount
to more or less the same thing. Conquest, Annexation, Cessation and Settlement,
all mean that some country or island was forcibly occupied by the British
with little or no regard for the local and original inhabitants. As we
have indicated England wasn't the only European country to conquer, annex,
or settle foreign territories. In fact France, Spain, Portugal, Holland,
Belgium and later, Germany were also involved, so what follows also applies
to these countries, to a greater or lesser extent. It is also useful to
understand how such level of conquest and suppression of the indigenous
peoples could be justified for it reveals a great deal about our contemporary
world. It wasn't that the capitalist class of that period didn't know
any better - as we shall see that is a frequent retrospective defence.
As with all oppressive elites, they most certainly did, for the following
reasons.
Their religious beliefs
embodied some principles of humanity, even if the religious professionals
(priests and vicars) failed to advocate them or influence them sufficiently.
The capitalist class and their representatives certainly knew it was unfair
and unjust to just take over the territory inhabited by other human beings
and seize them, and the natural resources used by them. They knew it by
the reactions of the conquered and oppressed (twenty major slave revolts
between 1730 and 1876); they knew it by reasoning; they undoubtedly knew
it by their personal experience of being treated unfairly or oppressively
by others; and they knew it by being told (by the slaves and anti-slavery
protesters). For example, in 1834 John Howison, who was not the first
to describe what was happening, nor would he be the last, wrote;
"The continent
of America has already been nearly depopulated of its aborigines by the
introduction of the blessings of civilisation. The West Indian archipelago,
from the same cause, no longer contains a single family of its primitive
inhabitants. South Africa will soon be in a similar condition, and the
islanders of the Pacific Ocean are rapidly diminishing in numbers from
the ravages of European diseases and the despotism of self-interested
and fanatical missionaries. It is surely time that the work of destruction
should cease; and since long and melancholy experience has proved us to
be invariably unsuccessful in rendering happier, wiser, or better, the
barbarians whom we have visited or conquered, we may now conscientiously
let them alone and turn a correcting hand toward ourselves and seek to
repress...our avarice, our selfishness, and our vices." (Quoted in
'Exterminate the Brutes' Sven Lindqvist. Pub. Granta Books, page 122.)
Sven Lindqvist, in
his excellent study of Europe's barbaric involvement in Africa, from which
this extract is drawn, also arrives at the conclusion that educated people
at all times and in all countries know more or less accurately what is
being done in their name. The truth then, as it is today, is that the
entrepreneurial capitalists (and their supporters) to whom such sentiments
were addressed just didn't (and don't) care. The schizophrenic mentality
which allowed them to dissociate their oppressive economic actions from
their personal life in their home country allowed them to detach their
involvement in imperialist oppression from any humanitarian feelings.
If they could treat a section of their own citizens, the workers, as exploitable,
dispensable sources of surplus value in their factories and sweatshops,
in the European centres of industry and commerce, then it is obvious they
had little trouble treating the native populations of the far-off countries
they conquered in the same or a worse manner. And it must be said, as
we shall see later, it is more or less the same today.
However, for a moment
let us consider a not untypical action of some of the very early merchant
explorers from Europe as revealed by none other than Christopher Columbus.
"When we stepped
ashore we saw fine green trees, streams everywhere and different kinds
of fruit. I called to the two captains to jump ashore with the rest, who
included Rodrigo de Escobedo, secretary of the fleet and Rodrigo Sanchez
de Segovia, asking them to bear solemn witness that in the presence of
them all I was taking possession of this island for their Lord and Lady
the King and Queen and I made the necessary declarations which are set
down at greater length in the written testimonies." (Christopher
Columbus. extracts in 'The Oxford Book of Exploration. page 321)
I invite the reader
to pause for a moment or two to picture the wider implications of the
scene described by this extract. A group of people set out from Spain
across the sea. After a long journey they step ashore on the first fruitful
land they encounter and immediately claim it for their own. They had prepared
in advance the "necessary declarations" and had a procedure
already worked out including how to witness it. Obviously using the name
of the King and Queen of Spain was just a device as it was not expected
that Isobella and her consort would take up residence there.
We should make the
effort to imagine that situation, for a moment, and put ourselves in their
shoes. Imagine sitting at home minding your own affairs when a group of
armed foreign people walk into your town or village and announce that
they are now the owners of all they survey. This was the reality of the
experience of many foreign peoples, which the previous list of 'possessions'
indicates. Usually the inhabitants were initially friendly and welcomed
these travellers. In most cases they never for a moment considered that
they were about to be treated as less than human and that millions of
them would pay for the pleasure of this meeting with their lives. They
did not know that their habitat had been 'annexed' or 'conquered' and
that their land would eventually be 'settled' with devastating consequences.
Writing of this earlier European conquest of South America and the West-Indian
Islands, Jared Diamond, notes;
"In both conquests
European-transmitted epidemics (probably small-pox) made major contributions,
by killing the emperors themselves, as well as a large fraction of the
population." (Jared Diamond. 'Guns, Germs and Steel'. Pub. Vintage.
Page 373)
This is not just an
isolated viewpoint. In summing up the effect of the conquest undertaken
by Cortes, and others, in the America's, V.D. Hanson, an unapologetic
champion of western and capitalistic values notes;
"The legacy of
Cortes's men and men like them was a brilliant military conquest - and
the decimation of the indigenous population of the Caribbean and Mexico
in a mere thirty years through military conquest, the destruction of native
agricultural practice, and the inadvertent importation of smallpox, measles,
and influenza. Like the 'Hellene', Alexandre the Great, the 'Christian'
Cortes slaughtered thousands, looted imperial treasuries, destroyed and
founded cities, tortured and murdered - and claimed he had done it all
for the betterment of mankind. His letters to Charles V proclaiming interest
in establishing a brotherhood among all natives and Spaniards read a great
deal like Alexander's oath at Opis (324 B.C.), in which he proclaimed
a new world embracing all races and religions. In both cases the body
count told a different tale." ('Why the West has Won' . Victor Davis
Hanson. Pub. Faber & Faber. Page 205.)
Despite the previously
noted psychosis, a section of the capitalist and middle classes remained
uneasy about such activities, particularly in the later Imperialist expansions.
The result was that another section of the capitalist class and their
supporters devoted much energy and time to inventing excuses and creating
special reasons for this international period in the rapid accumulation
of capital. These reasons and rationalisations were institutionalised
in various 'learned' anthropological, ethnological, geological and geographical
societies as well as prepared for popular consumption. Here is one example
of how capitalist ideology rationalised for popular consumption, these
enormous injustices, motivated as they were by greed. The poet Rudyard
Kippling penned these immortal words;.
"Take up
the White Man's burden,
Send forth the
best ye breed -
Go bind your
sons to exile.
To serve your
captives' need;
To wait in heavy
harness,
On fluttered
folk and wild -
Your new-caught,
sullen peoples,
Half-devil and
half-child."
He was not on his
own; many other poets and writers of the time took up similar themes.
There is no hint of the search for wealth and profit in the above lines,
no indication of the motivation of compound interest to be had by investment
in slavery and the theft of gold, ivory and natural produce. Rudyard Kippling
in this poem reveals himself as an Imperialist spin-doctor par-excellence
of his time. This poem was the tip of an iceberg of systematic racist
ideology which expressed clearly the psychopathic self-delusions of the
capitalist class and their hangers on. The brutal facts of conquest, cruelty
and exploitation were deliberately misrepresented as - a 'burden'! Imperialist
aggression and conquest was contorted into - 'serving the captives' need'!
Being waited upon hand and foot while servants and slaves dug the gold
or raised the plantation crops was distorted into - waiting in 'heavy
harness'! We should recognise that this type of attitude unfortunately
cannot be consigned to the past, for racist and elitist misrepresentation
and distortion still goes on today. But the real depth of the sickness
in the mentality of the ruling classes, and their supporters, was revealed
by the deliberate dehumanising of the inhabitants of the conquered lands.
In designating and collectively conspiring to label the 'new caught sullen
peoples' as 'half-devil and half-child', the capitalist class in the period
of Imperialism prepared an intellectual anaesthetic. They then used this
to dull the sensitivities of its citizens to the enormity of its crimes
against non-European humanity.
In the case of Britain,
a not too dissimilar process had previously taken place in the British
conquest of Ireland, so the ruling class there was well versed in blaming
the victim. There also the primary motive was control and extraction of
economic resources with politics, religion, armed force and racist stereotypes
serving those exploitative ends. Seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth
century racism, echoes of which still strongly reverberate today, was
a direct effect and consequence of capitalist expansion and imperial conquest.
Alternative terms such as 'heathens' and 'savages were frequently used
to demonise the indigenous inhabitants and prepare the ground for settlement,
armed oppression and exploitation. Imperialism was, in the words of one
professor of sociology, a "world order founded on conquest and
maintained by force". Developing the point he noted that;
"In Cape Colony,
the primitive nomads were hunted for sport. In Tasmania, in 1830, settlers
combined with soldiers, police and criminals, in a military battle across
the island to wipe out the entire aboriginal population." (P. Worsley,
'The Third World'. Pub. Weidenfield and Nicholson, Page 3.)
Hunting human beings
- for sport! Looting, rape and murder by the Imperialist forces was endemic.
Once the capitalist Company had conquered, 'settled' or 'purchased' these
huge tracts of land, they would be 'administered' in the manner most befitting
the maximum extraction of surplus value. This was usually in the form
of ruthlessly obtaining raw materials and sources of labour in order to
realise the maximum profits for the individual shareholders of the company.
For example the Dutch Imperialists operating in Java and Sumatra maximised
profits by the use of forced labour and forced deliveries. Thus;
"Villages were
required by law to set aside one-fifth of their irrigated rice land for
sugar cultivation, while villagers were required to provide labour for
cultivation, harvest, transport and milling of the cane." (JS Kahn.
in 'The Anthropology of pre-capitalist Societies'. Pub. Macmillan, Page
192)
Of course the 'law'
was made by the imperialist conquerors and enforced by its capitalist
company agents or government forces. The capitalist classes' influence
and domination within the political structure of the home country would
then ensure that the financial burden of administration of these imperialist
conquests would sooner or later be transferred to the state. This was
done via a Foreign Office, which allowed the private companies to continue
maximising exploitation and profits, whilst a government department took
over control of the native population. Thus for example the various European
African Company territories, would become known as British West Africa,
Portuguese North Africa, German Sudan, French Congo, Italian Somaliland.
By 1900, the whole world was dominated, by one or other of the European
capitalist countries. For hundreds of years the capitalist classes in
these European countries have grown rich on the backs of the ordinary
people of these conquered countries. Raw materials have been ripped out
of the ground, the produce on the surface, harvested and exported, the
land taken from them. The native peoples of almost the entire planet have
either been subjected to the rule of Capital via its stage of Imperialism,
or have been exterminated in opposing it.
The following excerpt
from a speech by Lord Palmerston the British Foreign Secretary in 1850
gives something of the flavour of the racist and Imperialist mind.
"These half-civilised
governments such as those of China, Portugal, Spanish America, all require
a dressing down, every eight or ten years to keep them in order. Their
minds are too shallow to receive an impression that will last longer than
some such period and warning is of little use. They cared little for words
and they must not only see the stick but actually feel it on their shoulders
before they yield to that argument which brings conviction." (quoted
in Lawrence James 'Rise and Fall of the British Empire'. Pub Little, Brown
& Co. Page 174)
Palmerston, in this
extract, had clearly extended his racial prejudice to include British
Imperialism's competitors. The early European capitalist and Imperialist
profit-driven conquests, caused the near extermination of the numerous
native American Indian tribes, the aboriginal peoples of Australia, (totally,
as we have heard, on the Island of Hobart) and many indigenous peoples
of South America, and Oceania. Profit motivated Imperialist expansions
have consistently used torture, concentration camps, slavery and barbarous
war against all those peoples who sought to defend themselves and their
land against exploitation and appropriation. The culture and economic
organisation of these native peoples had to be declared primitive, backward
and ungodly. In this way the capitalist class and their supporters in
the European countries were able to cynically hide their greed for profit
behind an assertion of godly duty to educate the inhabitants; to
modernise their productive methods and enlighten them to
the 'true' god.
Given the domination
of the capitalist class within their respective countries, racist ideology
became a major trend within the ideology of capitalist countries. For
example, a whole generation of young people were brought up in Britain
on racist comics such as 'Boy's Own Paper', 'Pluck' and 'Union Jack',
which had as their recurring themes, the justification of conquest, exploitation
and the glorification of Imperialist soldiering. Not surprisingly racist
ideas of white superiority and black inferiority are still endemic in
most capitalist countries. This is despite the fact that during the imperialist
epoch, it was the capitalist countries which were more barbaric and systematically
inhuman than any of the conquered peoples. Such ideas of white superiority
continue to exist in many capitalist countries despite the technological
and material debt owed to many of the so-called inferior cultures.
Sadly, the racist
ideology of the ruling classes has infected many working class people.
In sharing the outrageous prejudices of their own capitalist class these
working people cut themselves off from most if not all forms of international
solidarity, which is essential against an international capitalist class.
Racist and elitist ideas were, and still are, useful to some sections
of the modern capitalist class, for it divides white workers from black
workers and at the same time allows the capitalists to avoid a full accounting
for the source of their wealth and positions. The origin of their accumulated,
inherited wealth, in these cases, is subjected to a collective historical
amnesia, for it is now just too controversial to trace it back. Many wealthy
families enjoy mapping their genealogy back to distant generations but
cannot for one minute publicly admit that their inherited wealth is due
to their parents or grandparents complicity in the annexation of other
peoples' land and wealth. Indeed, in Britain in particular there is a
great deal of morbid conscience.
"And there is
the Briton's bad conscience with respect to the Empire. It is evil enough
to have been willing - eager - to rule all those lesser breeds without
the law. But had not Britain - somehow or other - grown rich by exploiting
her Imperial subjects? How else could Britain be so rich while India is
so poor and Tanzania so backward? (I.M Drummond. 'British Economic Policy
and the Empire'. Pub. Alan and Unwin, Page 17.)
Even an economic historian
with 'sympathy' for the imperial system, such as Professor Drummond of
Toronto University, cannot pass over what he considers the 'evil' rule
and the get-rich-quick greed of the capitalist class. Many of their sons
and daughters, inherited this ill-gained wealth and continue to use it
to maintain, or even increase, their share of the annual surplus value.
They like to consider themselves cultured and civilised, but fail to admit
the past sources of wealth underpinning that culture and draw a convenient
veil over family fortunes based upon colonial conquest and plunder. Considerable
numbers of the present capitalist class in Europe, America and Japan are
bound by a self-imposed silence over their deeply rapacious and racist
past. In this way they implicitly support contemporary manifestations
of racism. However, this economic and cultural legacy of racist oppression
and exploitation was not the only negative effect of capital when it escalated
into imperialism.
Global Warfare
and terrorist fighting.
Once the entire world
had been conquered by the various competing capitalist countries, future
rapid bursts of economic expansion could only take place by further direct
conflict with other capitalist countries. This conflict was frequently
over the control and use of the world's economic resources. A second stage
of imperialist rivalry, therefore, gave rise to increased diplomatic intrigue
and savage wars. These occurred between advanced capitalist countries
such as Britain and Germany, as each sought to oust the other from control
or influence, over foreign sources of important raw materials and/or markets.
The second stage of imperial expansion saw a struggle with other capitalist
nations on a titanic scale. The first and second world wars were wars
between alliances of capitalist states who were fighting over who would
dominate the world's main resources and markets. In order to disguise
its real motives the ruling class on each side used its domination of
government and press to present the wars as being against the other side's
military aggression. However, it should be born in mind that capitalist
military organisations were, and almost always are, subordinate to their
respective political structures and that the economic interests of the
capitalist class invariably dominate those political structures. At the
bottom of any large or small-scale war, under the rule of capital, is
the economic interests of one capitalist group or another. Both these
wars witnessed another effect of capitalist imperialism, the accelerated
development of weapons technology.
The results of the
two 'world' wars of domination between European states and their allies,
were unprecedented in the scale of human and material destruction. The
exact figures of those who were killed and injured are impossible to state
since no accurate records were kept. However, the staggering figures of
11,000,000 dead in the First World War (1914 - 1918) and 54,000,000 dead
in the Second World War, (1939 - 1945) appear as carefully considered
estimates, in a book by the historian Eric Hobsbawm.
With histories like
this, including the modern practice of financial imperialism, it is very
surprising that the populations of the advanced capitalist countries are
not universally hated by today's descendants of these once colonised countries.
It is also quite surprising that extreme hatred of Europe and America
is present in only a relatively few terrorist organisations around the
world. This lack of universal hatred is undoubtedly testament to the irrepressible
'humanist essence' alive in the new generations of non-European peoples.
Yet the legacy of a fragmented, war-torn, terrorist-ridden world, which
we inherit today, is undoubtedly due to the imperialist dislocation and
control of the non-capitalist social structures and economies of the world.
The consequent continued suffering of the majority of the inhabitants
of the conquered countries, the deep-seated racism which inhabits the
advanced capitalist countries of today and the puppet regimes financed
by the 'advanced' capitalist countries, have left many subjected peoples
with immense feelings of frustration and resentment. Such is the strength
of these emotions that it boils up in some individuals as the desire to
exact revenge by acts of terror.
The various terrorist
organisations are the nucleus of and the recruiting grounds for those
angry and frustrated individuals who see no constructive way forward for
themselves or their people and so turn to acts of destruction (including
self-destruction) in a desperate effort to affect or change the situation.
Although having different aims and distinctive backgrounds, terrorist
organisations more often than not originate in a frustrated struggle against
some form of capitalist or imperialist oppression and exploitation. For
these terrorist-motivated dissidents the imperialist present is intrinsically
bound up with the colonial past, it is one continuous history of oppression
and exploitation. This is not to excuse their actions for in many cases
they deliberately set out to kill not only those who oppress them, the
capitalists and their representatives, but people who are themselves similarly
oppressed. Basque separatists, the I.R.A., E.T.A.; P.L.A., the various
Kurdish groups, Latin American guerrilla groups; Red Brigades, Weathermen,
and the Al-Qaeda network, to name just a few of the more well known 'terrorist'
groups all share a similar overt desire to end some form of exploitation
and oppression which have been put in place by either the agents of capital
or imperialism. However extreme their actions their efforts will be in
vain, for as argued elsewhere, in this book, terrorist acts do not advance
the struggle against capitalist oppression and exploitation. In fact,
as is the case with other forms of sectarian behaviour, terrorist activity
can seriously undermine it.
It was the profit-led
motive for capital accumulation, in European countries, which caused economic
dislocation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by localised
internal conflicts to drive agricultural families off the land, and turn
it over to capitalist plantations, mines or factories. The same motive
force resulted in the desire for imperialist expansion, it was simply
the next stage in the further extension of commercial, agricultural, industrial
and finance capital. The instrument of that expansion was therefore military
intervention and war. Contemporary manifestations of the same phenomena
are still at work. The form of capitalist global exploitation changed
for a while from being headed by gunboats, colonial armies and settlers,
to being spearheaded by IMF and World Bank loans, but the motives were
still the same. However, a new era of aggressive armed intervention has
returned in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. Now we have
pro-capitalist neo-liberal governments 'actively securing' resources such
as oil and minerals which are essential to the capitalist system of exploitation.
Where such resources cannot be assured by malleable governments it will
be secured by armed intervention and occupied territory.
Behind the political
and military facade is the economic interests of the capitalist class
which is to maintain the ever increasing expansion of commercial, industrial
and financial capital. At one time, with a few notable exceptions, such
as terrorist bombs or hijacks, the effects of this financial and technological
imperialism were mostly invisible to the direct experience of working
people in the advanced countries. Only occasionally did it make itself
indirectly known in the form of television documentaries and magazine
articles. Now it is clear for all those who wish to see. The war on terror
declared by President Bush marks a new phase of aggressive capital accumulation.
This pro-capitalist elite uses the terrorist activity it has itself created
by oppressive global policies, as an excuse and 'cover' to engage in further
atrocities, military intervention and commercial exploitation. Such manoeuvres
will only increase terrorist activity not reduce it.
The escalating
cost of Armaments.
Because a capitalist
class cannot oppress and exploit working people without forcing them into
submission to its anarchistic needs, it has always needed weapons and
armed bodies of men. It needed men armed with swords in Europe to clear
the agricultural land and control the working class in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. It needed them later, with muskets and bayonets,
to gain footholds in the colonised lands of the Americas. Later still,
armed bodies of men were needed with rifles and machine guns in Africa,
India and Oceania in the form of private company armies and government
troops. These were a top priority in order to conquer and annex peoples
of the various 'imperialised' countries. In the later period of accelerated
imperialist expansion and competition between rival capitalist countries
they were needed in the form of military bases and supplies to resist
the encroachment of other capitalist nations. Throughout all this armed
pursuit of surplus production and surplus value, the technological advance
of weapons surged ahead.
The result of this
'progress' is that large parts of Science and Technology in capitalist
countries has become distorted in the direction of the development of
weapons of destruction. The size and weight of each bullet is now scientifically
calculated and technologically developed to minimise the cost of production
whilst maximising the damage to human life. More recently smart bombs,
missiles and aircraft have been developed with a view to rendering obsolete
as quickly as possible the last lot of weapons sold, so that a new round
of profits can be made by weapons manufacturers. These rapid changes and
the excessive costs associated with them, are paid out of the production
and surplus production of the middle classes and working classes, who
ultimately foot the bill through their tax payments. Excessive charging
for weapons is endemic in the defence industry. Thus we read that in Britain;
"...in the past
year excess charges by defence contractors totalled £1.3 billion
- enough to build several fully equipped general hospitals and 50 secondary
schools." (Sunday Times 13/12/98)
The £1.3 billion
is just excess charges over and above the main, and often quite unnecessary,
costs, and in only one year!. Of course much the same goes for all arms
manufacturers not just those based in Britain. Weapons of mass destruction
are perfected to kill the maximum number in the most cost effective way,
whilst providing a good return on investment for the capitalist arms manufacturers.
Instead of production for worthwhile construction, capital distorts and
directs the skills of large numbers of scientists and technicians into
production for profit and destruction. Not only bigger and better bombs,
but quicker and more deadly means of delivering them. As we know, new
arms technologies have been developed to include chemical, biological
and atomic weapons. Yet we tend to forget that these developments do not
occur in a vacuum. They are a direct consequence of capitalist nation
state rivalry and to a lesser extent, capitalist class paranoia about
its own internal overthrow. The effect of this distortion has been to
ensure that countries spend huge amounts on arms expenditure varying from
one percent of the Gross National Product in some countries to thirty
two percent in others.
It goes almost without
saying that a government which is devoting a large part of its tax revenue
(i.e. its share of the surplus value) to weapons cannot use this money
for other (socially useful) purposes. For example according to the World
Bank, the United States in the 1990's set aside 25 percent of its governmental
income for military spending and only 1.7 percent for education; Britain
over 12 percent for military purposes and 2.2 percent for education. The
Pakistan government devoted 29 percent; Oman 43 percent; Chile 10.7 percent.
The list goes on. Of the 64 countries listed, in the World Bank Report,
only 33 spend more of their tax money on education than on the military
and only 16 countries spend more on health than arms. In 1999 it was estimated
that the money required to provide adequate food, water, education, health
and housing for everyone in the world would be in the region of $17 billion
per year - this is about the same as the world spends on armaments - every
two weeks! My guess is that there has been no significant reduction in
arms spending since those figures were released and, in view of September
11, 2001, it may well have increased considerably.
These levels of arms
expenditure cannot but distort the social structure of any country and
de-stabilise the world. An enormous quantity of the surplus value produced
by working people, which could be used for other humane purposes, is used
in developing and producing these quickly obsolete and destructive inhumane
commodities. Out-dated armaments are later sold on to third-world dictators
and other oppressive regimes at great profit to the capitalist concerns.
In none of the countries of the world are the citizens allowed to choose
this level of military expenditure or to make choices over how much should
go to health and education. The decision on levels of government expenditure,
and the apportioning of this, is taken by an elite group from within the
ruling capitalist or militarist governments of each country who have a
vested interest to continue spending on the things which benefit them
and protect their rule. These representatives have, therefore, a monopoly
of the decision-making with regard to this expenditure and so it is not
surprising that we read;
"Potentially
the most serious danger in the arms trade lies in the fact that it is
concentrated in the hands of very few government officials. By and large
the very few government officials who control the trade in Western nations
are subject to no specific recall. They are not elected to their posts.
They control budgets that (would) stagger the imagination...and they operate
in bureaucracies that are so large....so powerful that effectively they
are beyond the control of elected representatives." (George Thayer.
'The War Business' Pub. Paladin, Page 305/306.)
But not beyond the
control of the class they represent, who could, if they so desired, curb
the activities of these individuals if they sufficiently disapproved of
their activities. They don't, of course, because they share the same capitalistic
economic motives and their economic and political rule is ultimately reliant
upon these arms, their production and their procurement..
Of course, large-scale
warfare for the division and re-division of the world's resources seems
no longer an option to the European and North American capitalist class.
Such is the technological base of warfare that any full scale war between
major powers would now threaten the mutual destruction of each side. Nuclear
and biological warfare also threatens the welfare of ruling elite itself
despite the existence of its secret nuclear bunkers. Atomic explosion
and fall out, along with drifting chemicals, are largely indifferent to
class. Using the coercive power of the state, the ruling capitalist class
can still force the working class into the direct line of fire, but unlike
the two previous world wars, the ruling class fear is that the enemy may
now posses the means to reach beyond the front line trenches, and once
provoked, may use these means. So the latest strategy developed by American
capital and its political, military and scientific supporters is that
of 'full spectrum dominance'.
This political/military
strategy of the capitalist system aims to use its control over the enormous
surplus value created by the world's working classes to gain and maintain
military dominance over the full spectrum of warfare possibilities, air,
land, sea and space. It uses satellite mapping and guidance systems together
with aircraft carriers, long distance bombers, smart bombs and mini-cruise
missiles, to be able to 'take out' (annihilate) any dissident, opposing
political, or military group in any part of the world, and to do so from
such a distance as to make the American armed forces unlikely to sustain
any casualties themselves. In 1990, the 'Gulf War' combined military mission,
known as Desert Storm, was the first full-scale practical test by the
U.S. military of this strategy. A second test, Desert Fox, followed in
1998. The inhuman dictator Sadam Hussain, by not fully co-operating with
American dominated arms inspectors, provided the pretext for the American
military to further perfect their military strategy for the new millennium.
The fact that due to the advanced announcement of the attack. the 'intelligent'
bombs and missiles often hit only empty buildings and vacated sites, is
of little importance. The success of Desert Fox, in the eyes of the North
American political and military regime, was the much publicised demonstration
that they could destroy any opposition group in its barracks or meeting
halls, in any part of the world. It was a politico-military strategy which
was tried again, with less success, in Afghanistan in 2002. The results
of the U.S.A.'s latest adventure (2003) in Iraq have yet to unfold but
we can be sure it will have unforeseen consequences as well as creating
enormous profits for arms and petroleum manufacturers, as well as construction
firms.
The modern Finance
and Industrial capitalists, who exercise their political and military
influence predominantly through their control of money rather than the
direct and indirect, political control of armies, still have an armed
response back-up. The capitalists, and their representatives, now usually
influence politics in foreign countries through the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO), by making
restructuring loans, threatening to withdraw existing loans, writing off
loans and reducing or increasing interest rates, as well as company bribes
and payoffs. But if, and when, these no longer work, as they clearly didn't
in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and Iraq under Saddam Husssain, another
more forceful strategy is required. The capitalist elite in the USA and
elsewhere, hope their global strategy of 'Full Spectrum Dominance' will
allow such mistakes to be rectified without an 'unpopularly' high level
of human casualties on their own side.
The existence of the
'arms trade' is a direct effect of capitalist control of the economic
and political system and of arms manufacture. In addition, global capitalist
businesses often see Police states, Militarist regimes and Fascist-style
dictators as providing the kind of stability which allows for long term
investments to mature and be repeated. Such regimes can also hold down
wages more effectively, agree to lower prices for raw materials so that
a higher return on investment can be guaranteed and will be protected
for a long time. So, in fact, the situation for many third-world working
people today is no better than that of their ancestors in the imperialist
era because modern finance capitalists, multinational corporations and
their political representatives, not only turn a blind eye to indigenous
regimes of oppression, they actively support them. For, as was discussed
in the last chapter, the less working people get in wages the more surplus
value there is to share among the groups who live off the surplus value.
In other words the more poverty that exists, the more wealth can be produced.
Which brings us to the next direct effect of capitalism.
Poverty and
Wealth.
We have seen from
the chapter on 'Co-operation and Evolution' that prior to the onset of
'civilisation', human beings long ago built upon the beneficial association
existing in the natural world. In doing so they formed and re-formed social
groups for the purpose of production and reproduction. We also noted that
long ago these groups reached levels of economic and cultural production
which guaranteed not just their immediate survival, but a surplus. This
was used initially for reciprocal exchange and to develop culture in the
form of art, music and dance. True, the level of comfort may seem basic
to modern concepts, but food was usually plentiful and except in a few
isolated places, nourishing and varied. Shelter and clothing were also
more than adequate. There was very little human created poverty and very
little individual wealth and certainly these two polar opposites did not,
prior to civilisations, exist side by side. It is possible to say this
because ethnology, archaeology and anthropology have provided extensive
evidence from which to draw. It was the socio-economic development of
'civilisations' which introduced the stark contrast between the 'haves'
and 'have-nots'.
However, poverty,
in the modern sense of the word, is a relatively new condition. If the
definition of poverty is as Charles Booth described it in 1899 as "living
under a struggle to obtain the necessaries of life" or existing
"in a state of chronic want", then poverty amid plenty as
a social phenomena in pre-capitalist and pre-civilised societies was a
reasonably rare occurrence. Leaving aside the slave-based civilisations
of Mesopotamia, Greece, Egypt and Rome, if drought or famine occasionally
brought hardship to hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, or agriculturists,
it brought it to all in the community. Not so in 'civilised' society and
not so under capitalism. Poverty exists alongside, and as a direct consequence,
of its opposite - wealth. This interconnection between the creation of
wealth and poverty is not simply a biased assertion of the revolutionary-humanist
perspective. For example, even a more liberal-humanist approach can say;
"The rich are
nothing more than the most monstrous predators upon the earth's resources,
the cannibalistic devourers of the substance of the poor....They are the
most baleful force ever unleashed upon the world, the ransackers of its
beauties, the plunderers of its natural treasures, the greedy and parasitic
exhausters of its fragile covering. Their purposeless mobility, aimless
heaping up of possessions, their costly pleasures and gilded palaces,
their powers of consumption make of them a disease. There is no problem
of poverty, or there would not be, but for the more intractable problem
of wealth and its abusive and monopolistic control of the necessities
of the poor." (Jeremy Seabrook 'Race for Riches'. Pub Marshal Pickering.
Page 21.)
It will come as no
surprise then to the reader to learn that revolutionary humanists among
the anti-capitalist movement also consider that 'poverty' is a direct
consequence and effect of the economic system of capital. In fact, as
will be indicated, poverty has become - through the manipulation of unemployment
- also a deliberate instrument of capitalist government policy. In the
previous chapter we described how working people's wages were fixed at
or around the level necessary to feed, clothe and house the worker and
his or her family in the manner normal for the country or area in which
the production or service takes place. In other words wages are set at
just above a poverty line 'relative' to what is normal to that group of
workers in the country or area of production. This means that when wages
fall just below that line working people are in 'relative' poverty and
when wage levels fall well below that line workers easily fall into absolute
poverty. It is obvious that when a working person is unemployed, or becomes
unemployed, their income falls below the poverty line and in the absence
of any alternative, or insufficient, 'income support', they fall into
what Mr Booth described as a state of 'chronic want'.
In the next chapter
we will have reason to consider the history of the reformist campaign
to end poverty and its utter failure, but meanwhile let us make the following
general points. Unemployment in a capitalist country, with a substantial
working class, is the biggest creator of relative and absolute poverty
because these unemployed working people have no other resources to depend
upon. For the vast majority of the world's working class, unemployment
is poverty in either its relative or absolute forms. Long-term
unemployment, an accepted feature of capitalist governments, is simply
another word for long-term poverty. In the Thatcher, Reagan, Kohl and
Mitterand influenced years of 1980's and 1990's, right-wing political
economists successfully urged the deliberate creation of unemployment
as a means of counteracting inflation in all their respective countries.
Thus, for example, in 1999 we could read in Britain that;
"The consensus
among the economists, in the Treasury, the Bank, including most of the
MPC's (Monetary Policy Committee - RR) and outside is that unemployment
has to rise, probably quite significantly, to head off inflationary pressures.....The
implications of the Bank's analysis is that the jobless total needs to
rise by about 500,000 before we can rest easy about inflation." (Sunday
Times 23/8/98 Section 3, page 6.)
The Bank of England
in its quarterly report for the summer of 1998 also considered that the
'balance of evidence' suggested that the actual rate of unemployment was
below its 'current natural rate'. Here we have a link between the capitalist
economist Ricardo (quoted in Chapter 9) writing of 'natural' wage levels
and his modern capitalist counterpart in the Bank of England writing of
'natural' levels of unemployment. We know of course that 'nature' does
not produce unemployed working people on the one hand and well-heeled
bank economists on the other. So this anonymous late 20th century political
economist of Britain, writing the quarterly review, unwittingly gives
the game away. Under the rule of capital, unemployment is not a 'natural'
occurrence, but a deliberate social and political instrument of government
policy. According to the British Treasury, the Bank of England and the
Monetary Policy Committee all considered that, "unemployment has
to rise" in order to counteract inflation. Sure enough they took
measures to make certain that it did. Such 'modern' policy strategies
apply equally to the capitalist governments the world over. Similar capitalist
economic policies are pursued throughout the European Economic Community,
in Japan, Australia, America and Canada.
'We can't change
the circumstances of the global market', is a paraphrase of sentiments
used by the Blairites, Clintonites, their European and South American
counterparts. They neglect to add that they and the class they represent
are the circumstances of the global market. The 'global market' is
not some natural unstoppable force like a volcanic eruption, a hurricane
or a tidal wave. The global market is simply an abstract term for a relatively
small group of human beings (industrial, commercial and financial capitalists)
who buy and sell commodities and currencies in order to accumulate capital.
They are human beings who could stop their activities themselves or moderate
them if they chose to, and they could certainly be stopped by governments
- even individual governments - if these governments so wished. What the
apologists of the capitalist system really mean is that they 'won't change
the circumstances of the global market'. And the reason they won't is
that they and their immediate families gain substantially from the existing
circumstances of the world market.
Not only do individual
capitalist concerns create unemployment in pursuit of profit as we have
seen in the previous chapter, but governments dominated by capitalists
and their representatives can create and deliberately increase unemployment
as we have seen admitted in the previous quote. They do so in order to
ensure that inflation does not eat into the wealth and investments of
the capitalist class as a whole. In this way, and for these reasons, working
people are consciously and deliberately made unemployed. All over the
world working people are forced by the economic policies of the capitalist
class and its representatives into or toward the 'chronic state of want'
known as poverty. In other words the capitalist class and its representatives
deliberately create poverty on a national and world scale in order to
protect their own accumulated wealth and to ensure an eager response to
the low-paid work of the capitalist class when the capitalists are ready
to offer it. The representatives of the capitalist class have been aware
of special efficiency of this mechanism of unemployment/poverty, and used
it for some time. For example, in 1876 , the Reverand Joseph Townsend
noted that;
"Legal constraint
to labour is attended with too much trouble, violence and noise, creates
ill will etc., whereas hunger is not only a peaceable, silent, unremitting
pressure, but as the most natural motive to industry and labour, it calls
forth the most powerful exertions." (J Townsend. Quoted in Marx Grundrisse.
Penguin edition. Page 845)
In other words forcing
people to work, as under full-blown slavery, is very costly, it causes
rebellion and ill will. However, just leaving people to starve, under
the capitalist system, creates an 'unremitting pressure' and the simple
need to survive will more often than not force workers into accepting
even low-paid and unhealthy wage slavery. It is very rare to find such
explicit honesty in capitalistic motives today but it is still revealed
implicitly in the contemporary debates in the advanced countries. Part
of the debate asserts that unemployment pay is too high, and therefore
acts as a disincentive for working people to accept low paid work. This
is tantamount to admitting that unemployment benefit rates, if set too
high, relieve the unremitting pressure of poverty and starvation.
A not too dissimilar
situation exists in the ex-imperialised countries. Having created economic
havoc among conquered countries during the period of Imperialism, world
capital continues to do so today, but as we have already mentioned, by
different means. Using the mechanism of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, the advanced capitalist countries lend money to the countries
they have already ruined and in the process ruin them further. World Bank
Money is lent by the billions of dollars on condition that the countries
borrowing restructure their economies to suit the needs of the capitalist
investors of the advanced countries. In doing so the rich get richer and
the poor get poorer. An example is provided by Catherine Caufield concerning
the World Bank. As the results of $6,000,000,000 in World Bank loans between
1983 and 1991 to Mexico, (already ruined by hundreds of years of Spanish,
French and America intervention and conquest) a programme of adjustment
and austerity was implemented. The consequences are made clear;
"In 1984 the
top one-fifth of the population received 48 percent of the national income
and the poorest one-fifth got only 5 percent. By 1992 the wealthy's take
of the national income had grown by 13 percent and the poor's had fallen
by the same amount. The countries richest man had more money than the
country's 17 million poor people combined. (Catherine Caufield. 'The World
Bank and the Poverty of Nations. Pub. Pan. Page 153.)
The same author informs
us that the World Bank then loaned another $1 Billion to Mexico on conditions
of even further restructuring. As a consequence prices rose by 29 percent
and 750,000 people lost their jobs. Having once increased the level of
poverty by one series of loans, the World Bank did it all again with another.
The World Bank lends to most of the previously 'imperialised', now often
termed third world, countries and the results are invariably the same.
The austerity measures which are made 'conditions' of the loans are such,
that where there is an industrial working class, their situation is made
worse by lower wages or unemployment; and where there is a peasant class,
they are ruined or made land-less and migrant. Where the economy collapses
as a result of such restructuring, even well-off middle-class people can
lose much of their savings. In all cases poverty increases as a direct
result of these capitalist policies. As stated the problem of poverty
is not confined to the ex-colonialised countries for it exists also in
the heartland's of the advanced capitalist countries. In the 1960's Michael
Harrington wrote a book exposing the poverty which existed within the
richest capitalist country in the world - the United States of America.
The book was called 'The Other America' and it sparked off a debate in
the U.S.A. and inspired many government programmes allegedly aimed at
helping the poor. Writing again in 1984 about what had happened in the
intervening twenty years he wrote;
"How many poor
people are there?....I would suggest that there are in the range of forty
to fifty million Americans who live in poverty....It is also if I may
take off my stifling statistical mask and speak in a human voice an unambiguous
outrage." ('The new American Poverty.' Michael Harrington. Pub. Firethorn.
Page 88.)
What kind of system
is it which in the heart of the richest capitalist nation in the world
there exists, according to Harrington, forty to fifty million people living
in poverty? Even if critics suggested his estimates were wildly exaggerated,
a doubtful contention, then we still have a system that deliberately keeps
even 10 million or one million of its people in relative or absolute poverty
amid so much wealth. At this point the reader should recall the annual
surplus value noted in the previous chapter. The figure was $327.7 billion
for America in the year 1963 and since 1929 the amount had never fallen
below $22.6 billion!
Indeed, in those same
intervening years since the 1960s, Jeremy Seabrook's 'monstrous predators'
of the capitalist class world wide, have got richer. How could they not
have done so? Those workers in employment have been mass producing surplus
commodities all the time, with the latest technologies, and the capitalist
class has been realising much of the annual surplus value stored in them.
So, as in the case of Mexico above, the Mexican capitalist class have
become richer along with their counterparts in all the advanced countries.
A similar thing has happened in other South American countries. For example
in Britain the top 200 richest persons increased their combined wealth
from £38 billion in 1989 to £54 billion in 1994. The combined
wealth of the 500 richest people in Britain in 1994 was £65.3 billion
(an average of £131 million each) a level which had grown to £70
billion by 1996 (a 28 percent rise); to £86.8 billion in 1997, £94
billion by 1998 and £123.8 billion (an average of £247 million
each) by the year 2000.
Yet in 1998/99 there
were more than six million working people on means-tested benefits in
Britain. This clearly demonstrates the contrast between wealth and poverty
and indicates that without these benefits the recipients would be in absolute
poverty rather than the relative poverty of the 'benefits system'. Also
in wealthy Britain it has been estimated that there were 246,000 homeless
young people to add to the adult homeless who existed in abject poverty.
We can see from even this cursory glance that there is no shortage of
wealth in capitalist Britain, Europe and America even though there is
large-scale poverty. The only problem is that, as in the rest of Europe
and the capitalist world, the rich are greedily grabbing hold of the vast
majority of it and selfishly hanging on to it. The scale of this social
obscenity is quite mind-boggling as can be seen from the fact that none
of the top British billionaires, despite their nauseating levels of wealth,
feature in the top 20 of the world's richest people and only six make
it into Europe's top fifty!
Those permanently
excluded from the work-force by reason of their ethnicity, geographical
location or lack of some spurious qualification do not just lie down and
die. In the search for some way of obtaining the necessities and occasional
luxuries in life many turn to criminality. Thus an artificial level of
criminality has arisen in industrial and urban centres as a consequence
of the capitalist mode of production since its establishment. This too
has long been well known. For example the member of Parliament for Bedford
in 1830 felt moved to write;
"In January 1829,
there were ninety-six prisoners for trial in Bedford Goal, of whom seventy-six
were able-bodied men, in the prime of life and, chiefly, of general good
character, who were driven to crime by sheer want..I conversed with each
of these men singly...When I inquired how he could lend himself to such
a wretched course of life, the poor fellow replied, 'Sir, I was anxious
to obtain work, I offered myself in all directions, but without success;
I was allowed 7s (shillings) a week for all; for which I was expected
to work on the roads from light to dark..." (quoted in J.L &
B Hammond. 'The Village Labourer.' Volume 1 Page 190)
Eighteen of the above
unemployed workers of 1830's turned to the illegal act of poaching and
were subsequently imprisoned or hanged for it. Amazingly the choice even
in those days was compulsory low-paid community service repairing the
roads, or criminality. One hundred and sixty years later how little has
changed. Today's unemployed may not have poaching as an alternative employment
possibility but many of them do take up the modern equivalents of burglary,
theft and selling drugs. Some of course, turn their hands to all three.
Today's low paid community service may be caring for the elderly or community
gardening instead of digging roads and clearing commons, but the capitalist
system even when running normally still cannot provide its citizens with
meaningful and well paid work. The 'silent unremitting pressure' of poverty,
so necessary to the ruling class, of course, can only force working people
into wage labour where capital wishes to offer them wage labour. And to
make this offer the capitalist needs to be able to extract sufficient
surplus products, realise the surplus value in them and in this way make
enough profit. Where capitalists do not offer jobs, the unremitting pressure
forces working people in other directions. In this way a section of the
working class can and will become criminalised by the very act of resisting
or trying to resist the conditions of poverty created by the capitalist
system. Criminality, drug-taking and other escape mechanisms are the result
of a chain of economic and social events initiated by capitalist investment
decisions. Thus the capitalist generated economic pattern of over-production
- crisis - stagnation - inactivity etc., (as we saw in chapter 9)
sets in motion a related social pattern of unemployment - poverty -
criminal activity - imprisonment. Ironically, the last three parts
of the pattern require capitalist governments to spend some of their share
of surplus value on police forces, prisons and probation services. These
are the knock-on effects of capitalist investment decisions which, as
we have seen, are based upon getting their hands on more and more surplus
value.
There are an estimated
45 low income countries in the world, 52 middle-income countries and 18
high-income countries. Having understood the concept of surplus production
and value extraction from the last chapter, we can see that it is in the
interests of multinational companies to base production facilities in
as many low income or low wage countries as possible which keeps the period
for 'necessary labour' short and 'surplus labour' long. Providing those
countries contain the facilities necessary for production and distribution
the capitalists then have the economic and social basis for low production
costs and longer surplus production time. This results in a larger number
of finished commodities which are produced at no extra cost to the capitalists
and are then exported to the high income countries. IN AN EXPOSÉ
of how capitalistically low cost 'branded' goods are produced, Naomi Klein
notes;
"Though the revelations
came out in the press one at a time, the incidents coalesced to give us
a rare look under the hood of branded America. Few liked what they saw.
The unsettling combination of celebrated brand names and impoverished
production conditions have turned Nike, Disney and Walmart, among others,
into powerful metaphors for a brutal new way of doing business. In a single
image, the brand-name sweatshop tells the story of the obscene disparities
of the global economy: corporate executives and celebrities raking in
salaries so high they defy comprehension, billions of dollars spent on
branding and advertising - all propped up by a system of shanty towns,
squalid factories and misery and trampled expectations of young women
like the ones I met in Cavite, struggling to survive." (Naomi Klein.
'No Logo' Pub. Flamingo. Page 329.)
Of course, sweatshops
with female and child labour are not a brutal new way of doing business
for capitalists, as Ms Klein elsewhere recognises. They are as old as
the capitalist system itself. Cavite is just the name of one of the latest
sweatshops given a new 'title'. The 'Export Processing Zones' (EPZ's),
is the metamorphosed 'sweatshop' system of old, translated into the late
20th century/early 21st century jargon and using 21st century technology.
Of course the commodities produced in these low-paid, third-world sweatshops
have to be sold in order to realise the enormous amounts of surplus value
contained in them. Yet in considering their marketing strategy, the representatives
of capital still have the 70 (i.e. 52 + 18) middle-income and high-income
countries as markets in which to sell the products and realise this high
level of surplus value. In other words the new strategy for global capitalism
is, produce in low income countries, sell in high income countries. If
over a period of time some of the workers in the low-income countries
improve their wages beyond a certain point, the multinational companies
will simply be able to transfer their factories to other low-income countries
with other EPZ's, and move their production there. This is the real essence
of capitalistic 'globalisation' and world trade. Of course the mere threat
of moving production is calculated to cool wage demands down before rises
are claimed, or where claimed, before they are actually achieved.
Not surprisingly the
capitalist system even increases the discrepancy between poverty and wealth
even in the case of disaster relief funds. An example of this is demonstrated
by the situation following an earthquake in Gujurat, India. A total of
£2 billion was raised from various sources, which was enough to re-house
all the survivors, but not all were re-housed. Writing in 2002, Ann Mc
Ferran states;
"Drive from Bhuji's
tiny airport today , and you will see builders working overtime. From
this, you might conclude that rebuilding Gujurat has been a huge success.
Indeed many Gujuratis have been very well re-housed, some so well that
they now own rather better homes than the nice houses they once lived
in. A few now own two houses instead of one. Thanks to the way aid for
Gujurat was dispensed, the rich became richer and the poor became poorer."
(Sunday Times 24/3/2002.)
Meanwhile many of
the displaced poor were living in lean-to's and makeshift platforms covered
with rags. The author of this report asks her readers: "Are our disaster-relief
efforts only making the gap between rich and poor greater?" The answer
is - yes! - if and when that relief work occurs in the context of capitalist
and class-divided societies.
Food.
It seems somewhat
banal to remind ourselves that the human body needs food. But we need
to perhaps remember that among other things, food contains the essential
minerals and 'fuel' which energises the limbs and brain and makes all
further sustained activity possible. This includes the essential activities
such as the production of shelter, clothing, offspring, culture and the
production of surplus products. Food is one of the essentials of all life
and is therefore at the basis of all social systems. So what happens to
it is extremely important. As the basis of life, food needs to be both
nutritious and continuously available. Without sufficient nutrition the
human body cannot adequately reproduce itself for long, and cannot daily
reproduce sufficient energy to fulfil the necessary tasks beyond those
attending basic survival. Production in the wider sense, and particularly
surplus production, depend, therefore, to a great deal upon the level
and quality of nutrition. In this way capitalist production, and surplus
production in general, also depend upon sustainable food resources. Yet
ironically, capital, and particularly modern capital investment in agriculture,
threatens both these basic requirements.
In Europe, capital
developed and flourished upon the level of food production already developed
under the feudal system of agriculture and animal husbandry. In general
the feudal land distribution and tenure produced enough food to cater
for the needs of those producing the food and those classes who didn't.
Obviously, again in general, a population can only be as large as the
food resources which can sustain it. Just as importantly, the soil which
produces the food needs also to be sustained. It too needs its equivalent
of refuelling by nutrients - its own vital ingredients! Pre - industrial
agriculture had various naturalistic means of allowing the soil to recover
and supplement its vitality. Letting the land lie fallow, spreading animal
manure, (or bird droppings and fish meal), growing different crops, such
as clover, in succession, or both together, are just some examples. This
was an example of sustainable agriculture.
However, when capitalistic
criteria were applied to agriculture and food production, the main criteria
moved from sustainability to profitability. For this reason the yield
per acre or hectare, became not just a challenge to ensure plenty, but
a necessity to ensure an adequate return on capital. The perception of
sensibly allowing a field to lie fallow changed from being a 'natural'
investment to ensure a future healthy crop, to a 'capital' investment
lying unprofitably idle. Means were sought to reap and sow as many harvests
per field, and in as many fields as scientifically and technologically
possible. Capitalist science over time provided unlimited chemical fertilisers
and insecticides and capitalist technology supplied the tractors and combined
harvesters. The results were a massive increase in agricultural production
and the capitalist food producers claimed to be able to save the world
from starvation.
As is usual under
the domination of capitalist viewpoints, the dialectic (i.e. everything
possibly having both positive and negative aspects to it) was ignored
and everything they did was presented as positive. However, the repeated
use of the soil on each field or section can quickly lead to soil degradation
and even erosion. This means that soil becomes poorer and good soil can
be washed away by rainfall and actually lost over time. To counteract
the degradation cheap chemical fertilisers were developed. However, these
are not the same as natural fertilisers and don't replenish the soil of
everything which is taken out. Worse than this though is the fact that
the 'chemical' fertilisers and in particular, pesticides permeate and
contaminate the food which humans eventually eat. They also kill not only
the targeted pests but a host of other beneficial insects and micro-organisms
which are needed in the soil.
The combined results
of this capitalistic process is that capitalist agriculture now finds
it necessary to coat seeds for sowing with several chemicals before they
are planted. It also ploughs chemicals into the ground before planting
the seeds and it sprays chemicals on the plants as they are growing. In
addition to this, other chemicals are now used extensively in the manufacture
of processed foods. Twentieth century human beings are the first generations
in the millions of years life-span of humans on the planet to be consistently
fed upon a diet which consciously and deliberately contains a complex
cocktail of industrially produced chemicals. We should not be surprised,
therefore, if the long-term results on food nutrition and human health
are disastrous. Chemical pesticides such as liver-damaging
'paraquat' (sold as Weedol to gardeners) which is permeable to the skin,
together with potential cancer-inducing '245T' (more popularly known as
'Agent Orange', used by the American military in Vietnam), are routinely
used on agricultural crops destined for human consumption. Chemical
fertilisers such as nitrates considered to produce stomach
cancers and calcium phosphate which 'poison's' rivers and lakes are also
permitted 'growth enhancers' for use by capitalist farming. Pigs, Cows,
Chickens and Turkeys are routinely given growth hormones (such as Diethylstilboestrol
and bgH); antibiotics (such as Penicillin, Chlortetracycline, Erythromycin
and Aureomycin); and steroid solutions to fatten them more quickly and
make sure fewer of them die before they are sold.
All this is done in
order to realise the maximum surplus production and consequently the surplus
value embodied in them. All of these additive substances find their way
into the body of those humans who consume the plants and animals and the
foods 'processed' from them. This practice also produces resistant strains
of non-beneficial bacteria and viruses. Of course we are told by the capitalist
concerns and their scientists that these are 'safe' chemicals, but can
we be sure after the reassurances that cows fed and treated with certain
animal and chemical products were free of B.S.E.; that nuclear energy
would be, safe, cheap and efficient? Incidentally, the assumption that
after the much belated B.S.E. ban on feeding cows animal protein, things
are much better, is challenged by a Farmer turned critic Richard Body.
He asserts that in place of ground-up diseased sheep, cows are now fed
on the remains of chickens which have fallen onto the floor in large-scale
intensive chicken broiler factories. He explains that in these intensive
chicken houses;
"..the mortality
rate is very high. The birds are so crammed together that the stockman
is unable to move among them to pick up those that have died. The carcasses
are trodden into the litter; as soon as the remaining birds are taken
away to be slaughtered, tractors move in to scoop up the litter, which
is sent off to be processed into cattle feed. (R. Body. 'Our food, our
Land'. Pub. page 74)
There is of course
a chance that the dead chickens may have died of some viral or bacterial
infection or other. They will have certainly been fed a diet of hormones
and antibiotics, so the rotting chicken carcasses mixed in with the excrement
on the floor will have produced a rich soup of potential 'resistant' pathogens
and parasites. The question is; can the reader trust that an enterprise
run by a management interested in maximising profits, which goes to the
length of buying the floor sweepings from chicken houses as raw material,
is going to ensure that these floor sweepings are made into a safe cattle
feed of the highest quality? It may seem a sweeping generalisation from
the evidence presented in this short section, but all I have discovered
so far, suggests that food which is capitalistically produced is now almost
totally adulterated in one way or another. A walk around the over-abundant
shelves of any Supermarket or small-scale store to examine the contents
lists on the food labels confirms this. Such a scrutiny will reveal a
long list of chemical additives that are in addition to those used in
the production of the raw materials used in the product. The nutrients
lost in the food producing process will of course not appear on any label,
nor will it be readily admitted. However, the loss is no less real. But
this loss presents another opportunity for capitalist enterprise. Vitamins
and minerals which were once present naturally in food now have to be
purchased (by those who can afford them) in bottles, from other capitalists,
in order to offset this deterioration in the nutritional level of capitalistically
produced food. Heads they win; tails we lose!
A classic example
of how food is robbed of its nutritional value by the process of capitalistic
food production is provided by the commonplace food product - bread! In
the process of flour production from wheat, before the bread is baked,
bleaching agents, improving agents, preservative agents, emulsifying agents,
antioxidants and colouring agents are all used or added. The process of
producing bread flour also ensures that up to 80% of the 24 naturally
occurring vitamins and minerals are lost. So on top of the above list
of chemical agents designed to improve the whiteness, the shelf-life and
the ease of baking, the capitalist flour-makers add in a few chemically
produced vitamins and minerals to make it a little bit more nourishing
than the wrapper it is bound in. In an assessment of the British bread
industry, controlled by three large capitalist concerns, the authors of
an academic report declared;
"The outstanding
conclusion is that nutritional quality is subordinated to superficial
appeal or technical and economic advantage. And among the causes is the
misuse of scientific research for profits and the lack of effective government
intervention in defence of the consumer." (Bread; TACC Report. page
28)
As noted it is not
bread alone which is subject to this type of process. Just how many modern
intractable illnesses in humans are caused by this continuous diet of
chemicalised and nutrient deficient food supply, it is impossible to say
and proof is difficult to come by. However, the effects are certain to
be there, and will definitely get worse as long as capitalistic criteria
is allowed to determine how food is produced and processed.
Genetically modified
foods and 'irradiation' are just more recent 'technological' ways of capitalist
enterprise decreasing the 'natural' losses of crops and increasing the
level of profits. The development of G.M food, for example, is certainly
not being undertaken for the benefit of the consumer, but for the benefit
of the capitalist agri-businesses and producers of chemicals. With massive
food mountains going to waste and farmers being paid not to grow certain
crops, there is certainly no lack of food or potential for food. So what
is the motive?
One clear motivation
for the development of G.M. crops by these capitalist concerns is to provide
plant resistance to their own and others' already over used chemical weed
killers. The development of genetically modified Soya and Rapeseed are
both examples of this self-created purpose for producing genetic modification.
So the industry and government 'propaganda' of 'need' and 'safety' needs
to be taken with a large degree of cynicism and suspicion. On this question,
Arpad Pusztai, a leading researcher on proteins, for example, found that
when he fed rats with a genetically modified potato substance their immune
systems degenerated and their brains contracted. As a consequence in 1998
he spoke publicly of the potential dangers to human health. He was quickly
made to retire early from his government funded job for being so safety
conscious and public spirited. Nevertheless his point of view was supported
a year later, in 1999, by twenty more scientists, yet the government and
the food industry did nothing to protect consumers. So lacking in confidence
were the authorities in their claims of food safety for genetically modified
foods, that they restrained Mr Pusztai from talking about his research
by a gagging clause in his retirement contract. Another case of the supporters
of capitalism using the power of the state to keep its citizens in ignorance
of their practices.
Irradiation of food
is yet another under-tested food process which may have implications for
human health. It may control bacterial growth and allow an extended shelf
life for food products - an obvious benefit to the capitalist producer
- but it also most certainly destroys or degrades the vitamins at the
same time. A reduction in nutrition through the loss of vitamins and essential
minerals cannot but have a detrimental effect upon the health of those
who are forced by circumstances, or accustomed by habit, to eat them.
I suggest the complete
link and the full extent of the effects of chemicalised food on the human
anatomy, such as the various stomach, bowel and colon cancers together
with the return of rickets and tuberculosis, has yet to be established.
This is not the case with chemicals used on the land. The chemicals which
are ploughed into the ground and sprayed onto the growing plants, also
gets flushed into the rivers and seas by rainfall and this is an effect
of capitalistic methods of production that we shall also consider later
under the heading of 'pollution'. Meanwhile.
Health.
The question of health
and adequate health care is an important human right for all peoples,
and one with a world-wide dimension. Good health together with good nutrition
is necessary for production of all necessities and all surplus production.
Without good health the ability to work in order to support an individual
or family, is impaired. With the onset of disease it is ended either temporarily
or permanently. Being healthy not only 'feels good' but is good for individuals,
families and communities. Yet as we have seen in the last two sections,
capitalist forms of production undermine the basis of good health by creating
poverty, poor nutrition and by adding large quantities of chemicals into
and onto food. Under the capitalist system of production, wealth can purchase
the best available forms of health care and medicine but these are rarely
available to the poor.
Under capitalism,
capitalists can invest in certain areas of health care if these are sufficiently
profitable or if the results lead to other profitable resources. It will
come as no surprise to readers, therefore, to learn that medical science
was distorted early on, by capitalist wealth into assisting the imperialist
expansion and exploitation. It has been noted that;
"The efficiency
of quinine and the later war on mosquitoes gave colonists fresh opportunities
to swarm into the Gold Coast, Nigeria and other parts of West Africa and
seize fertile agricultural lands, introduce new livestock and crops, build
roads and railways, drive natives into mines and introduce all the disruptions
to traditional lifestyles that cash economies brought. The ecological
transformation and social proletarianisation created ....... triggered
massive epidemics, in particular sleeping sickness, while the planting
of coffee, cocoa, rubber and other cash crop monocultures led to a decline
in the nutritional status and general well-being of the natives in Africa,
Asia, America and the Pacific. (R. Porter. 'The Greatest Benefit to Mankind.'
Pub. Harper Collins, page 465/466.)
Thus the earlier pattern
of decline in the health and welfare of the European working class was
repeated in the colonised and imperialised countries. It continues to
the present day and the causes are essentially the same. Overcrowding,
ineffective sanitation and poor nutrition, indirectly and in many cases
directly caused by the introduction of capitalist domination, lead to
increased disease. At the same time the development of capitalist methods
of producing curative medicines was gathering pace. The result was the
development of the multinational pharmaceutical companies. Capitalist
drug producing companies (and practically all drug-producing companies
are capitalist) are in the 'health business' to make profits by the manufacture
and sale of drugs. The more they sell these products the more they realise
the surplus value stored up in them. To sell more drugs they have to actively
promote the use of more of these pharmaceutical compounds. This they do
by literature, seminars and sales representatives aimed not only at the
ultimate consumer, the patient, but at the health professionals such as
doctors who administer them. Yet in the words of Roy Porter "wonder
drugs produce super bugs".
It has already been
indicated in the previous section that the routine use of antibiotics
and the intensive breeding of animals for capitalist food production has
increased the potential for diseases. Viruses are not only able to cross
the species gap between humans and animals but are made more resistant
to subsequent treatment. The resistance of non-animal diseases is also
increased by the use and over-use of drugs, such as antibiotics for human
consumption. So the vigorous pursuit of profit by promoting over-use of
curative medicines has served to bring about genetic mutations of the
non-beneficial bacteria and the human sufferers are being driven back
to square one. The huge multinational pharmaceutical companies are primarily
concerned to make profits, not to produce the cheapest and most effective
medicines. They are not in the business of promoting preventative health
care, for this would remove the need for many of the curative drugs which
are highly profitable.
The combined pharmaceutical
industry in the late 1970's had a total world market of £7,100 million.
These industrial pharmaceutical firms were not only making above average
profits of 19% to 28% in European countries during the 1970's, but some
sections of it were making vast profits in third world countries by over-pricing.
It is estimated, in the case of Diazepam and Ampicillin, during this period,
that the percentage over-pricing to Columbia was 6000% and 136% respectively.
Other exported drugs such as Erythromycin and Metronidazole varied between
100% and 3000% over-priced to the importing countries. We can be sure
that such practices continue. They amount to a massive exploitation of
the resources of the poor and sick in developing countries. Particularly
when these over priced medicines may not be helping to solve the health
problems encountered in developing countries and indirectly making them
worse. For example;
"It is now generally
accepted that the bulk of disease in the underdeveloped countries is the
effect of poor socio-economic conditions (poor housing, nutrition etc.).
Certainly the improvements in the morbidity and mortality patterns that
have occurred in the West have largely been the result of improvements
in these standards......It is to the advantage of the drug companies,
however, that the health services remain orientated towards a curative
approach.. " ('Poor Health, Rich Profits.' Tom Heller. Spokesman
Books. Page 20)
It cannot be denied
that the multi-national drug companies spend vast amounts of money advertising
their products. Nor can it be doubted that they use all the scientific
prestige of the developed countries to influence the health services in
the developing countries to purchase their particular branded products.
This much they admit themselves. They constantly try to justify their
high prices and huge profits by reference to the need for research. But
even in their research they are often up to dirty tricks, some of which
they do not readily admit. The use of human guinea-pigs for testing new
drugs is tightly controlled by legal constraint in the developed countries.
Such constraining measures were introduced following the Helsinki Declaration
of 1964, but of course this agreement is much harder to enforce in some
developing countries. So we read;
"The most flagrant
use of the peoples of Third World countries for testing new products has
been during the development of various contraceptive devices and in particular
the steroid contraceptives. The very first oral forms of these contraceptives
were given their initial large-scale clinical trials around 1953 in Puerto
Rico ." ('Poor Health, Rich Profits.' Tom Heller. Spokesman Books
page 52.)
The well known scandal
of the potentially dangerous contraceptive Depo-Provera is a further example
of the racist use of non-white humans for testing drugs to explore their
effectiveness and side effects before further marketing in developed countries.
Nevertheless, despite the known dangers, Depo-Provera has been tested
in Brazil, Thailand, Chile, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Egypt,
Honduras, Peru, Mexico and Pakistan.
In the advanced countries
medicines are banned once they have been 'officially recognised' as being
toxic. Official recognition of the problem can take some time from when
the problem is actually identified. However, once banned in advanced countries
they are then routinely exported to developing countries who are not yet
aware of the problem or whose officials are prepared to turn a blind eye.
For example, it is estimated that over ten million capsules of chloramphenical
were sold by the multinational pharmaceutical company Parke-Davis after
it had been banned for use in America. The sole reason for such unethical
and immoral acts is a direct result or effect of the capitalist control
of the production of medicines. They were sold this way rather than destroyed
in order to realise the surplus value locked up in the products so that
the directors, owners and shareholders of the companies, could increase
their wealth. Another more recent development in exploiting the world's
poor has been the use of the trade agreements, such as the Trade-Related
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), prevent the manufacture of cheaper
variants of drugs such as the AIDS drug.
The curative approach
to health favours the profits of capital but it does not drive the motivation
which allows such dumping and experimenting - that motivation springs
from the greed of capitalists. But the curative approach also favours
the profits of the companies and the wealthy even in the case of the public
provision of health-care services in the developed countries. The existence
of a well funded public health service was one of the reforms that capitalist
Britain could boast excellence about in the post-second world war years.
There is no doubt that under a political and economic system dominated
by capitalists, the British National Health Service represented something
of an advance, but as a government sponsored investigation in 1980's noted,
it was not all it was cracked up to be;
"The lack of
improvement and in some cases the deterioration, of the health experience
of the unskilled and semi-skilled manual classes (class V and 1V) relative
to class 1, throughout the 1960's and early 1970's is striking....severe
under-utilisation by the working classes is a complex result of under-provision
in working class areas and of costs (financial and psychological) of attendance...
Thirty years of the welfare state and of the National Health Service have
achieved little in reducing social inequalities in health." (Inequalities
in Health. P Townsend & N. Davidson. pub. Pelican. Page 206 &
210)
This report, chaired
by Douglas Black, was not properly printed and published by the government
of the day. It was given a cool reception because its recommendations
were unwelcome and involved considerable expenditure. With the election
of the Thatcher government in Britain, the National Health Service was
pushed through several stages of re-organisation and delivered less and
less to working class patients during the 1980's and 1990's. Yet we shall
see in the next section why working people more than any other class need
an efficient health service. This is because they are subjected to all
manner of injuries and diseases, due primarily to their working and social
environments.
Unsafe Working
practices.
At an inquiry into
the death of a worker due to inadequate scaffolding, a Mr Green, speaking
for the firm Babcock and Wilcox, made the following observation during
his statement;
"Ideally the
company would have liked to have had an arrangement whereby the whole
length would have been scaffolded. But this was out of the question because
of the expense which would have been involved." (Quoted in 'The Hazards
of Work'. by Patrick Kinnersley. Pub. Pluto Press. page 17.)
It is perhaps rare
to find such candour from the capitalists' side as that given in the above
quote. Yet when such statements do appear they reveal what nearly every
worker in industry knows - that capitalist profits come before the safety
of working people. In fact in many cases, injury and death among working
people are not simply 'accidents' (i.e. something which could have been
avoided), but can be predicted and are a direct result of the desire of
the capitalist class to maximise profit. When a capitalist concern argues,
through its managers, that adequate safety for its employees, or the public,
is out of the question because of the expense, it is actually saying much
more than this. What is actually being admitted, is that setting aside
enough of the surplus value for safe conditions of production, is out
of the question, because the capitalist class wish to have that surplus
value. It is an admission that they are not prepared to give up any more
of it than they are forced to.
In the case quoted
above, which could be replicated in thousands, it is not that the necessary
safety measures were unknown, impossible to erect, or for that matter
all that expensive. Scaffolding is not technologically demanding or so
costly, particularly for a large building firm such as Babcock and Wilcox.
The number of times safety procedures are known but under utilised, because
the owner of capital or their representatives, treat working people as
cheap disposable commodities, would hopefully be few. Not so.
"We have the
knowledge and apparatus for absorbing gases, arresting grit, dust and
fumes and preventing smoke formation. The only reasons we still permit
the escape of pollutants is because economics play such an important part....most
of our problems are cheque book rather than technological. (Chief Alkali
Inspector. quoted in 'The Hazards of Work'. by Patrick Kinnersley. Pub.
Pluto Press. Page 18.)
The knowledge is there,
and the technological ability is there. What prevents it being used are
the ethics of the capitalist oriented profit and loss account. The words
"not economically viable'' are used frequently to both mystify and
bring to a dead-end any line of inquiry which looks for blame in such
circumstances. However, we now know from the last chapter, that the 'economics'
which play such an important part are the economics of capital, or surplus
value extraction. Capitalist economics include the ethics of knowingly
and willingly exposing their work-force to dangers. They are the morals
of antisocial greed and represent the heartless and unrelenting social-psychology
of the capitalist class. Let us look at some of the hazards and danger
to which working people are routinely exposed in the process of capitalist
production.
Noise. Many
industries, particularly those involving the use of machinery, produce
large volumes of noise. Millions of workers suffer hearing loss or impairment
as a result of years of exposure to excessive noise. Even noise at levels
of frequency and intensity which are not painful, including low frequency
and ultra-sound, can over a period of time, kill or irreparably damage
the delicate hair-cells in the inner ear. The vast majority of damaging
noises could be eliminated in the workplace by soundproofing or silencing.
The technology is not space-age but it would eat into the surplus value
and so employers go - where they are forced to do something - for the
cheaper solutions of earplugs or ear-defenders. These of course are often
uncomfortable and can lead to additional problems for the wearer such
as ear infections and skin irritation. They also insulate the wearer,
who may not then be able to heed warning shouts or alarm signals of danger
from other workers. This is not just a theoretical possibility, working
people have been killed or injured as a direct result of not be able to
hear shouted warnings of danger.
Vibration. This
is a hazard which again could be eliminated for it is most often the result
of bad design, cheap manufacture or poor maintenance. Damaging vibration
at work is dependent upon its frequency, its amplitude and its duration.
This determines whether and to what extent vibration damages internal
organs and the bone structure. Spinal and lower back damage, for example,
can occur among those who work on, or operate for long periods, heavy
equipment such as earth movers and tractors, or other machinery which
is actually designed to vibrate, such as pneumatic drills, compactors,
jack hammers, drills hammers, chisels etc. Long-term damage to finger,
wrist, elbow and shoulder joints including the painfully severe damage
known as white-finger can occur for those who work with the latter category
of tools. Of course a bad situation is made worse for those who operate
such machinery in cold, damp, or wet conditions such as building and road
workers. Which brings us on to the next category of hazard - temperature!
Temperature.
Exposure to any extreme of temperature for long periods can bring about
damage to the human body. Extreme heat or even exposure to very hot conditions
for long periods can lead to loss of fluids and salts and the body's self-regulatory
temperature system can become destabilised, or even collapse, and in extreme
cases death can occur. Even well before that extreme occurs physical damage
can be done to the respiratory system and undue stress placed upon heart
and lungs. Workers in forges. smelters, casting processes, ovens, furnaces
and many others such as office workers are exposed regularly to such oppressive
conditions of heat and humidity. At the other end of the temperature scale,
millions of workers are forced to endure the effects of cold. Low temperatures
create heat loss, and blood circulation is reduced, particularly to hands,
feet and brain. In extreme cases unconsciousness and coma can follow,
along with heart failure. However, even moderately cold conditions can
cause long-term effects particularly where exposure to wind (the wind-chill
factor) aggravates the problem. Workers in these conditions, such as seamen,
oil rig workers, building workers and power cable workers are more subject
to rheumatism, bronchitis, arthritis and heart diseases. Again all these
conditions can all be counteracted by the use of insulation, ventilation
and air-conditioning for heat protection; or heating and protective clothing
for cold conditions. Yet invariably these counter-measures are not used
properly or adequately and the cheapest are chosen because the best ones
would decrease the amount of surplus value going to the owners of capital.
Radiation.
Radiation is a more common hazard than is often supposed. It is not just
those who are engaged at nuclear power stations and in advanced war armaments
production, who are in danger from radiation. Continuous exposure to high
power radio waves for example, or the newly developed microwaves for heating
and communications, are all potentially cancer-or tumour-inducing sources
of radiation. Electro-magnetic radiation, and Infra-red radiation sources
are common in some industries, as are ultra-violet radiation sources.
Health workers, dentists and of course patients are all exposed to X ray
emissions, but not as continuously as workers in industries which regularly
use X rays and Gamma rays for inspection or other productive uses. All
radiation sources can cause skin damage, internal organ problems and tumours.
Even the ubiquitous computer screens in millions of offices are giving
off low doses of radiation which over long periods of use can result in
damage to eyes and the internal health of computer operators. The unborn
babies of pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to this particular
source of radiation. Alternative LCD screens exist but are expensive and
their introduction will be resisted by those capitalists and their managers
eager to conserve the amount of surplus value for their capitalist shareholders.
Metals. Even
after the extremely dangerous molten stage of manufacture, metals remain
sources of danger to those workers employed in their transport or further
production. Badly designed stacking methods and lifting procedures increase
the dangers. The sheer weight of metals in bulk can permanently crush
or maim fingers, limbs and even bodies where safety procedures and equipment
are inadequate. And in many capitalist firms they are inadequate. The
danger does not just apply to those metals which are commonly known to
be dangerous such as lead which can cause poisoning, zinc which can also
explode under certain conditions, or magnesium which can set on fire and
produce toxic fumes. Metal turning, welding and riveting even with common
metals, create dangerous particles and fumes, all of which workers inhale.
These substances can cause permanent damage to the lungs and respiratory
system. The cutting oils which are used with metals also release fumes
which can cause cancers and skin diseases such as dermatitis. Jagged edges
of metals which have been cut or drilled can cause also permanent and
unsightly scars, dangerous infections, and even amputated limbs. As with
all the other hazards in this section, the only thing which prevents them
from being largely eliminated is the refusal by capitalists to use sufficient
of the surplus value produced by workers to ensure the maximum safety.
Chemicals.
There are literally thousands upon thousands of hazardous chemicals used
in industry, manufacturing and commerce, so this small section cannot
list even a small selection of them and still have enough space to note
some of their effects on the human body. We shall have to content ourselves
with noting that they come in three basic forms; solids, including
powders, liquids and gases all of which can be poisonous,
corrosive, explosive or cancer inducing (carcinogenic). Powders can burn
the skin, get in the mouth, lungs and stomach; liquids, can also burn
and permeate the skin and give off fumes which damage lungs and the respiratory
system. Not all gasses can be seen and not all give off a smell. Since
they readily mix with air, danger can be present without anyone knowing.
The lungs and air passages of working people are in the front line of
the attack from gasses which have escaped and this is well before any
explosion can take place.
Trade names and secrecy
often mask the real danger of chemicals in the production process until
after a serious incident has taken place. Chemical manufacturers routinely
play down the hazards so they can sell their products more widely. Chemicals
are not always stored, or disposed of, in the safest possible containers
but usually the cheapest available. The cheapest being basic thin steel
drums which can quickly rust, or be corroded by the chemical contents,
creating dangers in the medium to long-term, if not in the short-term.
The highly profitable
chemical industry employs so-called 'experts' whose job it is to calculate
the 'safe level' of daily exposure to chemical substances. In reality
there is no safe level of exposure to chemicals. It takes less of the
companies' surplus value to pay an expert for this calculated 'safety
advice' than to ensure the chemicals are manufactured, stored, transported
and disposed of safely at all times. Even an apparently safe and comfortable
office building can often be a sinkhole of volatile organic pollutants
from paints, varnishes, plastics and statically charged particles. Some
people are more sensitive to such contaminants, but all are effected in
the long term.
This short list presents
only the tip of an iceberg of hazards which daily face the working class
as they enter the capitalist factories, mines, offices, shops and farms.
Theoretically there are laws to place limits as to how much danger the
workers can be placed in. There are also, in most of the industrialised
countries, factory inspectors who are employed to police the safety at
work. But as every worker knows these inspectors are understaffed and
can only make few visits. These visits are also programmed in advance
so the senior management ensure the workplace is cleaned up the day before
the inspector arrives, and any dodgy practices are suspended until the
visit is over. To add to this problem of detection, the inspectors are
usually from the same background as the managers/owners and so there is
more often than not a cosy social bond. Where this exists it ensures that
even blatantly dangerous practices, where spotted, are only 'noted' over
a friendly coffee in the boardroom. This undoubted social bond rests upon
the basic economic class interests shared between the owners and managers
of capital, the state inspectors who police the workplace and the judges
who enforce the law. It is a bond which can all but neutralise the effect
of legislation.
This problem is no
more glaring than in the areas of transport and the Nuclear Power industry
where accidents causing potentially devastating health hazards are routinely
covered up or denied. Aircraft are routinely sent up into the skies with
known problems and defects. Ships and Ferries are frequently sent out
to sea in known unseaworthy conditions. Many lives are lost in the process
and many more put at risk because of the cynical pursuit of profit before
all else. In the case of Nuclear energy, where this deadly and obnoxious
form of industry is partly or wholly, privatised, as in Japan, then the
situation can become even more dangerous. In some cases cheap, untrained
labour from groups of unemployed and homeless are employed to clean out
the most hazardous parts of nuclear power plants. This is just another
way in which profits are maximised at the expense of safety for the employees
and the large number of communities who live within 'fall-out' range.
Such practices can
only occur by collusion (turning a blind eye) between capitalist management,
pro-capitalist government inspectors and pro-capitalist justices departments.
A collusion, which as noted before, is engendered by the fact that material
conditions of all three social groups are directly dependent upon the
amount of surplus value left over after all other expenses of production
are deducted. As a rule the more surplus value that is set aside for safe
production, the less there is for profits and government taxes. Real safety
and the removal of hazards by methods - which as we have seen are scientifically
known and technically available - would reduce profits and government
income for highly paid civil servants. This leaves the consumers (and
in cases such as Bopal, the communities adjacent to such hazards) subject
to a yearly lottery of death and injury. It leaves the workers to endure
the temperatures, noise, vibration, radiation and absorb the gasses, fumes,
liquids and dusts. Nor does it stop at the factory gate. What the employees
don't take into their bodies gets pumped or dumped into the surrounding
environment for others to absorb.
Pollution.
We have seen that
as a result of its profit driven production processes, Capital produces
masses of commodities, which it markets and sells in order to realise
the surplus value embodied in them. It does not take a great deal of knowledge
of the mass market to note that the vast majority of these commodities
are produced irrespective of their long-term usefulness or their longevity.
Commodities and services under the capitalist system are merely the 'vehicles'
used to realise surplus value and deliver profit for the owners of capital.
However, the production of these vehicles creates by-products which in
the vast majority of cases, are treated merely as waste. In the majority
of cases these waste products are not profitable and, as noted, the safe
disposal of them would require a deduction from the profits, so they are
simply dumped at the nearest and/or least costly place. As stated, many
of these waste products are highly toxic. Some, in the form of gases,
are allowed to blow into the air, and as we know, the quality of the air
we breathe is vitally important to our health.
The average human
being could probably last about seven weeks without food and perhaps seven
days without water but could not last seven minutes without air. In fact
most adults inhale about 30 pounds weight of air per day or approximately
5 tons of air per year. Yet it is reliably estimated that the existing
process of production and transport now mixes into the air 15 million
tons of soot and dust per year. In addition, two hundred hazardous chemicals
are also regularly vented by industry into the atmosphere. Many of these
chemical pollutants are cancer causing carcinogens, which permeate the
air and wait to be sucked into our lungs with each breath. According to
the World Almanac of 1998, 1,562 million lb. of toxic chemicals are allowed
to escape into the air each year in America. America is only one of many
advanced industrialised countries of the world which daily add their respective
contributions to this huge amount.
This airborne pollution
is breathed in by the young, old, sick and the well. Those particles which
fail to reach our lungs, fall onto land or sea or remain suspended until
they are washed out by rain. Chlorine monoxide levels in the air are now
calculated to be 100 times the previous normal level. This together with
the Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) being released are considered to be causing
the holes in the vital layer of ozone which protects the planet's inhabitants
from dangerous levels of stellar radiation. Some of the 200 chemicals
mentioned above are in the form of sulphur dioxides and trioxides which
can produce sulphuric acid and nitric acid. This is the noxious substance
which falls to the ground as acid rain.
Water is another essential
of life which is constantly and increasingly being polluted as a by-product
of the capitalist system of production. It is not just the chemical rain
which finishes up in rivers and the sea. As we have noted under the section
on food many of the chemicals used in food production (pesticides herbicides
and fertilisers) are drained from agricultural land by rain, and finish
up in the rivers, groundwater, and the sea. There they join the billions
of gallons of crude oil which are regularly dumped into the sea and the
billions of tons of solid waste from the kitchens and toilets of the worlds
seaside towns and cities. The United States of America alone disposes
of 160 million tons of solid waste per day and much of it finishes up
in the sea. These totals may be higher than any other capitalist country,
but you can rest assured there will be a similar amount, or greater, from
the combined capitalist countries of Europe. Millions of people rely upon
underground water supplies such as wells and springs but the ground water
which supplies these wells is more and more polluted by toxic chemicals,
as pesticides, fertilisers, heavy metal, solvents, and petrochemical compounds
seep into the ground water system.
Again according to
the World Almanac of 1998 in America 235 million lbs of toxic chemicals
are dumped underground and 136 million lbs per year are drained into surface
waters. The main perpetrators of this pollution are the chemical industry,
primary metal production industries, paper making mills and plastics factories.
The UK disposes of over 400 million tons of waste products each year on
land. The U.S.A. has a total of 1,255 hazardous waste sites within its
boundaries and stores 275 million lbs of toxic chemicals on land sites.
Landfill waste sites have been used not only to dump solid household waste
- bad enough you may think - but also toxic chemicals, petroleum products,
and solvents. Dangerous hospital and contaminated medical products have
joined the millions of tons of domestic garbage dumped annually. This
has been done both officially and unofficially by industry and government
departments. Land fill dumping, because it is cheapest in the short term,
is also the preferred method for storing the hundreds upon hundreds of
tons of nuclear waste products, some of which will take thousands of years
to decay to a point at which they are no longer dangerous. Despite the
reassurances of the nuclear industry, it is clear that the containers
used for this nuclear waste will not last that amount of time. The drums
used may be somewhat more robust than the cheap steel ones used for chemicals,
but we know that storage which would be guaranteed safe for a thousand
years would be too costly for an industry based upon profitability. The
management and scientists of the nuclear industry know very well they
won't be there when the final cost is presented to the future generations.
They will have taken their profits and high salaries for their lifetimes
and cynically left the problem for others, including their children and
grandchildren.
For over a hundred
years this capitalistic process of dumping waste products into the air,
the sea, the land and the rivers has continued unabated and despite the
size of the planet, the effects are beginning to tell. The pressure placed
on industry by the owners of capital and commerce to take shortcuts in
production processes to maximise profits, is now causing lasting biological
and ecological damage and shows no sign of abating.
The ecological
destructiveness of Capital
The combined effects
of the many sources of pollution are bringing about climate change and
alterations in weather patterns. These in turn are having devastating
effects upon the worlds human and non-human population. Global warming,
itself a result of the effects of pollutant 'greenhouse' gasses released
by capitalist dominated industry, does not simply make everywhere warmer,
but dislocates the patterns of weather and raises sea levels. This in
turn upsets the delicate balance of seasonal weather patterns which are
essential for food production. Rising rivers, hurricanes and alternative
droughts and heavy rainfall occurring at times when they are not normal,
or in places where they do not normally occur, cause damage to villages,
towns and cities by floods or fires. They destroy crops, livestock and
wild life. Many low-lying human communities throughout the world are in
real danger of repeated floods making their lives miserable and dangerous.
There are currently a further 1,667 species endangered or threatened ranging
from mammals through birds and reptiles, to fish, insects, conifers and
ferns. Many of which, as we have seen in chapter 8 are likely to be beneficially
interconnected not only with each other but with other species.
Added to the results
of global warming are the other direct effects of the capitalist pre-production
process itself. This process requires large consignments of raw materials,
which because of the motive to maximise profits, are obtained as quickly
and cheaply as possible. Trees are sawn down for timber in large quantities
irrespective of the short and long-term effect upon the environment such
as species loss, soil erosion and depletion of the oxygen-generating nitrogen
cycle. Minerals are extracted from the ground in the quickest and cheapest,
often open-cast way, again irrespective of the detrimental effects upon
the surrounding environment. The waste materials are often just left piled
up around the site. Forests are cleared to create short-lived profit-led
capitalist plantations, which soon exhaust the land and where the soil,
lacking the previous binding power of tree roots, is soon washed away.
Thousands upon thousands of small, and large, ecosystems are being destroyed
annually and their wildlife robbed of their habitat and food sources as
global capitalism searches every nook and cranny - even the deep sea trenches
- to exploit the planet's resources in order to turn in a quick profit.
In a very real sense the planet cannot sustain a further epoch of capitalist
exploitation. The capitalist system of production must be superseded or
the planet will no longer be able to support human life in a credible
way.
Capitalist economics
is the political economy of only one class in society - the capitalist
class. As such it reflects only the parasitic needs and concerns of the
capitalist class. Accordingly it takes the earth (raw materials, minerals)
the environment (forests, water, air) and living natural resources (animals,
birds, fish) for granted as cost-free assets for its own plunder and profit.
Yet these resources are not free. They are of immense value, developed
over millions of years, and in many cases they are priceless. Not only
have they taken long periods of time to develop and evolve, in many cases
they are irreplaceable. Yet;
"...we can conclude
that on a global scale the ecological base of our activities is being
narrowed, so that the ecological stability and sustainability of the resource-procurement
systems on which human-kind depends for its survival are being undermined."
(Stuart McBurney. 'Ecology into Economics won't go.' Pub. Green Books.
Page 171)
The resource-systems
upon which humans and all other forms of life depend are precisely, good
food, fresh water, and clean air, all of which are in danger of becoming
degraded, polluted or terminally exhausted by the process of capitalist
production. The dynamic 'balance' of natural ecosystems which over long
periods of time is able to correct natural disturbances, is being progressively
weighted in the direction of large-scale environmental degradation and
mass extinction's. And the capitalist class as a whole remains largely
unconcerned. Their field of vision, along with their intellect, is focused
almost exclusively upon their bank balances and, apart from token gestures,
it is only new opportunities to enlarge these balances or spend them,
are allowed to enter their peripheral vision. Issues such as safety, sustainability,
extinction's etc. are of little or no concern to them. On humanist, environmental
and ecological issues the capitalist class seems content to imitate a
field of ostriches faced with a danger from which they cannot escape.
"It is no accident
that at the very moment when the danger of irreparable damage to the planet
becomes clear, the political and economic institutions of the West should
be celebrating the universal acknowledgement of the superiority of the
market system that is at the root of that damage....An elaborate apparatus
is required to prolong the illusion that the 'real world', in which we
are constantly being exhorted to live, really is represented by that artificial
construct defined by capitalism." (Jeremy Seabrook. 'The myth of
the Market'. Pub. Green Books. Page 168.)
The greed of the capitalist
class for more and more wealth will never allow a voluntary ending of
the present levels of ecological destruction. As a class they know no
shame, no humanity broader than their own, and no conservation outside
the conservation of their own inflated lifestyles. One way or another,
sooner or later, they will have to be compelled to change their
ways if the planet is to be saved from permanent ecological destruction.
Such compulsion will inevitably entail the revolutionary overthrow of
the capitalist system.
Human Rights.
The domination of
global capital causes so much misery, destruction and devastation that
there is considerable opposition to its rule even if that opposition is
only directed against certain aspects. As we have noted, since capitalists
are in a minority they require armed bodies of men to protect their right
to exploit the world and its peoples. This ensures that where capital
dominates there are problems of human rights. In the 'advanced' capitalist
countries, where some human rights, lost in the 17th and 18th centuries,
were regained in the 20th century, human rights are again being eroded.
In the ex-colonial countries and developing countries the capitalist class
and their political representatives often support the development of governments
run by the armed forces, for this ensures that capital can have access
to raw materials and labour uninhibited by opposition and protests from
the indigenous population. In exchange for this access for international
capital, those capitalist governments with arms manufacturers within their
boundaries arrange the sales of armaments to those military regimes. The
armaments give those regimes the means to oppress and subordinate working
and other oppressed people to the will of a military or political elite.
For the supply and sale of arms to oppressive regimes are the main means
by which oppressed and exploited people are prevented from seriously opposing
their oppressors. How this is done was clearly stated by Amnesty International
in a 1983 report.
"Hundreds of
thousands of people in the past ten years have been killed by the political
authorities in their countries. The killings continue. Day after day Amnesty
International receives reports of deliberate killings by the army and
the police, by other regular security forces, by special units created
to function outside normal supervision, by 'death squads' sanctioned by
the authorities, by government assassins. The killings take place outside
any legal or judicial process; the victims are denied any protection from
the law. Many are abducted, illegally detained, or tortured before they
are killed. Sometimes the killings are ordered at the highest level of
government: in other cases the government deliberately fails to investigate
killings or take measures to prevent further deaths. Governments often
try to cover up the fact that they have committed political killings.
They deny that the killings have taken place, they attribute them to opposition
forces, or they try to pass them off as the result of armed encounters
with government forces or of attempts by the victim to escape from custody."
('Political Killings by Governments' an Amnesty International Report.
1983, page 5.)
So just as capital
provided the motive force for killings in the stages of Colonial and Imperialist
expansion of the 18th and 19th century, it still provides the background
momentum for killings in the 20th century. What other reasons are there
for so many political killings other than to prevent opposition to the
dominant economic and political force on the planet? The hundreds of thousands
of people are not all simply killed from personal motives of anger or
jealousy. In reviewing the situation in 1998 Amnesty International had
to report that it was no better.
"Driven by political
expediency and self-interest, governments have long trampled on their
citizens rights in order to maintain power and privilege for a few,"
(Amnesty International. Report 1998, page 2)
By page 394, of the
1998 report, the reader was being informed that Amnesty International
had files open on 4,100 individual cases in 99 countries and that in the
previous year there had been, 177 cases of torture; 74 cases of 'disappearances';
133 cases of judicial execution; 173 cases of political killings and death
threats and a further 64 referred to them. Political assassination and
intimidation on this scale is a determined and systematic defence of the
status quo of power and privilege. And the status quo which dominates
and operates throughout the whole world, is the rule of international
capital. Fifty years after capitalist governments had agreed to a 'Universal
Declaration Human Rights' (U.D.H.R.), Amnesty International had to note
in its introduction that;
"..for most people
the rights in the U.D.H.R. are little more than a paper promise. A promise
that has not been fulfilled for the 1.3 billion people who struggle to
live on less than $1 (US) per day; for the 35,000 children who die of
malnutrition and preventable disease every day; for the 1 billion adults,
most of them women, who cannot read or write; for the prisoners of conscience
languishing in jails in every region of the world; or for the victims
of torture in a third of the world's countries." ( ibid. page 2)Capital,
driven by its desire for cheap raw materials and profits, deals directly,
or via its governmental representatives, with the most brutal regimes.
They supply them with weapons technology and information in exchange for
access to raw materials or the subordinated control of the working and
oppressed classes of that particular country. In this way capital produces
on a world scale, sometimes as a direct product, sometimes as a by-product,
the main causes of the loss of human rights. It does so by educating and
organising an elite within these countries, some of which it trains militarily,
who are then able to subordinate and oppress the indigenous populations
over which they rule. It is a situation which leads to the forced removal
of indigenous working people from the land, the return of Victorian type
sweatshops in the third-world countries, the removal or denial of trade
union rights, the return of large-scale child and female labour, and as
we have read - political assassination. We are tutored insidiously by
capitalist propaganda in the western countries to picture such happenings
as only occurring in third-world countries and nothing to do with western
influences. Of course neither is the case. Amnesty International has files
on the advanced capitalist countries of Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, USA. and Japan. All involve beatings, deaths
in custody and some include torture and rape. The lack of human rights
around the world is directly linked to the economic interests of the capitalistic
system.
Animal Rights.
If capital has little
regard for human life and the conditions of human life, then apart from
the few cosseted 'pets' of the rich, they will have even less regard for
the animal life of the planet. This was no more clearly demonstrated than
in how the early capitalist dealt with the exotic wild life of the planet.
The international capitalist classes and their supporters found great
'sport' in ganging up in groups and preying upon wild animals using the
technology of high-powered rifle bullets. This practice became so widespread
that it had to be eventually prevented by legal constraints because the
morality and conscience of this section of the capitalist class was insufficient
to bring an end to it of their own volition. Their great halls and studies
were at one time adorned by the decapitated heads of the animals safely
annihilated on 'expedition' or 'safari', which were proudly shown off
as trophies by these ecologically challenged and morally sick members
of the aristocracy and capitalist class.
The lack of regard
by the capitalist class for the other animal life forms with which we
share the planet and evolutionary history is also demonstrated in the
circumstances and treatment of animals used as sources of food. The forced
feeding of such animals with substances (antibiotics, steroids etc.),
which are not natural, was noted in the section on food, but if we look
closely at the way they are reared, transported and killed, most people
are in for a shock. The investment of capital in animal food production,
for profit, has brought all the horrors of the factory system of production
to animals. The occasional cruelty of the prairie ranch and farmer's field
of early capitalist food production methods is no longer deemed profitable
enough and is being progressively replaced by intensive rearing methods.
This means animals are increasingly concentrated in large numbers in as
small a space as possible, in conditions of humidity and heat, which together
with the artificial manufacture of foodstuffs, optimise their growth in
terms of size and speed of maturity.
These factories are
nothing more than concentration camps for the rapid fattening and slaughter
of animals. As with the case of the human concentration camps of Hitler
and Stalin, no regard whatsoever, is made for the fact that these animals
suffer stress, distress, anxiety and pain for most, or all, of this process.
This way of treating animals is not simply a continuation or intensification
of how humans have always treated their livestock animals. Hunter/Gather,
pastoralists, agriculturists and even early capitalist farming methods
in general treated their animals with a degree of dignity and humanity
far in advance of modern capitalist methods. It is only the insatiable
greed by capitalists for more and more profit which has introduced such
barbaric conditions into the lives of animals used as food supplies. The
policies used to attempt to control animal disease are also driven by
the profit motive. The severe culling of British animals in 2001 during
the foot and mouth epidemic is a case in point. The decision to slaughter
all animals whether infected or not, rather than wait and see if they
got the disease or alternatively inoculate them against the disease, was
a direct result of governments responding directly to the logic of capitalist
driven economics. It was cheaper in the short-term, and more profitable
to the capitalistic farmers, to slaughter the animals wholesale and compensate
the farmers than inoculate and wait. Once again Britain led the way in
this barbaric solution to a problem created and further exacerbated by
the desire for profit.
Then there is the
vexed question of animal experiments. Of course the use and treatment
of animals in so-called scientific experiments is so grotesque that not
one of these places of animal torture will allow cameras in to see what
actually goes on. All kinds of animals from cats and dogs to monkeys and
chimpanzees are routinely used as 'guinea-pigs' to test foods and chemicals
upon their internal organs and their external skin. The doses of these
chemicals are graded from slight to severe so that the testers can discover
the precise amount of any chemical which will cause certain symptoms or
certain death. In this way they can find out for their capitalist employers
an exact amount of each substance which in the short term will not cause
visible damage or noticeable effects upon the human users of the commodities
which contain these chemicals. Yet there is no guarantee that animal organs,
skin and immune systems react in precisely the same way as in humans.
This barbaric practice
is presented as necessary research primarily to protect the consumer,
but as we can see it is not. Quite the reverse. The real purpose and underlying
motive of these animal experiments is to ensure that the surplus labour
embodied in these products, be they cosmetics, cigarettes, food or whatever,
will be realisable by the continued sale of them. If noticeably detrimental
effects were caused by these products, then there would be an interruption
of sales. This interruption would cause a loss of return on the capital
invested, or a failure to gain surplus value. These animal experiments
are thus conducted primarily to protect the capitalist producer from loss
of consumers and excessive litigation when things go badly wrong. The
motive for these inhumane experiments is once again the greed of the capitalist
class for wealth accumulation.
Cultural and
technological distortion.
Not only does Capital
distort the productive needs of the bulk of the population it also subordinates
the Arts, Science and Technology to its own need for profit. Science and
Technology in particular did not grow and develop separate to the development
of capitalist production relations. Indeed it was closely interwoven with
it and dependant upon it. Science and Technology are not used to reduce
the overall time needed to work, or to produce longer lasting, less polluting,
more recyclable or safe products, all of which would benefit the bulk
of mankind. Instead, science is deployed to take shortcuts, to increase
productivity and to deliberately produce items for obsolescence; all of
which benefit only the investors of capital. As noted earlier, Science
and Technology are also predominantly harnessed to discover or produce
new commodities which can be sold in place of ones which have become worn
out or discarded.
In addition, complex
projects are developed, by Scientists and Technologists, simply for the
prestige and profit of the capitalist class, not for the good of mankind.
Billions of pounds and dollars are spent devising, perfecting and sending
items such as spy and telecommunications satellites into space; all of
which are calculated to make a profit. Not content with polluting the
planet itself, a section of the scientific community in collaboration
with the capitalist class and its representatives is now busily polluting
the 'space' around it.
With few exceptions
the Arts, have become a specialist endeavour. They are likewise subordinated
to the mass-produced culture, technology and investment needs of capitalists.
Under the pressure of the capitalist search for profit, dramatic art is
often made to imitate the process of the factory. The continuous and monotonous
production of soap operas, replicates the continuous and monotonous factory
production of soap itself. New episodes now enter the home more frequently
than the bars of soap that originally inspired them. Both are produced
for profit, even though one is perhaps of more use than the other. Capitalist-inspired
culture produces the delusion that viewing a 'talk show' or 'soap' is
more interesting and satisfying than conversing with real people and friends.
In actual fact it only has more 'interest' earning potential for finance
capital. Watching processed Television sport yields more profit for media
capitalists than people being involved in sport for themselves. Capitalist
Satellite and Cable TV networks obtain substantial profits in the currencies
of the country they operate in from turning many of its citizens into
couch-potatoes..
Listening to capitalistically
produced music is far more profitable for the record companies, than making
it yourself, so we are encouraged to listen rather than to play. Popular
music in particular has become the auditory equivalent of fast food production.
It is mostly all form and adulterated content, produced by the aid of
machines to be quickly consumed and forgotten in order to pass on to the
next 'profitable' listening experience. Popular cultures have been modified
by capital in the direction of passivity and consumption away from active
creation and creative action.
By way of a
summary.
In this chapter we
have briefly considered a number of the effects upon human life, animal
and plant ecology and the environment by the social domination of capital
and the capitalist class. Many of these effects have prompted campaigns
by groups of people throughout the capitalist world who are concerned
by the severity of these effects. They may have a separate existence to
each other and discrete forms of activity, but their common origin lies
in their opposition to one or other of the effects of the capitalist mode
of production, and its pursuit of profit above all else.
We have seen that
capital in its present 21st century form is no less exploitative and oppressive
than its 19th century counterpart. Although modern capital is dominated
by the financial sectors rather than the industrial sectors, it is no
less rapacious in its search for profits, and no more concerned for the
suffering it causes, than 19th century industrial capital. The capitalist
factory owners have been replaced by the merchant bankers and international
speculators as the dominant sectors of the ruling capitalist class, but
there is no fundamental change in the attitude of that class. They still
see the entire world, its people and its resources as means to their own
self-enrichment.
The orbiting satellite
camera and computer graphics perhaps make the Victorian explorer and his
mapping pen, look cumbersome and amateurish, but they are used for essentially
the same purpose. Once prosperous and healthy peoples who managed their
flocks, tilled their soil and produced their handicrafts, feeding themselves
and their families in the process, are no longer bought and sold as slaves,
but their ancestors, in nearly every corner of the globe, have been reduced
to wage-slavery, increasing degradation and in many cases begging.
On a world scale,
taking all the human beings, animal life and natural resources into consideration,
the effect of the last two hundred or so years of capitalist domination
has been unprecedented. The celebration of capitalism's few technological
miracles, is in stark contrast to its almost complete technological devastation
of the world's natural resources. Capital has created a class of billionaires
and a moderate sized middle class, who are 'comfortably off' but this
does not remove or negate the fact that the overwhelming majority of the
world's population and resources are oppressed, exploited and overwhelmingly
poor.
Modern capital, on
the basis of a high level of technical and scientific knowledge and skill,
has turned many areas of the world into little more than a dustbin. The
reason for this is that scientific and technological knowledge have been
primarily harnessed to the individualistic pursuit of capitalist profit.
The technical ability to recycle, or safely dispose of toxic and other
waste materials from production, does exist, but as long as using this
knowledge and skill reduces profit, this fact will guarantee it will not
be used sufficiently. It may be more advantageous for the planet and its
inhabitants, in the long term, to turn to sustainable production and leave
huge tracts of forest intact, but where a capitalist can identify a profit
from logging, then we can be sure he or she will use every means to ensure
that every last tree is cut down.
Only legal or physical
compulsion can prevent capitalist industrial pollution and resource stripping.
No moral, ethical or considerations of human or animal suffering will
stand in the way of the capitalists' search for more wealth. If the individual
capitalist is squeamish or wishes to be considered more cultured and progressive
they simply pay someone else to do the nasty bits. Mechanisms have been
created which allow them to lend their capital, or subcontract their production,
to someone else less squeamish. In this way the source of their profit
is sufficiently masked or disguised.
From every point of
view; environmental, human rights, working or peasant class welfare and
well-being or animal welfare, capital is an obscene and destructive method
of production and distribution of goods and services. Only from the selfish,
individual capitalist point of view, can its existence be justified. All
attempts to regulate its destructive effects on the world and its environment
have come to little or nothing. From the standpoint of the working and
oppressed peoples of the world, Capital needs to be superseded by a different
social system. Even from the standpoint of those who are 'better off'
and who can see beyond their own immediate needs and beyond their own
lifetime, there is a case for radical change. But what kind of change?
The next chapter will look at attempts to change some of the negative
and destructive aspects of capitalist rule by the method of 'reform' and
why these failed.
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