Internationalist Perspective

In Pontecorvo’s film Queimada, set in the 1830s, the agent provocateur, Sir William Walker, points out that a decade can show the contradictions of a century. Fast forward almost 200 years. It only took a few days into 2016, the strains of Auld Lang Syne having barely faded away, to highlight the contradictions of the whole capitalist system today. Once a decade was needed, now only a few days; the acceleration of forces and events is palpable. Indeed, although the various aspects of life under capitalism have always been linked – and those always highlighted in times of crisis – today’s expressions of crisis can move from one domain to another to expose a quite astonishing interconnectedness and immediacy as the past few weeks since the start of this year show.

This article aims to put some perspectives on the acceleration of events. One can always point to the underlying crisis of capitalism – its crisis of value – but this crisis never expresses itself without the decisions and actions of classes and groups, and the vicissitudes of events. It is on these behaviours that this article focusses. In a few pages it is impossible to review the whole world situation so I have selected a few key issues to concentrate on.

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2016 opened with a major fall in the Yuan, forcing the Chinese rulers to find an appropriate response against the backcloth of falling economic expectations. Slackening of economic activity in the world’s major workshop has led to overcapacities in world shipping, air freighting, steel production and extraction industries– all of whose output and share prices have fallen substantially. The oil price fell further and it has not yet bottomed given that Iran has now rejoined the world market. The ever more murderous wars in the Middle East continued apace with the pivotal Saudi/Iranian rivalry and Russian interventions as prominent features. The mass migrations from the region into Europe are straining relationships between EU members; fences are going up between Shengen countries and there is a political and social backlash against immigrants. Meanwhile, all factions of the ruling class defend their right to bomb and murder civilians as and when they wish. The big question is: where is the response of the proletariat?

But before coming to that question, we must look at some aspects of the global crisis since last year. As a starting point, I refer back to the text of October 2014 – ‘Heart of Darkness’ – and its major themes in Internationalist Perspective 60. To recap, for some decades we lived in a period of post-imperialist blocs, post-Reagan and Thatcher economics, in which there was an accelerated development of the productive forces, an ever-tightening integration of world capital and its market that promoted both increased interdependence of national capitals and increased competition. This is a particularly profound contradiction today, around which much of the bourgeoisie’s policies are centred. Along with these economic changes, more nation states are asserting themselves aggressively as regional or global imperialist players. Furthermore, for some years strong social movements have collided time and again with broadening imperialist interests – as exemplified in the Arab Spring. A year ago we said that with the deepening economic crisis and the intensification of contradictions against political and social constraints, the world was fissile. It still is, and is getting hotter.

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Financial Exhaustion

Consider how exhausted are the policies of the bourgeoisie in the economically-advanced countries following the financial crisis of 2008. Quantitative Easing – implemented in various ways across the world – was introduced to support the price of capital and increase the money supply through central banks buying medium and longer-term debt;it has lost almost all its leverage. Although the US stopped the policy in October 2014, the Japanese and European Central Bank have continued with it. Indeed the ECB increased the amount of monthly easing hugely a year ago and again, in desperation, this month by a further third:the current rate of QE is €80 billions/month.

Low interest rates, scarcely above zero for several years, have in places gone negative. The low oil price has brought lower revenues to producing countries while it has not stimulated industrial production in the importing countries. And now the banking system is again showing problems, especially in the Eurozone where banks’ share values have plunged. Deutsche Bank reported heavy losses in January and questions about its ability to pay interest on its contingent liability bonds have highlighted underlying risks. Worse still is the Italian banking system which is a chronic worry to the E.U. And underneath, the Eurozone’s structural problems remain. In the US, the Federal Reserve regrets the view it took in December that the American economy was growing, when it took the opportunity to raise interest rates. In February, Yelland told Congress that “Financial conditions in the US have recently become less supportive of growth,” and that foreign economic developments “pose risks to US economic growth”. The weakening of the economies in the West is reducing demand for Chinese manufacture and, in turn, weakens that country’s growth.And yet the key global policy makers have no alternative plans.

The Oil Price Plummet

The oil price has fallen catastrophically for producing countries – from over $130/barrel to under $28 in recent weeks.

Saudi Arabia abandoned its role as global swing producer over a year ago and until recently maintained high production levels, a strategy initially intended to undermine the US fracking and tar sands production. However, this policy – successful regarding the fracking but not against the tar sands – has been draining the Saudi finances savagely. It is difficult to know how long they can keep it up especially with the costs of their wars, although the oil minister says he is prepared to let it drop to $20. Iran’s output to the world market is only enlarging the glut. The Russian economy likewise suffers – indeed its economy shrank by 6% in 2015 – and the ruling class is imposing savage austerity measures on its enormous population.

There are signs of change. By February Saudi Arabia had made approaches for cooperation to Russia (and other producers both in and outside OPEC) – their opposing military-politico activities in Syria notwithstanding. A key meeting is scheduled to take place in Qatar in April where a realignment of oil producers is likely to take place along with agreement on reduced production and a floor for the oil price.

As a symptom of deeper economic weaknesses, the low oil price did not stimulate global production over the past year so its increase will not contribute to an improvement there.

Today’s Warfare

Imperialist rivalry has long been a permanent condition of capitalism, with much of the second half of the 20th Century dominated by that between the American and Russian blocs.Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the physiognomy of world imperialism has undergone great change.

Today’s sharpening imperialist rivalries are highlighted in many parts of the world, not only between global powers but also between regional imperialisms which have grown in reach and aggressiveness. Characteristics may differ in different theatres – such as in the Middle East, East and South Asia, or in various parts of Africa – in terms of adversaries, material, and strategic and political focus. But together, whatever else they express, these wars constitute a bloody violence against civilian populations; of bourgeois forces against the mass of society.

The Middle East is a vipers’ nest of shifting alliances and hostilities. What used to be the focus – the Palestinian question – has been marginalized; no-one now maintains the fiction of a Palestinian/Israeli peace process.Now other hostilities have moved to centre stage. The rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia has intensified with both committing air and ground forces and proxies into Syria, Iraq and Yemen which are treated as free-fire zones where civilians are indiscriminately slaughtered along with militias. Turkey’s conflicts with Kurdish forces has led to tension with the US which arms them, as has its shooting down of overflying Russian aircraft with Putin. For years the West – the US and other NATO members – has regarded the skies as its own. No longer. In this theatre global powers, regional powers and nearly one hundred militias are all operating in a murderous chaos from which has been generated a massive flood of refugees into Lebanon and Jordan far greater even than that into Europe.

The intricacies of this theatre of conflict change day by day but there are, however, some developments that should be pointed out. In the face of perceived Western, particularly US, hesitation to commit ground forces to confront the Islamic State and to sanction the Assad regime after it crossed a so-called ‘red line’ by gassing its citizens with chemical weapons,Russia entered the fray with objectives of its own. The combination of Russian cruise missiles and air power and Iranian Revolutionary Guard forces on the ground substantially overwhelmed IS and other anti-Assad forces and provided breathing space to the Syrian regime. The Russian pull-out (whatever the actual level turns out to be) then reduced the danger to them of being sucked into the quagmire. The extension of Russia’s use of military force in Crimea and Ukraine to Syria has further complicated the already uneasy relationship between the two strongest military powers. While Putin does not want to have direct military conflict with the West (although his aircraft are not averse to harrying US naval ships near Crimea and South Korea) he has shown himself adept at hobbling Western policies and wrong-footing the US. Putin does not necessarily want to maintain Assad in power, but this action gives Russia an ongoing role and a say in his replacement.

In this regard it is noteworthy that the cynical call for humanitarian aid to the Syrian population and for a cessation in hostilities came from Kerry and Lavrov in a joint US/Russian statement; subsequently, they both called for more progress in the Munich talks which may become again the stage for an illusory ‘peace in our time’ in this theatre of war. The Russian maneuvers have highlighted to the US the urgent need to define their military posture more coherently.

The Obama Administration has over recent years signalled a desire to re-focus on the Pacific region and to reduce commitments in the Middle East. This has been encouraged in part by the reduced strategic value of Saudi oil to the US and a related and substantial distancing from that erstwhile close ally and also by China’s increased belligerence in the Asia-Pacific region. In the South China Sea, China’s creation of artificial islands to justify exploitation rights and extended military reach have substantially increased tensions with Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia. US Navy ships have challenged these activities by sailing within Chinese-claimed waters. Naval exercises in the area will take place this year involving US, Japanese and Indian forces. China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have their own tangle of relationships – of rivalries and collaborations – and all are wary of North Korea’s possible agendas. Although China may become the world’s largest economy, this does not translate in the short term into a military capability able to rival the US but its ability to pressure its neighbours will depend in part on US military commitment and the region is a long way from the American mainland. Yet, China’s very bellicosity encourages its rivals into the American aegis.

The ability of the US to re-focus American energies of course will depend on the reduction of hostilities in the Middle East and that doesn’t look likely any time soon. The challenges posed by Russia and China in their different spheres were among the main challenges that US Secretary of Defence Ash Carter identified in early February when presenting his 2017 military budget to Congress. In this presidential election year the American ruling class will be overhauling its strategic priorities and reassessing its view on the commitment to ground forces in foreign wars. The Obama Administration’s efforts to pull out from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not given the US what it wanted and we can expect Obama’s successor to have a new mandate for more aggressive pursuit of American interests.

Interwoven with these global and regional imperialist antagonisms is the havoc created by the terrorist franchises which have spread across the globe: kidnappings in West Africa by Boko Haram, terrorist strikes in Europe by Islamic State and al-Qaeda groups, murderous street shoot-outs in Djakarta and Paris, bombings in Ankara and Brussels, Libya in chaos. The Islamic State, Daesh, has long spent its start-up funding from its original Saudi and Qatari backers and is now mainly self-sufficient thanks to selling oil and extorting the population under its control. Training foreign fighters and sending them home is a low-cost means of spreading the impact of the economic, political and social consequences of world imperialism’s policies back to China, Russia, Europe and the US where the propaganda of the ruling class tries to decouple their own long-term violence from the current blowback. Once the bourgeoisies of these major states considered their terror could be applied with impunity, now the jihadist terror reaches into their homelands. War has become normal everywhere; war is all around. Rarely do nation states now declare war on each other and march armies to battlefields. Today, war is endemic to everyday life for more and more populations under capitalism.

Just two days after the recent carnage in Brussels a UN war-crimes tribunal convicted Radovan Karadzic of the murder of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims amid wider crimes against humanity during the atrocious Balkan wars in the 1990s and underlined that fact that there is nothing the Eastern jihadists can teach Christian Europe about barbarism.

Stressed-out Europe

The state of the economy is not the only source of stress in the EU. The most dramatic and gutwrenching human images of the last year concern the massive migrations of peoples all over the world fleeing exploitation, oppression and destruction of their means of existence. Not since 1945 have there been such massive flights from conflict zones. From Syria, Iraq and Lebanon; from Eritrea and Sudan; from Yemen; from West and North Africa; from everywhere they flee, fleeing from war, destitution and torture. They flee from the bombings of the West and Russia, from Islamic State, the Taliban and Boko Haram, from a multitude of armies and militias. Millions have made it no further than countries adjacent to the war zones. But over the recent past a torrent of migrants have aimed for refuge in Europe where directly and indirectly they are intensifying social and political stresses on the EU. En route they have provided the raw material for human trafficking to become an industrial-scale – and murderous – business.

The dominant public mood has swung back and forward between sympathy and hostility for the migrants. Merkel, initially lauded for her openness towards the refugees, has found her political position suddenly become precarious. Not only in Germany but in most other European countries right-wing groups and parties are amplifying and preying off currents of xenophobia. The stresses are considerable as the ruling class spreads the social wage across an increased population; the effects are not only economic but are also expressed in cultural clashes such as in Cologne at the 2015 year-end. This is all grist to the mill of right wing governments such as the Law and Justice Party in Poland and Hungary’s Fidesz. (Long concerned about Fidesz, it has only taken a few weeks experience of the new Polish government for the European Commission to consider monitoring the Polish government to assess if its policies pose “systemic threats” to the rule of law.)

The migrations have generated huge problems for the EU rulers and forced them to take extraordinary and near-panicked responses. After 20 years of free movement in the Shengen Area the fences are going up again; country after country is adding controls to handle the flows of people and deal with their settlement. And after holding up Turkey’s application for accession to the EU for decades, in only a few days the EU concocted a deal promising to accelerate accession talks, open the Shengen area to Turkish citizens, take up to 72,000 refugees from Turkish camps, and give €6 billion cash in return for Turkey taking back from Greece those migrants who fail to get asylum. Clearly, this is not ‘business as usual’.

Furthermore, the migrations have provided cover for jihadists to return to Europe from the war zones. The carnage in Paris and Brussels will generate more tension around the migrations. It will surely be used in the UK where the Brexit referendum is scheduled for June where parties make poisonous cocktails of issues: refugees and terrorists, economic migrancy and so-called benefit tourism, racism and separatism. Separatist tendencies in the UK are strengthening, although it’s not clear just how much. Attention over the past couple of years concentrated on a possible Scottish exit from the UK, but there are indications of stronger support for Brexit. It’s not just the right wing of the Conservative Party but also the UK Independence Party and parts of the Labour Party (which historically has blown hot and cold on Europe) that want to leave the EU. Since the referendum will be a popular vote, parliamentary party results do not give an indicator. European governments are finally waking up to the fact that a British exit is a real possibility.

Coupling the Eurozone economic problems, the weaknesses of the Mediterranean countries and various separatist tendencies such as in the UK, Spain and Greece to the migration issue it is clear that Europe is under great stress at all levels. Some bourgeois commentators forecast the end of the EU; this is premature although the ruling class is clearly feeling instability grow in the face of all these events.

The Politics of Alienation

One striking expression of alienation today is in the circus that is the current American presidential primaries season.

Early expectations for the presidential election were a clash between the Bush and Clinton dynasties representing the Republican and Democratic Parties. Having got majorities in the Senate and the House, the Republican Party thought that with the right candidate they could complete the triad with the Presidency too and the funds gathered indicated that Jeb Bush had a good chance for the nomination. In the Democratic camp, Clinton looked to have the most suitable credentials: a Senator, Secretary of State and – a woman. The trend towards banality in previous campaigns looked set to continue. However, the major surprise has been the performances of Trump and Sanders: on the Republican side a billionaire who doesn’t trust the politicians he used to buy, wants Mexico to pay for a wall to be built along the border and to ban Muslims entering the US; and from the Democrats an elderly senator who describes himself as a democratic socialist (a word that would have previously anathematized any politician using it) and who offers free education and a hike to the minimum wage. Both these candidates have reached outside the party structures directly to a population that has suffered years of austerity and increasing precariousness in livelihood and is more and more turned off by jaded political institutions and processes which are imposed by force, money and lies. Their populist rhetoric and the strength of its resonance in their respective constituencies has confounded both party establishments, as it did in last year’s election of Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party in England.

There is an enormous well of anxiety, anger and cynicism in the population and the political castes in many Western countries are tapping into it for their own benefit.The non-stop global media coverage showing the brutality of IS, the carnage in the Middle East, the flood of refugees into Europe, the terrorist attacks are then used by politicians and the media to heighten anxiety and disorientation, sustaining their mystifications.In the absence of struggle the cycle continues.Perversely, it appears that the worse capitalism gets the more ideological weapons the bourgeoisie finds to use against the population.

Social and Class Struggles

In the face of worsening conditions, social struggles are triggered and respond to different local conditions; there is no longer a clearly identifiable general tendency expressed across the world as there was in the enormous response to the consequences of the global financial crisis of 2008. The social movements following that crisis had many faces: the Arab Spring, Greek demonstrations, the indignados movements in Spain and Portugal, the Occupy movement which had nearly 1,000 demonstrations in nearly 100 countries (over 600 in the US), as well as many specific reactions to issues such as cuts in education support. The response of the various bourgeoisies ranged from temporarily giving concessions to brutal suppression. The period did show the importance of a global phenomenon to provide focus for resistance to the austerity the ruling class almost universally imposed.

Struggles have become more heterogeneous, more disparate. In the US, ‘Black Lives Matter’ has grown in reaction to long-term police brutality.In India, the Dalits maintain an ongoing campaign for more civil rights. Communal strife, a mainstay of the Indian ruling class, has increased and the level of class struggle has diminished considerably over the past several years.

In contrast, social and class struggles have increased hugely in China. It’s difficult to assess the numbers of riots that take place as the various official statistics are likely to have been doctored. Nonetheless the numbers of protest events against state bureaucrats, corruption and forcible removal of people to make way for new projects are certainly to be measured in the tens of thousands annually. The importance of dealing with social unrest is reflected in the fact that the Chinese budget for spending on internal security exceeds its military expenditure.

And more ominously for the ruling class, the struggles of Chinese workers on their own class terrain have been increasing over the past several years, doubling between 2014 and 2015. To this must be factored in shutdowns and contractions in various parts of the Chinese economy.Thousands of small coal mines are being closed in an accelerated programme which will displace one million workers (added to the nearly 900,000 miners that have been laid off since 2013). Steel plants are being closed in the face of a world steel glut; already, dumping on the world market in past months has led to the eradication of the UK steel industry. Shipyards will be idle because of shipping overcapacity. The ruling class is bracing itself for more reaction from the workers.

The Lunar New Year eruption in Hong Kong over the police mistreatment of the fish ball street-sellers highlights the underlying social tension.Massive confrontations with the state can appear to come out of nowhere. This is at a time when a global economic downturn is expected and the economic issues are presenting themselves starkly in shutdowns and unemployment for huge numbers of workers even provoking strikes and demonstrations while the ceremonial National People’s Congress was in session in Beijing.

The global dispersion of the collective worker can make it difficult for proletarians to see in class terms what capitalism is doing to them, so the experience of the Chinese workers will help to highlight the full extent of capitalist exploitation and – hopefully – emphasize the power of collective action. In a world so full of violence and mayhem serving only the interests of the bourgeoisie, the potential for working class struggle in China is welcome but it must not be viewed with any triumphalism.

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Clearly the immiseration across the planet is by itself insufficient to provoke revolutionary action. Of the consciousness necessary to accompany class action we have seen only hints. But the future convergence of several factors – concerning economic hardship, the enhanced threat of state violence and the willingness of workers to act collectively in their class defence – may well provide opportunity to start to breach our containment within capitalist social relations.

Marlowe

March 25, 2016

A Critique of the theses of the GIK and “labor coupons” (Excerpts from an exchange with Kees)

Kees, you write:

“The problem that I see is the following: as we are not in a situation of ‘abundance’ but in a situation of ‘scarcity’ there will inevitably be ‘exchange’ (or else total arbitrariness) based on some kind of calculation. The only possibility would seem to be take labor time as the basis of the calculation.”

The link between scarcity and exchange is something that also seems to me to be very important. Exchange and its main instrument, money, are an extremely effective means to ensure the circulation of goods in conditions of scarcity and a developed division of labor, as history has amply demonstrated. Too often we believe that it suffices to declare money “abolished” for it to disappear.

We cannot do away with money without eliminating the necessity for exchange. The Argentine experience of 2001, the “Movement for a social money” shows how, in a situation of scarcity, if the “official” money disappears, other forms of money reappear “spontaneously” as a product of the need to exchange in order to survive. Cigarettes were used as commodity-money during the Second World War by prisoners, and still are today in prisons in the United States. During the 20th century there were many situations, especially in times of war or in statist regimes particularly where governments have tried to ban free exchanges and limit the role of money by imposing mechanisms of rationing. The result has always been that the market and money did not disappear, but developed in their most pernicious form: the black market.

As long as “abundance” or rather a “sufficiency” of goods has not been reached, the tendency to have recourse to commodity exchange and therefore to money will remain. In the “internal” world of free software, for example, money has practically disappeared not only because of ethical convictions but mainly because of the intrinsic nature of digital goods, freely reproducible, making them “abundant” as soon as they are created.
If money is spontaneously generated by the need for exchange, and if exchange is unavoidable for the distribution of non-abundant goods, or at least some of them, it is likely that, during the “transition” to a communist society, for a longer or shorter period, a form of “money” will subsist, side by side with a non-commodity economy and interwoven with it.

The instinctive and natural repulsion every communist has for money is probably why this reality is so often ignored. Yet from the moment one knows that money and exchange will not disappear in an instant, simultaneously across the globe, their coexistence with the developing non-commodity “communized” sector, would appear inevitable. This coexistence is not essentially a geographical one, but rather one shaped by areas of economic activity. So I certainly agree with the idea of a tendency for the persistence of exchange as (and where) scarcity remains.

That said, two remarks are important:

• In no case, within the sector where the producers have become masters of the productive machinery, can labor power be treated as a commodity. Even assuming that a portion of the share distributed to the individual producer must take a “monetary” form, it must not be determined on the basis of the “value” of labor power.
• Exchange is not the only way to manage scarcity. Rationing, free distribution, based on what is produced can also deal with such a situation, “by avoiding the vicious detour of a calculation based on labor time”, in the words of Paul Mattick who made that very point in his critical introduction to the re-publication of the text of the GIK, to which I will come back.

I had written:

“No, it does not seem that “exchange” disappears with the system advocated by Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Program.

You replied:

“Correct, but, given \[the\] context, I obviously spoke not of “exchange” in general terms (such as in an “exchange of letters,” but indirect “exchange” via value, in contrast to direct “exchange” by labor time. You do not dispute that for Marx money, exchange (via value) and wage labor will disappear when we directly calculate labor time instead of indirectly via value. But you do not say if you agree here with Marx.”

I’m not sure if I understand you: you seem to think that, according to Marx, “exchange” as long as it is not done by using money, is no longer, strictly speaking, “exchange”; as long as the quantity of what is to be exchanged is not measured “via value” but “directly” via “labor time” there is no “exchange” in the strict sense of the term but only in the vague sense, as in the expression an “exchange of letters.”

I don’t agree with such an interpretation. It is true that the term exchange may have a very general sense that does not involve strict reciprocity, as in the example you give of epistolary exchange. That is why very often, especially in English, I specify “symmetrical exchange” to remove any ambiguity. But when Marx uses this term in the Critique of the Gotha Program he does so in the sense of the exchange of equivalents. Whether we measure that value by market mechanisms or by “scientific calculation” (if that is possible, to which I shall return), does not change the fact that what takes place is a symmetrical exchange; an exchange of equivalents. Marx specifies in this text:

“Clearly, the same principle is at work here as that which regulates the exchange of commodities as far as this is an exchange of equal values.”[1]

If indeed in Marx’s vision of the “lower phase of communist society” there is no longer wage labor that is not because there is no longer symmetrical exchange, but because that which the producer receives (“the same amount of labor he has given to society in another form”) no longer corresponds to the value of his labor power. His labor power is no longer a commodity; it is no longer for sale.

As for money, Marx indeed said that in this phase money disappears. Or rather, he said, among other places, in Capital volume II:

“There is no reason why the producers should not receive paper tokens permitting them to withdraw an amount corresponding to their labour time from the social consumption stocks. But these tokens are not money; they do not circulate.”[2]

And in Capital volume I, speaking of Owen’s labor vouchers, Marx seems to repeat what he wrote: “On this point I will only say that Owen’s ‘labour money’ [voucher], for instance, is no more ‘money’ than a theatre ticket is.”[3] Engels, in Anti-Dühring, cites this same reference of Marx.

I have doubts about the fact that such goods do not circulate or would not tend to be used to fulfill monetary functions, especially for the exchange between individuals of “individual consumer items” which, for Marx, remain the “property of the individual”.

What calculation?

You say that the exchange, in the “transition period” must be done “on the basis of a calculation” and that “the only possibility appears to be to take labor time as the basis for that calculation.”

For the GIK one of the main arguments to justify the need for this calculation is that it creates “an accurate basis for the relationship between producers and product.” “The relation between social product and producers is defined in an immediate way” and is no longer dependent on the goodwill of “higher” economic organs, which inevitably transform themselves, as in Russia, into organs of exploitation: “… in every society where the relation between producers and product is not exact, where it is determined by persons, there necessarily arises an apparatus of exploitation, even after the elimination of private property in the means of production.”

But the question that arises is whether this “exact” calculation is possible. This calculation requires, firstly, the measurement of the average social labor contained in each product; secondly, the measure of labor time provided by individual producers. Now these two evaluations clash over “qualitative” difficulties.

For the measurement of the labor contained in each product, there is the problem of assessing the contribution of all activities whose outcome does not apply directly to a specific product but contributes to the productive capacity of society in general, especially those related to knowledge, science, social organization, etc.

Marx, in the Grundrisse, already noted that:

“To the degree that labour time – the mere quantity of labour – is posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree does direct labour and its quantity disappear as the determinant principle of production – of the creation of use values – and is reduced both quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate moment, compared to general scientific labour, technological application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general productive force arising from social combination in total production on the other side – a combination which appears as a natural fruit of social labour (although it is a historic product). Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form dominating production.”[4]

or:

“Capital itself is the moving contradiction, \[in\] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth (..) On the one side, it calls to life all the powers of science and of nature, as of social combination and of social intercourse, in order to make the creation of wealth independent (relatively) of the labour time employed on it. On the other side, it wants to use labour time as the measuring rod for the giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within the limits required to maintain the already created value as value.”[5]

If the measure of wealth by direct labor time is already a problem in capitalism, why continue on this basis to organize production and distribution with the end of capitalism? With the development of new technologies and the ubiquity of digital software, having become essential at all stages of production, but where the measure of the labor time contained in each utilization is practically impossible, it appears all the more as an absurdity.

At the other end of the exchange, it is necessary to measure the labor done by the individual producer. For Marx, as for the GIK, this measure must be reduced to that of labor time, regardless of its intensity, regardless of the producer’s physical or intellectual qualities. One hour of labor as an engineer gives a right of consumption identical to an hour of labor as a sweeper.[6]

Marx points out the inequalities that the application of such a system entails, not only because it remunerates unequal labor equally, but also because the individual needs of producers are unequal: “one worker is married, another not; one has more children than the other, etc”. He concludes that “To avoid all these disadvantages, right should not be equal, but unequal. … [But] these disadvantages are inevitable in the lower phase of communist society.” In this particular aspect, the system described by these lines written more than 130 years ago appears more indifferent to the individual needs of producers than even the capitalism of the twentieth century with its welfare state which foresaw special compensations for the unemployed or large families.

But beyond the questions of compensation for labor, right at the outset there is the question of how to determine what should be considered as “work”.

How to distinguish the activity “work” , which alone would give one the right to obtain consumer vouchers, from other activities? Already in capitalism, an ever growing part of the digital goods are no longer produced by “work”, in the sense of a separate, paid activity. “Peer production” (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) are essentially the work of unpaid volunteers, who do it for the fun, and for the pleasure of being useful to others.

The disappearance of “labor” or of the distinction labor – leisure can be seen as one of the parameters making it possible to evaluate the progress of overcoming capitalism. To base the distribution of individual consumer goods on the measure of the “work” performed by each person, besides resting on criteria that are difficult to establish, tends to perpetuate a reality which precisely must be overcome as quickly as possible.

On a more general level, measuring the contributions of individual producers is deemed to create (or maintain) a motivation to participate in social production. But as such, this “motivation” is based on the old bourgeois principle: if you don’t work, you don’t eat; if you don’t work enough, you won’t have enough, and this independently of the existing social possibilities. Yet to learn how to participate in social production in another way than under the whip of the blackmail of hunger seems an urgent priority as soon as the collectivity will possess the main means of production.

The certainty that people will work, which is deemed to be guaranteed by the obligation to work and by the proportionality between work and the access to products, does not compensate for the negative aspects induced by the spirit of coercion which such a system demands.

Who would have thought 20 years ago that products like Linux or Wikipedia, which represent millions of hours of “work,” could be accomplished without any economic coercion? Why would that not be the case for material production? The social atmosphere created by the fact that the means of production are in the hands of society, as a part of the common goods, should generate an enthusiasm and a collective spirit which would be the most powerful motivation to participate in production, without individual economic coercion.

What about the “loafers” who’d refuse to participate freely?

Even in flocks of birds there often are some “loafers” who don’t participate like the others in the collective watch for predators, when the group sets down to eat. It doesn’t mean the others condemn them to starve. In a society where the means of production are no longer privately owned, the concrete process of production can and must be organized by the producers themselves. The very concept itself of the means of production (machines, work spaces, etc.) can and must be essentially determined by the gratification they can give to those who use them. To transform productive activity so that it becomes satisfying must be FROM THE VERY BEGINNING be a priority of a post-capitalist transition. To the degree that things depend on human will, we should focus on that method, rather than on individual economic coercion, as an incentive to participate in production.

The system based on the principle “to each according to his labor” therefore seems inappropriate, not only because the calculations it implies seem obsolete and impossible to carry out rigorously, but also because:

• It maintains the principle of symmetrical exchange;
• It maintains the logic of individual economic coercion;
• It maintains the calculation of the parameters of production and distribution on the basis of labor time instead of being based on use values, the concrete physical quanta.

On this last point, it is, again, necessary to take into account the contribution of the new information and communication technologies.
The measure of human needs, on the one hand, and of the actual possibilities of production, on the other, in physical terms (e.g., the quantity of gallons of milk per child, on the one hand, and the number of dairy cows on the other), are far more simple to make than any assessments based on average social labor time.
Estimates of human needs are obviously more complex, since they involve subjective factors. From one point of view, human needs can be considered as infinite. An individual may possibly be convinced that he absolutely needs a rocket for himself in order to walk in space. But we can reasonably hope that in a revolutionary period or a less alienated society, most people can assess their personal material needs taking into account what is possible and in harmony with the collective welfare.

The big department stores and malls increasingly use electronic equipment to register, aside from their accounting in monetary terms (e.g. x thousand dollars from the sale of milk), the physical quantities of the products they sold (e.g. y thousands of milk bottles). This assessment in physical terms is critical to their inventory management, to foresee future orders. Through the networks on the internet this information circulates globally and is transmitted to producers, sometimes in “real time” and automatically, virtually without human intervention.

This measure of the needs and productive possibilities in physical terms today is skewed by the logic of capitalism. Human needs are recognized only to the extent that those needs are ‘solvent’, expressed by people with the means to pay; production possibilities are taken into account only to the extent they are profitable for capital. But freed from their capitalist matrix, informational links between production and consumption enabled by new technologies are an important asset to quickly dispense with the logic of the commodity.

You write:

“If you don’t agree with my critique of the association of Proudhon’s ‘labor money’ with Marx’s ‘consumer vouchers’, what are, in your view, the differences between them?”

Your critique is correct. It would indeed be a mistake to confuse the “distribution coupons” or “labor vouchers” proposed by Marx with Proudhon’s “labor money”. For Marx these vouchers are not money because they do not circulate. And above all, they do not presuppose the same social conditions of production.

You ask:

“With respect to the two different “stages” of communism not being opposed to one another, the same question: what are in your view, the differences between the two?”

In the process described by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Program, he distinguishes a “lower phase” and a “higher phase of communist society”. In both, the proletariat has possession of the means of production, the old propertied classes have been expropriated, but in the first, the social and material conditions do not yet permit everyone to take “according to his needs.” I share some essential aspects of the description outlined by Marx. But on other aspects, I disagree with interpretations that have often been made; and Marx’s text is consistent with them.

I agree with the idea that what characterizes communism in terms of social production and distribution is the universal application of the principle: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

I am in agreement with the elements provided by Marx to characterize the higher stage of communism:

” … when the enslaving subjugation of individuals to the division of labour, and thereby the antithesis between intellectual and physical labour, have disappeared; when labour is no longer just a means of keeping alive, but has itself become a vital need; when the all-round development of individuals has also increased their productive powers and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly”[7]

Finally, I also agree with the idea that as long as “all the springs of cooperative wealth” do not “flow more abundantly” it will not be possible to distribute everything in a free and unlimited way.

However, I do not agree with two interpretations or deductions that are made of the picture drawn by Marx.
The first is the one that considers that, before a social revolution has put all the means of production in the hands of producers, no social relationship that is in some way “communist” can arise or exist, not even in embryonic forms. I believe that the relations of production that are developing in the sphere of digital goods, such as the peer production that created free software, Wikipedia, Open Science, etc., are real seeds of communist, non-market relations and that they will be a major asset in building a communist society.

The second interpretation is the one that concludes from the need to develop the productive forces that individual consumption needs must be considered as a secondary concern compared to the development of the means of production, especially industry. Such interpretations served to justify the Stalinist theories of “socialist accumulation” and the horrors of the construction of state capitalism. It’s from the beginning, not after a long period of “sacrifices” that production should be directly oriented towards satisfaction of human needs.

Conclusions and alternatives

But recognizing that there are two “phases” in the transition from a capitalist to a communist society means recognizing that, in the first, there is the problem of how to organize production and distribution under conditions where there is not yet sufficient material affluence to allow unlimited free distribution. How then to limit consumption to the existing possibilities of production? If we abandon the wage principle “to each according to the value of his labor power”; and if we reject the principle “to each according to his labor”, what principle can we use?

I see only one possibility: to each according to what’s socially possible, averaging a “dynamic rationing”, i.e. taking into account the evolution of the possibilities in real time. The terms of such a “rationing” of not yet abundant goods remain to be defined and may vary depending on the product, the geographical framework, and the imagination of the people involved. It is a distribution according to the principle “to each according to his needs/desires”, limited, rationed by what is really possible, as in house-hold economies, or as in a fishing village where, after having collectively pulled in the nets, the villagers receive from the catch, taking into account what has been taken and the fact that all those who need have a share.

It is a conscious and direct way to deal with scarcity. It’s the logical consequence of the fact that the means of production are owned collectively (placed in the common domain). If we participate in production as collective owners, production can be distributed collectively, always taking into account, in a dynamic way, what is possible and what is necessary. Computer networks make instantaneously available, everywhere, the information required for such a system to be possible. The question then is: will consumers voluntarily respect the restrictions when they exist? Will such a system not collapse due to multiple abuses?

Such a system requires a great degree of collective consciousness and of individual responsibility. This may seem a utopia, seen from the point of view of the capitalist social jungle. But let’s not underestimate the change in attitudes that would be induced by a society where production is oriented directly and exclusively to the human needs, where the orientation of the production is collectively agreed upon. One of the most important contributions of open source and peer production was to prove by facts that humans can co-operate, share and produce the most complex things without the incentive of monetary profit and without state coercion. Some thought that Wikipedia would never develop because it would continuously be destroyed by “vandals”. The intelligence of Wikipedia was to trust the collective mind of the participants, to base its rules on the needs of that trust, not on the danger posed by vandals. The vandals have existed since the beginning of Wikipedia, (7%, according to some estimates), but they remain a small minority and the attention of the majority contributed to neutralizing their negative action.

The collective consciousness will be a key element to manage the transition and, again, the new communication technologies will greatly facilitate the establishment of the “collective brain” which such an undertaking requires.

Raoul Victor

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NOTES:

[1]: Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme in Marx, The First International and After, Penguin Books, p.346.

[2]: Marx, Capital, Volume II, Penguin Books, p.434.

[3]: Marx, Capital, Volume I, Penguin Books, p.188

[4]: Grundrisse, Penguin Books, p.700

[5]: Ibid, p.706

[6]: The GIK questioned the possibility of rigorously applying this principle from the outset: “Perhaps at the outset it will still be temporarily necessary to pay intellectual labor more; for example, 40 hours of labor would give one the right to a product equivalent to 80 or 120 hours of labor.” But it is then pointed out that this must disappear as soon as “things are settled.”

[7]: Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme, op.cit., p.347. The word labor is used here in a very general sense for the productive activity necessary to social life, and not in the strict sense that it has in societies based on exploitation. The term labor in romance languages \[e.g. le travail\] comes from the Latin word tripalium, which designated an instrument of torture for slaves in Roman antiquity. At the very least “labor” is inadequate to designate productive activity in an expanding communist society. Nevertheless, the idea that in such a society participation in social production would become “not just a means to live, but also the first need of living” seems to me to be correct and important. When Marx speaks here (as elsewhere) about the “productive forces” he doesn’t just mean the material means of production (machines, factories, etc.) as others have too often interpreted his words to mean. For Marx, the principal productive force is human beings with their knowledge, their science, their technologies, and their capacity for productive and social organization. It is in that sense that he sees the development of the productive forces as dependent on the full development of the individual.

Over the past several years Rojava or Western Kurdistan, legally a part of Syria, has been seen by many anarchists, libertarians, and even Marxists as the locus of a social revolution, one that demands solidarity on the part of revolutionaries, all the more so as it has been the object of brutal military assaults, first from Daesch (the Islamic State), and now from Erdogan’s Turkey. Inasmuch as the Middle-East today is literally on fire, the scene of vicious ethnic and religious cleansing, and bloody battles between rival imperialist states and armies, it is important to determine whether we are seeing a mortal threat to capital, an anti-capitalist commune OR an inter-imperialist bloodbath in which the population has been mobilized to serve the interests of capitalism.

For the past several years, as Syria has collapsed into civil war fueled by the intervention of imperialist states (Iran, Turkey, Russia and the US), Rojava has been under the control of the PYD and its fighters (the YPG), the Syrian offshoot of the PKK (The Kurdistan Workers Party \[sic.\]), led by Abdullah Öcalan. Originally a Marxist-Leninist, now in Turkish incarceration, Öcalan has had a prison conversion, and under the influence of the writings of the American libertarian, Murray Bookchin, has reinvented himself as a partisan of “communalism” and “Democratic Confederalism.” Suffice it to say that whether paying obeisance to Chairman Mao or to “libertarian municipalism” Öcalan, and Öcalan alone (his photograph is on virtually every “public” space in Rojava) rules; his word is law, and in Rojava, as secretly in much of the Kurdish regions of Turkey itself (at least by night), the Kurdish Workers Party rules. In Rojava the PYD has built a one-party state. The nature of the “democracy” to which the partisans of the PYD, both in the West and in Rojava, point, is no different – slogans aside – from that of the “people’s democracies” in the Stalinist bloc during the cold war. Indeed even the feminism to which its partisans also point, with its women “warriors,” hair flowing in the wind, gun in hand, bears an uncanny resemblance to those photos of La Pasiónaria on the front page of the Stalinist press in 1936, which Russian imperialism used so well to mobilize public support. The fact that Rojava itself has been brutally attacked by both IS and by The Turkish AK regime of Erdogan, cannot be the basis for any kind of revolutionary defencism, as so many in the libertarian “world” are calling for. The class line in an inter-imperialist war is not based on which side fired the first shot; on whose troops crossed the border first or started the war, or even the particular brutality of one or the other of the combatant armies. On such a basis, revolutionaries will always have to choose one capitalist state, one imperialist bloc, or the other, thereby guaranteeing the victory and consolidation of capitalism; and thereby precluding any possibility of either resistance to its power, or to articulating a political position that might become a basis for actual resistance to imperialism on both sides of the front line.

Is the Kurdish nationalism of the PKK/PYD, different from the Kurdish nationalism of Iraqi Kurdistan and Masoud Barzani? Certainly the ideology is different. In Iraqi Kurdistan capitalism has become a mantra in what is now a de facto American protectorate, and military base, where it is politically difficult to distinguish between the Kurdish Peschmerga, armed and equipped by the US, and the American special ops and troops based in Erbil. Yet apart from the Western “tourists” who in the recent past came to Rojava to see a “libertarian commune” in practice, Rojava too is full of CIA agents and American special ops. Indeed, when IS threatened to capture the Kurdish stronghold of Kobane, it was American air power that saved the town for the PYD. Neither in its Kurdish nationalism nor in its mobilization for inter-imperialist war at the side of the US can one make a distinction in class nature between Rojava and Erbil!

Today, the clash between imperialist states and their local allies has turned the Middle East into a veritable charnel house, in which the acclaim for Rojava can no longer be seen as naïve or politically innocent, but rather as a descent into the ideological vortex of imperialism itself, for which excuses are no longer possible. So, let us take a look at the rapidly deepening clash between rival imperialisms in the Middle East, where allies can become enemies on the turn of a dime, starting with the clash between Russian and American imperialism in the region. Putin’s Russia has a foothold in Middle East by way of its naval bases and air fields in Assad’s Syria, dominated by the Alawite minority, whose defense is essential to the retention of Russian influence and power in the region, and to its close relationship with Shiite Iran. The US has now come to see IS as a serious threat to its own power in the region, even at the “cost” of propping up the Shia government in Iraq. Indeed, though it is too early to tell, the possibility exists that the Iran nuclear deal could at some point in the not too distant future begin a process of détente with Teheran, particularly if Washington’s traditional Sunni allies (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan) remain unwilling to take the lead and provide the ground forces to crush IS. The growing disenchantment of America with its Sunni allies, applies to Sunni Turkey, and the Erdogan government too, which sees Assad’s Syrian regime as an enemy to be destroyed, along with the Kurdish nationalism that threatens the very territorial integrity of Turkey in its Eastern provinces, the same Kurdish nationalism that is a lynchpin of American strategy in Iraq and Syria. Into that tangled skein Erdogan has now sent his troops across the border into Rojava to perhaps crush the PYD and YPG there, and at the same time both challenge Syrian claims to sovereignty, as well as Ankara’s traditional enemy Russia, the protector of Assad. And, at the same time Russia and the US are seeking a “ceasefire” in Syria, which it hopes would permit Russia to attack IS, even as Assad, with Russian aid, seems to be reclaiming Aleppo, and now perhaps Idlib too, thereby turning the tide in that protracted civil war through the mass killing of their civilian populations by relentless Russian bombing. History is replete with dramatic turns in inter-imperialist conflicts, and we just might be on the cusp of one now.

Whatever turns there might be, however, one thing is clear: those who insist on seeing Rojava through the lens of social revolution are blinding themselves to the ongoing inter-imperialist slaughter which quite literally shapes events there on the ground. When you’re supporting the same side as the CIA, do you really need Google Maps to tell you that you’ve crossed the class line?

Mac Intosh

Allons enfants de la patrie, le jour de gloire est arrivé…

(“Let’s go, children of the fatherland, the day of glory has arrived…”)

The opening of the ‘Marseillaise, the French national anthem

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The following text is a statement IP put out after the terrorist attacks in Paris last november. It was widely shared on social media and internet lists. We received some criticism, in particular of the claim that ISIS is a capitalist enterprise and “not a religious movement”. Indeed, it would be more correct to state that it is both. Both aspects coexist within ISIS and use each other. As a capitalist state ISIS uses religious fervor for the purpose of capital accumulation, and as a religious movement, ISIS uses the instruments of the state to advance its fanatical religious goals. Those two aspects fit together smoothly, united by the common goal of conquest, although lately tensions have been reported between factions focused on consolidating ISIS’s management of its territory and factions that want to expand the global ‘Jihad’, regardless the consequences. It remains to be seen how that plays out. The role that religion plays today in capturing the rage of some of the most marginalized proletarians is not something that we have foreseen. It begs for a deeper analysis.

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The Marseillaise is popular again. The bloodthirsty song rises again from thousands of throats on French squares, before sport events and concerts, in the Sorbonne and in the parliament: “Amour sacré de la patrie, conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!” (“Sacred love of the fatherland, lead, support our vengeful arms!”) On Facebook a campaign was started to exhort users all over the world to change their profile in the colors of the French national flag.

• Do not sing the Marseillaise.
• Do not change your FB profile into the colors of the French national flag.
• Do not fall in the trap of the war-mongering media.

The terrorist attacks in Paris were horrific and repulsive. But nationalism is not the answer; it spreads the poison further. It may be true that most people who now sing the Marseillaise, or change their FB-profile into the French colors, only want to express their solidarity with the victims. But at a moment like this, it is important to know what the symbols, around which we are asked to close ranks, represent. Under the French tricolor, millions were sent to their death, in wars for worse than nothing. Under this banner, atrocities were committed (in Algeria and elsewhere) that were even worse than those of ISIS, while singing the Marseillaise: “Qu’un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!” (“May their impure blood water our furrows!”)

We don’t want to single out France: other national flags and anthems are equally blood-drenched. ISIS itself is not a religious movement; it simply uses religion as a flag and anthem to recruit cannon-fodder for its real goal: to control territory, to gain power, to amass capital. It seizes opportunities arising in the context of war and economic crisis in the Middle East to establish its own state. A state at war, and in war, as the history of France, the US, Germany and just about any other country illustrates: all is permitted.

What did ISIS have to gain from the attacks in Paris? Continuous recruitment is essential for the so-called Islamic state, it needs it to wage war and to control its territory. The attacks favor its recruitment in two ways: first, as a demonstration of power, which increases its appeal for young people who feel angry and powerless. Secondly, the attacks fan the hatred of Muslims and thus the ill treatment of Muslims, pushing more of them into the tentacles of ISIS. Furthermore, ISIS needs to stop the exodus of refugees out of Syria. It cannot permit the emptying of the territory it controls or wants to conquer. Contrary to what’s often claimed, it does not get its main income from oil-exports or from Saudi subsidies but from the exploitation, in various ways, of the population in the areas it controls. So those who use the attacks to fan hatred for Islam and to keep the refugees out, do exactly what ISIS hoped they would do.

The problem is not Islam. The global system is in crisis and this crisis creates situations in which waging war becomes very profitable. The warring parties feed on each other. The civilian casualties of drones and missiles feed the Islamist propaganda; the Islamist atrocities feed the belligerent, nationalist, anti-other ideologies in the West which prepare the way for more war.

The first thing president Hollande did after the attacks was to send planes to bombard Raqqa, a large city that is said to be the capital of the IS. One wonders: had these planes “clean” military targets for what became the largest bombardment of Raqqa so far? If so, why weren’t they hit before? And if they were not, how many civilians were killed in Raqqa? Will the media tell us? Will there be a campaign on Facebook to put the flag of ISIS on our profile, in solidarity with the innocent victims that fell on its territory? Or will the mangled corpses only be seen on the Islamist social media?

Revenge. Reprisal. Retaliation: The deeper the crisis becomes, the more we risk to see of it. The wars, the terrorist attacks, the massive unemployment and uncertainty, the ecological catastrophes, the swelling stream of refugees, all show that the systemic, global crisis of capitalism brings with it ever more social disruption, violence and destruction. The real problem is in society’s foundations and as long as they remain intact –as long as capitalism survives- the spiral will only widen.

Changing the foundations, changing the purpose and means of human relations, ending capitalism, can only come as a result of massive collective struggle, which does not exist today. Nobody knows what the future will bring. But we do know it’s not written yet. What we do or don’t matters. It matters that we don’t passively accept the logic of capital. It matters that we refuse to sing the national anthem together with those who exploit and oppress us. It matters that we stand in solidarity with the victims of wars and terrorist attacks, whether they are French or Turk, Arab or Jew, black or white, without embracing any of the war-making parties. It matters that we raise our voices against the calls to close borders, erect walls, keep out refugees, and engage in more war. It matters that we say no! to more control, more police violence, more austerity in the name of national security. It matters that we refuse to help dig our own graves. It matters that we demonstrate that none of the problems facing society can be solved within capitalism. It matters that we speak, in the rivulets of revolt, of the power of the stream they could become.

Internationalist Perspective 60 appears at a moment of heightened social tensions, and widespread social movements from the US to Greece and Sweden, from China to Mexico, which have their roots in the grim reality of a crisis of capitalism that has not been ameliorated over the past seven years, and which beyond its manifestation as a massive financial crisis (with new upheavals to come), manifests itself as a surplus of humanity, whose very labor power can no longer be profitably exploited by capital. What links all movements that are now erupting globally is capital’s recourse to police brutality directed at the very unrest provoked by the degrading conditions in which an evergrowing mass of the population is condemned to live, a brutality that includes police shootings of unarmed people on an ever-greater scale. Whether it is the use of lethal force against immigrant youth in Husby or Ragsved in Stockholm, or the anniversary of police killings of demonstrators in Athens; whether it is the brutality against demonstrators by the cops in Hong Kong, the cold- blooded murder of dozens of students in Mexico on their way to a demonstration, or the killing of unarmed black men by police in Ferguson and Staten Island, the roots of these assaults by the forces of order lie in the effort to protect and to buttress the basic social relations of capitalism itself. The other side of this violence on the part of the police, are the efforts of the capitalist state to contain these social movements through a series of reforms on the part of “progressive” or left factions of the capitalist class to respond to the growing discontent of those excluded from even the possibility of the sale of their labor power. This is clearly evident in the response of the American president, and his justice department to contain the spread of these movements, in tandem with their proclamations that the right of people to peaceful protest is enshrined in the bourgeois concept of justice. But reforms cannot change the very trajectory of capitalist society in this historical moment, and nor can making the police force more reflective of the people that they “serve,” as progressives contend. Nothing less than the overturning of the very system of wage-labor and capital accumulation can bring any change.

Anxiety is rising and no wonder. The lack of economic prospects, the social dislocations resulting from capital’s penetration of the whole world and its expulsion of ever greater numbers of people from actual production and jobs, the wars over possession it engenders, with their merciless slaughter of civilians, whether through air bombardments or suicide attacks, the many millions of refugees fleeing horror and hopelessness, the climate disturbances… it is indeed a potent cocktail.

People try to make sense of it all. Politicians and other ideologues capture the discussion within their particular spectrum, which varies all the way from Islamophobia and other expressions of racism and warmongering, to empty promises based on the illusion that taking money from the rich and spending it on the poor will solve it all. What they all have in common is that they cannot imagine a world beyond capitalism. All things change, but capitalism, in their minds, is eternal. “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism,” environmentalist Rob Nixon wrote in a November 2014 New York Times Book Review assessment of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything.

But the end of capitalism must be imagined if the end of the world, or something close to that, is to be prevented, because all the above mentioned expressions of worsening crisis have their roots in the crisis of capitalism itself. It must be understood that capitalism is not eternal, that the rules it imposes on the world are not “natural” and must be smashed for the sake of our survival, and that they can be smashed, that there is a world possible beyond capitalism.

Of course we don’t expect this understanding to come from politicians and other ideologues. We expect it to come from within the very struggle for survival of the proletariat. We expect it to come from small groups and circles within the proletariat who contribute to its struggle by connecting the dots, by showing the way out of the trap that we’re swimming in.

That is our aim too. In this issue of IP we publish articles that connect the dots and explore the way out. The first text is a statement IP published after the terrorist attacks in Paris last November. Since then, the asymmetrical global war has continued and similar attacks have taken place, in Brussels, Lahore and other places. The statement unfortunately fits those horrible events as well. It explains the strategic (capitalist) aims of the attacks and denounces the abuse of the victims for the purpose of whipping up nationalism and war-support, and the use of fear to expand repressive power.

The second article is a global overview of the turmoil in the world at this point in time, the spring of 2016. It is followed by a closer look at Rojava, a proto-state in northern Syria, which, while being involved in inter-imperialist war, supposedly also is creating a post-capitalist society. The article criticizes the illusion that on nationalist soil, a revolutionary alternative can grow.

Imagining the end of capitalism, what does that mean? What kills it, what sneaks it back in? That is a question examined in the last text, written some years ago by RV, a member of the pro-revolutionary “Cercle” of Paris. Its starting point is a critique of the idea that replacing money by labor vouchers would end capitalism.

The longest text in this issue is also the reason why it appears with quite a bit of delay. We took our time to write and discuss it collectively. It is our attempt to formulate how all the misery and promise of our times, the despair and the hope, are connected. How we make sense of it all. The world as we see it, anno 2016. We hope that it will encourage other pro-revolutionaries to think about this, to discuss this text and criticize and comment. On the Libcom-list the text provoked some discussions, on which we will report on our website.

This text has a particular importance for IP’s life as a revolutionary political group. In IP 60 we informed our readers of difficulties we had had over the recent past, especially disagreements that emerged over the first part of ‘IP and the Tradition of the Communist Left’ published in IP 57. We consider that the text published here reflects where we stand as a group, at this time. It’s not the last word on anything but it responds to the need for a coherent understanding of the social world in its totality, the need to understand how it all fits together. In IP 60 we said that: “We believe Internationalist Perspective has made a worthwhile contribution to the development of Marxist theory and has endeavored to intervene in social struggles to the degree we could. All of us in Internationalist Perspective wish to continue with this activity.” We think that this reference text shows that ongoing commitment.

Read and spread this issue and send us your comments.