Stockholm hit by riots

Stockholm riots challenge image of happy, generous state

• Stockholm riots challenge image of happy, generous state
  12:47pm EDT
• Sweden’s capital hit by worst riots in years
  5:50am EDT

11:41am EDT

By Patrick Lannin and Philip O’Connor

STOCKHOLM | Wed May 22, 2013 7:48pm EDT

(Reuters) – Hundreds of youth have torched cars and attacked police in four nights of riots in immigrant suburbs of Sweden’s capital, shocking a country that dodged the worst of the financial crisis but failed to solve youth unemployment and resentment among asylum seekers.

Michael Heinrich, Marx's law and crisis theory

Reblogged from Michael Roberts Blog:

Michael Heinrich is an exponent of what is known as the 'New German Reading of Marx', which interprets the theory of value that Marx presents in Capital as a socially specific theory of  'impersonal social domination'. He is a collaborator on the MEGA edition of Marx and Engel’s complete works and has published several philological studies of Capital. He has also authored a work on Marx’s theory of value, …

Read more… 2,484 more words

....Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (LTRPF) ...the ‘law as such’, says that the rate of profit will tend to fall over time because the organic composition of capital (the ratio of the value of constant capital to variable capital) will tend to rise faster than the rate of surplus value (the ratio of surplus value to variable capital). This flows from the basic equation of profitability, s/c+v, where c/v rises faster than s/v because Marx’s value theory argues that only labour power creates value. So if the value of constant capital (machinery, plant, raw materials etc) rises faster than the value of variable capital (the value of labour power and the only creator of value), then the rate of profit will fall, other things being equal.

Roberts is one of the best teachers of the technical aspects of Marx's scientific study of political economy. My readers are encouraged to follow his blog which does a better job of this than I am capable of.
I submitted the following comments to Roberts post on a controversy surrounding Marx's view of the long term tendency of the rate of profit under capitalism to fall. My point relates to my analysis of "mature capitalism" and my contention that there are fundamental qualitative or 'epochal' shifts related to the effective full extension of commodity social relations on a global scale. Below the comments are slightly expanded and re-edited.

Up until the present historical moment the capitalist system has had definite pathways of expansion and thus recovery open to it this is because the maturation of the system of commodity production on a global scale was as yet incomplete during the 20th Century.

Consider that it was not until the Great Depression and War years of the 1940's in the that subsistence agriculture was substantially eliminated United States. Each new wave of historical economic crisis has pushed forward the integration of non-proletarianized toilers into the commodity producing working class or into forms of directly exploited commodity production in agriculture. This along with the massive material destruction of inter-imperialist warfare has allowed the capitalist accumulation cycles to begin anew and thusly to partially overcome the tendency toward the falling rate of profit by means of a reset or 'reboot'.

The full globalization of capital over the past 3 decades and the global expansion of the proletariat has created the conditions where inter-imperialist conflict presents fundamental historic risks to the survival of the imperial state-capitalist regimes which are essential to the continued semi-stable operation of the capitalist system. The total net growth of the system as a whole which remained vibrant during the 20th century has met its limits in the 21st.

This reality presents a qualitative shift not just in the analysis of the political economy of capitalism but also in the tactical considerations before Marxists and socialists who advocate political struggle which follows the line of the social interests of the working class.

Militant: Cuban Government Condemns Terror Attacks in Boston

Over the past few weeks both The Cuban Communist Party and the Socialist Worker’s Party (US) have made it a point to condemn the actions of the participants in the bombing of the Boston Marathon. On the one hand such statements against what appears to most working people as senseless evil are easy to make. On the other hand these are important messages.

The glorification of violence on the part of those wearing the mantle of revolution and claiming to speak out against social injustice is all too common. It is my opinion that militarist, conspiratorial and terrorist forms of organization on the part of revolutionary groups during much of the 20th century created a legacy that continues to shackle the working class, socialist and and anti-capitalist movements in their struggle to find a footing in the current epoch.

Variants of this form of leftist extremism are found amongst radical sects in all of the major socialist currents, Maoist, Pro-Soviet Stalinist, people who consider themselves to be Trotskyist, as well so amongst people who consider themselves to be anarchists and progressive nationalists of various stripes and even certain radical liberal social-democratic currents who may pursue a concilationist reform agenda on their own turf but romanticize violent radicalism in other contexts.

This sort of orientation mostly stems from a perspective in which the working class is viewed with a compassion-less eye as an objectified mass, like a bull to be goaded into revolution, or a pitied child unable to see it own interests but needing one who knows better to come to her defense, rather than as the subject makers of history. To this true believer in his own theoretical construct, once the red flag has been waved, the bull must charge. If he does not charge, perhaps then some form of violence will make him start. Never does this revolutionary toreador consider the possibility that the patient bull is smarter than he.

Of course the question as to when and where force is justified is infinitely reductive with its extreme poles being insurrectionist anarchism-with no purpose beyond mayhem being it object–on the one hand, and pacifism on the quaker model–in which even direct self defense is considered a spiritual violation–representing the other extreme.

I welcome comments on this post but will not entertain the conversation if it devolves into an abstract reductionist argument. The question to me seems to require a careful view in terms of principle, tactics and history.

This is to say that there must be a basic reasoning of moral principle in which individuals who claim to represent certain values must respect those values in the context of their own behaviors and statements. If we are clear enough to represent the social interests of the working class then it must be a matter of principle that our actions and tactical orientation do not create destructive conditions whose primary victim is our own class.

On the tactical level if our goal is to lead toward the free association of the producers it must be understood that the democratic development of a social class is not achievable by means of violence. In this way one better understands the forced collectivization of agriculture in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin, the effect of which was a massive decline in the productive capacity of agriculture there due to the political demoralization and generalized disruption of the lives of millions of Russian Ukrainian and Central Asian peasants. It is not extreme to consider, at the dissolution of soviet power some 50 years after, that this act was the death blow to the Russian Revolution. The peasantry who, despite their class position as small proprietors,   had been integral to the overthrow of the major landholders and financial/industrial bourgeoisie, the victory of the Bolshevik regime in the Civil War and defense against invasions (1918-1921) were treated by Stalin as social objects rather than as they had been as actors and participants in the struggle.

Equally important to the consideration of strategy and tactics in the battle against capitalism is to see with a clear eye where one stands in history. Tactics that may have served Toussaint Louverture two hundred and thirty years ago may be lauded for their heroism respected in their context and defended as tactically correct. They may however not fit so well into the present moment.

The Militant, in my view correctly identifies “jihadist islamism” as a reactionary movement and so not one to be identified with the historically progressive struggle to defend the social interests of the working class.

Links to the rest of it are below.

As also a link to Lenin’s “Left Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder“

Vol. 77/No. 19      May 20, 2013
Why revolutionaries condemn terror
methods, from Boston to Colombia

Further information can be found in this April 16/ AP article published in the Huffington Post.
Cuba Sends Condolences To Victims Of Boston Marathon Explosions, Condemns ‘All Acts Of Terrorism’

Union Rights Expanded in Bangladesh; Guardian

E.A. Preobrazhensky, The New Economics: Historic Context and Contemporary Relevance

The following is an expanded abstract of a paper that I am writing which is intended for academic publication by the end of this year. This is an initial formulation of my ideas on these subjects. Readers comments are more than welcome as are additional references.

E.A. Preobrazhensky The New Economics: Historical Context and Contemporary Relevance. Expanded Abstract

In capitalist society individuals are controlled by a pitiless law usually beyond their comprehension. The alienated human specimen is tied to society as a whole by an invisible umbilical cord: the law of value. –Che Guevara Socialism and Man in Cuba[1]

Eugene A Preobrazhensky, Евге́ний Алексе́евич Преображе́нский,. (February 27 [O.S.February 15] 1886 – July 13, 1937)  was an early adherent to the Bolshevik the faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP) (from 1903) a member of the Central Committee of the Bolsheviks in 1917, a leader of the Bolshevik party in the Urals at the time of the October Revolution, holder of several national party and state offices throughout the 1920s and early 1930’s, and a leading voice of the Left Opposition in the 1920s. He was a “professional revolutionary” party leader, activist, functionary, educator, intellectual and writer for the full extent of his adult life. He was also a piercingly insightful economist whose ideas transcended the intense factional party debates of the Soviet Union during the New Economic Policy (NEP)period (approximately 1921-1929).[2] [3]

Preobrazhensky’s writings on a broad range of economic problems have grown in influence over the past three decades and are increasingly cited in works on alternative economic theory, problems in the interpretation of Marx’s analysis, and the field of “development economics”[4] [5]as well as providing insights into the study of the history of the Soviet Union and theoretical models for the construction of both socialist and mixed or market socialist economies.

Preobrazhensky’s book, The New Economics (1965)[6] is his most influential and thoroughly developed work. First published as a complete edition in 1926 as Novasia economika: Opy t teoreticheskogo analiza sovetsokogo khoziatva [The New Economics: An Attempt at a Theoretical Analysis of the Soviet Economy],[7] The New Economics was actually part of a larger effort and one which unfortunately was never completed as a whole. Though many of the ideas contained in the work begin to emerge in the author’s writings concurrent to the end of the War Communism Period (1918-1921) and with the initial moves toward the establishment of the NEP. The first thorough expression of the theories was presented in 1924[8] as lectures and later as articles published in Vestnik Kommunisticheskoi Akedemii. The published version was intended to be the first of two volumes representing a complete theoretical work. Though the latter part of this work was never completed in full, some of the elements have been assembled in English translation in the collection The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization edited and translated by Donald A. Filtzer[9]

In the New Economics Preobrazhensky describes the conflict between the emerging Soviet State in its attempt to develop industry along planned lines and the broad operation of market forces remnant from the Russian empire as well as the new market forces created by the peasant revolution which accompanied the Bolshevik seizure of power.[10]

Preobrazhensky’s achievement is not limited to the specifics of his technical understanding or his subtle and significant contribution to Marxist literature or even to economic thought as a whole. It must be understood in the context of the broader continuity of scientific socialism and revolutionary ideas and as a part of the historical continuity of individuals who have sought to place the methods of discovery in social science at the service of the struggle for the social liberation of the working class.

This paper seeks to look at the work of Preobrazhensky for its content in the context of the individual as a political revolutionary and to understand his ideas as part of the historic continuity of revolutionary minded scientific socialism. Secondly it seeks to view Preobrazhensky’s ideas in the context of broader advances in bourgeois economic science made by his historical peers, in particular that of Alfred Marshall and John Maynard Keynes as well as the more vociferous critics of the Marxist view in particular Ludwig von Mises and the Austrian tradition. Thirdly it seeks to explain that an understanding of the economic conflicts and contradictions which existed during the New Economic Policy Period as described by Preobrazhensky remains directly relevant, not only to individual developing economies, or those in which agriculture remains the dominant form of production, or to countries which are nominally ‘socialist’ but rather to the fundamental dynamics of the contemporary global economy. Thusly I seek to justify the direct relevance of the study of Preobrazhensky’s writings in the context of contemporary political economics.

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Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance , is self-evident. No natural laws can be done away with. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws assert themselves. And the form in which this proportional distribution of labor asserts itself, in the state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the exchange value of these products. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1868/letters/68_07_11-abs.htm Marx to Kugelmann, In Hanover Abstract, London, July 11, 1868

As an essential aspect of this study I will explore certain key technical aspects of Marxist theory and of Preobrazhensky’s work in The New Economics.

• The Marxist conception of ‘value’ and the term “The Law of Value”
• The concept of ‘The Planning Principle” and the ideal of a planned economy as described by Preobrazhensky and other Second International and Bolshevik Marxists and socialists.
• The Concept of “pimative” or “primary accumulation” as described by Marx and as applied by Preobrazhensky to socialist transitional economics.

The history of the 20^th century was largely defined on its surface by the contest between the Soviet Socialism on the one hand and ‘western’(sic) capitalism on the other. Despite this and despite the spectacular collapse of the Soviet state, it seems clear enough at the present time that little in terms of social contradiction was resolved by the demise of the Soviet system. As the binary simplicity of the cold war contest fades into a quaint memory, the present world order –if it may be considered an order at all—is characterized by the massively expanded political and economic weight of China, by the post-colonial rise of mass struggle in the Middle East, North Africa, Central and South Asia known as the “Arab Spring”, by the multi-polar fractalization of economic power characterized by the emergence of the BRIC nations and other rising second world economic stars such as South Korea and Indonesia and by the grinding extended stagnation of the economies of the 20^th century imperialist nations, Japan, the European Union countries and to a lesser extent but not insignificantly the United States and Canada.

The fundamental historical development of the period following the World Wars was not a contest of two systems but rather the extended workings of the development of capitalism which brings us to the present moment. Rising above the fearful tremblings of the political left and the triumphal bluster of neoliberal dogma are four clear social facts which can be reduced from the boiling broth of 20^th century history.

I. Effective extension of commodity relations to the whole of the world’s population.

The primary element which defines the present epoch is the penetration of commodity production as the dominant feature of economic life for virtually all of the world’s populations in every sphere of human activity. Involvement of the entire world society in relations of commodity exchange remained an incomplete development at the end of the Second World War. Today this process has neared its completion and the “world market” has come in to its full fruition.[11]

II. The overall resolution of the national question as a motive force for progressive democratic social change. The virtually complete {with evident exceptions} establishment of republican national forms of government for the vast majority of the world’s populations, the complete end of the colonial system and the beginnings of the end of the social relations of neo-colonialism.

In the political sphere, the history of the 20th century may be primarily defined by the transformation of the world political structure such that the inexorable assertion of the right of nations to self-determination has won out against all forces opposing it. It is now the case nearly all of the world’s citizens live in more or less modern nation states which are more or less self-governing republics.[12] Nationalism as a political force has effectively met its end by its own success. The dominant wars and revolutions of the 20th century drove forward this process and drove the colonial arrangement out of existence and set the imperialist powers on the run. No state has been returned to monarchical or other non-republican governmental form in the recent course of history. No existing nation states have been dissolved or successfully robbed of their sovereignty. Attempts to repress the natural tendency toward nationhood on the part of like peoples sharing common histories and languages have proven doomed to relentless bloodshed and eventual failure.

III. The development of the raw productive capacity, infrastructural development of transport, communications and information technology, advances of medical technology and integration of the world’s populations into the world economy such that the technical and material foundations of extreme poverty and disenfranchisement are eradicable but for political will and effective social organization.

The productive capacity, cultural and technical development, and the development of communications and transport infrastructure is now in the present quite sufficient to support the wellbeing of each member of the world’s populace. It is in every way materially possible to educate all of the world’s children, to have complete literacy within every community, to begin to reverse the effects of industrial pollution and the excess accumulation of waste, to combat disease and to provide adequate health care universally across the entire human race. This capacity exists now. The productive forces, technical development, human resources, exist now. The utilization of the massively untapped human resources necessary to achieve this task can and will in itself elevate the whole standard of human society while the extraordinary condition exists that the abilities of somewhere between one quarter and one half of the world’s population is wasted by unemployment, lack of education and conditions of abject poverty.

IV. The established social fact of the welfare state and the inescapable reality that government spending represents between 20 and 60 percent of GDP in all developed societies, such that macro level economic planning, regulation and monetary/financial intervention is an integrated aspect of modern capitalist society. These mechanisms do not simply exist as commonly understood (especially on the left) as mediating forces in the class struggle but also because they have become essential to the basic operation of the capitalist system itself as they are directly integrated into the process of appropriation and distribution of surplus value now that the classical “laissez” faire operations of the capitalist market have been rendered by its own contradictions, not just socially unviable, but in fact unviable at an economic level without perpetual state intervention.

No form of political or military force proved able to forestall these powerful tendencies in the long course of history, neither the statist socialism of countries governed by Stalinist political parties, nor the traditional political powers of Europe nor the hyper-capitalist young imperial power of the United States. Monarchies and colonial arrangements collapsed into failing wars or revolutions, and markets opened up to virtually everyone everywhere.

If one is to examine the nature of the economies of all countries presently engaged at least nominally in the construction of some form of Socialism today one will find forms of the same challenges faced by the Bolsheviks during the New Economic Policy period. It is even so in North Korea in which the state attempts to fully suppress market forces. There are varied levels of operation of the “law of Value” as this remains the dominant force in world economic development at the present time. On the other side in virtually all of the capitalist world with the ascendance of Keynesian methods of state intervention and even on a global scale with the operation of the International Monetary Fund and coordinated actions on the part of the “G20” governments the European Common Market, The North American Free Trade Alliance and major corporate monopolists engage in variedly successful and unsuccessful attempts to “manage” the operation of the ‘free market’ in pursuit of normative economic goals.

While the Bolshevik government had as its goal the construction of a socialist economy the essential conflict described by Preobrazhensky at the time remains at the core of the challenges facing human progress at the second decade of the 21st century only four years short of the centennial of the October Revolution.

Preobrazhensky’s economic views reduced the challenge before himself, his comrades and the working people who had made the Soviet revolution as a contradiction between the planning principle and the Law of Value.

It is a complex business to analyse an economic system in which both the planning principle—within the limits imposed by the degree of organization attained in the economy—and also the law of value, with its externally-compelling power, are operating simultaneously. The especial difficulty of studying an economy of this kind is that neither form of production is present in its pure form. While the law of value, to the extent that it manifests itself in this system, is an old acquaintance of ours, which has been sufficiently studied as it is exemplified in classical capitalism and in relation to the system of simple commodity production, the planning principle is something unfamiliar, which first emerges on to the arena of history in our economy, and has so far revealed itself to us only to a limited extent. Nor is that all. Both the law of value and the planning principle, the basic tendencies of which assume in the Soviet economy the form of the law of primitive socialist accumulation, are operating within a single economic organism, and are counterposed one to the other as a result of the victory of the October revolution. [13]

It is the assertion of the planning principal characterized by direct investment and social intervention[14] rather than monetarist or fiscal market manipulation which can bring humanity forward at the present juncture. The movement in this direction must come from political action with social demands.

Chart showing progress of US Government spending as a factor of GDP over time http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/07/government-spending-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-2/ by Barry Ritholtz – July 29th, 2011

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[1] Socialism and Man in Cuba

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:BlindArthur/Yevgeni_Preobrazhensky

[3] Gorinov,  M. M. , Tsakunov S. V. and Konstantin Gurevich Life and Works of Evgenii Alekseevich Preobrazhenskii Slavic Review , Vol. 50, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 286-296 Published by: Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2500204

[4] Lin, J. and M. Yu (2008) ‘The Economics of Price Scissors: An Empirical Investigation for China’,CCER working paper.http://wise.xmu.edu.cn/ Master/News/NewsPic/20084795119869.pdf

[5] Sah, Raaj Kumar and Stiglitz, Joseph E.; The Economics of Price Scissors The American Economic Review , Vol. 74, No. 1 (Mar., 1984), pp. 125-138 Published by: American Economic Association Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1803313 http://www.nber.org/papers/w1156

[6] Preobrazhensky, Evgeny. The New Economics. Translated by Brian Pearce. London, UK: Clarendon Press, 1965.

[7] Fitzer “A Select Bibliography of Preobrazhensky’s Works” in Preobrazhensky E.A. The Crisis of Soviet Industrialization pp 237-240

[8] Nove, A. Introduction to The New Economics. pp xi. In Preobrazhensky, The New Economics

[9] Preobrazhensky. E.A. Filtzer editor,  M.E. Sharpe 1979

[10] The Slogan of the October Revolution of 1917 “Peace Land and Bread” Was taken in earnest by millions of Russian and Central Asian peasants who revolted against Feudal conditions and seized the lands formerly possessed by feudal aristocrats. The resulting condition was that the Socialist Revolution in Russia achieved a significant task assigned to the bourgeois stage of social development. It opened the door to unfettered commodity production in the sphere of agriculture and liberated the peasantry to condition of open competition amongst themselves. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/sep/06.htm

[11] The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. Marx, Karl The Communist Manifesto http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

[12] There are notable exceptions such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States which remains hereditary monarchies but such are few and far between. This is not a comment on the level of internal political development or social progress of the existing regimes in many nations but rather simply to state that virtually all of the world’s peoples now reside in self-governing republics and thusly that the completion of the extension of relations of commodity production to the whole of the world’s population is coupled with the near resolution of what was once called the “national question”.

[13] Preobrazhensky TNE pp 55

[14] Both of these terms as used here are unacceptably vague it is my intention to expand and concentrate on a more scientifically precise meaning and definition of “The Law of value” and the “planning principle”. Suffice at this juncture to understand The planning principle to mean normative rather than profit driven conscious direction of economic development. And the Law of Value to mean essentially the raw forces of profit driven market activity.

On The organic development of Civil Society and economic life in Tunisia : Rebel Economy interviews Monica Marks

An excellent article discussing the development of civil society and economic life  in post revolutionary Tunisia from the Egyptian blog Rebel Economy

It is important to note that when observers (particularly foreign observers) characterize pre-revolutionary Tunisia as socially ‘liberal,’ they are often basing this on two simple factors: (1) Tunisia’s post-independence leaders (Bourguiba and Ben Ali) are almost always described as ‘secularists’, and (2) Tunisia’s 1956 Personal Status Code, which is still in effect, granted women more rights than elsewhere in the MENA region and included the Arab world’s only prohibition on polygamy. Taken together, these factors—the secularism of state leaders and women’s advanced legal status—are often enough to prompt commentators to call Tunisia’s society and pre-revolutionary government ‘liberal.

For the complete article and a link to Rebel Economy click the link above.

Consequences of falling energy prices for Bahrain and Saudi “The Dark Side of US Energy Independence”

Benjamin Alter’s New York Times Op Ed article discusses the potential challenges faced by US Imperialism as falling oil prices may tend to destabilize the Gulf Monarchies

Margaret Thatcher, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. , Osama Bin Laden and Jessica Dovey.

I am amused to find that each time a major controversial figure dies readership to this blog increases by many hundreds of percent for a few days. Hundreds, thousands and– directly following the killing of Osama Bin Laden–tens of thousands of people come to these pages looking for the original text of something that Martin Luther King Jr. did not exactly actually say.

What was said goes like this

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.
‘Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.’ MLK jr” [click  for link to full story]

The part which I have shown in bold face was said not by anyone hitherto famous, but rather buy a young woman possessing obvious intelligence, integrity and compassion. Her name is Jessica Dovey. Her thoughts were originally expressed to her friends on Facebook immediately following the death of Osama Bin Laden in the context of spontaneous public celebrations following President Barack Obama’s triumphal announcement of the killing of imperial America’s vowed arch enemy.   As will happen her words were merged with those of Dr. King, whom she quoted accurately. The back story on this can be found by clicking on the hyperlink of the text above.

The difference between the situations of the deaths of Thatcher versus that of Bin Laden should be obvious enough.  Bin Laden, the arch terrorist and reactionary anarchist was hunted down by two successive administrations of the most powerful military empire in known history. Thatcher lived to the ripe age of 87 and died in material comfort, a bronze statue of her likeness already standing in the house of the British parliament at the time of her death. She was a towering figure in bourgeois politics in the country that, having been fertilized by the  Dutch, gave birth to the bourgeoisie.

Guardian reports police officer resigns after publicly wishing Thatcher a painful death

Telegraph reports protesters plan to turn their backs on Prime Minister Thatcher’s funeral procession

Reuters reports Argentine PM not invited to Thatcher Funeral

As for myself I shall neither rejoice nor morn. I am not convinced that Madam Thatcher represented any greater threat to the social interests of the working class than did Tony Blair. She filled her role and represented efficiently the interests of those whom she was charged to represent. Those of us who would see a different world must let go of the idea that we are betrayed by the agents of capital and rather fight to represent ourselves and thus to shape the world as we would have it.  What was received from Thatcher is what should have been expected.

The Right to Bear Arms, Equality for Women, Equal Status for Agricultural and Domestic Laborers: Consider these Demands from the Erfurt Program of 1891

Below is printed in its entirety an English language translation of the 1891 Erfurt Program of the German Social Democratic Party, which at that time had over a million working-class members and was deeply connected to the trades unions of the day.  The relevance of this simple document speaks for itself, calling for the abolition of the standing army and ” Education of all to bear arms,” full equality for women, free medical care, direct democracy and popular control of taxation and other demands all of which stand in stark contrast to the stateist and bureau-meritocratic elite bias of what passes for progressive politics in much of contemporary discourse.

The Erfurt Program

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Source: German History in Documents and Images;
First Published: Protokoll des Parteitages der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands: Abgehalten zu Erfurt vom 14. bis 20. Oktober 1891 [Minutes of the Party Congress of the Social Democratic Party of Germany: Held in Erfurt from October 14-October 20, 1891]. Berlin, 1891, pp. 3-6;
Translated: by Thomas Dunlap

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The economic development of bourgeois society invariably leads to the ruin of small business, which is based on the private ownership by the worker of his means of production. It separates the worker from his means of production and turns him into a propertyless proletarian, while the means of production become the monopoly of a relatively small number of capitalists and large landowners.

Hand in hand with this monopolization of the means of production goes the displacement of these fractured small businesses by colossal large enterprises, the development of the tool into a machine, the gigantic growth in the productivity of human labor. But all the benefits of this transformation are monopolized by the capitalists and large landowners. For the proletariat and the sinking middle classes – petty bourgeoisie and farmers – it means an increase in the insecurity of their existence, of misery, of pressure, of oppression, of degradation, of exploitation.

Ever greater becomes the number of proletarians, ever more massive the army of excess workers, ever more stark the opposition between exploiters and the exploited, ever more bitter the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which divides modern society into two hostile camps and constitutes the common characteristic of all industrialized countries.

The gulf between the propertied and the propertyless is further widened by crises that are grounded in the nature of the capitalist mode of production, crises that are becoming more extensive and more devastating, that elevate this general uncertainty into the normal state of society and furnish proof that the powers of productivity have grown beyond society’s control, that the private ownership of the means of production has become incompatible with their appropriate application and full development.

The private ownership of the means of production, once the means for securing for the producer the ownership of his product, has today become the means for expropriating farmers, artisans, and small merchants, and for putting the non-workers – capitalists, large landowners – into possession of the product of the workers. Only the transformation of the capitalist private ownership of the means of production – land and soil, pits and mines, raw materials, tools, machines, means of transportation – into social property and the transformation of the production of goods into socialist production carried on by and for society can cause the large enterprise and the constantly growing productivity of social labor to change for the hitherto exploited classes from a source of misery and oppression into a source of the greatest welfare and universal, harmonious perfection.

This social transformation amounts to the emancipation not only of the proletariat, but of the entire human race, which is suffering from current conditions. But it can only be the work of the working class, because all other classes, notwithstanding the conflicts of interest between them, stand on the ground of the private ownership of the means of production and have as their common goal the preservation of the foundations of contemporary society.

The struggle of the working class against capitalist exploitation is necessarily a political struggle. Without political rights, the working class cannot carry on its economic struggles and develop its economic organization. It cannot bring about the transfer of the means of production into the possession of the community without first having obtained political power.

It is the task of the Social Democratic Party to shape the struggle of the working class into a conscious and unified one and to point out the inherent necessity of its goals.

The interests of the working class are the same in all countries with a capitalist mode of production. With the expansion of global commerce, and of production for the world market, the position of the worker in every country becomes increasingly dependent on the position of workers in other countries. The emancipation of the working class is thus a task in which the workers of all civilized countries are equally involved. Recognizing this, the German Social Democratic Party feels and declares itself to be one with the class-conscious workers of all other countries.

The German Social Democratic Party therefore does not fight for new class privileges and class rights, but for the abolition of class rule and of classes themselves, for equal rights and equal obligations for all, without distinction of sex or birth. Starting from these views, it fights not only the exploitation and oppression of wage earners in society today, but every manner of exploitation and oppression, whether directed against a class, party, sex, or race.

Proceeding from these principles, the German Social Democratic Party demands, first of all:

1. Universal, equal, and direct suffrage with secret ballot in all elections, for all citizens of the Reich over the age of twenty, without distinction of sex. Proportional representation, and, until this is introduced, legal redistribution of electoral districts after every census. Two-year legislative periods. Holding of elections on a legal holiday. Compensation for elected representatives. Suspension of every restriction on political rights, except in the case of legal incapacity.

2. Direct legislation by the people through the rights of proposal and rejection. Self-determination and self-government of the people in Reich, state, province, and municipality. Election by the people of magistrates, who are answerable and liable to them. Annual voting of taxes.

3. Education of all to bear arms. Militia in the place of the standing army. Determination by the popular assembly on questions of war and peace. Settlement of all international disputes by arbitration.

4. Abolition of all laws that place women at a disadvantage compared with men in matters of public or private law.

5. Abolition of all laws that limit or suppress the free expression of opinion and restrict or suppress the right of association and assembly. Declaration that religion is a private matter. Abolition of all expenditures from public funds for ecclesiastical and religious purposes. Ecclesiastical and religious communities are to be regarded as private associations that regulate their affairs entirely autonomously.

6. Secularization of schools. Compulsory attendance at the public Volksschule [extended elementary school]. Free education, free educational materials, and free meals in the public Volksschulen, as well as at higher educational institutions for those boys and girls considered qualified for further education by virtue of their abilities.

7. Free administration of justice and free legal assistance. Administration of the law by judges elected by the people. Appeal in criminal cases. Compensation for individuals unjustly accused, imprisoned, or sentenced. Abolition of capital punishment.

8. Free medical care, including midwifery and medicines. Free burial.

9. Graduated income and property tax for defraying all public expenditures, to the extent that they are to be paid for by taxation. Inheritance tax, graduated according to the size of the inheritance and the degree of kinship. Abolition of all indirect taxes, customs, and other economic measures that sacrifice the interests of the community to those of a privileged few.

For the protection of the working classes, the German Social Democratic Party demands, first of all:

1. Effective national and international worker protection laws on the following principles:

(a) Fixing of a normal working day not to exceed eight hours.

(b) Prohibition of gainful employment for children under the age of fourteen.

(c) Prohibition of night work, except in those industries that require night work for inherent technical reasons or for reasons of public welfare.

(d) An uninterrupted rest period of at least thirty-six hours every week for every worker.

(e) Prohibition of the truck system.

2. Supervision of all industrial establishments, investigation and regulation of working conditions in the cities and the countryside by a Reich labor department, district labor bureaus, and chambers of labor. Rigorous industrial hygiene.

3. Legal equality of agricultural laborers and domestic servants with industrial workers; abolition of the laws governing domestics.

4. Safeguarding of the freedom of association.

5. Takeover by the Reich government of the entire system of workers’ insurance, with decisive participation by the workers in its administration.

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Alternate Translation | Engels’ Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Program of 1891
Social Democracy Archive

An Interesting View of Small Scale Production and Private Ownership from 1902

Though Karl Kautsky was famously vilified by both Lenin¹ and Trotsky² for his critique of the establishment of a socialist republic by the Bolsheviks and for his centrist wavering in the face of the rising imperial conflict of World War I, he played an essential role as a popularizer  of socialist ideas and theory during the heyday of the German Social Democratic Party. He was the editor of the 4th volume of Capital and a key participant in the drafting of the 1891 Ef0rt Programme which was consistently working class and socialist in its tone and content. Kautsky, though perhaps middle class in temperament and lacking in revolutionary mettle when faced with the test of history, provided an essential link of living continuity between the theoretical work of Marx and Engels–the latter of whom was his friend and working associate –and the generation of revolutionists who led the Russian and German Revolutions at the end of the First World War. He was also an essential part of the leadership of one of the great mass working class socialist parties in history the SPD.

In this, as in every other relation, the greatest diversity and possibility of change will rule. Nothing is more false than to represent the socialist society as a simple, rigid mechanism whose wheels when once set in motion run on continuously in the same manner.

The most manifold forms of property in the means of production – national, municipal, cooperatives of consumption and production, and private can exist beside each other in a socialist society – the most diverse forms of industrial organization, bureaucratic, trades union, cooperative and individual; the most diverse forms of remuneration of labor, fixed wages, time wages, piece wages, participation in the economics in raw material, machinery, etc., participation in the results of intensive labor the most diverse forms of circulation of products, like contract by purchase from the warehouses of the State, from municipalities, from co-operatives of production, from producers themselves, etc., etc. The same manifold character of economic mechanism that exists to-day is possible in a socialistic society. Only the hunting and the hunted, the struggling and resisting, the annihilation and being annihilated of the present competitive struggle are excluded and therewith the contrast between exploiter and exploited.

¹See V.I. Lenin The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky : 1918

²See Leon Trotsky : Terrorism and Communism : 1922

The Remnants of Private Property in the Means of Production

Karl Kautsky  from The Social Revolution / The Day After The Social Revolution, 1902 (follow link for complete text)

Original Publication in English by Charles Kerr Chicago

We have seen that the proletarian regime would make short work of the smaller businesses where they represent the little, undeveloped plants, not only in industry but also in exchange.

The efforts referred to above for the organization of circulation would also lead to the greatest possible abolition of the little middlemen by crushing them out, partially through co-operatives for consumption, partly through extension of municipal activity. Superintendence and organization of the productive processes will be much easier when it is not necessary to deal with countless operators, but rather with only a few organizations.

Besides the work of the middle-men the direct producers of articles of consumption for local necessity would fall to the cooperatives and municipalities – for example, bakeries, milk and vegetable production and erection of buildings.

Agriculture

But it is not to be expected that all small private industries will disappear in this manner. This will be specially true in agriculture. To be sure those agricultural plants which have already become capitalist industries would fall with the wage system and be transformed into national, municipal or co-operative businesses. Therewith a large number of the little competing farmers of to-day would cease to exist and go as laborers into the industrial or agricultural great industry, because they could there secure a respectable existence. But we may be sure that some farmers would always remain with their own family, or at the most with one assistant, or maid that will be reckoned as part of the family, and would continue their little industry. With the present conservative nature of our farmers it is highly probable that a number of them would continue to work in the present manner. The proletarian governmental power would have absolutely no inclination to take over such little businesses. As yet no socialist who is to be taken seriously has ever demanded that the farmers should be expropriated, or that their goods should be confiscated. It is much more probable that each little farmer would be permitted to work on as he has previously done. The farmer has nothing to fear from a socialist regime.

Indeed it is highly probable that these agricultural industries would receive considerable strengthening through the new regime. It would bring an abolition of militarism, of burdens of taxation, bring self-government and nationalism of schools and road taxes, an abolition of poor relief and perhaps also a lowering of mortgage burdens, and many other advantages. We have also seen that the victorious proletariat has every reason to increase the amount of products, and among those products for which the demand would be increased, the most important are agricultural products. In spite of all the refutation of the theory of increasing misery there is still much hunger to satisfy, and this fact alone justifies us in the opinion that the raising of wages mold show itself above all in an increase of the demand for agricultural products. The proletarian regime would also have the greatest interest in increasing the production of the farmers and it would have powerful forces at its disposal for this purpose. Its own interests demand that the agricultural industry should be brought to a higher stage through the care of animals, machines and fertilizers, through improvement of the soil, etc. It mold in this manner assist in Increasing agricultural products, including those in the industries not yet socialized.

But here, as well as in every sphere, conditions would make it necessary to simplify the circulation process by substituting for a large number of private individuals trading their products with one another a few organizations united for economic purposes. The State would much prefer instead of selling breeding animals, machines and fertilizers to the individual farmers to deal with the farmers’ societies and co-operatives. These societies and co-operatives would find as the purchasers of their products no longer private middle-men, but either co-operatives, unions for consumption, municipalities or national industries (mills, sugar factories, breweries and such like). So here also the private industry would continually recede before the social, and the latter would finally transform the agricultural industry itself and permit the development of many such industries through the co-operative or municipal co-operative into one great social industry. The farmers will combine their possessions and operate them in common, especially when they see how the social operation of the expropriated great industry proves that with the same expenditure of labor perceptibly more can be produced, or that with the same number of products the laborers can be granted considerably more leisure than is possible in the small industry. If the small industry is still able to assert itself in agriculture this is due not a little to the fact that it can pump more labor out of its laborers than the great industry. It is undeniable that farmers work harder than the wage workers of the great land owners. The farmer has scarcely any free time, and even during the little free time that he has he must be continually studying how he can improve his business. There is nothing else in his life but his business, and that is also one of the reasons why he is so hard for us to gain.

But this holds true only for the older generation; the younger generation is conscious of other things. They feel a strong impulse towards enjoyments and pleasures, towards joy, and also towards a higher culture, and because they cannot satisfy these impulses in the country they stream into the cities and populate the level plains. When once the farmer sees, however, that he can remain in agriculture without being compelled to renounce leisure and culture he will no longer flee from agriculture, but will simply move from the little industry to the great and therewith the last fortress of private property will disappear.

But the victorious proletariat will not consider a violent hastening of this development, and this for the very good reason that it does not feel itself called upon to get its head cracked without any necessity. And this has been the result of every attempt to force the farmers to a new stage of production. However high may be my estimate of the belligerency and fearlessness of the proletariat, its struggle is not directed against the little people that are themselves exploited, but against the great exploiters.

Small Industry

Along with agriculture the small industry in business comes into consideration. This also need not completely disappear at once. To be sure the new regime, as we have already seen, would, whenever poorly organized industry came in competition with the more perfect, strive to concentrate production in the well directed great industries. This could be easily attained, however, without the application of force by the simple raising of wages. But there will always be branches of industry in which the machine cannot compete successfully with hand labor, or, cannot accomplish what the latter can accomplish. It is highly significant that an investigation of the factory statistics of the German empire did not yield a single form of production in which the small industry still exclusively rules, with one insignificant exception (four plants each with one laborer). A few figures that, so far as I know, have never yet been published are here given. In the following branches of industry the small business rules almost exclusively, more than 97 per cent of all industries, while the great business with more than fifty laborers does not exist at all:

	Number of Factories with:
	1 to 5 workers	6 to 50 workers	Number of motors
Makers of whetstones	77	2	52
Makers of violins	1,037	24	5
Preparation of anatomical material	126	3
Scavengers	971	2	11
Spinners (materials not given)	275	3	2
Weavers (materials not given)	608	6	5
Rubber toys	4
Barbers, hairdressers, wigmakers	60,035	470	6
Cleaners of clothes and bootblacks	744	4	7
Chimneysweeps	3,860	26
Sculptors and painters	5,630	84	2

If we exclude painters, barbers, chimneysweeps, violin makers and, according to my opinion, also scavengers and bootblacks, this reduces the held of existing small businesses, in industries which are outside the field of competition of great industries, to practically nil.

Nevertheless it may be granted that the small industry will have a definite position in the future in many branches of industry that produce directly for human consumption, for the machines manufacture essentially only products in bulk, while many purchasers desire that their personal taste shall be considered. It is easily possible that even under a proletarian regime the number of small businesses may increase as the well being of the masses increases. The demand for products of hand labor as a result of this may become active. Artistic hand work may accordingly receive a new impulse. However, we need not expect the realization of the picture of the future that William Morris has painted for us in his beautiful Utopia, in which the machine plays no role whatever. The machine will remain the ruler of the productive process. It will never give up this position again to hand labor. This, however, does not exclude the possibility that hand work in many artistic branches will again flourish and that it will even conquer many new fields. Meanwhile it to-day too often maintains its existence only as the product of extreme misery. As a house industry hand work in a socialist society call only exist as an expensive luxury which may in a universal well being find an extensive distribution. The foundation of the productive process will still remain the machine-driven great industry. The problematical small industries will at the most be maintained as islands in the ocean of the great social businesses.

Variety in the Forms of Economic Structure

These little industries, again, can take on the most various forms in regard to the ownership of their means of production and the disposal of their products. They may be dependent upon a great national or municipal industry, from which they receive their raw material and tools and to which they dispose of their products. They can produce for private customers, or for the open market, etc. as to-day, so then, a laborer can occupy himself in the most diverse occupations one after another. A seamstress, for example, can occupy herself for a time in a national factory and at another time make dresses for private customers at home, then again can sew for another customer in her own house, and finally she may, with a few comrades, unite in a co-operative for the manufacture of clothing for sale.

In this, as in every other relation, the greatest diversity and possibility of change will rule. Nothing is more false than to represent the socialist society as a simple, rigid mechanism whose wheels when once set in motion run on continuously in the same manner.

The most manifold forms of property in the means of production – national, municipal, cooperatives of consumption and production, and private can exist beside each other in a socialist society – the most diverse forms of industrial organization, bureaucratic, trades union, cooperative and individual; the most diverse forms of remuneration of labor, fixed wages, time wages, piece wages, participation in the economics in raw material, machinery, etc., participation in the results of intensive labor the most diverse forms of circulation of products, like contract by purchase from the warehouses of the State, from municipalities, from co-operatives of production, from producers themselves, etc., etc. The same manifold character of economic mechanism that exists to-day is possible in a socialistic society. Only the hunting and the hunted, the struggling and resisting, the annihilation and being annihilated of the present competitive struggle are excluded and therewith the contrast between exploiter and exploited.