STRANGE TIMES

Question “The only experience that I have with dialectics is a horrible essay that I had to write at university about Mozart and Beethoven. I’ve never really understood what dialectics means, except that it’s a great word to use when pretending to be intellectual over a cup of coffee. Most other people don’t really seem to understand the concept either, but would prefer not to admit it. I know this as I regularly drop it into conversations and no one has pulled me up on it yet.. see emperor’s new clothes post!”

Dialectics – What is it, what are examples of it?

by Keza 2004

I mentioned in The relation between materialism and idealism topic that materialist philosopher Daniel Dennett doesn’t mention the word dialectics – so in reading Dennett I’ve been looking out for what language he uses when describing concepts that are dialectical.

I’ve found one instance – he uses words like paradoxical to describe the problem and then in detailing his solution says things like, “this is not paradoxical at all”

An example is that Mother Nature / Evolution has no foresight and yet has managed to create humans who have foresight.

• Re: progress and dialectics

Posted by keza at 2004-12-28

The best laid plans of mice and men…. if practically everything that we do results in something not intended then why do we plan, why do we struggle, why do we try to move the world in a certain direction?

When Engels wrote that consciously willed actions often result in quite unintended consequences I think he was disputing the Hegelian idea that history is “the gradual realisation of ideas”. His point was that what happens in history comes about not as a direct result of abstract ideas, wishes, intentions (and so on) but is governed by ‘inner laws’ – ie what is possible (and therefore real and rational) in a given epoch. Movements don’t arise just because someone comes up with a good or bad) idea and manages to convince lots of people to follow them. Movements for change arise out of material conditions – the possibility for change is present and that opportunity is seized. The ideology in which the movement is clothed is (somewhat) secondary.

“The distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production … and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.”

Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Political Philosophy (1859)

An example is the idea of “equality” in the bourgeois democratic revolution. The idea that “all men are created equal” stood in direct opposition to the feudal belief that all men are most definitely not created equal. The growth of capitalism made it not only possible but also necessary for the idea that rulers are made rather than born to take hold. Thus on a conscious level the motivation for bourgeois revolution was belief in ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ but at a more fundamental level, the revolution was driven by the necessity to liberate the productive forces from the constraints of feudalism. That reason (or motivation) was only dimly appreciated however.

Friedrich Engels wrote in 1893 that:

“Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker. Consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces.

I don’t think this means that bourgeois revolutionaries didn’t really believe in liberty, equality, fraternity – or that the battles they fought weren’t really for these things. We all know (except perhaps for the pseudo left) that as a result of the democratic revolution we have freedoms and rights that were hardly even dreamed of previously. However the ideas themselves weren’t the driving force – these ideas could only take hold because the material conditions were crying out for them (so to speak).

I think what bothers a lot of people is the feeling that perhaps this means that what they as individuals actually do doesn’t really matter – that somehow we are all carried along by a tide of “underlying forces” , that we are seized by ideas rather than seizing them ourselves etc etc. Engels refuted this when he said “freedom is the recognition of necessity” (Anti Duhring?) … once we come to understand “how things work” – “the rules of the game” then we do have a real chance of using our understanding to influence the course of history. Engels’ Letter to Franz Mehring in Berlin is interesting in this respect.”

He starts by pointing out that both he and Marx tended to neglect the role of ideas/ consciousness in bringing about change…

“Marx and I always failed to stress enough in our writings and in regard to which we are all equally guilty. That is to say, we all laid, and were bound to lay, the main emphasis, in the first place, on the derivation of political, juridical and other ideological notions, and of actions arising through the medium of these notions, from basic economic facts. But in so doing we neglected the formal side – the ways and means by which these notions, etc., come about – for the sake of the content. This has given our adversaries a welcome opportunity for misunderstandings and distortions…..”

and later:

“Hanging together with this is the fatuous notion of the ideologists that because we deny an independent historical development to the various ideological spheres which play a part in history we also deny them any effect upon history. The basis of this is the common undialectical conception of cause and effect as rigidly opposite poles, the total disregarding of interaction. These gentlemen often almost deliberately forget that once an historic element has been brought into the world by other, ultimately economic causes, it reacts, can react on its environment and even on the causes that have given rise to it.”

No time to write any more now!! I’ll finish with a quote I quite like though:

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living…. “
(Marx: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napolean)

end Keza

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19 01:54 AM

More about the usefulness of dialectics, being a bit more specific about it than in my previous reply to sally.

1) socialist / not socialist dialectic

A few years ago (maybe 20) I went to a debate where someone from the pro-Soviet so called communist party was arguing that the Soviet Union was still a socialist country. This person was so wrapped up in the details and scope of his argument that I could see that no single point could be made in question time that could possibly persuade him that he might be wrong. I wanted to support the case that the Soviet Union wasn’t socialist and so was racking my brains for a question that might get through, if not to the speaker, then at least to the audience.

What I thought of and asked the pro-Soviet speaker was: ” Are there any possible circumstances that might arise in the future which would persuade you that the Soviet Union was no longer socialist?”

To the amusement and bemusement of some of the audience, he replied, “No, the Soviet Union will always be socialist”

2) progressive / reactionary dialectic

I think a similar sort of point can be made to the pseudo-left in connection to the US invasion of Iraq.

In my view it’s pretty straightforward that the US has led a campaign to overthrow the fascist government of Saddam Hussein and is now proceeding to help Iraqis create a democratic government. That has to be progressive.

Because historically US Imperialism has been very reactionary, as exemplified by the Vietnam war and much more, there are now many people in the world who seem incapable of conceptualising that the US could possibly do something progressive. It’s always possible for these people to point to bad things that the US does – there is no shortage of examples.

Maybe part of the problem is that they have an ingrained black and white, non dialectic world view, which implicitly denies the very possibility that the US could do something progressive.

I’m not saying that thinking dialectically is a substitute for studying the details of processes in detail – including the details of what the Soviet Union became historically and the details of what is happening in Iraq and the Middle East. But that having the concept of dialectics (the coexistence of opposites in things) might help prevent falling into the rigid black and white thinking illustrated in the two examples above. If some people can’t even conceptualise that it might be possible for US Imperialism today to do something progressive then no amount of detail is going to change their mind about Iraq. Their thinking is dogmatically stuck at another level to do with their whole world view. I’m arguing that studying dialectics is useful because it helps us keep our minds open to these possibilities.

Here’s a paragraph from Dennett:

“One of the standard (and much needed) correctives issued to those who study evolution is the old line about how natural selection has no foresight at all. It is true, of course. Evolution is the blind watchmaker, and we must never forget it. But we shouldn’t ignore the fact that Mother Nature is well supplied with the wisdom of hindsight. Her motto might well be “If I’m so myopic, how come I’m so rich?” And while Mother Nature is herself lacking in foresight, she has managed to create things – us human beings, preeminently – who do have foresight, and are even beginning to put this foresight to use in guiding and abetting the very processes of natural selection on this planet. I occasionally encounter even quite sophisticated evolutionary theorists who find this paradoxical. How could a process with no foresight invent a process with foresight? One of the main goals of my book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” was to show that this is not paradoxical at all. The process of natural selection, slowly and without foresight, invents processes or phenomena that speed up the evolutionary process itself – cranes, not skyhooks in my fanciful terminology – until the souped up evolutionary process finally reaches the point where explorations within the lifetime of individual organisms can affect the underlying slow process of genetic evolution, and even, in some circumstances, usurp it.”
– Freedom Evolves, page 53

So, this illustrates that one can think dialectically without formally studying dialectics or even using the word dialectic. Dennett’s ability to do this would presumedly arise out of his deep study of the science of evolution combined with his materialistic philosophy.

In dialectical language no foresight and foresight would constitute a unity of opposites and in the process of development one can transform into the other. I think this way of looking at it is preferable to Dennet’s apparent paradox that turns out not to be a paradox.

But it’s probably more important to really study the topic deeply (in this case, evolution) than just to be able to spout the magic words. But I also believe that it’s important to study dialectics itself (Mao, Hegel etc.) because this creates an awareness or sensitivity to possibilities of things turning into their opposite that we otherwise might not even notice – it has the potential to make our thinking more fluid and flexible.

end post

Posted by kerrb at 2004-12-19

Dialectics is the co-existence of opposites in everything, nature, mind, society. I’ll explain by reference to something said in The Emperor’s New Clothes thread:

Think of all the people scared to speak in public, or scared to admit how they feel about something, or someone! I know for a fact that my private side is very different from my public face. So in my opinion this is a ‘problem’ that stretches right across the board, it’s not just in intellectual circles. People in general are afraid to speak their minds! Me too, so afraid that I don’t want to post this, but I will anyway.

What you are saying here is full of dialectics IMO. You talk about fear of speaking out and feeling compelled to speak out coexisting in your mind. Both of these opposites co-exist side by side. In some circumstances the fear might be stronger and you don’t speak. In other circumstances the compulsion to speak out might be stronger.

I think it’s fair to say that these opposite tendencies exist in everybody and so we are talking about something that is universal.

So, by contrast, what would be a non dialectical way of looking at this? We might view some people as always speaking out, the sort of people we wish would shut up sometimes. We might view other people as never speaking out, the sort of people that we don’t know what they are thinking. We might form black and white opinions about people with these extreme tendencies and as a result lose our curiosity, for example, not notice that a normally garrulous person has gone quiet in certain circumstances.

But of course there are no people like either of these two extremes. Although some people speak too much and others hardly at all these are just tendencies across the spectrum of possibilities. In reality, the two opposite tendencies coexist within everyone.

I’ve just taken one example of dialectics here from something you wrote in order to explain the idea. But whatever you are thinking about or studying I would argue that you can always conceptualise opposites that coexist within that thing. At the least I think it’s a very handy way to think about things because it can open up new ways of looking at something.

ON PRACTICE
On the Relation Between Knowledge and Practice, Between Knowing and Doing

July 1937

[There used to be a number of comrades in our Party who were dogmatists and who for a long period rejected the experience of the Chinese revolution, denying the truth that “Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action” and overawing people with words and phrases from Marxist works, torn out of context. There were also a number of comrades who were empiricists and who for a long period restricted themselves to their own fragmentary experience and did not understand the importance of theory for revolutionary practice or see the revolution as a whole, but worked blindly though industriously.

The erroneous ideas of these two types of comrades, and particularly of the dogmatists, caused enormous losses to the Chinese revolution during 1931-34, and yet the dogmatists cloaking themselves as Marxists, confused a great many comrades. “On Practice” was written in order to expose the subjectivist errors of dogmatism and empiricism in the Party, and especially the error of dogmatism, from the standpoint of the Marxist theory of knowledge. It was entitled “On Practice” because its stress was on exposing the dogmatist kind of subjectivism, which belittles practice. The ideas contained in this essay were presented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung in a lecture at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan.]

Before Marx, materialism examined the problem of knowledge apart from the social nature of man and apart from his historical development, and was therefore incapable of understanding the dependence of knowledge on social practice, that is, the dependence of knowledge on production and the class struggle.

Above all, Marxists regard man’s activity in production as the most fundamental practical activity, the determinant of all his other activities. Man’s knowledge depends mainly on his activity in material production, through which he comes gradually to understand the phenomena, the properties and the laws of nature, and the relations between himself and nature; and through his activity in production he also gradually comes to understand, in varying degrees, certain relations that exist between man and man. None of this knowledge can be acquired apart from activity in production.

In a classless society every person, as a member of society, joins in common effort with the other members, enters into definite relations of production with them and engages in production to meet man’s material needs. In all class societies, the members of the different social classes also enter, in different ways, into definite relations of production and engage in production to meet their material needs. This is the primary source from which human knowledge develops.

Man’s social practice is not confined to activity in production, but takes many other forms–class struggle, political life, scientific and artistic pursuits; in short, as a social being, man participates in all spheres of the practical life of society. Thus man, in varying degrees, comes to know the different relations between man and man, not only through his material life but also through his political and cultural life (both of which are intimately bound up with material life).

Of these other types of social practice, class struggle in particular, in all its various forms, exerts a profound influence on the development of man’s knowledge. In class society everyone lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking, without exception, is stamped with the brand of a class.

Marxists hold that in human society activity in production develops step by step from a lower to a higher level and that consequently man’s knowledge, whether of nature or of society, also develops step by step from a lower to a higher level, that is, from the shallower to the deeper, from the one-sided to the many-sided. For a very long period in history, men were necessarily confined to a one-sided understanding of the history of society because, for one thing, the bias of the exploiting classes always distorted history and, for another, the small scale of production limited man’s outlook.

It was not until the modern proletariat emerged along with immense forces of production (large-scale industry) that man was able to acquire a comprehensive, historical understanding of the development of society and turn this knowledge into a science, the science of Marxism.

Marxists hold that man’s social practice alone is the criterion of the truth of his knowledge of the external world. What actually happens is that man’s knowledge is verified only when he achieves the anticipated results in the process of social practice (material production, class struggle or scientific experiment). If a man wants to succeed in his work, that is, to achieve the anticipated results, he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in his practice.

After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit”. The dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the primary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from practice.

Thus Lenin said, “Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowledge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of immediate actuality.” [1] The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat. The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice. Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical materialist theory of knowledge. [2]

But how then does human knowledge arise from practice and in turn serve practice? This will become clear if we look at the process of development of knowledge.

In the process of practice, man at first sees only the phenomenal side, the separate aspects, the external relations of things. For instance, some people from outside come to Yenan on a tour of observation. In the first day or two, they see its topography, streets and houses; they meet many people, attend banquets, evening parties and mass meetings, hear talk of various kinds and read various documents, all these being the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things. This is called the perceptual stage of cognition, namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions.

That is, these particular things in Yenan act on the sense organs of the members of the observation group, evoke sense perceptions and give rise in their brains to many impressions together with a rough sketch of the external relations among these impressions: this is the first stage of cognition. At this stage, man cannot as yet form concepts, which are deeper, or draw logical conclusions.

As social practice continues, things that give rise to man’s sense perceptions and impressions in the course of his practice are repeated many times; then a sudden change (leap) takes place in the brain in the process of cognition, and concepts are formed. Concepts are no longer the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external relations of things; they grasp the essence, the totality and the internal relations of things.

Between concepts and sense perceptions there is not only a quantitative but also a qualitative difference. Proceeding further, by means of judgement and inference one is able to draw logical conclusions. The expression in San Kuo Yen Yi, [3] “knit the brows and a stratagem comes to mind”, or in everyday language, “let me think it over”, refers to man’s use of concepts in the brain to form judgements and inferences. This is the second stage of cognition. When the members of the observation group have collected various data and, what is more, have “thought them over”, they are able to arrive at the judgement that “the Communist Party’s policy of the National United Front Against Japan is thorough, sincere and genuine”.

Having made this judgement, they can, if they too are genuine about uniting to save the nation, go a step further and draw the following conclusion, “The National United Front Against Japan can succeed.” This stage of conception, judgement and inference is the more important stage in the entire process of knowing a thing; it is the stage of rational knowledge. The real task of knowing is, through perception, to arrive at thought, to arrive step by step at the comprehension of the internal contradictions of objective things, of their laws and of the internal relations between one process and another, that is, to arrive at logical knowledge.

To repeat, logical knowledge differs from perceptual knowledge in that perceptual knowledge pertains to the separate aspects, the phenomena and the external relations of things, whereas logical knowledge takes a big stride forward to reach the totality, the essence and the internal relations of things and discloses the inner contradictions in the surrounding world. Therefore, logical knowledge is capable of grasping the development of the surrounding world in its totality, in the internal relations of all its aspects.

This dialectical-materialist theory of the process of development of knowledge, basing itself on practice and proceeding from the shallower to the deeper, was never worked out by anybody before the rise of Marxism. Marxist materialism solved this problem correctly for the first time, pointing out both materialistically and dialectically the deepening movement of cognition, the movement by which man in society progresses from perceptual knowledge to logical knowledge in his complex, constantly recurring practice of production and class struggle.

Lenin said, “The abstraction of matter, of a law of nature, the abstraction of value, etc., in short, all scientific (correct, serious, not absurd) abstractions reflect nature more deeply, truly and completely.” [4] Marxism-Leninism holds that each of the two stages in the process of cognition has its own characteristics, with knowledge manifesting itself as perceptual at the lower stage and logical at the higher stage, but that both are stages in an integrated process of cognition. The perceptual and the rational are qualitatively different, but are not divorced from each other; they are unified on the basis of practice. Our practice proves that what is perceived cannot at once be comprehended and that only what is comprehended can be more deeply perceived.

Perception only solves the problem of phenomena; theory alone can solve the problem of essence. The solving of both these problems is not separable in the slightest degree from practice. Whoever wants to know a thing has no way of doing so except by coming into contact with it, that is, by living (practicing) in its environment. In feudal society it was impossible to know the laws of capitalist society in advance because capitalism had not yet emerged, the relevant practice was lacking. Marxism could be the product only of capitalist society.

Marx, in the era of laissez-faire capitalism, could not concretely know certain laws peculiar to the era of imperialism beforehand, because imperialism, the last stage of capitalism, had not yet emerged and the relevant practice was lacking; only Lenin and Stalin could undertake this task. Leaving aside their genius, the reason why Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin could work out their theories was mainly that they personally took part in the practice of the class struggle and the scientific experimentation of their time; lacking this condition, no genius could have succeeded. The saying, “without stepping outside his gate the scholar knows all the wide world’s affairs”, was mere empty talk in past times when technology was undeveloped.

Even though this saying can be valid in the present age of developed technology, the people with real personal knowledge are those engaged in practice the wide world over. And it is only when these people have come to “know” through their practice and when their knowledge has reached him through writing and technical media that the “scholar” can indirectly “know all the wide world’s affairs”. If you want to know a certain thing or a certain class of things directly, you must personally participate in the practical struggle to change reality, to change that thing or class of things, for only thus can you come into contact with them as phenomena; only through personal participation in the practical struggle to change reality can you uncover the essence of that thing or class of things and comprehend them. This is the path to knowledge which every man actually travels, though some people, deliberately distorting matters, argue to the contrary.

The most ridiculous person in the world is the “know all” who picks up a smattering of hearsay knowledge and proclaims himself “the world’s Number One authority”; this merely shows that he has not taken a proper measure of himself. Knowledge is a matter of science, and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse–honesty and modesty. If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality. If you want to know the taste of a pear, you must change the pear by eating it yourself. If you want to know the structure and properties of the atom, you must make physical and chemical experiments to change the state of the atom. If you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution.

All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience. But one cannot have direct experience of everything; as a matter of fact, most of our knowledge comes from indirect experience, for example, all knowledge from past times and foreign lands. To our ancestors and to foreigners, such knowledge was–or is–a matter of direct experience, and this knowledge is reliable if in the course of their direct experience the requirement of “scientific abstraction”, spoken of by Lenin, was–or is–fulfilled and objective reality scientifically reflected, otherwise it is not reliable.

Hence a man’s knowledge consists only of two parts, that which comes from direct experience and that which comes from indirect experience. Moreover, what is indirect experience for me is direct experience for other people. Consequently, considered as a whole, knowledge of any kind is inseparable from direct experience. All knowledge originates in perception of the objective external world through man’s physical sense organs. Anyone who denies such perception, denies direct experience, or denies personal participation in the practice that changes reality, is not a materialist. That is why the “know-all” is ridiculous.

There is an old Chinese saying, “How can you catch tiger cubs without entering the tiger’s lair?” This saying holds true for man’s practice and it also holds true for the theory of knowledge. There can be no knowledge apart from practice.

To make clear the dialectical-materialist movement of cognition arising on the basis of the practice which changes reality–to make clear the gradually deepening movement of cognition–a few additional concrete examples are given below.

In its knowledge of capitalist society, the proletariat was only in the perceptual stage of cognition in the first period of its practice, the period of machine-smashing and spontaneous struggle; it knew only some of the aspects and the external relations of the phenomena of capitalism. The proletariat was then still a “class-in-itself”.

But when it reached the second period of its practice, the period of conscious and organized economic and political struggles, the proletariat was able to comprehend the essence of capitalist society, the relations of exploitation between social classes and its own historical task; and it was able to do so because of its own practice and because of its experience of prolonged struggle, which Marx and Engels scientifically summed up in all its variety to create the theory of Marxism for the education of the proletariat. It was then that the proletariat became a “class-for-itself”.

Similarly with the Chinese people’s knowledge of imperialism. The first stage was one of superficial, perceptual knowledge, as shown in the indiscriminate anti-foreign struggles of the Movement of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Yi Ho Tuan Movement, and so on.

It was only in the second stage that the Chinese people reached the stage of rational knowledge, saw the internal and external contradictions of imperialism and saw the essential truth that imperialism had allied itself with China’s comprador and feudal classes to oppress and exploit the great masses of the Chinese people. This knowledge began about the time of the May 4th Movement of 1919.

Next, let us consider war. If those who lead a war lack experience of war, then at the initial stage they will not understand the profound laws pertaining to the directing of a specific war (such as our Agrarian Revolutionary War of the past decade). At the initial stage they will merely experience a good deal of fighting and, what is more, suffer many defeats.

But this experience (the experience of battles won and especially of battles lost) enables them to comprehend the inner thread of the whole war, namely, the laws of that specific war, to understand its strategy and tactics, and consequently to direct the war with confidence. If, at such a moment, the command is turned over to an inexperienced person, then he too will have to suffer a number of defeats (gain experience) before he can comprehend the true laws of the war.

“I am not sure I can handle it.” We often hear this remark when a comrade hesitates to accept an assignment. Why is he unsure of himself? Because he has no systematic understanding of the content and circumstances of the assignment, or because he has had little or no contact with such work, and so the laws governing it are beyond him.

After a detailed analysis of the nature and circumstances of the assignment, he will feel more sure of himself and do it willingly. If he spends some time at the job and gains experience and if he is a person who is willing to look into matters with an open mind and not one who approaches problems subjectively, one-sidedly and superficially, then he can draw conclusions for himself as to how to go about the job and do it with much more courage.

Only those who are subjective, one-sided and superficial in their approach to problems will smugly issue orders or directives the moment they arrive on the scene, without considering the circumstances, without viewing things in their totality (their history and their present state as a whole) and without getting to the essence of things (their nature and the internal relations between one thing and another). Such people are bound to trip and fall.

Thus it can be seen that the first step in the process of cognition is contact with the objects of the external world; this belongs to the stage of perception. The second step is to synthesize the data of perception by arranging and reconstructing them; this belongs to the stage of conception, judgement and inference. It is only when the data of perception are very rich (not fragmentary) and correspond to reality (are not illusory) that they can be the basis for forming correct concepts and theories.

Here two important points must be emphasized. The first, which has been stated before but should be repeated here, is the dependence of rational knowledge upon perceptual knowledge. Anyone who thinks that rational knowledge need not be derived from perceptual knowledge is an idealist. In the history of philosophy there is the “rationalist” school that admits the reality only of reason and not of experience, believing that reason alone is reliable while perceptual experience is not; this school errs by turning things upside down.

The rational is reliable precisely because it has its source in sense perceptions, other wise it would be like water without a source, a tree without roots, subjective, self-engendered and unreliable. As to the sequence in the process of cognition, perceptual experience comes first; we stress the significance of social practice in the process of cognition precisely because social practice alone can give rise to human knowledge and it alone can start man on the acquisition of perceptual experience from the objective world. For a person who shuts his eyes, stops his ears and totally cuts himself off from the objective world there can be no such thing as knowledge. Knowledge begins with experience–this is the materialism of the theory of knowledge.

The second point is that knowledge needs to be deepened, that the perceptual stage of knowledge needs to be developed to the rational stage–this is the dialectics of the theory of knowledge. [5] To think that knowledge can stop at the lower, perceptual stage and that perceptual knowledge alone is reliable while rational knowledge is not, would be to repeat the historical error of “empiricism”.

This theory errs in failing to understand that, although the data of perception reflect certain realities in the objective world (I am not speaking here of idealist empiricism which confines experience to so-called introspection), they are merely one-sided and superficial, reflecting things incompletely and not reflecting their essence.

Fully to reflect a thing in its totality, to reflect its essence, to reflect its inherent laws, it is necessary through the exercise of thought to reconstruct the rich data of sense perception, discarding the dross and selecting the essential, eliminating the false and retaining the true, proceeding from the one to the other and from the outside to the inside, in order to form a system of concepts and theories–it is necessary to make a leap from perceptual to rational knowledge. Such reconstructed knowledge is not more empty or more unreliable; on the contrary, whatever has been scientifically reconstructed in the process of cognition, on the basis of practice, reflects objective reality, as Lenin said, more deeply, more truly, more fully.

As against this, vulgar “practical men” respect experience but despise theory, and therefore cannot have a comprehensive view of an entire objective process, lack clear direction and long-range perspective, and are complacent over occasional successes and glimpses of the truth. If such persons direct a revolution, they will lead it up a blind alley.

Rational knowledge depends upon perceptual knowledge and perceptual knowledge remains to be developed into rational knowledge– this is the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge. In philosophy, neither “rationalism” nor “empiricism” understands the historical or the dialectical nature of knowledge, and although each of these schools contains one aspect of the truth (here I am referring to materialist, not to idealist, rationalism and empiricism), both are wrong on the theory of knowledge as a whole. The dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational holds true for a minor process of cognition (for instance, knowing a single thing or task) as well as for a major process of cognition (for instance, knowing a whole society or a revolution).

But the movement of knowledge does not end here. If the dialectical-materialist movement of knowledge were to stop at rational knowledge, only half the problem would be dealt with. And as far as Marxist philosophy is concerned, only the less important half at that. Marxist philosophy holds that the most important problem does not lie in understanding the laws of the objective world and thus being able to explain it, but in applying the knowledge of these laws actively to change the world. From the Marxist viewpoint, theory is important, and its importance is fully expressed in Lenin’s statement, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” [6]

But Marxism emphasizes the importance of theory precisely and only because it can guide action. If we have a correct theory but merely prate about it, pigeonhole it and do not put it into practice, then that theory, however good, is of no significance. Knowledge begins with practice, and theoretical knowledge is acquired through practice and must then return to practice. The active function of knowledge manifests itself not only in the active leap from perceptual to rational knowledge, but–and this is more important–it must manifest itself in the leap from rational knowledge to revolutionary practice.

The knowledge which grasps the laws of the world, must be redirected to the practice of changing the world, must be applied anew in the practice of production, in the practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle and in the practice of scientific experiment. This is the process of testing and developing theory, the continuation of the whole process of cognition. The problem of whether theory corresponds to objective reality is not, and cannot be, completely solved in the movement of knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, mentioned above.

The only way to solve this problem completely is to redirect rational knowledge to social practice, apply theory to practice and see whether it can achieve the objectives one has in mind. Many theories of natural science are held to be true not only because they were so considered when natural scientists originated them, but because they have been verified in subsequent scientific practice. Similarly, Marxism-Leninism is held to be true not only because it was so considered when it was scientifically formulated by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin but because it has been verified in the subsequent practice of revolutionary class struggle and revolutionary national struggle. Dialectical materialism is universally true because it is impossible for anyone to escape from its domain in his practice. The history of human knowledge tells us that the truth of many theories is incomplete and that this incompleteness is remedied through the test of practice.

Many theories are erroneous and it is through the test of practice that their errors are corrected. That is why practice is the criterion of truth and why “the standpoint of life, of practice, should be first and fundamental in the theory of knowledge”. [7] Stalin has well said, “Theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice, just as practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory.” [8]

When we get to this point, is the movement of knowledge completed? Our answer is: it is and yet it is not. When men in society throw themselves into the practice of changing a certain objective process (whether natural or social) at a certain stage of its development, they can, as a result of the reflection of the objective process in their brains and the exercise of their subjective activity, advance their knowledge from the perceptual to the rational, and create ideas, theories, plans or programmes which correspond in general to the laws of that objective process.

They then apply these ideas, theories, plans or programmes in practice in the same objective process. And if they can realize the aims they have in mind, that is, if in that same process of practice they can translate, or on the whole translate, those previously formulated ideas, theories, plans or programmes into fact, then the movement of knowledge may be considered completed with regard to this particular process. In the process of changing nature, take for example the fulfilment of an engineering plan, the verification of a scientific hypothesis, the manufacture of an implement or the reaping of a crop; or in the process of changing society, take for example the victory of a strike, victory in a war or the fulfilment of an educational plan.

All these may be considered the realization of aims one has in mind. But generally speaking, whether in the practice of changing nature or of changing society, men’s original ideas, theories, plans or programmes are seldom realized without any alteration.

This is because people engaged in changing reality are usually subject to numerous limitations; they are limited not only by existing scientific and technological conditions but also by the development of the objective process itself and the degree to which this process has become manifest (the aspects and the essence of the objective process have not yet been fully revealed). In such a situation, ideas, theories, plans or programmes are usually altered partially and sometimes even wholly, because of the discovery of unforeseen circumstances in the course of practice.

That is to say, it does happen that the original ideas, theories, plans or programmes fail to correspond with reality either in whole or in part and are wholly or partially incorrect. In many instances, failures have to be repeated many times before errors In knowledge can be corrected and correspondence with the laws of the objective process achieved, and consequently before the subjective can be transformed into the objective, or in other words, before the anticipated results can be achieved in practice. But when that point is reached, no matter how, the movement of human knowledge regarding a certain objective process at a certain stage of its development may be considered completed.

However, so far as the progression of the process is concerned, the movement of human knowledge is not completed. Every process, whether in the realm of nature or of society, progresses and develops by reason of its internal contradiction and struggle, and the movement of human knowledge should also progress and develop along with it.

As far as social movements are concerned, true revolutionary leaders must not only be good at correcting their ideas, theories, plans or programmes when errors are discovered, as has been indicated above; but when a certain objective process has already progressed and changed from one stage of development to another, they must also be good at making themselves and all their fellow-revolutionaries progress and change in their subjective knowledge along with it, that IS to say, they must ensure that the proposed new revolutionary tasks and new working programmes correspond to the new changes in the situation. In a revolutionary period the situation changes very rapidly; if the knowledge of revolutionaries does not change rapidly in accordance with the changed situation, they will be unable to lead the revolution to victory.

It often happens, however, that thinking lags behind reality; this is because man’s cognition is limited by numerous social conditions. We are opposed to die-herds in the revolutionary ranks whose thinking fails to advance with changing objective circumstances and has manifested itself historically as Right opportunism. These people fail to see that the struggle of opposites has already pushed the objective process forward while their knowledge has stopped at the old stage.

This is characteristic of the thinking of all die-herds. Their thinking is divorced from social practice, and they cannot march ahead to guide the chariot of society; they simply trail behind, grumbling that it goes too fast and trying to drag it back or turn it in the opposite direction.

We are also opposed to “Left” phrase-mongering. The thinking of “Leftists” outstrips a given stage of development of the objective process; some regard their fantasies as truth, while others strain to realize in the present an ideal which can only be realized in the future. They alienate themselves from the current practice of the majority of the people and from the realities of the day, and show themselves adventurist in their actions.

Idealism and mechanical materialism, opportunism and adventurism, are all characterized by the breach between the subjective and the objective, by the separation of knowledge from practice. The Marxist-Leninist theory of knowledge, characterized as it is by scientific social practice, cannot but resolutely oppose these wrong ideologies. Marxists recognize that in the absolute and general process of development of the universe, the development of each particular process is relative, and that hence, in the endless flow of absolute truth, man’s knowledge of a particular process at any given stage of development is only relative truth. The sum total of innumerable relative truths constitutes absolute truth. [9] The development of an objective process is full of contradictions and struggles, and so is the development of the movement of human knowledge.

All the dialectical movements of the objective world can sooner or later be reflected in human knowledge. In social practice, the process of coming into being, developing and passing away is infinite, and so is the process of coming into being, developing and passing away in human knowledge. As man’s practice which changes objective reality in accordance with given ideas, theories, plans or programmes, advances further and further, his knowledge of objective reality likewise becomes deeper and deeper. The movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man’s cognition of truth through practice. Marxism-Leninism has in no way exhausted truth but ceaselessly opens up roads to the knowledge of truth in the course of practice.

Our conclusion is the concrete, historical unity of the subjective and the objective, of theory and practice, of knowing ant doing, and we are opposed to all erroneous ideologies, whether “Left” or Right, which depart from concrete history.

In the present epoch of the development of society, the responsibility of correctly knowing and changing the world has been placed by history upon the shoulders of the proletariat and its party. This process, the practice of changing the world, which is determined in accordance with scientific knowledge, has already reached a historic moment in the world and in China, a great moment unprecedented in human history, that is, the moment for completely banishing darkness from the world and from China and for changing the world into a world of light such as never previously existed.

The struggle of the proletariat and the revolutionary people to change the world comprises the fulfilment of the following tasks: to change the objective world and, at the same time, their own subjective world–to change their cognitive ability and change the relations between the subjective and the objective world. Such a change has already come about in one part of the globe, in the Soviet Union. There the people are pushing forward this process of change. The people of China and the rest of the world either are going through, or will go through, such a process.

And the objective world which is to be changed also includes all the opponents of change, who, in order to be changed, must go through a stage of compulsion before they can enter the stage of voluntary, conscious change. The epoch of world communism will be reached when all mankind voluntarily and consciously changes itself and the world.

Discover the truth through practice, and again through practice verify and develop the truth. Start from perceptual knowledge and actively develop it into rational knowledge; then start from rational knowledge and actively guide revolutionary practice to change both the subjective and the objective world. Practice, knowledge, again practice, and again knowledge.

This form repeats itself in endless cycles, and with each cycle the content of practice and knowledge rises to a higher level. Such is the whole of the dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge, and such is the dialectical-materialist theory of the unity of knowing and doing.

NOTES

1. V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”. Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 205.

2. See Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach”. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, in two volumes, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1958, Vol. II, p. 403, and V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, ring. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1952, pp. 136-4.

3. San Kuo Yen Yi (Tales of the Three Kingdoms) is a famous Chinese historical nova by Lo Kuan-chung (late 14th and early 15th century).

4. V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 161.

5. “In order to understand, it is necessary empirically to begin understanding, study, to rise from empiricism to the universal.” (Ibid., p. 197.)

6. V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”, Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.

7. V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, p. 141.

8. J. V. Stalin, “The Foundations of Leninism”, Problems of Leninism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954, p. 31.

9. See V. I. Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, pp. 129-36.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.
HTML revised 2004 by Marxists.org

Selected Works of Mao Ts

ON CONTRADICTION

August 1937

[This essay on philosophy was written by Comrade Mao Tse-tung after his essay “On Practice” and with the same object of overcoming the serious error of dogmatist thinking to be found in the Party at the time. Originally delivered as lectures at the Anti-Japanese Military and Political College in Yenan, it was revised by the author on its inclusion in his Selected Works.]

The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the basic law of materialist dialectics. Lenin said, “Dialectics in the proper sense is the study of contradiction in the very essence of objects.” [1] Lenin often called this law the essence of dialectics; he also called it the kernel of dialectics. [2] In studying this law, therefore, we cannot but touch upon a variety of questions, upon a number of philosophical problems. If we can become clear on all these problems, we shall arrive at a fundamental understanding of materialist dialectics. The problems are: the two world outlooks, the universality of contradiction, the particularity of contradiction, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction, the identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction, and the place of antagonism in contradiction.

The criticism to which the idealism of the Deborin school has been subjected in Soviet philosophical circles in recent years has aroused great interest among us. Deborin’s idealism has exerted a very bad influence in the Chinese Communist Party, and it cannot be said that the dogmatist thinking in our Party is unrelated to the approach of that school. Our present study of philosophy should therefore have the eradication of dogmatist thinking as its main objective.

I. THE TWO WORLD OUTLOOKS

Throughout the history of human knowledge, there have been two conceptions concerning the law of development of the universe, the metaphysical conception and the dialectical conception, which form two opposing world outlooks. Lenin said:

The two basic (or two possible? or two historically observable?) conceptions of development (evolution) are: development as decrease and increase, as repetition, and development as a unity of opposites (the division of a unity into mutually exclusive opposites and their reciprocal relation). [3]

Here Lenin was referring to these two different world outlooks.

In China another name for metaphysics is hsuan-hsueh. For a long period in history whether in China or in Europe, this way of thinking, which is part and parcel of the idealist world outlook, occupied a dominant position in human thought. In Europe, the materialism of the bourgeoisie in its early days was also metaphysical. As the social economy of many European countries advanced to the stage of highly developed capitalism, as the forces of production, the class struggle and the sciences developed to a level unprecedented in history, and as the industrial proletariat became the greatest motive force in historical development, there arose the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics. Then, in addition to open and barefaced reactionary idealism, vulgar evolutionism emerged among the bourgeoisie to oppose materialist dialectics.

The metaphysical or vulgar evolutionist world outlook sees things as isolated, static and one-sided. It regards all things in the universe, their forms and their species, as eternally isolated from one another and immutable. Such change as there is can only be an increase or decrease in quantity or a change of place. Moreover, the cause of such an increase or decrease or change of place is not inside things but outside them, that is, the motive force is external. Metaphysicians hold that all the different kinds of things in the universe and all their characteristics have been the same ever since they first came into being. All subsequent changes have simply been increases or decreases in quantity. They contend that a thing can only keep on repeating itself as the same kind of thing and cannot change into anything different.

In their opinion, capitalist exploitation, capitalist competition, the individualist ideology of capitalist society, and so on, can all be found in ancient slave society, or even in primitive society, and will exist for ever unchanged. They ascribe the causes of social development to factors external to society, such as geography and climate. They search in an over-simplified way outside a thing for the causes of its development, and they deny the theory of materialist dialectics which holds that development arises from the contradictions inside a thing.

Consequently they can explain neither the qualitative diversity of things, nor the phenomenon of one quality changing into another. In Europe, this mode of thinking existed as mechanical materialism in the 17th and 18th centuries and as vulgar evolutionism at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. In China, there was the metaphysical thinking exemplified in the saying “Heaven changeth not, likewise the Tao changeth not”, [4] and it was supported by the decadent feudal ruling classes for a long time. Mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism, which were imported from Europe in the last hundred gears, are supported by the bourgeoisie.

As opposed to the metaphysical world outlook, the world outlook of materialist dialectics holds that in order to understand the development of a thing we should study it internally and in its relations with other things; in other words, the development of things should be seen as their internal and necessary self-movement, while each thing in its movement is interrelated with and interacts on the things around it. The fundamental cause of the development of a thing is not external but internal; it lies in the contradictoriness within the thing.

There is internal contradiction in every single thing, hence its motion and development. Contradictoriness within a thing is the fundamental cause of its development, while its interrelations and interactions with other things are secondary causes.

Thus materialist dialectics effectively combats the theory of external causes, or of an external motive force, advanced by metaphysical mechanical materialism and vulgar evolutionism. It is evident that purely external causes can only give rise to mechanical motion, that is, to changes in scale or quantity, but cannot explain why things differ qualitatively in thousands of ways and why one thing changes into another.

As a matter of fact, even mechanical motion under external force occurs through the internal contradictoriness of things. Simple growth in plants and animals, their quantitative development, is likewise chiefly the result of their internal contradictions.

Similarly, social development is due chiefly not to external but to internal causes. Countries with almost the same geographical and climatic conditions display great diversity and unevenness in their development. Moreover, great social changes may take place in one and the same country although its geography and climate remain unchanged. Imperialist Russia changed into the socialist Soviet Union, and feudal Japan, which had locked its doors against the world, changed into imperialist Japan, although no change occurred in the geography and climate of either country.

Long dominated by feudalism, China has undergone great changes in the last hundred years and is now changing in the direction of a new China, liberated and-free, and yet no change has occurred in her geography and climate. Changes do take place in the geography and climate of the earth as a whole and in every part of it, but they are insignificant when compared with changes in society; geographical and climatic changes manifest themselves in terms of tens of thousands of years, while social changes manifest themselves in thousands, hundreds or tens of years, and even in a few years or months in times of revolution.

According to materialist dialectics, changes in nature are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in nature. Changes in society are due chiefly to the development of the internal contradictions in society, that is, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the contradiction between classes and the contradiction between the old and the new; it is the development of these contradictions that pushes society forward and gives the impetus for the supersession of the old society by the new.

Does materialist dialectics exclude external causes? Not at all. It holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes. In a suitable temperature an egg changes into a chicken, but no temperature can change a stone into a chicken, because each has a different basis. There is constant interaction between the peoples of different countries. In the era of capitalism, and especially in the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, the interaction and mutual impact of different countries in the political, economic and cultural spheres are extremely great.

The October Socialist Revolution ushered in a new epoch in world history as well as in Russian history. It exerted influence on internal changes in the other countries in the world and, similarly and in a particularly profound way, on internal changes in China. These changes, however, were effected through the inner laws of development of these countries, China included. In battle, one army is victorious and the other is defeated, both the victory and the defeat are determined by internal causes The one is victorious either because it is strong or because of its competent generalship, the other is vanquished either because it is weak or because of its incompetent generalship; it is through internal causes that external causes become operative.

In China in 1927, the defeat of the proletariat by the big bourgeoisie came about through the opportunism then to be found within the Chinese proletariat itself (inside the Chinese Communist Party). When we liquidated this opportunism, the Chinese revolution resumed its advance. Later, the Chinese revolution again suffered severe setbacks at the hands of the enemy, because adventurism had risen within our Party. When we liquidated this adventurism, our cause advanced once again. Thus it can be seen that to lead the revolution to victory, a political party must depend on the correctness of its own political line and the solidity of its own organization.

The dialectical world outlook emerged in ancient times both in China and in Europe. Ancient dialectics, however, had a somewhat spontaneous and naive character; in the social and historical conditions then prevailing, it was not yet able to form a theoretical system, hence it could not fully explain the world and was supplanted by metaphysics. The famous German philosopher Hegel, who lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, made most important contributions to dialectics, but his dialectics was idealist.

It was not until Marx and Engels, the great protagonists of the proletarian movement, had synthesized the positive achievements in the history of human knowledge and, in particular, critically absorbed the rational elements of Hegelian dialectics and created the great theory of dialectical and historical materialism that an unprecedented revolution occurred in the history of human knowledge. This theory was further developed by Lenin and Stalin. As soon as it spread to China, it wrought tremendous changes in the world of Chinese thought.

This dialectical world outlook teaches us primarily how to observe and analyse the movement of opposites in different things and, on the basis of such analysis, to indicate the methods for resolving contradictions. It is therefore most important for us to understand the law of contradiction in things in a concrete way.
II. THE UNIVERSALITY OF CONTRADICTION

For convenience of exposition, I shall deal first with the universality of contradiction and then proceed to the particularity of contradiction. The reason is that the universality of contradiction can be explained more briefly, for it has been widely recognized ever since the materialist-dialectical world outlook was discovered and materialist dialectics applied with outstanding success to analysing many aspects of human history and natural history and to changing many aspects of society and nature (as in the Soviet Union) by the great creators and continuers of Marxism–Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin; whereas the particularity of contradiction is still not dearly understood by many comrades, and especially by the dogmatists.

They do not understand that it is precisely in the particularity of contradiction that the universality of contradiction resides. Nor do they understand how important is the study of the particularity of contradiction in the concrete things confronting us for guiding the course of revolutionary practice. Therefore, it is necessary to stress the study of the particularity of contradiction and to explain it at adequate length. For this reason, in our analysis of the law of contradiction in things, we shall first analyse the universality of contradiction, then place special stress on analysing the particularity of contradiction, and finally return to the universality of contradiction.

The universality or absoluteness of contradiction has a twofold meaning. One is that contradiction exists in the process of development of all things, and the other is that in the process of development of each thing a movement of opposites exists from beginning to end.

Engels said, “Motion itself is a contradiction.” [5] Lenin defined the law of the unity of opposites as “the recognition (discovery) of the contradictory, mutually exclusive, opposite tendencies in all phenomena and processes of nature (including mind and society)”. [6] Are these ideas correct? Yes, they are. The interdependence of the contradictory aspects present in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist.

Contradiction is the basis of the simple forms of motion (for instance, mechanical motion) and still more so of the complex forms of motion.

Engels explained the universality of contradiction as follows:

If simple mechanical change of place contains a contradiction, this is even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of organic life and its development. … life consists precisely and primarily in this–that a being is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end, and death steps in. We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could not escape contradictions, and that for example the contradiction between man’s inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in what is–at least practically, for us–an endless succession of generations, in infinite progress.

… one of the basic principles of higher mathematics is the contradiction that in certain circumstances straight lines and curves may be the same….

But even lower mathematics teems with contradictions. [7]

Lenin illustrated the universality of contradiction as follows:

In mathematics: + and – . Differential and integral.

In mechanics: action and reaction.

In physics: positive and negative electricity.

In chemistry: the combination and dissociation of atoms.

In social science: the class struggle. [8]

In war, offence and defence, advance and retreat, victory and defeat are all mutually contradictory phenomena. One cannot exist without the other. The two aspects are at once in conflict and in interdependence, and this constitutes the totality of a war, pushes its development forward and solves its problems.

Every difference in men’s concepts should be regarded as reflecting an objective contradiction. Objective contradictions are reflected in subjective thinking, and this process constitutes the contradictory movement of concepts, pushes forward the development of thought, and ceaselessly solves problems in man’s thinking.

Opposition and struggle between ideas of different kinds constantly occur within the Party; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end.

Thus it is already clear that contradiction exists universally and in all processes, whether in the simple or in the complex forms of motion, whether in objective phenomena or ideological phenomena. But does contradiction also exist at the initial stage of each process?

Is there a movement of opposites from beginning to end in the process of development of every single thing?

As can be seen from the articles written by Soviet philosophers criticizing it, the Deborin school maintains that contradiction appears not at the inception of a process but only when it has developed to a certain stage. If this were the case, then the cause of the development of the process before that stage would be external and not internal. Deborin thus reverts to the metaphysical theories of external causality and of mechanism. Applying this view in the analysis of concrete problems, the Deborin school sees only differences but not contradictions between the kulaks and the peasants in general under existing conditions in the Soviet Union, thus entirely agreeing with Bukharin. In analysing the French Revolution, it holds that before the Revolution there were likewise only differences but not contradictions within the Third Estate, which was composed of the workers, the peasants and the bourgeoisie. These views of the Deborin school are anti-Marxist. This school does not understand that each and every difference already contains contradiction and that difference itself is contradiction. Labour and capital have been in contradiction ever since the two classes came into being, only at first the contradiction had not yet become intense.

Even under the social conditions existing in the Soviet Union, there is a difference between workers and peasants and this very difference is a contradiction, although, unlike the contradiction between labour and capital, it will not become intensified into antagonism or assume the form of class struggle; the workers and the peasants have established a firm alliance in the course of socialist construction and are gradually resolving this contradiction in the course of the advance from socialism to communism. The question is one of different kinds of contradiction, not of the presence or absence of contradiction. Contradiction is universal and absolute, it is present in the process of development of all things and permeates every process from beginning to end.

What is meant by the emergence of a new process? The old unity with its constituent opposites yields to a new unity with its constituent opposites, whereupon a new process emerges to replace the old. The old process ends and the new one begins. The new process contains new contradictions and begins its own history of the development of contradictions.

As Lenin pointed out, Marx in his Capital gave a model analysis of this movement of opposites which runs through the process of development of things from beginning to end. This is the method that must be employed in studying the development of all things. Lenin, too, employed this method correctly and adhered to it in all his writings.

In his Capital, Marx first analyses the simplest, most ordinary and fundamental, most common and everyday relation of bourgeois (commodity) society, a relation encountered billions of times, viz. the exchange of commodities. In this very simple phenomenon (in this “cell” of bourgeois society) analysis reveals all the contradictions (or the germs of all the contradictions) of modern society. The subsequent exposition shows us the development (both growth and movement) of these contradictions and of this society in the [summation] of its individual parts, from its beginning to its end.

Lenin added, “Such must also be the method of exposition (or study) of dialectics in general.” [9]

Chinese Communists must learn this method; only then will they be able correctly to analyse the history and the present state of the Chinese revolution and infer its future.

III. THE PARTICULARITY OF CONTRADICTION

Contradiction is present in the process of development of all things; it permeates the process of development of each thing from beginning to end. This is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction which we have discussed above. Now let us discuss the particularity and relativity of contradiction.

This problem should be studied on several levels.

First, the contradiction in each form of motion of matter has its particularity. Man’s knowledge of matter is knowledge of its forms of motion, because there is nothing in this world except matter in motion and this motion must assume certain forms. In considering each form of motion of matter, we must observe the points which it has in common with other forms of motion. But what is especially important and necessary, constituting as it does the foundation of our knowledge of a thing, is to observe what is particular to this form of motion of matter, namely, to observe the qualitative difference between this form of motion and other forms. Only when we have done so can we distinguish between things. Every form of motion contains within itself its own particular contradiction.

This particular contradiction constitutes the particular essence which distinguishes one thing from another. It is the internal cause or, as it may be called, the basis for the immense variety of things in the world. There are many forms of motion in nature, mechanical motion, sound, light, heat, electricity, dissociation, combination, and so on. All these forms are interdependent, but in its essence each is different from the others. The particular essence of each form of motion is determined by its own particular contradiction. This holds true not only for nature but also for social and ideological phenomena. Every form of society, every form of ideology, has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.

The sciences are differentiated precisely on the basis of the particular contradictions inherent in their respective objects of study. Thus the contradiction peculiar to a certain field of phenomena constitutes the object of study for a specific branch of science. For example, positive and negative numbers in mathematics; action and reaction in mechanics; positive and negative electricity in physics; dissociation and combination in chemistry; forces of production and relations of production, classes and class struggle, in social science; offence and defence in military science; idealism and materialism, the metaphysical outlook and the dialectical outlook, in philosophy; and so on–all these are the objects of study of different branches of science precisely because each branch has its own particular contradiction and particular essence.

Of course, unless we understand the universality of contradiction, we have no way of discovering the universal cause or universal basis for the movement or development of things; however, unless we study the particularity of contradiction, we have no way of determining the particular essence of a thing which differentiates it from other things, no way of discovering the particular cause or particular basis for the movement or development of a thing, and no way of distinguishing one thing from another or of demarcating the fields of science.

As regards the sequence in the movement of man’s knowledge, there is always a gradual growth from the knowledge of individual and particular things to the knowledge of things in general. Only after man knows the particular essence of many different things can he proceed to generalization and know the common essence of things.

When man attains the knowledge of this common essence, he uses it as a guide and proceeds to study various concrete things which have not yet been studied, or studied thoroughly, and to discover the particular essence of each; only thus is he able to supplement, enrich and develop his knowledge of their common essence and prevent such knowledge from withering or petrifying. These are the two processes of cognition: one, from the particular to the general, and the other, from the general to the particular.

Thus cognition always moves in cycles and (so long as scientific method is strictly adhered to) each cycle advances human knowledge a step higher and so makes it more and more profound. Where our dogmatists err on this question is that, on the one hand, they do not understand that we have to study the particularity of contradiction and know the particular essence of individual things before we can adequately know the universality of contradiction and the common essence of things, and that, on the other hand, they do not understand that after knowing the common essence of things, we must go further and study the concrete things that have not yet been thoroughly studied or have only just emerged.

Our dogmatists are lazy-bones. They refuse to undertake any painstaking study of concrete things, they regard general truths as emerging out of the void, they turn them into purely abstract unfathomable formulas, and thereby completely deny and reverse the normal sequence by which man comes to know truth. Nor do they understand the interconnection of the two processes in cognition– from the particular to the general and then from the general to the particular. They understand nothing of the Marxist theory of knowledge.

It is necessary not only to study the particular contradiction and the essence determined thereby of every great system of the forms of motion of matter, but also to study the particular contradiction and the essence of each process in the long course of development of each form of motion of matter. In every form of motion, each process of development which is real (and not imaginary) is qualitatively different. Our study must emphasize and start from this point.

Qualitatively different contradictions can only be resolved by qualitatively different methods. For instance, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is resolved by the method of socialist revolution; the contradiction between the great masses of the people and the feudal system is resolved by the method of democratic revolution; the contradiction between the colonies and imperialism is resolved by the method of national revolutionary war; the contradiction between the working class and the peasant class in socialist society is resolved by the method of collectivization and mechanization in agriculture; contradiction within the Communist Party is resolved by the method of criticism and self-criticism; the contradiction between society and nature is resolved by the method of developing the productive forces.

Processes change, old processes and old contradictions disappear, new processes and new contradictions emerge, and the methods of resolving contradictions differ accordingly. In Russia, there was a fundamental difference between the contradiction resolved by the February Revolution and the contradiction resolved by the October Revolution, as well as between the methods used to resolve them.

The principle of using different methods to resolve different contradictions is one which Marxist-Leninists must strictly observe. The dogmatists do not observe this principle; they do not understand that conditions differ in different kinds of revolution and so do not understand that different methods should be used to resolve different contradictions; on the contrary, they invariably adopt what they imagine to be an unalterable formula and arbitrarily apply it everywhere, which only causes setbacks to the revolution or makes a sorry mess of what was originally well done.

In order to reveal the particularity of the contradictions in any process in the development of a thing, in their totality or interconnections, that is, in order to reveal the essence of the process, it is necessary to reveal the particularity of the two aspects of each of the contradictions in that process; otherwise it will be impossible to discover the essence of the process. This likewise requires the utmost attention in our study.

There are many contradictions in the course of development of any major thing. For instance, in the course of China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution, where the conditions are exceedingly complex, there exist the contradiction between all the oppressed classes in Chinese society and imperialism, the contradiction between the great masses of the people and feudalism, the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the contradiction between the peasantry and the urban petty bourgeoisie on the one hand and the bourgeoisie on the other, the contradiction between the various reactionary ruling groups, and so on. These contradictions cannot be treated in the same way since each has its own particularity; moreover, the two aspects of each contradiction cannot be treated in the same way since each aspect has its own characteristics.

We who are engaged in the Chinese revolution should not only understand the particularity of these contradictions in their totality, that is, in their interconnections, but should also study the two aspects of each contradiction as the only means of understanding the totality. When we speak of understanding each aspect of a contradiction, we mean understanding what specific position each aspect occupies, what concrete forms it assumes in its interdependence and in its contradiction with its opposite, and what concrete methods are employed in the struggle with its opposite, when the two are both interdependent and in contradiction, and also after the interdependence breaks down.

It is of great importance to study these problems. Lenin meant just this when he said that the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, is the concrete analysis of concrete conditions. [10] Our dogmatists have violated Lenin’s teachings; they never use their brains to analyse anything concretely, and in their writings and speeches they always use stereotypes devoid of content, thereby creating a very bad style of work in our Party.

In studying a problem, we must shun subjectivity, one-sidedness and superficiality. To be subjective means not to look at problems objectively, that is, not to use the materialist viewpoint in looking at problems. I have discussed this in my essay “On Practice”. To be one-sided means not to look at problems all-sidedly, for example, to understand only China but not Japan, only the Communist Party but not the Kuomintang, only the proletariat but not the bourgeoisie, only the peasants but not the landlords, only the favourable conditions but not the difficult ones, only the past but not the future, only individual parts but not the whole, only the defects but not the achievements, only the plaintiff’s case but not the defendant’s, only underground revolutionary work but not open revolutionary work, and so on. In a word, it means not to understand the characteristics of both aspects of a contradiction.

This is what we mean by looking at a problem one-sidedly. Or it may be called seeing the part but not the whole, seeing the trees but not the forest. That way it is impossible to kind the method for resolving a contradiction, it is impossible to accomplish the tasks of the revolution, to carry out assignments well or to develop inner-Party ideological struggle correctly. When Sun Wu Tzu said in discussing military science, “Know the enemy and know yourself, and you can fight a hundred battles with no danger of defeat”, [11] he was referring to the two sides in a battle. Wei Chengi [12] of the Tang Dynasty also understood the error of one- sidedness when he said, “Listen to both sides and you will be enlightened, heed only one side and you will be benighted.”

But our comrades often look at problems one-sidedly, and so they often run into snags. In the novel Shui Hu Chuan, Sung Chiang thrice attacked Chu Village. [13] Twice he was defeated because he was ignorant of the local conditions and used the wrong method. Later he changed his method; first he investigated the situation, and he familiarized himself with the maze of roads, then he broke up the alliance between the Li, Hu and Chu Villages and sent his men in disguise into the enemy camp to lie in wait, using a stratagem similar to that of the Trojan Horse in the foreign story. And on the third occasion he won.

There are many examples of materialist dialectics in Shui Hu Chuan, of which the episode of the three attacks on Chu Village is one of the best. Lenin said:

… in order really to know an object we must embrace, study, all its sides, all connections and “mediations”. We shall never achieve this completely, but the demand for all-sidedness is a safeguard against mistakes and rigidity.[14]

We should remember his words. To be superficial means to consider neither the characteristics of a contradiction in its totality nor the characteristics of each of its aspects; it means to deny the necessity for probing deeply into a thing and minutely studying the characteristics of its contradiction, but instead merely to look from afar and, after glimpsing the rough outline, immediately to try to resolve the contradiction (to answer a question, settle a dispute, handle work, or direct a military operation).

This way of doing things is bound to lead to trouble. The reason the dogmatist and empiricist comrades in China have made mistakes lies precisely in their subjectivist, one-sided and superficial way of looking at things. To be one-sided and superficial is at the same time to be subjective. For all objective things are actually interconnected and are governed by inner laws, but instead of undertaking the task of reflecting things as they really are some people only look at things one-sidedly or superficially and who know neither their interconnections nor their inner laws, and so their method is subjectivist.

Not only does the whole process of the movement of opposites in the development of a thing, both in their interconnections and in each of the aspects, have particular features to which we must give attention, but each stage in the process has its particular features to which we must give attention too.

The fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a thing and the essence of the process determined by this fundamental contradiction will not disappear until the process is completed; but in a lengthy process the conditions usually differ at each stage. The reason is that, although the nature of the fundamental contradiction in the process of development of a thing and the essence of the process remain unchanged, the fundamental contradiction becomes more and more intensified as it passes from one stage to another in the lengthy process.

In addition, among the numerous major and minor contradictions which are determined or influenced by the fundamental contradiction, some become intensified, some are temporarily or partially resolved or mitigated, and some new ones emerge; hence the process is marked by stages. If people do not pay attention to the stages in the process of development of a thing, they cannot deal with its contradictions properly.

For instance, when the capitalism of the era of free competition developed into imperialism, there was no change in the class nature of the two classes in fundamental contradiction, namely, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, or in the capitalist essence of society; however, the contradiction between these two classes became intensified, the contradiction between monopoly and non-monopoly capital emerged, the contradiction between the colonial powers and the colonies became intensified, the contradiction among the capitalist countries resulting from their uneven development manifested itself with particular sharpness, and thus there arose the special stage of capitalism, the stage of imperialism.

Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution precisely because Lenin and Stalin have correctly explained these contradictions and correctly formulated the theory and tactics of the proletarian revolution for their resolution.

Take the process of China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution, which began with the Revolution of 1911; it, too, has several distinct stages. In particular, the revolution in its period of bourgeois leadership and the revolution in its period of proletarian leadership represent two vastly different historical stages. In other words, proletarian leadership has fundamentally changed the whole face of the revolution, has brought about a new alignment of classes, given rise to a tremendous upsurge in the peasant revolution, imparted thoroughness to the revolution against imperialism and feudalism, created the possibility of the transition from the democratic revolution to the socialist revolution, and so on. None of these was possible in the period when the revolution was under bourgeois leadership.

Although no change has taken place in the nature of the fundamental contradiction in the process as a whole, i.e., in the anti-imperialist, anti- feudal, democratic-revolutionary nature of the process (the opposite of which is its semi-colonial and semi-feudal nature), nonetheless this process has passed through several stages of development in the course of more than twenty years; during this time many great events have taken place– the failure of the Revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the regime of the Northern warlords, the formation of the first national united front and the revolution of 1924-27, the break-up of the united front and the desertion of the bourgeoisie to the side of the counterrevolution, the wars among the new warlords, the Agrarian Revolutionary War, the establishment of the second national united front and the War of Resistance Against Japan.

These stages are marked by particular features such as the intensification of certain contradictions (e.g., the Agrarian Revolutionary War and the Japanese invasion of the four northeastern provinces), the partial or temporary resolution of other contradictions (e.g., the destruction of the Northern warlords and our confiscation of the land of the landlords), and the emergence of yet other contradictions (e.g., the conflicts among the new warlords, and the landlords’ recapture of the land after the loss of our revolutionary base areas in the south).

In studying the particularities of the contradictions at each stage in the process of development of a thing, we must not only observe them in their interconnections or their totality, we must also examine the two aspects of each contradiction.

For instance, consider the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Take one aspect, the Kuomintang. In the period of the first united front, the Kuomintang carried out Sun Yat-sen’s Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party, and assistance to the peasants and workers; hence it was revolutionary and vigorous, it was an alliance of various classes for the democratic revolution. After 1927, however, the Kuomintang changed into its opposite and became a reactionary bloc of the landlords and big bourgeoisie. After the Sian Incident in December 1936, it began another change in the direction of ending the civil war and co-operating with the Communist Party for joint opposition to Japanese imperialism. Such have been the particular features of the Kuomintang in the three stages. Of course, these features have arisen from a variety of causes.

Now take the other aspect, the Chinese Communist Party. In the period of the first united front, the Chinese Communist Party was in its infancy; it courageously led the revolution of 1924-27 but revealed its immaturity in its understanding of the character, the tasks and the methods of the revolution, and consequently it became possible for Chen Tu-hsiuism, which appeared during the latter part of this revolution, to assert itself and bring about the defeat of the revolution.

After 1927, the Communist Party courageously led the Agrarian Revolutionary War and created the revolutionary army and revolutionary base areas; however, it committed adventurist errors which brought about very great losses both to the army and to the base areas. Since 1935 the Party has corrected these errors and has been leading the new united front for resistance to Japan; this great struggle is now developing. At the present stage, the Communist Party is a Party that has gone through the test of two revolutions and acquired a wealth of experience.

Such have been the particular features of the Chinese Communist Party in the three stages. These features, too, have arisen from a variety of causes. Without studying both these sets of features we cannot understand the particular relations between the two parties during the various stages of their development, namely, the establishment of a united front, the break-up of the united front, and the establishment of another united front. What is even more fundamental for the study of the particular features of the two parties is the examination of the class basis of the two parties and the resultant contradictions which have arisen between each party and other forces at different periods.

For instance, in the period of its first cooperation with the Communist Party, the Kuomintang stood in contradiction to foreign imperialism and was therefore anti-imperialist; on the other hand, it stood in contradiction to the great masses of the people within the country–although in words it promised many benefits to the working people, in fact it gave them little or nothing.

In the period when it carried on the anti-Communist war, the Kuomintang collaborated with imperialism and feudalism against the great masses of the people and wiped out all the gains they had won in the revolution, and thereby intensified its contradictions with them. In the present period of the anti-Japanese war, the Kuomintang stands in contradiction to Japanese imperialism and wants co-operation with the Communist Party, without however relaxing its struggle against the Communist Party and the people or its oppression of them.

As for the Communist Party, it has always, in every period, stood with the great masses of the people against imperialism and feudalism, but in the present period of the anti-Japanese war, it has adopted a moderate policy towards the Kuomintang and the domestic feudal forces because the Kuomintang has pressed itself in favour of resisting Japan. The above circumstances have resulted now in alliance between the two parties and now in struggle between them, and even during the periods of alliance there has been a complicated state of simultaneous alliance and struggle. If we do not study the particular features of both aspects of the contradiction, we shall fail to understand not only the relations of each party with the other forces, but also the relations between the two parties.

It can thus be seen that in studying the particularity of any kind of contradiction–the contradiction in each form of motion of matter, the contradiction in each of its processes of development, the two aspects of the contradiction in each process, the contradiction at each stage of a process, and the two aspects of the contradiction at each stage–in studying the particularity of all these contradictions, we must not be subjective and arbitrary but must analyse it concretely. Without concrete analysis there can be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction. We must always remember Lenin’s words, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions.

Marx and Engels were the first to provide us with excellent models of such concrete analysis.

When Marx and Engels applied the law of contradiction in things to the study of the socio-historical process, they discovered the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, they discovered the contradiction between the exploiting and exploited classes and also the resultant contradiction between the economic base and its superstructure (politics, ideology, etc.), and they discovered how these contradictions inevitably lead to different kinds of social revolution in different kinds of class society.

When Marx applied this law to the study of the economic structure of capitalist society, he discovered that the basic contradiction of this society is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of ownership. This contradiction manifests itself in the contradiction between the organized character of production in individual enterprises and the anarchic character of production in society as a whole. In terms of class relations, it manifests itself in the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

Because the range of things is vast and there is no limit to their development, what is universal in one context becomes particular in another. Conversely, what is particular in one context becomes universal in another. The contradiction in the capitalist system between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production is common to all countries where capitalism exists and develops; as far as capitalism is concerned, this constitutes the universality of contradiction.

But this contradiction of capitalism belongs only to a certain historical stage in the general development of class society; as far as the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production in class society as a whole is concerned, it constitutes the particularity of contradiction. However, in the course of dissecting the particularity of all these contradictions in capitalist society, Marx gave a still more profound, more adequate and more complete elucidation of the universality of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production in class society in general.

Since the particular is united with the universal and since the universality as well as the particularity of contradiction is inherent in everything, universality residing in particularity, we should, when studying an object, try to discover both the particular and the universal and their interconnection, to discover both particularity and universality and also their interconnection within the object itself, and to discover the interconnections of this object with the many objects outside it. When Stalin explained the historical roots of Leninism in his famous work, The Foundations of Leninism, he analysed the international situation in which Leninism arose, analysed those contradictions of capitalism which reached their culmination under imperialism, and showed how these contradictions made proletarian revolution a matter for immediate action and created favourable conditions for a direct onslaught on capitalism.

What is more, he analysed the reasons why Russia became the cradle of Leninism, why tsarist Russia became the focus of all the contradictions of imperialism, and why it was possible for the Russian proletariat to become the vanguard of the international revolutionary proletariat. Thus, Stalin analysed the universality of contradiction in imperialism, showing why Leninism is the Marxism of the era of imperialism and proletarian revolution, and at the same time analysed the particularity of tsarist Russian imperialism within this general contradiction, showing why Russia became the birthplace of the theory and tactics of proletarian revolution and how the universality of contradiction is contained in this particularity. Stalin’s analysis provides us with a model for understanding the particularity and the universality of contradiction and their interconnection.

On the question of using dialectics in the study of objective phenomena, Marx and Engels, and likewise Lenin and Stalin, always enjoin people not to be in any way subjective and arbitrary but, from the concrete conditions in the actual objective movement of these phenomena, to discover their concrete contradictions, the concrete position of each aspect of every contradiction and the concrete interrelations of the contradictions. Our dogmatists do not have this attitude in study and therefore can never get anything right. We must take warning from their failure and learn to acquire this attitude, which is the only correct one in study.

The relationship between the universality and the particularity of contradiction is the relationship between the general character and` the individual character of contradiction. By the former we mean that contradiction exists in and runs through all processes from beginning to end; motion, things, processes, thinking–all are contradictions. To deny contradiction is to deny everything. This is a universal truth for all times and all countries, which admits of no exception. Hence the general character, the absoluteness of contradiction.

But this general character is contained in every individual character; without individual character there can be no general character. If all individual character were removed, what general character would remain? It is because each contradiction is particular that individual character arises. All individual character exists conditionally and temporarily, and hence is relative.

This truth concerning general and individual character, concerning absoluteness and relativity, is the quintessence of the problem of contradiction in things; failure to understand it is tantamount to abandoning dialectics.

IV. THE PRINCIPAL CONTRADICTION AND THE PRINCIPAL ASPECT OF A CONTRADICTION

There are still two points in the problem of the particularity of contradiction which must be singled out for analysis, namely, the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of a contradiction.

There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determine or influence the existence and development of the other contradictions.

For instance, in capitalist society the two forces in contradiction, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, form the principal contradiction. The other contradictions, such as those between the remnant feudal class and the bourgeoisie, between the peasant petty bourgeoisie ant the bourgeoisie, between the proletariat and the peasant petty bourgeoisie, between the non-monopoly capitalists and the monopoly capitalists, between bourgeois democracy and bourgeois fascism, among the capitalist countries and between imperialism and the colonies, are all determined or influenced by this principal contradiction.

In a semi-colonial country such as China, the relationship between the principal contradiction and the non-principal contradictions presents a complicated picture.

When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism. At such a time, the contradiction between imperialism and the country concerned becomes the principal contradiction, while all the contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction, between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position. So it was in China in the Opium War of 1840, the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and the Yi Ho Tuan War of 1900, and so it is now in the present Sino-Japanese War.

But in another situation, the contradictions change position. When imperialism carries on its oppression not by war, but by milder means–political, economic and cultural–the ruling classes in semi-colonial countries capitulate to imperialism, and the two form an alliance for the joint oppression of the masses of the people. At such a time, the masses often resort to civil war against the alliance of imperialism and the feudal classes, while imperialism often employs indirect methods rather than direct action in helping the reactionaries in the semi-colonial countries to oppress the people, and thus the internal contradictions become particularly sharp. This is what happened in China in the Revolutionary War of 1911, the Revolutionary War of 1924-27, and the ten years of Agrarian Revolutionary War after 1927. Wars among the various reactionary ruling groups in the semi-colonial countries, e.g., the wars among the warlords in China, fall into the same category.

When a revolutionary civil war develops to the point of threatening the very existence of imperialism and its running dogs, the domestic reactionaries, imperialism often adopts other methods in order to maintain its rule; it either tries to split the revolutionary front from within or sends armed forces to help the domestic reactionaries directly. At such a time, foreign imperialism and domestic reaction stand quite openly at one pole while the masses of the people stand at the other pole, thus forming the principal contradiction which determines or influences the development of the other contradictions. The assistance given by various capitalist countries to the Russian reactionaries after the October Revolution is an example of armed intervention. Chiang Kai-shek’s betrayal in 1927 is an example of splitting the revolutionary front.

But whatever happens, there is no doubt at all that at every stage in the development of a process, there is only one principal contradiction which plays the leading role.

Hence, if in any process there are a number of contradictions, one of them must be the principal contradiction playing the leading and decisive role, while the rest occupy a secondary and subordinate position. Therefore, in studying any complex process in which there are two or more contradictions, we must devote every effort to funding its principal contradiction. Once this principal contradiction is grasped, all problems can be readily solved. This is the method Marx taught us in his study of capitalist society. Likewise Lenin and Stalin taught us this method when they studied imperialism and the general crisis of capitalism and when they studied the Soviet economy. There are thousands of scholars and men of action who do not understand it, and the result is that, lost in a fog, they are unable to get to the heart of a problem and naturally cannot find a way to resolve its contradictions.

As we have said, one must not treat all the contradictions in a process as being equal but must distinguish between the principal and the secondary contradictions, and pay special attention to grasping the principal one. But, in any given contradiction, whether principal or secondary, should the two contradictory aspects be treated as equal? Again, no. In any contradiction the development of the contradictory aspects is uneven. Sometimes they seem to be in equilibrium, which is however only temporary and relative, while unevenness is basic. Of the two contradictory aspects, one must be principal and the other secondary. The principal aspect is the one playing the leading role in the contradiction. The nature of a thing is determined mainly by the principal aspect of a contradiction, the aspect which has gained the dominant position.

But this situation is not static; the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction transform themselves into each other and the nature of the thing changes accordingly. In a given process or at a given stage in the development of a contradiction, A is the principal aspect and B is the non-principal aspect; at another stage or in another process the roles are reversed–a change determined by the extent of the increase or decrease in the force of each aspect in its struggle against the other in the course of the development of a thing.

We often speak of “the new superseding the old”. The supersession of the old by the new is a general, eternal and inviolable law of the universe. The transformation of one thing into another, through leaps of different forms in accordance with its essence and external conditions–this is the process of the new superseding the old. In each thing there is contradiction between its new and its old aspects, and this gives rise to a series of struggles with many twists and turns. As a result of these struggles, the new aspect changes from being minor to being major and rises to predominance, while the old aspect changes from being major to being minor and gradually dies out. And the moment the new aspect gains dominance over the old, the old thing changes qualitatively into a new thing. It can thus be seen that the nature of a thing is mainly determined by the principal aspect of the contradiction, the aspect which has gained predominance. When the principal aspect which has gained predominance changes, the nature of a thing changes accordingly.

In capitalist society, capitalism has changed its position from being a subordinate force in the old feudal era to being the dominant force, and the nature of society has accordingly changed from feudal to capitalist. In the new, capitalist era, the feudal forces changed from their former dominant position to a subordinate one, gradually dying out. Such was the case, for example, in Britain and France. With the development of the productive forces, the bourgeoisie changes from being a new class playing a progressive role to being an old class playing a reactionary role, until it is finally overthrown by the proletariat and becomes a class deprived of privately owned means of production and stripped of power, when it, too, gradually dies out.

The proletariat, which is much more numerous than the bourgeoisie and grows simultaneously with it but under its rule, is a new force which, initially subordinate to the bourgeoisie, gradually gains strength, becomes an independent class playing the leading role in history, and finally seizes political power and becomes the ruling class. Thereupon the nature of society changes and the old capitalist society becomes the new socialist society. This is the path already taken by the Soviet Union, a path that all other countries will inevitably take.

Look at China, for instance. Imperialism occupies the principal position in the contradiction in which China has been reduced to a semi-colony, it oppresses the Chinese people, and China has been changed from an independent country into a semi-colonial one. But this state of affairs will inevitably change; in the struggle between the two sides, the power of the Chinese people which is growing under the leadership of the proletariat will inevitably change China from a semi-colony into an independent country, whereas imperialism will be overthrown and old China will inevitably change into New China.

The change of old China into New China also involves a change in the relation between the old feudal forces and the new popular forces within the country. The old feudal landlord class will be overthrown, and from being the ruler it will change into being the ruled; and this class, too, will gradually die out. From being the ruled the people, led by the proletariat, will become the rulers. Thereupon, the nature of Chinese society will change and the old, semi-colonial and semi-feudal society will change into a new democratic society.

Instances of such reciprocal transformation are found in our past experience. The Ching Dynasty which ruled China for nearly three hundred years was overthrown in the Revolution of 1911, and the revolutionary Tung Meng Hui under Sun Yat-sen’s leadership was victorious for a time. In the Revolutionary War of 1924-27, the revolutionary forces of the Communist-Kuomintang alliance in the south changed from being weak to being strong and won victory in the Northern Expedition, while the Northern warlords who once ruled the roost were overthrown.

In 1927, the people’s forces led by the Communist Party were greatly reduced numerically under the attacks of Kuomintang reaction, but with the elimination of opportunism within their ranks they gradually grew again. In the revolutionary base areas under Communist leadership, the peasants have been transformed from being the ruled to being the rulers, while the landlords have undergone a reverse transformation. It is always so in the world, the new displacing the old, the old being superseded by the new, the old being eliminated to make way for the new, and the new emerging out of the old.

At certain times in the revolutionary struggle, the difficulties outweigh the favourable conditions and so constitute the principal aspect of the contradiction and the favourable conditions constitute the secondary aspect. But through their efforts the revolutionaries can overcome the difficulties step by step and open up a favourable new situation; thus a difficult situation yields place to a favourable one. This- is what happened after the failure of the revolution in China in 1927 and during the Long March of the Chinese Red Army. In the present Sino-Japanese War, China is again in a difficult position, but we can change this and fundamentally transform the situation as between China and Japan. Conversely, favourable conditions can be transformed into difficulty if the revolutionaries make mistakes. Thus the victory of the revolution of 1924-27 turned into defeat. The revolutionary base areas which grew up in the southern provinces after 1927 had all suffered defeat by 1934.

When we engage in study, the same holds good for the contradiction in the passage from ignorance to knowledge. At the very beginning of our study of Marxism, our ignorance of or scanty acquaintance with Marxism stands in contradiction to knowledge of Marxism. But by assiduous study, ignorance can be transformed into knowledge, scanty knowledge into substantial knowledge, and blindness in the application of Marxism into mastery of its application.

Some people think that this is not true of certain contradictions. For instance, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, the productive forces are the principal aspect; in the contradiction between theory and practice, practice is the principal aspect; in the contradiction between the economic base and the superstructure, the economic base is the principal aspect; and there is no change in their respective positions. This is the mechanical materialist conception, not the dialectical materialist conception. True, the productive forces, practice and the economic base generally play the principal and decisive role; whoever denies this is not a materialist.

But it must also be admitted that in certain conditions, such aspects as the relations of production, theory and the superstructure in turn manifest themselves in the principal and decisive role. When it is impossible for the productive forces to develop without a change in the relations of production, then the change in the relations of production plays the principal and decisive role. The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times of which Lenin said, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.” [15] When a task, no maker which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy.

When the superstructure (politics, culture, etc.) obstructs the development of the economic base, political and cultural changes become principal and decisive. Are we going against materialism when we say this? No. The reason is that while we recognize that in the general development of history the material determines the mental and social being determines social consciousness, we also–and indeed must–recognize the reaction of mental on material things, of social consciousness on social being and of the superstructure on the economic base. This does not go against materialism; on the contrary, it avoids mechanical materialism and firmly upholds dialectical materialism.

In studying the particularity of contradiction, unless we examine these two facets–the principal and the non-principal contradictions in a process, and the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction–that is, unless we examine the distinctive character of these two facets of contradiction, we shall get bogged down in abstractions, be unable to understand contradiction concretely and consequently be unable to find the correct method of resolving it. The distinctive character or particularity of these two facets of contradiction represents the unevenness of the forces that are in contradiction.

Nothing in this world develops absolutely evenly; we must oppose the theory of even development or the theory of equilibrium. Moreover, it is these concrete features of a contradiction and the changes in the principal and non-principal aspects of a contradiction in the course of its development that manifest the force of the new superseding the old. The study of the various states of unevenness in contradictions, of the principal and non-principal contradictions and of the principal and the non-principal aspects of a contradiction constitutes an essential method by which a revolutionary political party correctly determines its strategic and tactical policies both in political and in military affairs. All Communists must give it attention.

V. THE IDENTITY AND STRUGGLE OF THE ASPECTS OF A CONTRADICTION

When we understand the universality and the particularity of contradiction, we must proceed to study the problem of the identity and struggle of the aspects of a contradiction.

Identity, unity, coincidence, interpenetration, interpermeation, interdependence (or mutual dependence for existence), interconnection or mutual co-operation–all these different terms mean the same thing and refer to the following two points: first, the existence of each of the two aspects of a contradiction in the process of the development of a thing presupposes the existence of the other aspect, and both aspects coexist in a single entity; second, in given conditions, each of the two contradictory aspects transforms itself into its opposite. This is the meaning of identity.

Lenin said:

Dialectics is the teaching which shows how opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical–under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another,–why the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another. [16]

What does this passage mean?

The contradictory aspects in every process exclude each other, struggle with each other and are in opposition to each other. Without exception, they are contained in the process of development of all things and in all human thought. A simple process contains only a single pair of opposites, while a complex process contains more. And in turn, the pairs of opposites are in contradiction to one another.)

That is how all things in the objective world and all human thought are constituted and how they are set in motion.

This being so, there is an utter lack of identity or unity. How then can one speak of identity or unity?

The fact is that no contradictory aspect can exist in isolation. Without its opposite aspect, each loses the condition for its existence. Just think, can any one contradictory aspect of a thing or of a concept in the human mind exist independently? Without life, there would be no death; without death, there would be no life. Without “above”, there would be no “below”) without “below”, there would be no “above”. Without misfortune, there would be no good fortune; without good fortune, these would be no misfortune. Without facility, there would be no difficulty) without difficulty, there would be no facility.

Without landlords, there would be no tenant-peasants; without tenant-peasants, there would be no landlords. Without the bourgeoisie, there would be no proletariat; without the proletariat, there would be no bourgeoisie. Without imperialist oppression of nations, there would be no colonies or semi-colonies; without colonies or semicolonies, there would be no imperialist oppression of nations. It is so with all opposites; in given conditions, on the one hand they are opposed to each other, and on the other they are interconnected, interpenetrating, interpermeating and interdependent, and this character is described as identity.

In given conditions, all contradictory aspects possess the character of non-identity and hence are described as being in contradiction. But they also possess the character of identity and hence are interconnected. This is what Lenin means when he says that dialectics studies “how opposites can be … identical”. How then can they be identical? Because each is the condition for the other’s existence. This is the first meaning of identity.

But is it enough to say merely that each of the contradictory aspects is the condition for the other’s existence, that there is identity between them and that consequently they can coexist in a single entity? No, it is not. The matter does not end with their dependence on each other for their existence; what is more important is their transformation into each other. That is to say, in given conditions, each of the contradictory aspects within a thing transforms itself into its opposite, changes its position to that of its opposite. This is the second meaning of the identity of contradiction.

Why is there identity here, too? You see, by means of revolution the proletariat, at one time the ruled, is transformed into the ruler, while the bourgeoisie, the erstwhile ruler, is transformed into the ruled and changes its position to that originally occupied by its opposite. This has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place throughout the world. If there were no interconnection and identity of opposites in given conditions, how could such a change take place?

The Kuomintang, which played a certain positive role at a certain stage in modern Chinese history, became a counter-revolutionary party after 1927 because of its inherent class nature and because of imperialist blandishments (these being the conditions); but it has been compelled to agree to resist Japan because of the sharpening of the contradiction between China and Japan and because of the Communist Party’s policy of the united front (these being the conditions). Things in contradiction change into one another, and herein lies a definite identity.

Our agrarian revolution has been a process in which the landlord class owning the land is transformed into a class that has lost its land, while the peasants who once lost their land are transformed into small holders who have acquired land, and it will be such a process once again. In given conditions having and not having, acquiring and losing, are interconnected; there is identity of the two sides. Under socialism, private peasant ownership is transformed into the public ownership of socialist agriculture; this has already taken place in the Soviet Union, as it will take place everywhere else. There is a bridge leading from private property to public property, which in philosophy is called identity, or transformation into each other, or interpenetration.

To consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat or the dictatorship of the people is in fact to prepare the conditions for abolishing this dictatorship and advancing to the higher stage when all state systems are eliminated. To establish and build the Communist Party is in fact to prepare the conditions for the elimination of the Communist Party and all political parties. To build a revolutionary army under the leadership of the Communist Party and to carry on revolutionary war is in fact to prepare the conditions for the permanent elimination of war. These opposites are at the same time complementary.

War and peace, as everybody knows, transform themselves into each other. War is transformed into peace; for instance, the First World War was transformed into the post-war peace, and the civil war in China has now stopped, giving place to internal peace. Peace is transformed into war; for instance, the Kuomintang-Communist co-operation was transformed into war in 1927, and today’s situation of world peace may be transformed into a second world war. Why is this so? Because in class society such contradictory things as war and peace have an identity in given conditions.

All contradictory things are interconnected; not only do they coexist in a single entity in given conditions, but in other given conditions, they also transform themselves into each other. This is the full meaning of the identity of opposites. This is what Lenin meant when he discussed “how they happen to be (how they become) identical–under what conditions they are identical, transforming themselves into one another”.

Why is it that “the human mind should take these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, transforming themselves into one another”? Because that is just how things are in objective reality. The fact is that the unity or identity of opposites in objective things is not dead or rigid, but is living, conditional, mobile, temporary and relative; in given conditions, every contradictory aspect transforms itself into its opposite. Reflected in man’s thinking, this becomes the Marxist world outlook of materialist dialectics.

It is only the reactionary ruling classes of the past and present and the metaphysicians in their service who regard opposites not as living, conditional, mobile and transforming themselves into one another, but as dead and rigid, and they propagate this fallacy everywhere to delude the masses of the people, thus seeking to perpetuate their rule. The task of Communists is to expose the fallacies of the reactionaries and metaphysicians, to propagate the dialectics inherent in things, and so accelerate the transformation of things and achieve the goal of revolution.

In speaking of the identity of opposites in given conditions, what we are referring to is real and concrete opposites and the real and concrete transformations of opposites into one another. There are innumerable transformations in mythology, for instance, Kua Fu’s race with the sun in Shan Hai Ching, [17] Yi’s shooting down of nine suns in Huai Nan Tzu, [18] the Monkey King’s seventy-two metamorphoses in Hsi Yu Chi, [19] the numerous episodes of ghosts and foxes metamorphosed into human beings in the Strange Tales of Liao Chai, [20] etc.

But these legendary transformations of opposites are not concrete changes reflecting concrete contradictions. They are naive, imaginary, subjectively conceived transformations conjured up in men’s minds by innumerable real and complex transformations of opposites into one another.

Marx said, “All mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery over the forces of nature.” [21] The myriads of changes in mythology (and also in nursery tales) delight people because they imaginatively picture man’s conquest of the forces of nature, and the best myths possess “eternal charm”, as Marx put it; but myths are not built out of the concrete contradictions existing in given conditions and therefore are not a scientific reflection of reality.

That is to say, in myths or nursery tales the aspects constituting a contradiction have only an imaginary identity, not a concrete identity. The scientific reflection of the identity in real transformations is Marxist dialectics.

Why can an egg but not a stone be transformed into a chicken? Why is there identity between war and peace and none between war and a stone? Why can human beings give birth only to human beings and not to anything else? The sole reason is that the identity of opposites exists only in necessary given conditions. Without these necessary given conditions there can be no identity whatsoever.

Why is it that in Russia in 1917 the bourgeois-democratic February Revolution was directly linked with the proletarian socialist October Revolution, while in France the bourgeois revolution was not directly linked with a socialist revolution and the Paris Commune of 1871 ended in failure? Why is it, on the other hand, that the nomadic system of Mongolia and Central Asia has been directly linked with socialism?

Why is it that the Chinese revolution can avoid a capitalist future and be directly linked with socialism without taking the old historical road of the Western countries, without passing through a period of bourgeois dictatorship? The sole reason is the concrete conditions of the time. When certain necessary conditions are present, certain contradictions arise in the process of development of things and, moreover, the opposites contained in them are interdependent and become transformed into one another; otherwise none of this would be possible.

Such is the problem of identity. What then is struggle? And what is the relation between identity and struggle?

Lenin said:

The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute. [22]

What does this passage mean?

All processes have a beginning and an end, all processes transform themselves into their opposites. The constancy of all processes is relative, but the mutability manifested in the transformation of one process into another is absolute.

There are two states of motion in all things, that of relative rest and that of conspicuous change. Both are caused by the struggle between the two contradictory elements contained in a thing. When the thing is in the first state of motion, it is undergoing only quantitative and not qualitative change and consequently presents the outward appearance of being at rest. When the thing is in the second state of motion, the quantitative change of the first state has already reached a culminating point and gives rise to the dissolution of the thing as an entity and thereupon a qualitative change ensues, hence the appearance of a conspicuous change. Such unity, solidarity, combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity, attraction, etc., as we see in daily life, are all the appearances of things in the state of quantitative change.

On the other hand, the dissolution of unity, that is, the destruction of this solidarity, combination, harmony, balance, stalemate, deadlock, rest, constancy, equilibrium, solidity and attraction, and the change of each into its opposite are all the appearances of things in the state of qualitative change, the transformation of one process into another. Things are constantly transforming themselves from the first into the second state of motion; the struggle of opposites goes on in both states but the contradiction is resolved through the second state. That is why we say that the unity of opposites is conditional, temporary and relative, while the struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute.

When we said above that two opposite things can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other because there is identity between them, we were speaking of conditionality, that is to say, in given conditions two contradictory things can be united and can transform themselves into each other, but in the absence of these conditions, they cannot constitute a contradiction, cannot coexist in the same entity and cannot transform themselves into one another. It is because the identity of opposites obtains only in given conditions that we have said identity is conditional and relative. We may add that the struggle between opposites permeates a process from beginning to end and makes one process transform itself into another, that it is ubiquitous, and that struggle is therefore unconditional and absolute.

The combination of conditional, relative identity and unconditional, absolute struggle constitutes the movement of opposites in all things.

We Chinese often say, “Things that oppose each other also complement each other.” [23] That is, things opposed to each other have identity. This saying is dialectical and contrary to metaphysics. “Oppose each other” refers to the mutual exclusion or the struggle of two contradictory aspects. “Complement each other” means that in given conditions the two contradictory aspects unite and achieve identity. Yet struggle is inherent in identity and without struggle there can be no identity.

In identity there is struggle, in particularity there is universality, and in individuality there is generality. To quote Lenin, “. . . there is an absolute in the relative.” [24]

VI. THE PLACE OF ANTAGONISM IN CONTRADICTION

The question of the struggle of opposites includes the question of what is antagonism. Our answer is that antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites.

In human history, antagonism between classes exists as a particular manifestation of the struggle of opposites. Consider the contradiction between the exploiting and the exploited classes. Such contradictory classes coexist for a long time in the same society, be it slave society, feudal society or capitalist society, and they struggle with each other; but it is not until the contradiction between the two classes develops to a certain stage that it assumes the form of open antagonism and develops into revolution. The same holds for the transformation of peace into war in class society.

Before it explodes, a bomb is a single entity in which opposites coexist in given conditions. The explosion takes place only when a new condition, ignition, is present. An analogous situation arises in all those natural phenomena which finally assume the form of open conflict to resolve old contradictions and produce new things.

It is highly important to grasp this fact. It enables us to understand that revolutions and revolutionary wars are inevitable in class society and that without them, it is impossible to accomplish any leap in social development and to overthrow the reactionary ruling classes and therefore impossible for the people to win political power. Communists must expose the deceitful propaganda of the reactionaries, such as the assertion that social revolution is unnecessary and impossible. They must firmly uphold the Marxist-Leninist theory of social revolution and enable the people to understand that social revolution is not only entirely necessary but also entirely practicable, and that the whole history of mankind and the triumph of the Soviet Union have confirmed this scientific truth.

However, we must make a concrete study of the circumstances of each specific struggle of opposites and should not arbitrarily apply the formula discussed above to everything. Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute, but the methods of resolving contradictions, that is, the forms of struggle, differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. In accordance with the concrete development of things, some contradictions which were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones.

As already mentioned, so long as classes exist, contradictions between correct and incorrect ideas in the Communist Party are reflections within the Party of class contradictions. At first, with regard to certain issues, such contradictions may not manifest themselves as antagonistic. But with the development of the class struggle, they may grow and become antagonistic. The history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union shows us that the contradictions between the correct thinking of Lenin and Stalin and the fallacious thinking of Trotsky, Bukharin and others did not at first manifest themselves in an antagonistic form, but that later they did develop into antagonism.

There are similar cases in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. At first the contradictions between the correct thinking of many of our Party comrades and the fallacious thinking of Chen Tu-hsiu, Chang Kuo-tao and others also did not manifest themselves in an antagonistic form, but later they did develop into antagonism. At present the contradiction between correct and incorrect thinking in our Party does not manifest itself in an antagonistic form, and if comrades who have committed mistakes can correct them, it will not develop into antagonism.

Therefore, the Party must on the one hand wage a serious struggle against erroneous thinking, and on the other give the comrades who have committed errors ample opportunity to wake up. This being the case, excessive struggle is obviously inappropriate. But if the people who have committed errors persist in them and aggravate them, there is the possibility that this contradiction will develop into antagonism.

Economically, the contradiction between town and country is an extremely antagonistic one both in capitalist society, where under the rule of the bourgeoisie the towns ruthlessly plunder the countryside, and in the Kuomintang areas in China, where under the rule of foreign imperialism and the Chinese big comprador bourgeoisie the towns most rapaciously plunder the countryside. But in a socialist country and in our revolutionary base areas, this antagonistic contradiction has changed into one that is non-antagonistic; and when communist society is reached it will be abolished.

Lenin said, “Antagonism and contradiction are not at all one and the same. Under socialism, the first will disappear, the second will remain.” [25] That is to say, antagonism is one form, but not the only form, of the struggle of opposites; the formula of antagonism cannot be arbitrarily applied everywhere.
VII. CONCLUSION

We may now say a few words to sum up. The law of contradiction in things, that is, the law of the unity of opposites, is the fundamental law of nature and of society and therefore also the fundamental law of thought. It stands opposed to the metaphysical world outlook. It represents a great revolution in the history of human knowledge. According to dialectical materialism, contradiction is present in all processes of objectively existing things and of subjective thought and permeates all these processes from beginning to end; this is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction.

Each contradiction and each of its aspects have their respective characteristics; this is the particularity and relativity of contradiction. In given conditions, opposites possess identity, and consequently can coexist in a single entity and can transform themselves into each other; this again is the particularity and relativity of contradiction.

But the struggle of opposites is ceaseless, it goes on both when the opposites are coexisting and when they are transforming themselves into each other, and becomes especially conspicuous when they are transforming themselves into one another; this again is the universality and absoluteness of contradiction.

In studying the particularity and relativity of contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the principal contradiction and the non-principal contradictions and to the distinction between the principal aspect and the non-principal aspect of a contradiction; in studying the universality of contradiction and the struggle of opposites in contradiction, we must give attention to the distinction between the different forms of struggle.

Otherwise we shall make mistakes. If, through study, we achieve a real understanding of the essentials explained above, we shall be able to demolish dogmatist ideas which are contrary to the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and detrimental to our revolutionary cause, and our comrades with practical experience will be able to organize their experience into principles and avoid repeating empiricist errors. These are a few simple conclusions from our study of the law of contradiction.
NOTES

1. V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy” Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 249.

2. In his essay “On the Question of Dialectics”, Lenin said, “The splitting in two of a single whole and the cognition of its contradictory parts (see the quotation from Philo on Heraclitus at the beginning of Section 3 ‘On Cognition’ in Lassalle’s book on Heraclitus) is the essence (one of the ‘essentials’, one of the principal, if not the principal, characteristics or features) of dialectics.” (Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 357.) In his “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”, he said, “In brief, dialectics can be defined as the doctrine of the unity of opposites. This grasps the kernel of dialectics, but it requires explanations and development.” (Ibid., p. 215.)

3. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Coaected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

4. A saying of Tung Chung-shu (179-104 B.C.), a well-known exponent of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty.

5. Frederick Engels, “Dialectics. Quantity and Quality”, Anti-Duhring, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1959, p. 166.

6. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 357-58.

7. Frederick Engels, op. cit., pp. 166-67.

8. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 357.

9. Ibid., pp. 358-59

10. See “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”, Note 10, p. 251 of this volume.

11. See ibid., Note :, p. 249 of this volume.

12. Wei Cheng (A.D. 580-643) was a statesman and historian of the Tang Dynasty.

13. Shui Hu Chuan (Heroes of the Marshes), a famous 14th century Chinese novel, describes a peasant war towards the end of the Northern Sung Dynasty. Chu Village was in the vicinity of Liangshanpo, where Sung Chiang, leader of the peasant uprising and hero of the novel, established his base. Chu Chao-feng, the head of this village, was a despotic landlord.

14. V. I. Lenin, “Once Again on the Trade Unions, the Present Situation and the Mistakes of Trotsky and Bukharin”, Selected Works, Eng. ed., International Publishers, New York, 1943, Vol. IX, p. 66.

15. V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”, Collected Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1961, Vol. V, p. 369.

16. V. I. Lenin, “Conspectus of Hegel’s The Science of Logic”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, pp. 97-98.

17. Shan Hai Chug (Book of Mountains and Seas) was written in the era of the Warring States (403-221 B.C.). In one of its fables Kua Fu, a superman, pursued and overtook the sun. But he died of thirst, whereupon his staff was transformed into the forest of Teng.

18. Yi is one of the legendary heroes of ancient China, famous for his archery. According to a legend in Huai Nan Tzu, compiled in the 2nd century B.C., there were ten suns in the sky in the days of Emperor Yao. To put an end to the damage to vegetation caused by these scorching suns, Emperor Yao ordered Yi to shoot them down. In another legend recorded by Wang Yi (2nd century A.D.), the archer is said to have shot down nine of the ten suns.

19. Hsi Yu Chi (Pilgrimage to the West) is a 16th century novel, the hero of which is the monkey god Sun Wu-kung. He could miraculously change at will into seventy-two different shapes, such as a bird, a tree and a stone.

20. The Strange Tales of Liao Chai, written by Pu Sung-ling in the 17th century, is a well-known collection of 431 tales, mostly about ghosts and fox spirits.

21. Karl Marx, “Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy”, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Eng. ed., Chicago, 1904, pp. 310-11.

22. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

23. The saying “Things that oppose each other also complement each other” first appeared in the History of the Earlier Han Dynasty by Pan Ku, a celebrated historian in the 1st century A.D. It has long been a popular saying.

24. V. I. Lenin, “On the Question of Dialectics”, Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1958, Vol. XXXVIII, p. 358.

25. V. I. Lenin, “Remarks on N. I. Bukharin’s Economics of the Transitional Period” Selected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow-Leningrad, 1931, Vol. XI, p. 357.

Transcription by the Maoist Documentation Project.
HTML revised 2004 by Marxists.org
Selected Works of Mao TseTung

“Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Luhaydan said campaigners should put “the mind before the heart and emotion, and look at this issue with a realistic eye.”” These comments are by a Saudi psychologist asserting that driving affects women’s ovaries and can lead to their children having health problems. This sentiment has outraged Saudi women in the conservative Muslim country, 11,000 of which have signed a petition protesting a de facto ban on women driving.

Saudi women are buckling up for social change. Meanwhile, writers such as Abdullah Mohammad Al Dawood urges his 97,000 twitter followers to grope women who dare occupy public space. Or clerics who believe that women driving is evil no less. In places like Saudi Arabia victims of crime are often punished rather than the perpetrator. Saudi women activists were recently jailed for assisting a starving woman locked in her home. Think recent weirdo American hostage crimes and know that this kind of thing is not an aberration in near/Sharia societies and also that providing assistance to the vulnerable regularly brings medical professionals/social workers etc., into the harsh spot light of the black shirts that rule the streets. And what about this? “Saudi Arabia hopes to put imprisoned Al-Qaeda militants on the right path and make them drop their thoughts of jihad by offering them spa treatments, exercise and counseling at a new luxurious rehabilitation facility in the capital, Riyadh.”

The country’s first female law firm in Saudi Arabia will certainly have its hands full.

From

The country’s first female law firm has opened its doors to protect women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, two months after its founder along with three other female lawyers were granted licenses to practice law in the traditionally patriarchal kingdom.

Now Saudi women can seek help, advice and legal aid from Bayan Mahmoud Al Zahran, the first Saudi woman lawyer who launched the female law firm in Jeddah.

Zahran told Arab News that her law firm is ready to fight for the rights of Saudi women and relate women’s cases to the court, a task which her male counterparts at times cannot understand or handle.

“I believe women lawyers can contribute a lot to the legal system. This law firm will make a difference in the history of court cases and female disputes in the Kingdom. I am very hopeful and thank everyone who supported me in taking this historical step,” Zahran said.

The lawyer also stressed that she is eager to work on labor cases and business disputes involving women but will work with both genders.

“Our activity is not restricted to cases involving only women. Saudi Arabia’s legal system treats men and women equally and a lawyer has the right to represent men and women,” Zahran told Al Arabiya News Channel on Thursday.

The launch was attended by a number of Saudi officials and members from the NGO community, including Mazen Batterjee, vice president of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce.

Batterjee stressed the importance of Shariah law Saudi courts, adding that female attorneys should follow the restrictions of the court for hijab while presenting themselves before a judge.

Zahran’s father, Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Zahran, praised his daughter’s efforts.

“We are very proud of our daughter who stands firm for protection of women’s rights. This will help all women who couldn’t go and speak to male lawyers about their problems,” he said.

Zahran hopes that her firm’s example will lead to more female lawyers.

“This is a very positive step toward the Saudi court and justices as right now, we are four female lawyers who got the license, but I am hopeful that in future, the number will increase,” she added.

Bayan Zahran, Jihan Qurban, Sarra Al Omari and Ameera Quqani became the first female legal representatives in Saudi Arabia in October, when the country issues licenses, allowing them to change their status from legal consultants to attorneys, thus lifting the ban imposed on female law graduates to practice.

The initial plan of the justice ministry was to allocate licenses to family status cases, but the final decision did not impose any limits on fields of law practice.

Conditions to obtain the license are the same for men and women and include a university degree in law and three years of training.

Women in the ultra-conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia usually maintain a traditional place inside the household. Many details in the lives of Saudi women are closely regulated by Sharia law derived from the Koran.

Every adult woman is required to have a close male relative as her ‘guardian’, who is authorized to make a number of decisions on a woman’s behalf, including the right to travel, to start a business, and study at university. Saudi women are prohibited from driving, and are required to cover themselves in public, among other restrictions.

Last October, Saudi women embarked on unprecedented protest measure, by defying kingdom’s de facto ban on women driving by getting behind the steering wheel.

As part of the October 26th Women’s Driving Campaign, around 60 women got behind their vehicles, some brave enough have even posted their experience on YouTube.

The declaration on the website oct26driving.com has been signed by over 11,000 women.

“Physiological science and functional medicine [found that driving] automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis,” Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al Luhaydan, judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association, said in reaction to the issue.

He added that the women who drive give birth to children “with clinical disorders of varying degrees.”

Many Saudis have expressed their anger in Twitter, mocking the Sheikh’s “great scientific discoveries.”

Marwan Barghouti’s popularity can give new momentum to the Palestinian struggle.

By Shannon Ebrahim

October 29, 2013 “Information Clearing House – “Al-Jazeera” – On Sunday, October 27, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation launched an international campaign from the infamous Robben Island – where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years – for the release of Marwan Barghouti and all Palestinian political prisoners.

The symbolism is powerful. Kathrada launched the “Release Mandela” campaign in 1963, just prior to his own arrest, which saw him also incarcerated on South Africa’s Robben Island for 18 years. Now half a century later, as an 84-year-old veteran, he is launching yet another campaign for an iconic freedom fighter.

Barghouti’s wife, Fadwa, travelled to Robben Island with the Palestinian Minister for Detainees, along with hundreds of special guests, including South African struggle veterans and five Nobel Peace Prize laureates.

Barghouti was the first member of the Palestinian Legislative Council to be arrested by Israel, and is one of the most prominent of the more than 5,000 Palestinian prisoners who remain incarcerated in Israeli jails. The European Union and the Inter-Parliamentary Union have called for his release.

Barghouti’s struggle

Huddled in the back of a fish restaurant in the Gaza Strip in 2001, a few African National Congress (ANC) members of parliament and I sat whispering with Marwan Barghouti. We knew he was number one on Israel’s hit list, but little did we know that within nine months he would be kidnapped by Israeli forces, interrogated and tortured for 100 days, put in solitary confinement for 1,000 days, and, more than 11 years later, become known as “the Palestinian Mandela”.

In an interview Barghouti gave to Al-Monitor in May 2013, he described how the Israelis had kept him in solitary confinement for almost three years in a tiny cell infested with cockroaches and rats. His windowless cell had denied him aeration or direct sunlight, with dirt falling from the ceiling. He was only allowed one hour of exercise a day while handcuffed. He proved unbreakable after three years.

Barghouti’s defiance of the largest military power in the Middle East was inspiring, reminiscent of the fiery determination of the ANC leaders in South Africa twenty years earlier. At the time we met him he was the Secretary General of Fatah, the leader of Fatah’s armed branch Tanzim, and had been the brains behind the first and second intifada. His revolutionary spirit was electric.

He knew very well that sooner or later Mossad would catch up with him, despite his best efforts at being a black pimpernel. In one of a number of attempts to assassinate Barghouti in 2001, the Israeli military ended up killing his bodyguard in a targeted strike. In April 2002, Israeli forces hid in the back of an ambulance and ambushed the house he was staying in, grabbing him. He was later charged for his activities under Tanzim and given five life sentences.

But as with most exceptional freedom fighters elsewhere, his message and persona grew in prison. His popularity has surpassed that of all Palestinian leaders – both in Hamas and Fatah – and he is being hailed by Palestinians as a unifying figure who could lead his people to freedom.

His propensity to unite Fatah and Hamas into one powerful liberation movement insisting on a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders makes him a dangerous threat to Israel’s political establishment. Barghouti’s message is so powerful that Hamas has rallied behind him. When Hamas recently engaged in negotiations on a prisoner exchange with Israel in return for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, they had put Marwan Barghouti at the top of their list. For Israel, Barghouti’s release was not negotiable.

Apartheid and resistance

Palestinian unity threatens Israel’s strategy – which seems to be to delay peace talks, claiming to have no peace partner, while grabbing more land through settlements. That strategy has worked so far, in that settlement building has increased three or four times over the two decades of negotiations. What is left of historic Palestine is Swiss cheese – full of holes, with little contiguous territory. Its comparison to the old South African Bantustan maps is hard to avoid. Where Palestinian villages and towns remain, they are surrounded by the massive apartheid wall, in most instances cut off from their water resources and farm land, which have been annexed by Israeli settlers.

Where Mahmoud Abbas has given in to Israeli demands, opposing all forms of armed resistance, and establishing unprecedented economic and security cooperation with the occupying authorities, Marwan Barghouti has called for an end to all forms of cooperation with the Israeli occupation. Barghouti has been against the collaboration of US-trained Palestinian security forces with Israeli forces, which he believes has guaranteed the security of growing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Barghouti has also been scathing about the Arab Ministerial delegation to Washington in April 2013, which proposed amending the 1967 borders in return for land swaps. He considers this the Arab rulers’ worst betrayal of the Palestinian cause. While the Gulf monarchies may have tried to gamble with the future of the Palestinian people, Barghouti’s principled stand has found resonance on the Arab street.

The most famous Palestinian political prisoner is now calling for a third intifada – a non-violent mass uprising. Non-violent protest will deny Israel the ability to dismiss legitimate Palestinian demands as “terrorism”, a strategy that has discredited the Palestinian cause for many outside observers. It will be a Palestinian version of the Arab Spring that will dominate the headlines and galvanise international public opinion.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is only too well aware of the dangers of such calls. His focus at the United Nations and in private diplomacy on Iran as a nuclear threat has deflected the world’s attention from Palestinian independence, settlement building, and freeing legitimate peace partners.

If Barghouti’s attempt, from prison, to inspire a non-violent protest movement captures the imagination of Palestinians, it could start a significant new chapter in the heretofore tragic history of the Palestinians’ struggle for justice.

Shannon Ebrahim is a South African columnist on foreign affairs, a freelance writer, and political consultant. She has worked as the Director for International Relations for the South African Presidency, and coordinated Government policy on the Middle East and East Africa. Follow her on Twitter: @shannonfield7

Please note that the Ed. is laid up with a broken foot, and with only intermittent internet/computer connection.

The good news for the end of 2013, is that jailed Pussy Riot activists were released from Russian prisons, and 28 Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli prisons.

I noted that the ABC reporter of this news was standing in front of a portrait of Marwan Barghouti with the message FREE MARWAN BARGHOUTI as street wall art – I’m hoping that’s more than serendipity.

Also wishing that Strange Times readers, one and all, have a safe and productive 2014, and that the hearts and brains of “Israeli settlers’ ” grow a few sizes in the coming year.

2013-Almost everything that could go wrong did go wrong for the cause of global warming

from

2013 has been a gloomy year for global warming enthusiasts. The sea ice in the Antarctic set a record, according to NASA, extending over a greater area than at any time since 1979 when satellite measurements first began. In the Arctic, the news is also glum. Five years ago, Al Gore predicted that by 2013 “the entire North polar ice cap will be gone.” Didn’t happen. Instead, a deflated Gore saw the Arctic ice cap increase by 50% over 2012. This year’s Arctic ice likewise exceeded that of 2008, the year of his prediction.  And that of 2009, 2010, and 2011.

The weather between the poles has also conspired to make the global warming believers look bad. In December, U.S. weather stations reported over 2000 record cold and snow days. Almost 60% of the U.S. was covered in snow, twice as much as last year. The heavens even opened up in the Holy Land, where an awestruck citizenry saw 16 inches of snowfall in Jerusalem, almost three feet in its environs. Snow blanketed Cairo for the first time in more than 100 years.

2013 marks the 17th year of no warming on the planet. It marks the first time that James Hansen, Al Gore’s guru and the one whose predictions set off the global warming scare, admitted that warming had stopped. It marks the first time that major media enforcers of the orthodoxy — the Economist, Reuters, and the London Telegraph – admitted that the science was not settled on global warming, the Economist even mocking the scientists’ models by putting them on “negative watch.” Scientific predictions of global cooling – until recently mostly shunned in the academic press for fear of being labeled crackpot – were published and publicized by no less than the BBC, a broadcaster previously unmatched in the anthropogenic apocalyptic media.

2013 was likewise bleak for businesses banking on global warming. Layoffs and bankruptcies continued to mount for European and North American companies producing solar panels and wind turbines, as did their pleas for subsidies to fight off what they labeled unfair competition from Chinese firms. Starting in 2013, though, their excuses have been wearing thin. China’s Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel manufacturer, has now filed for bankruptcy, as has LDK Solar, another major firm.  Sinovel, China’s largest manufacturers of wind turbines and the world’s second-largest, reported it lost $100-million after its revenues plunged 60%, and it is now closing plants in Canada, the U.S., and Europe.

While these no-carbon technologies get buried, carbon-rich fuels go gung ho. Last month Germany fired up a spanking new coal plant, the first of 10 modern CO2-gushers that Europe’s biggest economy will be banking on to power it’s economy into the 21st century. Worldwide, 1200 coal-fired plants are in the works. According to the International Agency, coal’s dominance will especially grow in the countries of the developing world, helping to raise their poor out of poverty as they modernize their economies.

But important as coal is, the fossil fuel darlings are indisputably shale gas and shale oil. This week the U.K. sloughed off the naysayers and announced it will be going all out to tap into these next-generation fuels. Half of the UK will be opened up to drilling to accomplish for the U.K. what shale oil and shale gas are doing for the U.S. – drastically lowering energy costs while eliminating the country’s dependence on foreign fuels. China, too, has decided to tap into the shale revolution – in a deal with the U.S. announced this week, it will be exploiting what some estimate to be the world’s biggest shale gas reserves, equivalent in energy content to about half the oil in Saudi Arabia.

2013 as well marks a turning point for the governments of the world. January 1, 2013, Day One of the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol, saw Kyoto abandoned by Canada and Russia, two fossil fuel powerhouses. With their departure Kyoto became a club for the non-emitters – the Kyoto Protocol now only covers a paltry 15% of global emissions. At UN-sponsored talks on global warming in Warsaw last month, the Western countries of Europe, North America, and Australia refused to even discuss a proposal from developing countries that would limit emissions in the future.

2013 also saw Australia elect a climate-skeptic government in an election that was hailed as a referendum on climate change. Upon winning, the government promptly proceeded to scrap the country’s carbon tax along with its climate change ministry, now in the rubbish heap of history. Other countries are taking note of the public’s attitude toward climate change alarmism – almost nowhere does the public believe the scary scenarios painted by the climate change advocates.

2013 was the best of years for climate skeptics; the worst of years for climate change enthusiasts for whom any change – or absence of change — in the weather served as irrefutable proof of climate change. The enthusiasts fell into disbelief that everyone didn’t join them in pooh-poohing the failure of the climate models. That governments and the public would abandon the duty to stop climate change was in their minds no more thinkable than Hell freezing over. Which the way things are going for them, may happen in 2014.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Ed. Comment
While I have some disagreements with the busy bird this is an interesting take on the “Indonesian’ crisis. I do think there is a problem when writers still refer to East Timor when it is now officially named Timor Leste. It’s problematic for a few reasons, but mostly because it doesn’t get the most up to date information for the topic. All official documents refer to Timor Leste and researchers may miss the most important information by using the old terminology.

Despite this, Piping shrike puts ‘regionalism’ in its historical context, though the significance of ‘East Timor’ to the main relationship between Indonesia and Australia is definitely downplayed with “Even East Timor gets on board”. (With criticism of Australian security efforts) But Timor Leste has had long standing objections in the international court. (By way of the legal challenge to the Australia, Timor Leste Treaty provisions as they relate to oil and gas usage/revenues.)
End

From Piping Shrike

From Piping Shrike

“It’s not goodies versus baddies, it’s baddies versus baddies.” Tony Abbott on Australia’s foreign policy dilemma.

“Apology demanded from Australia by a bloke who looks like a 1970′s Pilipino [sic] porn star and has ethics to match.” Liberal media strategist

It’s getting hard to keep up. Government disarray, a non-existent honeymoon, and the most hostile media faced by any Liberal government in living memory have all meant the issues are now stacking up. On the international stage (let alone the domestic one) the Indonesia row has been overtaken by the Chinese row and now even East Timor feels up for having a go. Good grief.

This is all a shame. Since, in moving on from the Indonesia row, it has not yet been brought out that something very new happened during it. While everyone is sighing relief with the departure of Rudd and wanting to “move on”, the legacy of what he did in his last 100 days is proving harder to shake off.

The spying row exposed the phoniness of Australia’s “regionalism”. Indonesia is not Australia’s most important partner, the US is. Anything Australia does is seen through the prism of the only relationship that really counts in Australian politics. The exposure of Australia’s role as a listening post for the US in the region only exposes the reality that everyone already knows. So why was it so disruptive?

For a middling power, Australia’s foreign policy is unusual. It’s basically to be closely aligned as possible to whatever happens to be the leading global power of the day, whether the UK in the first half of the 20th century or the US in the second.

The downside of this has been Australia has been required to trot along to pretty well every global military venture dreamed up by these two (the 50s and 60s, when Australia was transitioning between them, was especially busy).

The upside is more subtle. Quite what it does for Australia’s world standing might be mixed given that Australia, especially in the region is often seen as just a mouthpiece of the US.

But the domestic benefits are pretty clear. It allows Australian politicians to present themselves as major players on the world stage when they’re not. In the Iraq war, Howard got away with presenting himself in the Australian media as one of an alliance of three, whereas to the rest of the planet there was Bush, and perhaps Blair, but Australia’s presence was unknown (on that note, try finding a Brit or an American who knew Australia was in Vietnam). It’s an act that Australian politicians are rarely caught out on, Howard’s slap down by Obama in 2007 a rare example.

This unusual foreign policy has a direct impact on the domestic scene. Historically, regional politics has little impact on domestic politics, except as much as they are seen through the prism of US/UK interests like the Vietnam War.

But nor do Australian politicians especially need to concern themselves with global events when there is no clear line from the leading power. The impact of the upheavals in the Middle East, for example, a major headache for the US political class on how to respond, has required the Australian response, as Abbott’s comments on Syria show, to barely need rise above the moronic.

The end result has been to lend Australian politics a curious impervious air for a middling power that appears at most times to be unaffected by the world around. It gives the illusion that everything emanates from Canberra, deeply flattering for what is otherwise a fairly ordinary political class.

In the last few decades, politics has taken a regional turn usually when the US has changed or lost direction and Australian politicians have had to pick up the slack, such as during the late 1960s and early 70s when US foreign policy had to adapt the failing war in Indochina. It prompted the US to tone down the Cold War and seek rapprochement with China partly in a bid to help stabilise the region with Whitlam famously pre-empting Nixon’s visit to China in 1971.

Generally Labor has proven more flexible on such shifts, with the Coalition preferring the clear polarity of the Cold War. The lack of clear direction from the US in late 1970s caused headaches for Fraser, with his Foreign Affairs Minister, Peacock, resigning and challenging him over what, for most Australians at the time, was the fairly arcane issue of UN Recognition for Pol Pot (that nice Mr Fraser wanted it).

It was a similar story during the next period of “regionalism” when the Cold War finished properly at the end of the 1980s. Keating promoted regionalism as one his “three R’s” but, like most of Keating’s post-Accord initiatives, owed more to political will than reality. Nevertheless Keating claimed that Howard would be a risk in Asia, especially following earlier comments on immigration. Howard almost proved it over East Timor.

While Keating was doing the talk on regionalism, Howard’s East Timor intervention in 1999 could be truly called a regional initiative. Perhaps more than Howard wanted. After having his bluff called by Indonesia’s President Habibie on holding an early referendum, Howard was left swinging in the breeze by Clinton with priorities elsewhere.

But even in East Timor, Australia acted more like a US surrogate than a regional player. It mirrored US policy at the time that was encouraging UN/NATO intervention in hotspots around the world especially in Eastern Europe. It did some good for Australia’s standing on the world stage, but little good with its neighbours, especially Indonesia.

The fall-out was apparent in Indonesian cooperation on asylum seekers. By 2000 – 2001 boat arrivals were spiking to what were then record levels, made worse by the introduction of TPVs in 1999. As Ruddock noted later, Indonesian cooperation only resumed after 9/11, consolidated by the Bali bombings, and managed around the Bali Process.

The War on Terror briefly brought some of the political benefits of the Cold War both domestically and internationally. It allowed Howard to strut the world stage for the benefit of cameras at home and turned the leader of a floundering government into the Man of Steel we have since come to love.

When the War on Terror faded so did the political benefits and the framework for regional affairs. The Bali Process was quietly dropped and the toning down of rhetoric on asylum seekers and the dumping of the Pacific Solution was initiated by Rudd, but followed by the Liberals as a pragmatic response.

The retrenchment of US leadership under Obama led to the third attempt at regionalism that, at first started less convincingly than the others. When Rudd came to power his intention was to adapt to US retrenchment by acting as go-between the US and China (like it was needed) and pursuing that agenda where US interests were less clear, climate change.

But as Rudd found in Copenhagen, no US leadership means no leadership at all. The detaining of a businessman in 2009 showed Australia had little real influence with China, and Oceanic Viking showed no leverage with Indonesia. By Gillard’s turn, we had Australia not even able to get East Timor to agree to a detention camp and the High Court knocking down a Malaysian Solution at home. By 2012, regionalism and Gillard’s chances of re-election were dead.

Then Rudd returned. When he did, he brought in a new “regionalism” but of a type Australia had not seen before.

It is possible to pin point exactly when this new regionalism started. it was 4 ½ minutes into Rudd’s 730 interview on 6 June when he pointed out what had been obvious for a long time but barely mentioned in either politics or the media – Indonesia would not allow the Coalition’s “turn back the boats” policy to happen.

It seems hard to believe now, but this point had been rarely made before, not least because Labor didn’t want to appear to be giving the impression that stopping the boats was not really an option.

More disconcerting was that by raising the issue of Indonesia’s attitude, Rudd was directly flying in the face of Howard’s mantra that “we will decide” who enters the country – an act of post 9/11 bravado that concealed the intense regional efforts Howard, Downer and Ruddock were making at the time. What Rudd did was to bring the importance of regional cooperation into the public arena and into one of the most important domestic issues for Australian politicians (if not as important in the electorate).

In doing so, Rudd was exploiting a weakness of Abbott and Gillard who had both made asylum seeker policy a central issue and were pretending that it was possible to go back to Howard’s post 9/11 policy. But the driver for both of them doing so were internal reasons in their respective parties (Labor’s insecurity over its base and the Liberals’ “branding” worries) – but without the post 9/11 conditions that had helped Howard and Downer get Indonesian cooperation.

But by raising Indonesia’s attitude to the Coalition’s boat policy, Rudd did more than just score a political point at Abbott’s expense. It became clearer in one of his earliest press conferences after resuming the leadership when he again raised the Indonesian objections and the possibility of diplomatic conflict and underlined the point by mentioning Konfrontasi.

Rudd’s allusion to when Australia joined Britain in the early 1960s in a military intervention to support what was effectively the British protectorate of Malaya against Indonesia, caused uproar from the right, and for good reason. First, because it highlighted the dubious historical record of Australia’s “regionalism” that was generally conducted on behalf of more global interests. But secondly it also gave the moral edge to Indonesia in the boat issue in what is seen by them as an issue of sovereignty.

What Rudd did was to give a green light, and considerable leverage, to do what no regional country had really done before, intervene directly into Australian domestic affairs. To drive the point home, the Indonesian Foreign Minister was paraded in front of the media to repeat a message that had been ignored for years.

The domestic benefits to Rudd were immediate: polls showed a sharp fall in the Coalition’s advantage on the issue, although obviously we had to find out once again that it was never the vote changer that some think.

But the more lasting consequence was the leverage it gave to Indonesia to get at the Coalition, which was stepped up a notch when the spy story broke. Despite the calm façade, we probably had a glimpse of what was going on in the right behind the scenes with the public self-immolation in social media of the Liberals’, er, media strategist. But while the right’s histrionics were at least clearly grasping what Indonesia was up to, the response from some on the left was more insidious.

It was summed up by a piece by academic Greg Barton in the Conversation, when comparing Indonesia’s response to revelations of spying by Australia and Germany’s response to US spying, he wrote:

… while Abbott might share in common with Obama a certain cool, precise, rational style of communication, Yudhoyono is an Indonesian president, not a German chancellor. For Yudhoyono, as his stream-of-consciousness Twitter feed has made clear, the problem with Abbott’s eloquent response is that it lacks emotional substance.

Leaving aside the rather unpleasant undertones of cool and rational versus “emotional”, Barton sums up the general view on the left that Indonesia has been wronged and Australia, as a bit of a bully, owes Indonesia an apology.

A comparison to Germany is indeed apt. Both Germany and Indonesia would have been fully aware that they were being spied on for years and hardly surprised by the revelations. How much a deal they make of it depends on what they want to do with it. In Germany’s case, the spying revelations give it a rare opportunity to take the moral high ground with the US to push the relationship more to its advantage. For Indonesia, a similar story applies, as was astutely summed up by the Fairfax Indonesian correspondent.

The difference is who they are targeting. US decline tends to get exaggerated but Germany, now consolidating its leadership in Europe, can take advantage of the current uncertainty in US foreign policy to press an advantage. But for Indonesia, an emerging economic power, the US’s deputy in the southern Pacific is a much easier target.

Merkel would know there is little leverage in US domestic politics with even the liberal US press unapologetic about the more intrusive aspects of its global role. But for SBY, whatever his emotional state, going on Twitter (in English) makes perfect sense as he would know, as a Liberal media strategist seems not to, that the Australian media would be all over it and generally only too happy to use it to cause further embarrassment to a new, weak government.

The left have been portraying Indonesia as the victim and Australia as the bully but the reality is more the reverse. For a country with a past of pontificating and interfering in the affairs of its neighbours, the growing weakness of its political system means it’s payback time. Welcome to the new, real regionalism.

Monday, December 16, 2013

A response to Barry York’s article, Can we have a real Education Revolution?

Barry commences by pointing out that class size has reduced from 50 to 25 over a generation.

It is often claimed, by the political right, that reduction in class size hasn’t improved educational outcomes. The statistics support this position of the right. John Hattie has become an often quoted authority about effect sizes:

“… a synthesis of meta-analyses and other studies of class size demonstrate a typical effect-size of about 0.1–0.2, which relative to other educational interventions could be considered ‘‘small’’ or even ‘‘tiny’’, especially in relation to many other possible interventions—and certainly not worth the billions of dollars spent reducing the number of children per classroom. The more important question, therefore, should not be ‘‘What are the reasons for this enhanced effect-size?’’, but ‘‘Why are the effect-sizes from reducing class size so small?’’”
– Hattie, J. (2005).The paradox of reducing class size and improving learning outcomes. International Journal of Educational Research, 43, 387–425

I believe that the Gonski report is yet another iteration of this process. It throws money at schools but lacks an evidence-based plan to actually improve educational outcomes.

Barry fondly mentions “a wonderful History teacher by the name of Itiel Bereson”. I agree that great teachers make a difference and that this is far more important than class size.

I also agree that the teachers union plays a very limited and sometimes negative role in real educational reform because they are more interested in teacher conditions than teacher quality. I’m angry at the Union for not supporting performance pay for teachers in remote indigenous communities, conditional on them achieving measurable improvements. If the teachers union had responsibility for determining the nature of teacher training in Universities then they would feel more pressure to actually come up with an educational approach that works, rather than focusing too narrowly on teacher rights.

But when Barry argues that classroom teachers “know best” there is some lack of the clear thinking he extols beginning to creep in. If there are only a few great teachers like Mr. Bereson, one wonders why they as a group “know best”? Barry is expressing the belief here that those who do the real work, those at the chalk face, as a result of their nitty gritty day to day experience, “know best”. Yet, if they really know best why do they support a union that focuses on worker conditions, promotes the same green issues that Barry objects to and doesn’t push hard enough for quality teaching?

Who really does know best? One group that I have been taking a lot of notice of recently are those who promote evidence-based criteria and have the skin in the game of actually working with and improving the learning of disadvantaged students. In Australia, this would include Kevin Wheldall, Robin Beaman-Wheldall and Kerry Hempenstall as well as the initiative promoted by Noel Pearson in Cape York, using the American derived teaching materials of Zig Engelmann.

Barry goes on to counterpose Learning to Teaching as though there is no real connection between them. Moreover, he claims that the social purpose of schools is to imprison the mind and that hasn’t changed for two centuries. This is simplistic argument. As always, the devil is in the detail.

This leads into Barry arguing for the end of learning as we know it and it’s replacement with learning over the world wide web. We are led to believe that we can do this now because in C21st we have a “very high literacy”. If only this were true. Unfortunately, the literacy rate in Australia leaves much to be desired. Although it has improved massively since the late C19th, the really important measure is whether people have sufficient literacy to be highly functioning members in today’s society.

My research indicates that roughly 44% or 13.6 million Australians aged 15 to 74 years have literacy skills that will make it difficult for them to independently extract useful information from the world wide web (source: Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, Australia 2011-12

Moreover, Australian schools are not doing a very good job in teaching basic literacy. The PIRLS 2011 study into reading comprehension put Australia second bottom of all English speaking countries surveyed. 24% of Australian students had a Low or Below Low score in reading comprehension. See Kevin Wheldall’s article, PIRLS before Swine for more detail.

The basic problem is that teachers have not been trained properly to teach literacy. This was the conclusion of the Brendan Nelson National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy in 2005 but none of the recommendations from that inquiry have been implemented. The real villains here are the teacher trainers in universities and the teacher unions who block reform. (the education establishment). Many of them are still wedded to discredited whole language approaches.

It has been argued that there are other, more modern forms of literacy than old-fashioned “reading comprehension”. These arguments sometimes take the form that it is more important to “read the world” than read the word. But a little thought is enough to convince most people that old fashioned “reading comprehension” is a prerequisite to “really learning” on the Internet.

So, the statistics reveal that at least 44% of adult Australians and 24% of young Australians, still at school, are going to miss out if Barry’s model of school reform is implemented. Of course, the internet has incredible learning potential for highly literate and self motivated learners. But Barry has made too many sweeping generalisations in his historical and social analysis of the actual nature of schools. If you are not clear about the actual problem then how can you be clear about a viable solution?

Is it possible to conceive of a useful purpose for schools? Yes, it is. Anthropological findings show that there is no easy or natural path to certain types of knowledge, including reading and writing. This type of knowledge has been called non universals (by Alan Kay) or “biologically secondary cognitive abilities” (by David Geary).

Universal knowledge, displayed by every human tribe, includes such things as:

social
language
communication
culture
fantasies
stories
tools and art
superstition
religion and magic
case based learning
theatre
play and games
differences over similarities
quick reactions to patterns
loud noises and snakes
supernormal responses
vendetta and more (about 300 of these have been identified across cultures)

The above categorises the level of what most people do on the world wide web (social media), despite it’s potential for higher learning.

On the other hand, the non universals include such things as:

reading and writing
deductive abstract mathematics
model based science
equal rights
democracy
perspective drawing
theory of harmony
similarities over differences
slow deep thinking
agriculture
legal systems

These are much harder to learn than the universals because we are not directly wired to learn them. These things are actually inventions which are difficult to invent. And the rise of Schools going all the way back to the Sumerian and Egyptian times came about to start helping children learn some of these things that aren’t easy to learn. For more details about the universals and non universals see The non universals

Some things are hard to learn. Although that hard to learn information is on the internet it is usually not sought out spontaneously by your average facebook junkie. I call the popularity of social media the you_twit_face phenomena (after youtube, twitter and facebook). Pop culture is the main form of discourse on the internet.

Learning to read is rocket science. But once you know how to read you totally forget the process you went through to learn to read. The literate then become blind to the plight of the illiterate. The idea that reading is natural, you just soak it up naturally from the surrounding environment, is BS.

The legitimate purpose of school should be to teach the non universals, the things which are not learnt naturally. That is one reason why schools were invented in the first place. They are not simply vehicles to imprison our minds.

Barry quotes Mao: “If you want knowledge, you must take part in the practice of changing reality”. I can agree with the Mao quote but like any one liner it only represents a part of a more complete picture. Mao argued for an ongoing spiral of knowledge between practice and theory. If you are going to take part in the practice of changing reality then you had better also be prepared to study / research hard and acquire a lot of knowledge, including book knowledge. We all know activists who end up doing and thinking foolish things.

In fact, there are many former radicals from the late 60s who went onto become education establishment leaders and union activists promoting non authoritarian, constructivist teaching methodologies such as whole language that have led to a quarter of our students not becoming literate. They have changed reality in a bad way due to insufficient research informed by an intuitive dislike for a form of “authority”, mistaking authoritative with authoritarian.

The factory model critique is problematic when applied to education because there is some good education that fits a factory model type of metaphor. Factories in capitalism are bad because they steal from the labour of workers. Another sense in which it is used is the replacement of artisan labour with mechanical labour, but that critique is more problematic according to Marx. There is nothing wrong with a machine replacing what was previously done by an artisan.

Many intelligent people report bad experiences at schools. For example, they were told to do things, such as write answers in sentences, over and over again, something that they already knew how to do and so the experience was boring, boring, boring …

But, could you have a good factory model in an educational setting? In my opinion, yes. One answer here would be to improve the factory, each student having their own individualised, computerised assembly line programmed to help achieve both essential literacies but also electives beyond the basics.

Another popular, related argument is that individuals have multiple intelligences or different learning styles, which have to be catered for. But those positions have pretty much been abandoned by thinking educators. Lookup Dan Willingham on the net, he is very good at debunking both of those fads (multiple intelligences, learning styles)

Direct Instruction is pretty much a factory model, a far better factory model than what happens in most existing schools, and so the intuitive dislike of it by “progressives” is strong – but wrong. In teaching basic literacy and maths the research shows that one method fits all is a very good way to go. Kevin Wheldall calls this Non categorical teaching.

In conclusion, what is my idea of a good argument for school reform? It’s a matter of getting the balance right between components that need to be highly structured and other components enabling freedom of expression. Thanks to people like the Wheldalls (MULTILIT) we now know how to achieve very close to 100% literacy education through a structured approach, an individualised factory model if you will. Direct Instruction models could also be beneficial for highly literate people wishing to extend their knowledge over particular domains, eg. the contribution of Einstein to our knowledge of physics. Beyond that I agree that Barry’s ideas have merit. The internet has much potential for extending our knowledge further for those who are literate and motivated to do that. But as Mao also said, you have to lift the bucket from the ground, not start in mid-air.

News from Beirut on the ‘disputed’ assassination of General al-Laqis.

The Hezbollah military leader Hussein al-Laqis was murdered outside his home on Dec. 4 2013, an act thought to be in retaliation for Hezbollah support for Pres. Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Israel is predictably being attributed with the assassination, however “The Sunni jihadist group Abdullah Azzam Brigades said it was behind the attack. The head of the al-Qaeda-linked group described the attack as a “double martyrdom operation carried out by two heroes from the heroic Sunnis of Lebanon”.

This comes on the back of the November 19 Iranian Embassy bombing in November in Beirut and recent Saudi calls for its citizens to leave Beirut.

From
By An Al-Monitor Correspondent in Beirut | Thu, Dec 5, 2013
Translator(s) Kamal Fayad

BEIRUT — Two separate and unknown factions claiming to be affiliated with jihadist movements issued statements claiming responsibility for the assassination of Hassan al-Laqis, a leader in Hezbollah’s Islamic resistance, barely 24 hours after gunmen attacked him around midnight on Dec. 4 in Beirut’s southern suburb. The factions, as they called themselves on Twitter, are the Brigade of Free Sunnis in Baalbek and the Brigade of Islamic Nation Partisans. Both identities are viewed with a measure of suspicion in Beirut. At first glance, the Brigade of Free Sunnis in Baalbek appears to have wanted to spark a sectarian clash between Sunnis and Shiites in Baalbek, which is home to adherents from both communities, reminiscent of the violence that erupted last summer between Hezbollah supporters and one of the city’s Sunni families.

For its part, Hezbollah quickly blamed Israel, which uncharacteristically issued a statement a few hours later through its Foreign Ministry denying any involvement in the killing. Such a denial is precedent-setting in Israel’s handling of these types of events. Israeli governments have typically maintained their silence, neither confirming nor denying involvement in such operations. Its response to Laqis’ assassination has raised speculation in Beirut about the reasons that might be behind Israel forsaking its traditional approach. Some sources suggested to Al-Monitor that Israel wanted responsibility for the ongoing security-related incidents that have plagued Lebanon in recent months to remain firmly focused on Hezbollah and its Sunni Islamist antagonists, whom the party suspects are receiving support from Saudi intelligence and its chief, Bandar bin Sultan.

Laqis’ assassination is the latest security incident following a series of bombings across Lebanon, apparently in conjunction with the escalating political conflict that has been raging between Hezbollah, Salafist Islamist movements and Saudi Arabia involving their respective positions vis-à-vis the Syrian crisis. Two weeks ago, on Nov. 19, two suicide bombers from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Abdullah Azzam Brigades targeted targeted the Iranian Embassy in Beirut. The attack was preceded by two car bombings in July and August in Hezbollah’s stronghold in Beirut’s southern suburb and speculation that they are part of ongoing retaliatory responses against Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian war alongside the Syrian regime.

Despite the fact that Laqis’ assassination came at a peak of tensions and anxiety surrounding additional terrorist bombings rocking Lebanon, the method used was a departure from previous attacks, which had mimicked the mode of operations prevailing in Iraq, that is, explosives-laden cars (as was the case in Tripoli on Aug. 23 and the southern suburbs) and suicide bombers (as used against the Iranian Embassy). In contrast, the Laqis hit was reminiscent of past assassinations carried out by Israeli special forces units against leaders of the Palestinian resistance movement during their presence in Lebanon in the 1970s and 1980s.

Security services are also unsure about the identity of the perpetrators. While the incident is thought to be attributable to the confrontation between Sunni Islamists and Hezbollah over Syria, its implementation is completely different from the methods by which jihadist Islamists operate. This opens the door for speculation that a third party might have entered the fray to stoke the flames of the confrontation raging between Hezbollah and Islamist Salafist movements, thus raising its intensity and diversifying the conflict.

Regardless of the perpetrators’ identity, Laqis’ assassination represents an unprecedented security breach in Hezbollah’s security. The operation necessitated a great deal of audacity and was executed by a commando unit that successfully carried out its mission before quietly retreating from an area considered an impregnable security stronghold for Hezbollah. Its timing was also suggestive, as it did not occur at a time when Hezbollah had its guard down, but at a time of extraordinary vigilance.

The most important question in the aftermath of this operation is whether a crack has begun to appear in Hezbollah’s defensive security fortress as a result of the attrition it is suffering in the Syrian war.

News from Israel shows the delusion before the dawn as the international community indicates that plucky little Israel’s quest for a Greater Israel is well and truly on the rails. More and more countries are saying enough is enough (the rhetoric has moved from ‘disputed territory’ to talk of occupied territory and with it comes the obvious practical agenda change) The world is sick of watching the tail wagging the dog and the people going to hell…So to all Israeli politicians you better start finding a way to bring the settlements out of the too hard to deal with Likud box, or be consigned to the Bastards file in the dustbin of history. Something like President F.W DeKlerk did in the 1990s is well and truly called for here and could possibly turn political fortunes around.

Author Mazal Mualem
Posted December 5, 2013
Danny Wool Translator

Earlier this week, a senior Israeli politician returned from a visit to Germany disturbed by what he had encountered there. What concerned him was the extent of the aversion that his hosts displayed whenever the topic of the settlements came up. The man, whose resume includes quite a few visits to European capitals over the past few years, was amazed to discover that unlike on his previous visits, the people he met with, including parliamentarians and senior foreign ministry officials, had zero tolerance for anything to do with the settlements. “I felt like they no longer paid attention at all, when we talked about the settlements. Until recently we still had someone to talk to. They tried to understand our side, and they were very tolerant, but this time I felt like they were trying to tell me, ‘We’re fed up with you. We’ve lost our patience. We don’t believe that you want a diplomatic process.’ And that was the Germans, who are considered to be our closest friends in Europe.”

The Israeli leadership risks boycotts beyond West Bank products with its failure to fully appreciate the extent to which the EU distrusts Israel’s stated desire for a peace settlement.

This description explains statements by sources in the European Union, published Tuesday, Dec. 3, asserting that half the EU member states support labeling products manufactured in the settlements. They want to do this as a result of the sorry state of the negotiations with the Palestinians and on the eve of yet another visit to the region by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The senior politician says that he was not surprised at all [by the report]: “This was the Europeans’ way of telling us, ‘You’ll understand it the hard way when we hurt you economically and when we stop funding all sorts of projects in the settlements.’ It will end with a boycott imposed on the entire land of Israel. But people here don’t fully understand the depth of the trouble we’re in. Here [Minister of Housing and Construction] Uri Ariel is not afraid to approve building programs in the settlements right in the middle of the diplomatic negotiations, to cause Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu problems on the diplomatic front, and yet still keep his job. What the Europeans take away from that is that Bibi isn’t serious and that nothing will come out of these negotiations. That is why they are trying to apply pressure.”

And so, even though the diplomatic and local significance of these reports are disconcerting, in Israel they were received with something bordering on apathy, if not disdain, as evidenced by comments made by Gilad Erda, minister of home front defense and a member of the diplomatic-security Cabinet. In a morning interview with Army Radio (Galei Tzahal) on Tuesday, Dec. 4, Erdan attacked the European Union: “It is very sad that these are the positions coming out of the EU. It shows their lack of understanding regarding what is happening in the Middle East. Marking these products will only encourage the Palestinians to toughen their positions even more during the negotiations.”

The arrogance of this Likud minister’s response is further evidence of the diplomatic shortsightedness and the obliviousness of the Israeli leadership to what is actually happening in Europe. In other words, what is sad about this story is not the failure by the European Union to understand what is happening in the Middle East, but the failure of the minister — as noted, a member of the diplomatic-security cabinet — to understand what is happening in Europe.

The cold shoulder that Europe is giving Israel is an unmistakable example of how Jerusalem is losing its friends. Anyone looking for signs of a third intifada might find themselves in the exact same position. This is not an armed Intifada. It is a diplomatic war against Israel in the international arena. The fact that states of the European Union support a boycott of Israel did not occur in a vacuum. It was the direct result of enormous diplomatic pressures applied by the Palestinians.

Ostensibly, now that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have been renewed, it would have perhaps been reasonable to assume that the Europeans and the Americans would have ignored the settlement constructions in Judea and Samaria [West Bank], just as they did when Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Olmert were prime ministers. Significant diplomatic negotiations took place during their tenures, if not more active political measures, such as Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza in 2005. The difference is that back then, the Israeli leadership viewed the settlements as something that should be resolved as part of a peace agreement. In contrast, Netanyahu ignores the issue entirely. Ideologically, it doesn’t look like he has changed over the past few years, and politically he is being held captive by the right — that is, by the settlers that registered en masse for the Likud and changed the very face of the movement.

The ideological trap that Netanyahu is caught in, within the Likud and in his coalition, has led him to prefer the release of terrorists over any declaration of a freeze on construction in the settlements as a goodwill gesture in advance of the negotiations with the Palestinians.

The one person to address this issue and use it to hold a mirror up to the Israeli public, especially Netanyahu’s political partners at the center of the political spectrum, has been Yuval Diskin, a former chief of Shin Bet.

At a conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, Nov. 27, to mark the 10th anniversary of the Geneva Initiative, Diskin called Netanyahu weak. He was especially critical of the prisoner release agreement, which he described as a “cynical and revolting deal, intended to prevent a freeze on construction in the settlements.” Nor did Diskin spare criticism of Netanyahu’s excessive focus on an Iranian bomb, stating, “The implications of the conflict with the Palestinians are far more existential than the Iranian nuclear threat.”

In his talk, Diskin called for changing the composition of the coalition so that it could advance significant diplomatic moves to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. The key to the problem is evident in Diskin’s remarks: The current coalition is unable to advance a diplomatic process or other moves toward peace. At best, all that it can do is what it has been doing for the past few months — keep limping along with the current negotiations, which aren’t going anywhere.

As long as Netanyahu is shackled to the settlers politically, he has no intention of making any progress with the Palestinians. Under these circumstances, Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni bear enormous responsibility as representatives of the center-left camp in the coalition. By sitting in a government that has no intention of making the transition to action in diplomatic negotiations, they are betraying the mandate they received from their voters.

Livni cannot keep making the rounds forever, running between the negotiating room and TV studios without the slightest expression on her face and without providing explanations to the public that voted for her precisely because she raised the banner of diplomacy in her campaign. She should apply strong political force and bring Lapid along with her to make Netanyahu realize that she will not sit in his government just to whitewash the settlements. This is the last chance to get Netanyahu to do something. After all, even if he hasn’t undergone some ideological transformation, he still wants to keep his seat as prime minister.

by Albert Langer

A 1981 analysis of why unemployment occurs under capitalism. Many references to the particular conditions in Australia at the time. Unemployment had reached its highest level since WW2 and there had been much debate in the media about the need for everyone to “tighten their belts” etc..

First published in August 1981 as an “Australian Political Economy
Movement” conference paper. (Adelaide 8-9 August.1981)

Republished subsequently by the Red Eureka Movement. (REM)

Part 7 was written one year after the original document.

CONTENTS

Brief Synopsis

Part 1: What is “unemployment”?

Other Societies
Science Fiction

Part 2: What “normally” causes unemployment?

The Labour Market
The Unemployment Pool
Changes in the Level of Unemployment

Part 3: What regulates unemployment?

What Do the Unemployed Actually Do?
How Unemployment Regulates Wages
Booms and Busts
Wages and Class Struggle
Union Solidarity
Arbitration and Wage Indexation
Capital Accumulation
Technological Change
Job Creation and Destruction

Part 4: Technological unemployment

Is It Technological?
“Controlling” Technology

Part 5: “Cyclical” Unemployment

Anarchy of Production
Planning and Money
Profitability
Overproduction
Are Wages Too High?
Stimulating Demand
Economic Crisis

Part 6: Solutions

“Giving Fraser the Razor”
Blowing Up the Balloon
Fine Tuning
Political Facts
Shorter Hours and Higher Pay
Expanding the Public Sector
Workers’ Co-operatives
Labor to Power with Socialist Policies?
Economic Consequences of Statism
Protectionism
“Militant Struggle”
Revolutionary Optimism

Part 7: Revolution

We Need a Program
Expropriating Big Business
Central Planning
Labour Policy
The Struggle for Control
Socialist Management
Investment Planning

 

 

Brief Synopsis

Conservative economists and politicians generally argue that unemployment and inflation in Australia are the result of changes in the international economy, and that Australia has to adapt to those changes or things will get even worse. They say government economic policies must promote more rapid economic growth by stimulating profits and investment at the expense of real wages and social welfare.

Labour movement opponents of the current Liberal government have proposed a series of sometimes contradictory arguments in opposition to this line. Explicitly or by implication they suggest that unemployment is at least made worse by the present government’s economic policy, and could be improved if different policies were followed. Various proposals are advanced – such as:
for shorter working hours
redistribution of wealth from the rich
protection of Australian industry
limitations on technological change
nationalisation
government job creation schemes
improvements in the lot of the unemployed
measures to stimulate economic growth without attacking living standards
and so on.

These proposals have had little impact on public opinion. Given the manifest failure of its economic policies, there has been nothing like the mobilisation against the government that might be expected.

The reason is that these proposals do not make sense. They ignore fundamental facts about how capitalism works, and about recent economic and political history.

The capitalist system is not capable of restoring full employment in any of the ways suggested from the labour movement, and it is silly to pretend that it can. The only alternative to conservative policies will be communist revolution. That alternative must be made realistic.

 

Introduction

Before deciding what could – and what could not – reduce unemployment, we first need to look at what causes unemployment. I am not very clear on that myself, but I still feel confident enough to reject various commonly accepted views on the subject. I will state my own provisional understanding rather baldly. Others can then point out its inadequacies, and we can go on from there.

This paper is thus a preliminary attempt, necessarily half-baked, and partly written for the purpose of self-clarification. It examines an issue that really needs to be considered in close connection with many other economic and social questions. It would have been better to have provided more facts and figures, examples and other evidence for the assertions below, as well as more explicit reference to other views. But we have to start somewhere.

Hopefully feedback will result in refinements and modifications of the arguments. Please do send comments.

Part 1. Emphasises that unemployment is specifically a problem connected with market economies. Then it gets slightly distracted to talk about science fiction and jellyfish.

Parts 2., and 3. Analyse the economic mechanisms that regulate “normal” unemployment, in order to explain the conservative arguments for “wage restraint” and why such arguments are wrong.

Part 4. Examines “technological” unemployment and shows that the increased unemployment now is not “technological”.

Part 5. Attempts an explanation of “overproduction” and “cyclical” unemployment (without great success).

Part 6.Considers various “solutions” from the labour movements, in the light of the earlier analysis, and rejects them all, but cheerfully, in view of part 7.

Part 7. Tries to give some concrete content to the idea that “the only solution is revolution”.

 

1. WHAT IS “UNEMPLOYMENT”

First, let us be clear about what unemployment actually means. Unemployment and employment are two sides of the same coin. Capitalism is based on wage labour. Workers sell their labour power to employers for money wages. They are “employed”, that is “used”, or “exploited”, to produce profits. They do not work for themselves, but are “employed” by others. Inherent in this is the possibility that some workers will be unable to find a buyer who is willing to purchase their labour power when it is offered for sale.

In fact unemployment is not only possible, but inevitable, in a capitalist or market economy. The labour market, like the other commodity and financial markets, is an essential mechanism regulating production and consumption by balancing supply and demand through price movements. Even at the height of prosperity there has to be some pool of unemployed for employers expanding their operations to recruit from. Otherwise they could only recruit from other employers by offering higher wages.

“Full employment” actually means “very little unemployment” – say 1% or 2% – just enough to stop a “wages explosion”. Any less unemployment than that is not “full employment” but a “labour shortage”.

The very term “market economy” implies an economy in which commodities, including labour power, may be offered for sale with no buyer. If there was a guaranteed buyer, then the transfer would be some sort of allocation, rather than a free market exchange.

So in a market economy, goods and services may be left unsold, capacities for production may be under-utilised, and workers may be unemployed. It all depends on the market – ie on whether somebody is willing to pay money for them.

For additional workers to be employed, an employer has to be able to make a profit out of employing them, by selling what they produce on the market at a price higher than their wages. If this is possible, then some employer, whether government or private, will do it. But on the other hand, if no profit can be made from employing additional workers, directly or indirectly, then they cannot be employed.

The government can pay them unemployment benefits, and it can call these benefits “wages”, but if the work done does not pay for itself on the market, it is not “employment”, and will require a continuing subsidy from revenue obtained by taxing real employment.

If there were any commodities with guaranteed buyers in a free market, then those commodities would be in short supply and their price would go up until there were no longer guaranteed buyers. That is actually what happens to wages when unemployment falls below a certain minimum. This is perfectly normal and completely unavoidable.

Most proposals for reducing unemployment lose sight of this essential fact. If it was possible to reduce unemployment by some simple measure to increase the number of jobs immediately available, then it would theoretically be possible to eliminate unemployment entirely by pursuing the same measures more vigorously.

However the basic nature of a market economy does not permit that. In fact it regenerates unemployment as part of its normal functioning. “Job creating” measures might work in some other kind of society, where work is done because a job needs doing, rather than because someone is willing to pay for it. But in a market economy, jobs are “created” by the market, and only by the market. Somebody has to pay.

In order to confirm that unemployment really is just the other side of employment and only occurs where work takes the form of wage labour, we can examine some societies which do not have a market economy.

Employment is so “normal” in our society that one tends to take it for granted and to look elsewhere for the explanation of unemployment. So it is worth reminding ourselves that employment and unemployment are characteristic features of only one kind of society – the capitalist or market economy.

 

Other Societies

Primitive Communism

Savage society was characterised by a primitive form of communism in which people worked together as a tribe. There were no employers and there was no question of finding or losing a job. You could starve to death, or get eaten, but you could not become unemployed. The fact that its quite common to hear modern society compared unfavourably with primitice society says something about how disgruntled people are with capitalism. In reality however the life of the “noble savage” (including the Australian Aboriginals) was, as Hobbes famously said, “nasty, brutish and short”. Nevertheless there was absolutely no reason why everybody in the tribe could not work at once. Unemployment was just not a possibility for people living in these societies.

Slave and feudal societies.

Slave society marked a considerable improvement, for civilisation, culture and so forth. This was so even for slaves since captives were no longer killed and eaten. There was still no unemployment. Even as recently as feudal society, for most of the population there was no such thing as employment and unemployment. A peasant or serf did not have to find a job. They simply worked the land and engaged in household industry. They could suffer from wars and famines, but not from unemployment. An artisan might have difficulty selling goods, but could not become unemployed. Again, reactionary romantics, including many supposed to be “left”, often look back on the cramped, narrow lifestyle of those times, as though it was some sort of “golden age” compared with modern society.

Modern society based on wage labour has opened up much wider horizons than anything that existed before it. But unemployment is part of the deal. Nevertheless it is a good deal compared with tribalism, or slavery, or being tied to the land.

Freedom to sell one’s labour power on an open market is an enormous advance over previous social systems in which people were born into their jobs and were therefore stuck with them for life. This freedom is the basis for all other freedoms.

However the deal is no longer good enough. We want more freedom and we will have to move beyond a market economy to get it. The current concern about unemployment is just one sign that the social system we have now is no longer good enough.

Future society

In future communist society people will not work for wages, but for social needs, as was the case in primitive communist society. They will not buy their requirements in exchange for money received as wages or profits, but will be given an allocation in accordance with their needs. Again, as in primitive communist society.

Unlike primitive communist society, people will not be ruled by “necessity” but will use their knowledge of natural laws to attain freedom from the blind working of “nature” or “fate”. Work as an obligation, and consumption as a right will not need to be enforced through commodity exchange, any more than they will need to be enforced through tribal sanctions.

Distribution will be “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”. The state as an apparatus of coercion will wither away since the government of people will give way to the administration of things. The free development of each will be the condition of the free development of all, and the long dark ages of the pre-history of humanity will have ended.

Science Fiction

It is worth reminding ourselves that this is what the progressive movement is ultimately all about – something that often gets forgotten in the midst of day to day struggles.

Even some science fiction stories take it for granted that humanity is headed towards a sort of communistic society. Sci fi characters tend not to be looking for jobs, receiving wages, or buying things with money. In these stories people do various jobs and obtain supplies of accommodation, food, and other things they need, without buying and selling. Although social relations specific to capitalism are often imposed on sci-fi societies quite inappropriately, there is still no “private enterprise” in many of these visions of future society. Likewise “nations” often seem to disappear.

Needless to say, in such a future society there would be no question of unemployment, since there would be no labour market. Despite this there could be plenty of other problems – just check out the sci-fi literature for examples.

Further along, or for alien life-forms, the very concept of “society” gives way to a single organic whole, where there is no question of distribution “from” or “to” any separate individuals. This reminds us of the way in which single celled creatures first gathered into colonies and then evolved into jellyfish -like creatures and eventually some went on to develop into highly complex organisms.

But returning to the present millennium – communism will still not be a good enough deal once we have it! People will then be ready to demand something along the lines of “From each according to their inclination, to each according to their wildest dreams” – and other more radical proposals.

There will still be struggles and the need for revolutions. We cannot predict what new problems will arise as humanity continues transforming itself and eventually changes into, or gives way to something quite different from the present species.

But unemployment will certainly be a problem over and done with, once employment is over and done with. It is not a permanent problem and one day we will not have to worry about it, just as today in most advanced countries we do not have to worry about starvation.

Coming right back now to the present day, communism is long overdue and we still have unemployment – and it is growing. However in recent times we have actually seen examples of modern societies where unemployment was not a problem. These were societies that had consciously set out on the road towards a communist society and had begun abolishing the market economy. They had no difficulty controlling and then eliminating unemployment. This was despite the fact that they had started with extremely backward economies and first had to deal with even bigger problems such as starvation. There was not any unemployment in the Soviet Union when it was socialist, even at the height of the 1930’s Great Depression.

However today there is unemployment in some sectors of the Soviet economy and labour shortages in others (apparently with an overall labour shortage as existed in most western capitalist economies in the 1960’s.) Since Soviet economists admit there are labour shortages, there must be a labour market, and that implies the shortages will later be followed by surpluses, just as in the West.

In China the connection between a market economy and unemployment is more dramatically obvious. There was no unemployment at all in China from the 1950’s until recently. There may be arguments about how efficiently people were employed, but nobody seriously suggests there was actual unemployment.

Within a few years of the restoration and expansion of market relations (ie since 1977), mass unemployment exceeding 20 million people has become a major social problem. Previously investment was planned and regulated by a socialist state, with each enterprise responsible to the state plan and having no independent right to hire and fire. Now enterprises are “free” to take their own independent investment decisions and to hire and fire while at the same time, workers are “free” to be unemployed.

All this suggests that we must examine every proposal for reducing unemployment, according to its implications for a market economy. Unemployment is a problem specific to capitalism and it is no use looking at solutions that ignore the specific features of market economies. We need to figure out how the labour market actually works in a capitalist economy.

 

2. WHAT “NORMALLY” CAUSES UNEMPLOYMENT?

We shall argue that conservative economists are correct to stress that unemployment plays an essential regulatory role in a market economy. This contrasts with the usual “left” calls for government action to “create jobs”. But we will go on to show that “wage restraint” will not solve the problem either.

Such “restraint” would be unnecessary to keep “normal” unemployment within limits, because the unemployment itself would regulate wages. Something must have changed so that unemployment and wages are not regulated in the way they used to be.

A common way to look at unemployment is that there is a certain fixed number of jobs and a certain fixed number of people available to fill them, and some sort of mismatch has occurred. The suggestion here is that the unemployed are simply those workers who cannot be fitted into the jobs available for them. This idea leads to “commonsense” proposals to reduce the number of workers, or provide a better match between specific workers and specific jobs.

Solutions aimed at restricting the number of job applicants have historically had a powerful appeal. Discrimination against women, migrants, blacks and so on, can be in the immediate interests of men, native born, or whites, in the competition for a place at the front of the jobs queue.

Obviously such “solutions” cannot reduce unemployment, but they can determine who gets the jobs, and for the individual on the dole, that can be just as important. Efforts are already being made to promote these objective divisions of interest within the working class. Those efforts are serious and should be fought seriously. They can succeed.

There are always vacancies as well as people unemployed, so “solutions” which emphasise re-training and so forth are still popular. So is the idea that there are really plenty of jobs available, but “dole bludgers” are just refusing to fit into them because they want something better.

School leavers do have access to advice about how to be well groomed for a job interview and so on, although only cretins could imagine that if all the unemployed were better groomed, any more of them would get jobs quicker! This simply confirms that who gets the jobs is pretty important for the school leaver. Advice about how to find a job can be somewhat helpful in evening out the duration of unemployment and reducing the numbers who miss out on jobs altogether. But quite obviously it cannot reduce unemployment.

A lot of energy in left wing propaganda and agitation is spent trying to combat the above ideas but without attacking the underlying concept that there is a fixed number of jobs and workers. The “left-wing” and “right-wing” analyses are therefore just two sides of the same coin, sharing the same basic assumptions.

So we should not be surprised that the left makes no progress against the dominant right wing ideology.
What is the difference between saying there are too many workers or not enough jobs? These really amount to exactly the same thing. Yet that is all the left does say. The “not enough jobs” line is sterile, boring, and will get nowhere because it is just not true.

These ideas are wrong because neither the number of workers nor the number of jobs is at all rigid.

Under normal circumstances, the number of jobs adapts flexibly to the number of workers available to do them. In fact there is always plenty more work that needs doing, than the labour available to do it.
As capital is accumulated and society develops its productive forces, jobs that were previously left undone get attended to. The limitation is always the social labour time available to do things, rather than the number of “jobs”.

When the number of jobs fails to adapt to the number of available workers, this must mean that something has changed in the adaptive mechanism itself, and we must find out what. Just trying to “create jobs” would still leave us with an adaptive mechanism that was not working and that could recreate a new pool of unemployed.

This more sophisticated understanding of job creation in a market economy, lies at the heart of conservative arguments for wage restraint. Those arguments have never been satisfactorily answered from the labour movement, and are gradually being accepted by the trade union bureaucracy. There is thus an urgent need for them to be answered. Let us first consider how the adaptive mechanism is supposed to work.

The Labour Market

The workforce in modern industrial countries is extremely mobile. It is the product of centuries of capitalist development in which the technique and structure of production have changed so rapidly that people expect to change jobs many times during their working lives.

Nowadays many firms are so large that a good deal of movement between jobs takes place within the same firm. Some even have regular career services with a defined system for recruitment, promotion and transfer. There is also a certain amount of transfer between firms, directly from one job to another. But a great deal of movement between jobs still takes place via the pool of unemployment.

“Labour Turnover” includes workers changing jobs while searching for a better situation. It also includes the replacement of workers who have died or retired or otherwise left the labour force, by new workers entering the labour force for the first time.

These movements have no net effect on unemployment although many workers will pass through unemployment on their way between jobs, or on their way into the labour force. In addition to this however, there is a continuous process of new jobs being created and old jobs being destroyed. This does have a net effect on employment, and therefore on unemployment, although the effect can be in either direction.

In existing establishments, expansion or contraction of demand will create new vacancies or produce redundancies. Changes in demand may also result in new establishments being set up as an industry expands, or old ones being closed down as it contracts.

New techniques will be introduced with expansion, or when it is time for old plant and equipment to be replaced. Old techniques will be phased out with contraction, or when they have become so obsolete that it is more profitable to introduce the new technique immediately.

Investment in new production techniques requires a reorganisation of the labour process. Vacancies will be created for new positions that previously did not exist. Old staff positions no longer required will be abolished. Some workers will be transferred from old positions to new ones. Others will be retrenched, or not replaced when they leave. New workers, perhaps with different skills, will be recruited. New raw materials and components will replace those previously used. Work previously done “in house” when the volume was lower and the need for specialisation was less, will either be farmed out to new outside contractors or subsidiary establishments set up for the purpose.

Generally the new technique is introduced to increase productivity. The new team of workers will be able to turn more of their “inputs” into “outputs” at a lower cost and using less labour. There may be an increased demand for new inputs used by the new process, with a decrease in demand for the old inputs used by the old process. This may produce some net effect on total employment in the suppliers (and in their suppliers…)

If the output is relatively cheapened as productivity increases, then there may be a further increase in demand, which will again increase the demand for the products of the firms or departments that supply the inputs.

Expansion of markets is generally a consequence of relative cheapening through increased productivity, and at the same time a condition for new techniques to be introduced. “The division of labour is determined by the extent of the market”. Often within the same establishment, there will simultaneously be expanding demand which increases employment, and reorganisation that decreases it. The total staff size may either grow or shrink as a result.

This sort of thing is happening all the time, and may not even be noticed as “labour saving technological change”. Especially if the change only increases output with the same size workforce, instead of leading to redundancies.

However labour productivity and the real gross national product per worker are able to grow each year only because of these changes. Growth rates have been very high in the whole post-war period, because these changes have been taking place very rapidly.

The long term tendency has been for the total labour force to grow more rapidly than the population. Labour saving technological change has meant more output per worker together with more employment overall. However this simply implies the overall rate of economic growth has been faster than the rate of productivity increase. Any particular change may result in either more or less total employment, and there is no guarantee that changes in employment taking place simultaneously throughout the economy will automatically balance each other in any way.

Both changes in demand and changes in technique can produce a net change in total employment. If there was no unemployment pool, there would be no leeway for changes in total employment to occur as a result of job creation and destruction. There must be leeway, so there must be an unemployment pool.But its size is another question.

The Unemployment Pool

As well as the normal labour turnover, there is a continuous stream pouring into the pool of unemployment as a result of positions that have become redundant (whether their previous occupants were sacked, or the position was just not filled when they left).. There is also a continuous stream emptying the pool of unemployment as a result of new vacancies that have been created.

In fact there are a number of interconnected pools and streams for different occupations, industries and localities. And these are also interconnected with the pools of people in the education system or otherwise not in the labour force as well as with the flows of migrants to and from other countries.

The effect of changing demand on the numbers of jobs available for people of various skills and occupations in various localities, is reflected in the filling and emptying of their unemployment pools. People who cannot find a job in one pool are forced to transfer to another by doing things such as changing their usual occupation or residence, acquiring new skills that are more in demand, and so on.

The pools of people “not in the labour force” can also be forms of “hidden” or “latent” unemployment. Women for example, are drawn into wage labour more extensively during periods of peak labour shortage, and pushed back into “home duties” when unemployment is growing. Likewise people may stay on at school longer, or retire earlier, as a result of unemployment.

On a world-wide scale, the movement of people off the land and away from petty production into industrial wage labour jobs is accelerated by labour shortages.

This movement is retarded or even reversed during a depression. Thus countries like Australia which normally absorb immigrants from agricultural areas like southern Europe, will put up barriers to immigration when there is unemployment at home. People left marginally employed, on or off the land in the agricultural areas are also part of the unemployment problem.

The modern capitalist economy is very flexible and has a number of mechanisms for adapting to changes in the level of economic activity and consequent changes in the demand for labour. Thse include adjustments in overtime hours worked, part-time and casual employment, wage rates, labour turnover, work intensity, production techniques and so so.

Only when the other adjustment mechanisms have already been stretched considerably, do substantial unemployment or labour shortages appear directly. Both unemployment and labour shortages are therefore signs of some relatively severe disproportion which must be stretching things. Since each firm hires and fires independently and plans its investment program independently, there is no reason why at any given time the total numbers pouring into the pool of unemployed should be equal to the numbers drained out of it. Some other mechanism must therefore maintain the balance.

After all, why should the number of jobs created in the tertiary sector, just happen to balance the number of jobs lost in manufacturing, plus the additional numbers of women entering the labour force, and so on? Nevertheless, these independent statistics did balance for many years, and we must find out why they did, before we can find out why they now do not.

As will be explained later, the expansion and contraction of unemployment is itself part of the mechanism that regulates the price of labour power, the rate of profit and the balance between production, consumption and investment.

There just is not any government authority that can regulate the number of new jobs being created, or the number of old jobs being destroyed each year – and there cannot be such regulation in a market economy.

Therefore there is not any way that the government can directly determine the number of unemployed.

Changes in the Level of Unemployment

It is difficult to separate job creation and destruction from other labour turnover, and difficult to separate the effects of new technology from expansion and contraction of demand. But labour turnover is very high, and some of it is the result of jobs being created and destroyed.

If people change their jobs an average of once every four years, then the number of job changes each year is equal to a quarter of the entire workforce. If the average duration of unemployment is six months, then twice as many people pass through unemployment each year on their way to a job (or on their way out of the labour force due to discouragement), as the number of unemployed at any given time. Only a small proportion of labour turnover needs to be due to job creation and destruction, for any imbalance between the two to have a rapid effect on net employment and unemployment.

One would naturally tend to think that if all those who happen to be out of work at the moment were to go abroad, or had jobs specially created for them, then there would be no unemployment. But the above analysis suggests that only a slight mismatch between the numbers of jobs being created and destroyed, would very quickly recreate a large pool of unemployed. Just to keep the number of unemployed static, whether at twenty thousand or two million, there would have to be perfect equality between the large number of jobs being destroyed each year, and the large number being created.

It follows that one should not just think in terms of a match between the numbers of jobs and workers, but also a match between the rates of job creation and destruction. In fact, when there is no dramatic continuing change in the level of unemployment, there must be just such a nearly perfect match between job creation and destruction.

How is it brought about? Why does not the number of unemployed fluctuate wildly, all the time? Only if we know how unemployment is normally regulated can we find out why that regulation is not working the same way now.

3. WHAT REGULATES UNEMPLOYMENT?

Somehow, the size of the pool of unemployed itself must regulate the rates of job creation and destruction. Otherwise the number of unemployed would fluctuate wildly all the time. We shall find out later how the regulation works normally, and why it is not working now. But we already know that unemployment must be some sort of regulator. The larger the pool of unemployment, the more jobs must get created and the less must get destroyed. Otherwise we cannot account for the usual balance eventually reached between these two quite independent rates.

Moreover, we know the mechanism usually tends to reach a balance with only a relatively small pool of unemployed. Therefore the mechanism must continue increasing the rate of job creation and/or reducing the rate of job destruction, as long as there is a certain amount of unemployment. It does not usually stop working with half the workforce still unemployed, just because unemployment is not still increasing.

Finally, we know that whatever this mechanism is, it does not always work. Right now, a small pool of unemployment is not balancing the rates of job creation and destruction. We await each month’s statistics with bated breath to find out whether unemployment has risen or fallen, and we usually find that it has risen. We know that periodically capitalism goes through major upheavals called economic crises, in which a large part of the labour force does get left unemployed for a long period. Our explanation of the balancing mechanism must account for that too.

Whatever the mechanism may turn out to be, we know that as long as it still is not working normally, no amount of artificial “job creation” can prevent the continuing mismatch between normal job creation and destruction from quickly recreating a large pool of unemployed. The only effective remedy for unemployment must be one that gets this balancing mechanism to work again. On this point we can agree with conservative economists. But what is the mechanism, why is it not working normally, and how can it be made to work again?

According to conservative economists the mechanism is simply that increased unemployment tends to pull down wages until it is profitable for capitalists to employ more workers. They conclude that the remedy is push down wages and increase profitability until the unemployment is absorbed.

That sounds quite plausible. If it is true, communists have no reason to deny it. We never claimed that capitalism could permanently maintain full employment without periodically pushing down wages to boost profits. Our answer would simply be that we do not feel like pushing down wages and boosting profits, thank you very much. We would prefer to abolish wages and profits and establish communism.

But a mystery remains as to why the mechanism should not be working, and why the remedy does not seem to work either! To resolve that mystery we shall first have to examine how unemployment regulates wages, and then how wages regulate employment and unemployment. We shall find that there is indeed a close connection between unemployment and wages, and between wages and job creation. But it is not as simple as the conservatives make out, it mainly works in one direction, and it does not work all the time. Most important, we shall find that we can not increase employment simply by pushing down wages. First let’s look at what the unemployed actually do to see how unemployment can regulate wages.

What Do the Unemployed Actually Do?

Under normal circumstances most of the unemployed are not just a stagnant “pool” but an active part of the “stream” moving from one job to another. They form a part of the stream that is temporarily banked up looking for outlets. They are an active part of the stream because they spend their time looking for jobs, not just rotting.

Unemployment is normally a period between jobs rather than a permanent status. When there was “full employment”, half the unemployed at any given time got jobs within four weeks. By 1978 more than a quarter had been waiting for over six months and another quarter for over three months. In a sense, one can measure how “normal” unemployment is, by its average duration, more than by the total numbers involved. It really is not a big problem if the economy is so dynamic that large numbers of people are changing their jobs each year, and they are spending a couple of weeks unemployed between each job. But it is very different when there are actually less people changing jobs than usual, but they are spending a longer time looking.

When unemployment increases slightly, it usually means that people moving from one job to another, or from school to work and so on, have to spend a longer time looking. But it does not immediately mean that a larger number of people are outside the labour force altogether.

Of course some unemployed workers do end up outside the labour force altogether, and even become permanently unemployable as a result of demoralisation. The larger the pool of unemployment, the larger the section of it that ends up stagnating instead of flowing back into employment, and the more peoples’ lives are ruined in this way.

Increasingly the unemployment we have got is taking on the features of a stagnant pool, rather than a flowing stream. This is compounded by the sharp reduction in normal labour turnover as people are reluctant to leave their old jobs unless they have new ones lined up. This stagnant unemployment is a different thing altogether from the “normal” unemployment that somehow regulates the rates of job creation and destruction. Nevertheless, we must first understand how “normal” unemployment does regulate these rates, before we can understand why the new unemployment does not.

The important thing about normal unemployment is that a larger part of the labour force is spending more time looking for work, and not that a section of the population has ceased to be part of the labour force. Hence the concept that the unemployed form a “reserve army of labour” that plays an active role in capitalist production, just as reserve armies play a vital role, and are not simply “inactive” in military battles. Some soldiers are in battle, and others are available to be deployed where required. Some workers work, and others are available to work where they are required. Both those in active service and those in reserve are necessary for things to go smoothly.

An important difference is that reserve armies of soldiers are deployed where their officers decide they are needed. With conscious military planning, reserves can be kept to a minimum and troops transferred directly from one front to another as required. Unemployed workers have no officers and are expected to find their own jobs. (Although there is now a fair bit of “manpower planning” and so forth).

The economic function of the unemployed is to look for work. Those that do not are no longer “unemployed”, but are “not in the labour force”. Those that do will normally find a job eventually. Their place in the unemployment pool may then be taken by someone else looking for employment. How long it takes, and what proportion miss out entirely, depends on the level of unemployment. But the unemployed individuals economic function does not change, their basic situation does not depend on the level of unemployment.

It is important to realise this when attempting to organise the unemployed. One reason they are very difficult to organise is that even now, most of them are not permanently unemployed – and the ones with enough initiative to get organised are also likely to get jobs quicker than average. On the other hand those that do become permanently unemployed can end up getting demoralised and dropping out of the labour force so they are no longer “unemployed” either, and are pretty hard to get involved in anything.

Let’s face it, unless things are really desperate, an individual unemployed worker can get more immediate benefit out of looking harder for a job than out of agitating against the government. The harder you look, the more chance you have of eventually getting to the front of the queue leading back into employment.

How Unemployment Regulates Wages

By looking for work, the unemployed play a vital role in the labour market. Their number determines the ease with which employers can recruit labour for expansion or replacement. That recruitment is going on all the time, even when there is a net reduction in the total number of jobs. There are always vacancies as well as people unemployed (and isolated examples of unfilled vacancies are always pointed to even though there are many times as many people looking for work as there are jobs available). The proportion of unemployed workers to job vacancies determines the average speed with which vacancies can be filled, just as it determines the average length of unemployment.

If vacancies cannot be filled fast enough any other way, then employers will bid up the price of labour by competing with each other to fill their vacancies. As in any other commodity market, this will continue until the supply of labour increases to fill the vacancies, or until the demand for labour has fallen (more likely, since the size of the labour force is relatively inflexible). The demand for labour will fall when the price has been bid up high enough, because investments that would have required more labour will cease to be profitable at the higher wage rate. So less jobs will be created and more will be destroyed. This includes of course the accelerated shift to less labour intensive production techniques.

We will examine the details shortly, but the important point to note is that unemployment only regulates wages in one direction. In fact unemployment only regulates wages when there hardly is any! As soon as there is enough unemployment to avoid a “wages explosion”, additional amounts will not significantly increase the ease with which employers can fill their vacancies.

There is no reason to believe that increased unemployment will cause employers to bid less for labour, or will cause unions to accept less. It may be that with really massive unemployment, union solidarity will be broken down. It may also be that the same slack demand for labour that has created unemployment will also make it unprofitable for employers to bid as much for labour as before. But these are both entirely separate questions. All we know for sure about unemployment as a regulator is that lack of unemployment will drive wages up and that will in turn force employment down.

This one-sided regulation is quite sufficient to explain the observed fact of a normal balance between job creation and destruction with very little unemployment. As long as markets are expanding and there is a tendency for the demand for labour to increase, that tendency will be checked by the size of the available labour force, but will permit full employment and real wages rising together with productivity.

This leaves open the question of whether other factors can also push unemployment and wages up or down and whether unemployment can coexist with high and low wages. That is as it should be, since we know that something other than the normal mechanism must account for the abnormal situation of high unemployment.

By way of contrast, the usual explanation that low wages will increase demand for labour, and high unemployment will push wages back down, explains too much. This would imply that any unemployment will correct itself, when it manifestly does not.

The usual explanation also implies that we should never expect to find increasing demand for labour alongside increasing relative wages. Yet that is exactly what has been happening with increased female labour force participation alongside equal pay.

Finally, the mechanism we have described gives no reason to believe that lowering real wages will automatically produce an increased demand for labour. All it says is that excess demand for labour (more than is available), will cause wages to go up. It does not follow that reduced wages would cause demand for labour to go up. That is also as it should be. Despite all predictions from the conservative camp, unemployment has continued rising while real wages have continued falling.

Since our unemployment regulator only explains one side of wages and unemployment, we need to look elsewhere to find what causes the abnormal movements in a crisis.

First, let us look at what happens before a crisis, namely a boom.

Booms and Busts

In a boom, real wages can even increase faster than productivity, so that the share of wages compared to profits will rise and the rate of exploitation will fall. This actually happened in the 1974 “wages explosion”. That was certainly a “boom” even though there was considerable unemployment at the time. Conversely, when demand is slack, unions have little bargaining power and the share of wages, or even the absolute level of real wages, will fall. That is happening right now.

When the economy is booming there is a general tendency for firms to increase their demand for labour power, raw materials and other inputs, in order to meet the demand for their output. This drains the pool of unemployed, reduces warehouse stocks, increases plant capacity utilisation and drives up wages and other prices. The increased demand for inputs and increased consumer spending can itself feed the boom to a certain extent, by further increasing demand.

But when the price of labour and other inputs is rising faster than the price of firms outputs, profit margins are reduced. There is then a general tendency for firms to cut back their investment and expansion, or even undertake contraction. This reduces the demand for labour and other inputs, and eventually recreates a pool of unemployed as well as stockpiles of other commodities and excess production capacities. Prices and wages are then forced back down (relatively).

These movements occur in individual sectors, but also in the economy as a whole. One firm’s inputs are another firm’s outputs and changes in demand act across the board. The balance between production, consumption and investment depends on movements in wages, prices and the rate of profit. This “balance” is always dynamic since it is precisely the imbalances that bring into play the factors for restoring a balance. Hence there is an unending succession of booms and busts in the economy as a whole and in particular sectors of it.

A problem with the above description of booms and busts is that it seems to describe a self-regulating mechanism that would automatically correct for unemployment or labour shortages by moving wage rates, or the capital intensity of investment, in the appropriate direction. So one would expect things to never get all that far out of balance. Indeed capitalism does work like that, a lot of the time, and normal “fluctuations” in the economy can be adapted to quite smoothly. But there must be more to it than that, when we have a “crisis”. Before going into that, we will look at wages, and then look at the normal balancing mechanism in more detail.

Wages and Class Struggle

Conservative economists assume that left to itself, capitalism always works smoothly, and when it does not, they therefore argue that there must be some institutional factor which is preventing prices from clearing market – for example, unions preventing wages from adjusting to the level of unemployment. Hence the calls for “wage restraint” and polemics against the unions.

To some extent this is hypocritical. Conservative economists are generally well aware that the level of wages is determined by the demand for labour, and not vice versa. They could not really believe that wages are greatly influenced by the effect of polemics against unions. They know that the only effective way to bring down wages is through reduced demand for labour, and that means increased unemployment. So it is quite illusory to talk of unemployment and “wage restraint” as alternatives. They go together.

Even though union leaderships might be very willing to go along with “wage restraint”, the employers themselves will bid up the price of labour power if there is not enough unemployment to hold it down. The propaganda for bringing down wages is really propaganda for accepting mass unemployment.

References here and elsewhere to “unemployment” holding down wages are not meant to imply that competition from the unemployed is the restraining factor. While union solidarity remains effective, there is little such competition. It would be more accurate to say “slack demand for labour” holds down wages. But generally (although not always), slack demand for labour is closely associated with unemployment. So the shorthand reference to”unemployment” is near enough.

Illusions about what determines wages are often spread from the labour movement, and especially its left wing, who sometimes picture the level of wages and conditions as primarily determined by the outcome of sharp class struggles on the shop floor.

This is certainly true to a greater extent than for other commodities. Because of the social elements in wages determination, worker militancy can effect wages more than farmer militancy can effect the price of wheat or supermarket rapaciousness can effect the price of groceries. A militant union can secure more for its members than a weak one and a militant workforce can enjoy a higher standard of living than a more servile one in a country with a comparable level of economic development.

There is an element of real bargaining, and extra-economic factors can also influence the outcome – for example fascist governments that suppress unions, or the threat of revolution. Even so, on a world scale it is clear that the level of wages corresponds very directly to the level of economic development in various countries.

Union Solidarity

The main variable in wage determination is the degree of unionisation and solidarity among the workers. If they are solid, they can get the full value of their labour power – its monopoly price. If they are not solid, they can be forced to accept anything below that – right down to minimum physical subsistence level. Unionisation has been and remains enormously important in raising workers above physical subsistence level and securing the value of their labour power. Smashing unions is still a goal for employers to force workers wages below their value and extract surplus profits.

But once unionisation is well established, unions cannot secure any more than the value of labour power. Like any other monopoly, they cannot charge what they feel like, but only “what the traffic will bear”. In this case “the traffic” is what employers will bid to secure extra labour.

In particular, the main effect of the “level of class struggle” is in determining the overall level of labour conditions for the whole nation. It has much less effect on wages in any particular industry or workplace. Even at a national level, class struggle probably has a greater impact on normal working hours and work intensity and on “social conditions” generally, than on actual wage rates.

Since there is free movement of labour between occupations and industries, the level of wages and conditions in any industry is influenced far more by the overall state of the labour market, than by the level of militancy in the particular industry. Workers in low paying industries will look for jobs in high paying ones, producing a labour shortage in the low paid industry which can only be eliminated by offering higher wages.

The bargaining position of a union also depends more on the demand for its members labour than on the dedication of its leadership. We are talking about variations a few percentage points above and below the wage rate determined by “market forces”. Failure to fight could halve wages compared to their “market” rate. But fighting harder could not double them above the market rate, because the market rate is not some arbitrary figure, but the maximum employers can be made to pay before their investment would be diverted elsewhere. Provided a union does fight, it will get more or less the market rate.

There is a parallel with land rent. Landlords can surrender part of their rent, or have it taken from them in taxes. But they cannot compel capitalists to pay a rent that will leave them with less than the average rate of profit on the capital they invest in the land. The capitalists just would not invest in that land.

Real wages have doubled in Australia since World War II, yet it is not a fundamentally different kind of society. They doubled because of economic development, not because of a sudden upsurge in militancy. Indeed the value of labour power has probably not changed very much. The increase in real wages has resulted directly from the relative cheapening of consumer goods, due to increased productivity.

Arbitration and Wage Indexation

The Australian Arbitration system provides elaborate rituals according to which wage rates are supposed to be determined by impartial judges on the basis of principles of equity. Token 24 hour strikes are an important part of those rituals and feed the illusion that wages are determined by some combination of industrial strength and skill in advocacy.

But arbitration is simply an attempt to measure the bargaining strength of the two sides, without them having to actually waste energy to prove that strength by fighting it out each time there may have been some change. The factors investigated in Arbitration Commission hearings, include the “state of the economy”, “productivity”, “capacity to pay”, “cost of living” and especially “work value” and “relativities”. These are precisely the factors that effect the market determined wage rates. The token strikes are a part of that measurement process rather than a form of real class struggle.

The Commission is trying to determine what the market wage rates objectively are. It does not “set” them. When the Commission guesses wrong, it is soon proved wrong by industrial trouble and/or over award payments and/or sectoral labour shortages or unemployment. Adjustments in the “awards” are then required.

The farce of “wage indexation” is a good illustration. When the Commission really did try to “set” wages according to uniform “guidelines”, it failed miserably. Unions and employers, and finally even the government urged it to allow wages to reflect market forces.

There is no reason to believe that the overall level of wages has been kept either artificially high or artificially low by the Arbitration Commission. The Commission itself is well aware that its centrality in the wage fixing process depends critically on how well it estimates actual labour market conditions. It has as much power to “set” wages as the Prices Justification Tribunal had to “set” (or even “justify”) prices, and less power than the Reserve Bank and the Treasury have to “set” interest rates. These institutions can help smooth things out in their respective markets, and they can stuff things up. But they cannot change the overall direction of market movements.

“Rigidities” have allegedly been introduced into the Australian wage structure by the Commission’s fixed “relativities” between occupations and skills. But this has not prevented wages moving in response to changing demands for labour, nor has it prevented labour moving in response to changing demand. It has simply ensured that the wage movements are slowed down and take the form of over award payments rather than awards. Less flexible “relativities” have encouraged more “manpower planning” to cope with shortages and surpluses of particular occupations, instead of the clumsier process of a change in relative wages having to indirectly attract labour from one occupation to another. Likewise, any “rigidity” in overall wage levels could only produce a time-lag in the effect of underlying market movements.

Leaving aside the hypocrisy, conservative economists do believe that bringing down real wages is an essential part of any program for economic recovery. They have masses of quite genuine statistics to prove that wages have increased more than productivity, the share of wages in Gross National Product has increased and so on. They rightly conclude that there is a “real wage overhang” keeping the economy out of balance, even though the purchasing power of wages may be declining.

Therefore, they see unemployment as necessary to bring down real wages, although they prefer not to emphasise that aspect, but just talk about “wage restraint”. But if more unemployment will bring down wages, why hasn’t it? Why is any “program” for economic recovery necessary at all?

The weak point in conservative arguments is that they do not explain what has changed. It is not good enough to just point out that there is a “real wage overhang” since the “wages explosion”. Why is there, and why have “market forces” not corrected it? Before answering that, we need to look at the normal adjustment mechanism in some detail.

Capital Accumulation

Capitalist production is always a process of production for the purpose of accumulating more capital. One part of profits is spent unproductively by capitalists, maintaining themselves and their retainers “in the manner to which they have become accustomed”. That can be fantastically expensive if you look at the lifestyles of Jackie Onassis and the like. But is a very small proportion of total profits, because there are very few really wealthy capitalists.

The more important part of profits is accumulated as new capital. This does not mean it goes into their pockets, or is hoarded into a pile of gold. It is invested in expanding the wealth and power of the individual capitalist, and incidentally developing the productive forces of humanity.

Capital investment means buying more labour power and raw materials to produce more goods, to be sold for more profits (some of which will allow the capitalist to “become accustomed” to an even more lavish lifestyle, and most of which will be invested to expand further). It is a process of continually expanded reproduction. If there was a fixed supply of labour and a fixed technology, this expanded reproduction would become impossible. The new capital would be trying to recruit workers already employed by the old capital, and it would have no market for its products. Only simple reproduction would be possible, with no net investment.

Even if we allow for increasing supplies of labour, a fixed technology would still only permit expanded reproduction at exactly the rate of labour force growth, with no increase in capital or output per worker.

In fact some “models” of the process of capital accumulation are based on assumptions like that. Naturally, they have not been able to explain very much about real economic growth, which always involves new technology with an increasing social division of labour and more capital and more output per worker.

Real capitalism is always expanding. Hence imperialism. Capital can expand intensively or extensively. It can expand extensively by employing more workers, even with the same technology and the same capital per worker. That is important in the third world where there are still reservoirs of peasants who are not employed as wage workers, and it has been important in pulling women out of the household and into wage labour. It also absorbs population increases.

But capitalism also expands intensively, by investing more capital per worker. This implies new technology and a development of the productive forces, and has made capitalism a far more dynamic and progressive social formation than previous ones which went on reproducing themselves without constantly revolutionising the technique of production.

The increasing organic composition of capital implies a falling rate of profit. Here is not the place for a detailed discussion of that, but it is worth mentioning that the difference in internal rates of profit between more developed and less developed countries is equalised by imperialist capital export and import.

A fuller treatment of capital accumulation should examine it internationally. This is very necessary to combat the narrow nationalist outlook so common in the Australian “left”. Suffice it to say that the unemployment we are suffering in Australia is clearly part of a worldwide problem and will require a worldwide solution. Our industries are not just “foreign owned”. They are part of an integrated world capitalist economy. We should think big.

Technological Change

At any given time, there is always a range of known techniques that can be used for production. This range is also always being extended by the discovery of new techniques, which usually involve the use of new intermediate products and hence an increasing social division of labour. But even without new inventions, there is a range of different ways of doing things, some of which will be economic while others are not.

At lower wage rates and a higher average rate of profit, a given labour intensive technique may be cheaper than a capital intensive technique for doing the same job, even though the capital intensive technique is more productive.

For example, third world countries with little capital invested in roads and so on, are forced to use more labour intensive techniques, even though the more advanced methods used in wealthier countries are already known. It can actually be cheaper to use donkeys for transport until capital is available for investment in building roads and truck plants, producing trucks, training drivers and so on. That capital will not be available until the rate of profit on that kind of investment is higher than on alternatives. As more capital is accumulated, the alternatives with higher rates of profit become saturated, the rate of profit goes down, wages go up, and eventually it becomes cheaper to use a truck. It was always more productive to do so.

One day it may be cheaper to use aircraft for regular inter-city transport. We already know how to, but truck drivers’ wages are not high enough, and the rate of profit is not low enough to justify the massive capital investment required.

Increasing returns to scale often dictate a change in technique when a market has reached a certain size. A road will then be replaced by a railway for example. The railway has greater productivity, but the capital investment required is not economic at low volumes of traffic.

Often increasing returns to scale are associated with a greater social division of labour. Special functions are split away from general purpose establishments and achieve a higher productivity while handling the greater volume. A special repair shop will only become economic with a certain level of repairs. Designs will be produced in-house until their volume permits a specialised design firm to do the job more efficiently.

An increase in the scale of operations as more capital is invested and markets expand, may not be regarded as a change in technique. But there will almost always be changes associated with it, like those mentioned above. In most industries the days are long gone when expansion simply meant that more establishments would be set up using essentially the same techniques.

This increasing social division of labour implies more interconnection between different sections of the economy. Each is producing for all, and all for each. It does not imply greater occupational specialisation. On the contrary it requires greater flexibility in the labour force as they change repeatedly from one job to another.

New capital can be invested in the same old techniques to employ more workers using the same old sort of plant to turn the same old raw materials into more of the same old products. But this is only possible if more workers are available. It always creates jobs, provided there is a market for more of the old product. But it creates no new market and assumes that for some reason the market for the old product has increased.

Otherwise new capital can only be invested in more productive techniques that allow fewer workers (usually using more fixed plant and machinery) to turn more raw materials and intermediate products into more products per worker. This destroys some of the old jobs and creates more or less new ones according to whether the output is increased faster or slower than the labour productivity is increased. That depends on how fast the market expands, which depends partly on how much the new techniques cheapen the product (relatively).

New capital intensive investment is always expanding the market, since it does relatively cheapen the product (or the old technique would continue in use), and since it creates a demand for the additional new plant and intermediate products required by the new technique. If there was no technological progress, capitalism would in fact reach the state of stagnation implied by most economic models, since there would be no expanding market for expanded reproduction.

If output is expanding slower than productivity, the result of capital intensive investment will be less workers employed in that sector of industry. If that is happening overall, the result will be an increasing pool of unemployment since more jobs are being destroyed than created. If output is expanding faster than productivity, then labour intensive investments must be expanding employment.

Job Creation and Destruction

Now we can see how a small pool of unemployment normally maintains a balance between job creation and destruction. As profits are continually being invested to become new capital, old jobs are continually being destroyed and new jobs are continually being created. The balance depends on the relative profitability of capital intensive and labour intensive production techniques in new investment.

As long as wages keep increasing at exactly the right rate to keep on gradually tipping the balance towards capital intensive techniques, investment can continue, with increasing capital per worker, even though the labour force is not growing as fast as capital is being invested (provided there is a market for the products).

Otherwise, if wages fail to grow fast enough, the existing techniques would continue being used by new investments, and this will absorb the pool of unemployed until competition for labour drives up wages and restores a balance.

If wages grow too fast, due to labour shortages, there will be a tendency to switch more rapidly to capital intensive techniques which reduce the demand for labour. Slack demand may then force wages down, but even if it does not, there will be no renewed upward pressure until the labour market has again been tightened by further accumulation.

The point is that in “normal” balance, the demand for labour is directly regulating wages so that demand equals supply. It follows that there can be no such thing as “too many workers” or “too few jobs”. The number of jobs will adapt to the number of available workers as capital accumulates. Likewise, wages will not be “too high” or “too low”. They are determined by the demand for labour. It seems then that “everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds”. Mass unemployment is impossible as the textbooks insist.

But this process of adaptation only applies to new capital investments. The existing capital investments can only adapt to labour shortages and surpluses, or changes in wage rates and the rate of profit, within fairly narrow limits. A steel mill cannot employ very much more or less labour according to wages rates. Its design is more or less fixed. Changes can only effect the design of new steel mills, or extensions to plant capacity, and the decision to expand steel production at all.

Lower wages will not encourage existing steel mills to hire more workers. It will only encourage designers of future steel mills to continue using more obsolete, labour intensive techniques. That will only create more jobs when, and if, an increased demand for steel causes more investment in expansion of steel mills.

Thus if there is some disturbance to the normal relationships, unemployment can increase, regardless of wage rates. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of economists, there is no automatic mechanism that would quickly restore a balance. The automatic mechanism can quickly cope with labour shortages, by choking off new labour intensive investment. But it cannot quickly cope with labour surpluses. The unemployment will be absorbed when, and only when, new investment has created new jobs, and that may take some time.

4. TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT

One reason unemployment can increase is because of sudden technological changes effecting a substantial sector of the economy. We will look at that first, and then consider the other major reason – “overproduction”. Most new technology tends to be developed “ahead of its time”. It will gradually come into use in the way described above, as economic conditions ripen. But if a new invention is economic to make use of at existing wage and profit rates, then it will not have to wait for more capital accumulation before being introduced. Instead of gradually displacing the old technique as conditions change, there will be a sudden scrapping of old methods in favour of the new ones.

This process may be “controlled” by monopolies with heavy capital investments in obsolete technology. They may obstruct the process and then later “discover” patents they have been sitting on for years, when it suits their investment plans. However this presumably is not the sort of “control” on technology that anybody would admit to advocating.

Generally the “structural adjustment” required by a sudden change in technique will only require a rearrangement of ongoing capital investment between other industries and the one that is changing.

If a new technique actually requires more capital to be invested in the changing industry, and less labour, then there will be a net diversion of investment from other industries. But at the same time, there can still be enough investment in the rest of the economy to absorb the displaced labour. That investment will continue using more labour intensive techniques, since the labour is available for it to do so. Productivity will grow more rapidly in the industry that is changing, and more slowly in other industries.

But if sectors involving a substantial part of the labour force are affected simultaneously, there may be more jobs being destroyed by the new techniques than are capable of being generated by the current amount of new investment.

If jobs are being destroyed faster than the economy as a whole is expanding, there will be increased unemployment until capital accumulation catches up.

The same general principles apply to other “structural adjustments” due to changes in demand. The shift from manufacturing to mining in Australia would be an example and this can also be considered as “technological change”.

There has been no reduction in the volume of manufactured goods in Australia – just higher labour productivity requiring fewer workers to produce them.

One point however, is that the capital previously directly and indirectly employing the workers who have been made redundant, will itself be freed by any changeover.

This capital is immediately available to increase the rate of expansion of the economy and employ additional workers in other sectors. That may not be much compensation for individual workers who have been thrown out of work eitherpermanently or temporarily.- but it does mean there should be no long delay waiting for capital accumulation to catch up. Because of this point, “technological unemployment” should not be a major problem in a modern capitalist economy. “Manpower planning” and “structural adjustment” should ensure that labour is rapidly re-trained, and capital rapidly redeployed, with far less upheaval than in the days of “laissez-faire”.

This has in fact been the experience during the post-war boom which involved very rapid technological change and structural adjustment. An enormous displacement of labour from manufacturing and primary industry to tertiary sectors took place in every advanced capitalist economy, without producing mass unemployment.

By comparison the “resources boom” shift from manufacturing to mining is quite minor. However it is is more noticeable because it is happening at a time when demand for labour is slack and unemployment is high. This does not mean it is a cause of unemployment. Obviously it is not because although unemployment is growing worldwide, the “resources boom” is local to Australia.

However since the resources boom is happening here and now, and there is unemployment here and now, it does provide something for people to waffle on about instead of analysing the capitalist system seriously.

Is it Technological?

The above suggests very strongly that the current high levels of unemployment is not “technological unemployment”. If it was, then one should be able to point to the specific new techniques that are rapidly displacing labour in particular sectors of the economy, and then discuss measures to cope with that.

There is a great deal of speculation about the future impact of microprocessors and so on, but no evidence that they are the cause of the sudden jump in unemployment which occurred simultaneously throughout the western world from the early 1970’s. It is quite clear that whatever changed then was in the “state of the economy” rather than in the field of technology.

Capitalism has not implemented microprocessors and other labour saving devices nearly as fast as would be possible, and it may be that when the barriers are finally broken down, there will be some technological employment, as a result. There will certainly be a devaluing of existing investments, which is what is obstructing things at present.

But so far microprocessors have been introduced at a snail’s pace compared with their potential and their introduction could not possibly be the cause of the rising unemployment we are currently experiencing.

Of course new technology is continuously destroying jobs. That is the whole point of it – finding ways to do things with less human effort. But this has been going on for centuries and cannot be the explanation for recurring sudden increases in unemployment.

Since the end of the second world war, technological change has been extremely rapid. The steady growth in GNP and real wages would not have been possible without it, since increased real output per person necessarily implies labour saving technological change. It seems though that the sudden increase in unemployment in the early 1970’s, has sparked off renewed concern about technological change.

Certainly there was no sudden acceleration of technological change around that time which could be responsible for the heightened interest. What has changed is that the workers made redundant by greater productivity are not being re-employed by new investment.

There has been a slackening in investment rather than an acceleration in productivity and technology. (As a matter of fact the rate of productivity improvement has actually been declining – for reasons explained later. A minimum requirement for “technological” unemployment would be accelerating productivity growth).

Apparently people do not notice how rapidly technology is changing when there is no unemployment, but their attention is attracted by unemployment. It is far easier to waffle on about technology than to face up to the need for an entirely new social system.

If there had been a sudden acceleration of technological change in the early 1970’s, there is no reason to suppose that it would not have simply meant even faster growth rates with very little unemployment, as occurred in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Indeed, since it is new technology that provides a market for expanded reproduction, we could say that technological change has not been rapid enough for new investment to provide jobs.

“Controlling” Technology

It follows of course that we cannot reduce unemployment by measures to restrict or “control” technological change. The unemployment that is causing concern just is not “technological” to start with. As will be shown later, the unemployment we are worried about is “cyclical”, and due to “overproduction”.

But even if there was a situation of “technological unemployment”, the appropriate response would be to insist on using the benefits of improved technology for shorter hours, higher living standards, re-training of workers made redundant, and faster social progress generally.
This would be the logical result of labour saving technology in a socialist society.

Capitalism has been able to partly deliver those results in the past, and if it is no longer able to do so, this is an argument for socialism. It is certainly not an argument for “controlling” human progress to suit the pace allowed by capitalism!

What prevents the use of technological progress for social progress now, is not some acceleration in the rate of technological progress, but rather a jamming up of the economic machinery of the capitalist market economy.

There is no reason to suppose that the machinery could be unjammed by slowing down technological progress. Only extreme reactionaries (eg most of what passes for the “left” in Australia), would want to try. On the contrary, slowing down technological progress would just put another spanner in the works.

It would further restrict the expansion of markets desperately needed to unjam the machinery.
Some people say they support technological progress in general, but do not know what else to do but oppose it when there is an immediate threat to peoples’ livelihoods. The short answer is that people are not on the dole because “a machine has taken their job”. They are on the dole because for some reason capital is not being invested to employ them.

Even in a particular work place situation with redundancies, the appropriate demands are for new jobs, not some way to hang on to the old ones that we just do not need doing any more. The result of the latter strategy would be gradually deteriorating conditions for everyone since the redundant employees really have no bargaining power in the long run.

Most jobs are not “lost” through direct retrenchments. Fighting retrenchments, while sometimes necessary, cannot directly involve many unemployed workers, such as school leavers, who have never been made redundant. A lot of the carry on about technology is just reactionary drivel which effectively distracts attention from the real workings of the capitalist market economy.

Even worse is the stuff coming out of the “left” about “deskilling”, destruction of “craftsmanship” and so forth. According to these ideas, people’s jobs are getting more and more menial. If this was really true it would imply that the working class will become so degraded as to become incapable of ever taking power.

The truth is that we are starting to notice how menial our jobs are because we are becoming more intelligent and capable of running things ourselves. Most jobs now require more intelligence than before, and this situation is creating more intelligent workers who are beginning to understand how ridiculous it is to go on doing them for bosses.

The modern proletariat is a class specifically created by modern industry with its requirement for rapid changing of jobs and skills. Continuous technological change has produced a working class more educated, skilled and flexible than ever before in history. Our perspective should be able to look forward to the proletariat taking command of modern industry and not to look backward to some “good old days” when things were much worse and people were much less clever that they are nowadays. Communism will not restore craft labour.

Some people are explicitly opposed to any new technology that saves labour, even if the present staff of an establishment is fully protected and agrees to the change. They put forward the slogan “its not our job to sell”. Meaning that jobs need to be preserved for school leavers and so on.

This slogan is based on the idea that the working class is still involved in some sort of guild system, passing on fixed “jobs” from one generation to the next. The plain fact is that things have not been like that since the middle ages.

There are very few jobs in Australia that are the same as in our parents’ time, and there will be very few that will be the same for our children. Workers improve their position within capitalism by changing their jobs, not by “preserving” them. The proletariat is a revolutionary class, not a conservative one.

If it cannot improve its lot within the existing society then it will overturn that society, not fight to stop it developing. Those who want to fight to “preserve jobs” at the expense of social development should call themselves “reactionaries” because that is the correct dictionary term for their philosophy.

They have no right to call themselves “progressives”, let alone “socialists”. If they had their way with “preserving jobs” we definitely would be still in the middle ages. Reactionaries want to “control” technology because they sense that it is making the existing social relations obsolete. Progressives want to “unleash” technology, and for the very same reason.

5. “CYCLICAL” UNEMPLOYMENT

Well, we have established that the normal adjustment mechanisms in the labour market will not necessarily eliminate unemployment, and we have shown that the unemployment we have now is not “technological”. We have conceded that there is a “real wage overhang” but not conceded that lower real wages would reduce unemployment. We have not yet answered the question of why things have changed from the “normal” regulation of unemployment, nor what can be done about it.

We will now attempt to explain what is meant by “cyclical” unemployment and how this involves a “crisis of overproduction”. Unfortunately the explanation below is not very clear or complete. Generally a good test of whether you really understand something is how well you can explain it to others. So I guess I am not very clear on this stuff myself. Any queries and comments on the following material would be especially welcome.

First of all, what’s new? Why is the labour market not regulating unemployment like it used to? The conventional wisdoms about unemployment just take it for granted that since there is something wrong with the labour market then both the cause of the problem and the solution to it must also lie in the labour market. But in fact they do not, because unemployment and wage rates are not the only things out of kilter.

The labour market is not operating normally because forces outside the labour market have changed the way in which jobs are being created and destroyed. We must therefore look outside it to explain those changes.

Unemployment is part of the mechanism that regulates wages, prices, the rate of profit and the balance between production, consumption and investment. However it would be a gross oversimplification to pretend that it is the sole, or even the main factor.

Unemployment is not even the only factor regulating wages, let alone regulating the economy as a whole. In addition to the labour market, other markets are also out of balance.

Commodity prices are at record levels and still rising, financial markets have record interest rates, foreign exchange market are all over the place, and so on. Something has really gone quite wrong, and it is something that effects all aspects of the economy.

We will argue that what is wrong is “overproduction”. The fundamental cause is the basic anarchy of a market economy. Nothing very much can be done about it except passing through another major economic crisis – or overthrowing the system and building a new one.

Anarchy of Production

It is often assumed that the output of capitalist industry is simply divided between wages and profits.
From one side this leads to the idea that profitability can be simply restored by cutting wages. From the other side it leads to the idea that increasing wages would “stimulate demand”. Once again we have both “left-wing” and “right-wing” prescriptions resting on the same faulty analysis.

In fact only a small part of the total output of industry goes into consumption goods purchased either from wages or profits. The bulk of the output consists of means of production which are used either to replace those used up in the previous period, or for investment in expanding production in the next period.

The “Gross National Product” is not the total output, but output net of all the intermediate products produced and consumed in further production. Even the GNP includes investment as well as consumption. Cutting wages will not solve the problem of realising profits by selling the total output on the market. The product has to be sold before the proceeds can be divided up between wages and profits.

Raising wages also will not solve that problem. Most of the total output is bought by capitalists as means of production, and their ability to buy it depends critically on profits, which would be reduced further by raising wages.

For reproduction to proceed smoothly, the demand for means of production as replacement and new investment must provide a market for those means of production that have actually been produced. The profits made selling goods and services on the market must provide the investment funds to buy them on the same market. Surplus value is produced when products are made, but profits are not realised until the products are sold.

The demand for consumer goods and services by capitalists and workers must correspond to the consumption goods that have been produced. The increase in demand for consumer goods from one period to the next must correspond to the investment that has been made in the previous period to meet that demand. The investment in industries producing consumer goods depends on previous investment by industries producing the necessary means of production, and so on.

Not only the profits, but the cost of production itself, can only be realised if the products are sold on the market. The sale of each firm’s output depends on some other firm (or consumer), buying these products as inputs. The money to buy the inputs depends on the sale of the outputs.

Production has become highly socialised, with every firm directly or indirectly dependent on every other firm through the immensely complex social division of labour. The gigantic means of production operated by huge labour forces are geared to production for the whole of society. They are basically social means of production only useable in common. Yet the physical exchange of necessary inputs and outputs between different establishments is entirely dependent on free market relations.

Any disproportions will result in goods unsold, profits unrealised and investments not made – whether wages are high or low. Sever disproportions will result in suppliers unpaid, bankruptcies and market collapses. This cannot be rectified simply by cutting wages, if there is no market for what has been produced.

In a full scale crisis, products can be virtually unsaleable at any price,and may be dumped on the market by bankrupt firms unable to pay their creditors. Not only can profit margins become too small, and then disappear entirely, but the value added can disappear too, so that production would not be worthwhile even with zero wages. *In fact the value of raw materials (plant and stock) etc can also disappear so that a finished product will fetch more as scrap for its component materials than it will on the oversaturated market for that product. Whole steel plants and shipbuilding yards were scrapped in this way during the last depression.

What ensures that the proper proportions will be maintained so that exactly those goods are produced that are required? Very simple. It is a market economy, so the market regulates it. If demand for a particular product exceeds supply, the price will go up. If production becomes more profitable than average, capital will be attracted to that industry instead of others. Profit is what regulates the economy and profit is all that regulates it. The miracle is not that this sometimes breaks down in a crisis, but that it ever hangs together at all!

Planning and Money

Actually of course, things are not quite that fragile. There is a lot of leeway because firms can go on producing even at less than the average rate of profit, so long as they do not make a loss. They can even bear a loss for some time, as long as they do not go bankrupt. They can even keep trading after they have become insolvent, as long as nobody knows. Goods that are not sold to final buyers can still be sold to wholesalers, or accumulated in inventory.

The credit system is extremely flexible and can be stretched to cover disproportions in particular sectors, and also in the economy as a whole. This is a major topic in itself, quite central to understanding overproduction and crises, but unfortunately it can not be covered here.

But all this leeway and flexibility also implies that disproportions can continue developing for some time before they break out in a crisis.

It will seem to highly profitable firms that their market is still expanding, when actually the demand is coming from firms that are already operating on reduced profit margins, or are insolvent, and from wholesalers which are not actually able to sell the goods to final buyers, and so on. Faced with this apparently “expanding” market the profitable firms will expand their investment, which in turn stimulates demand in other sectors and keeps the whole boom going. But the margins get narrower, credit gets tighter and eventually the whole thing blows up *(implodes).

Another aspect is that production is far more planned than it used to be. Whole sectors of the world economy are each under the management of a single centralised transnational corporation. Governments and international organisations play important co-ordinating and planning roles. There are serious efforts to predict the demand, supply and prices of everything that is produced, and to use these predictions for quite long range planning of production and investment.

But these forecasts and plans still revolve around the market. Nobody allocates the total social product between the different sectors of industry and individual establishments. They buy and sell it from each other because they each privately own a different part of it. Their relations are money relations.

When money breaks down, the “social fabric” unwinds, because money is the social fabric of a market economy. The more large scale and long term the plans, the more fundamental the disproportions that can develop before the crisis actually breaks out.

Again, we need to study the essential nature of money to understand why it breaks down in a crisis, but that will not be gone into here. We tend to take money for granted, as though it is perfectly natural that everything produced should have a price. Yet the social relations expressed by money are extremely difficult to grasp and absolutely fundamental to the nature of market economies.

Profitability

If any single regulator can be considered decisive in a capitalist economy, it is the real average rate of profit. This is what determines the flow of investment from one sector to another and regulates a balance between production and consumption. Wages are one factor influencing profitability, but others are just as important.

In “equilibrium”, higher wages means lower profits, but we are now discussing “disequilibrium” and very often the same factors that push profits above and below their “natural” rate, will push wages in the same direction, until the underlying real movement forces a change in direction for both.

What determines the creation and destruction of jobs is the extent and labour intensity of investment. Investment depends on profitability, in which wages are only one factor. The price at which the output can be sold is just as big a factor.

Over the whole period of the capitalist business cycle we find a general trend up and down in the rate of profit with corresponding trends in employment, prices, interest rates and so on. When the business cycle lasted only five or ten years, these movements were very obvious. But since we have not had a full scale crash since the 1930’s, the changes appear to be long term secular movements rather than features of a business cycle.

Yet the usual pattern can be seen of an apparent high rate of profit with rising prices followed by overproduction, falling profit margins, increasing unemployment and so on.

A characteristic feature is the gradual stretching of credit as overproduction intensifies, until the whole structure becomes top heavy and topples over. While Keynesians are clamouring for more credit expansion, the structure of debt has already become far more top heavy than in any previous period. Most corporations now run on ratios of debt to equity in excess of 80%. There is no room for the slightest drop in prices and profitability without actual bankruptcy.

Another feature is the gradual increase in unemployment until the actual crisis breaks out and intensifies unemployment enormously. This unemployment is “cyclical” because it reaches a peak at the depths of a depression and is a minimum at the height of prosperity. It reflects an overall state of demand in the economy that moves quite differently from the “normal” regulation of wages and unemployment during the phase of prosperity.

There is not the slightest sign of a reversal in these trends and no reason to believe they can be reversed except by the outbreak of a full scale crisis. Just as the labour market is unregulated and must correct its own fluctuations, so there is no overall authority that can ensure a balance between production and consumption, savings and investment, borrowing and lending. In general terms, production creates its own market, and it is theoretically possible for capitalist production and accumulation to continue indefinitely. Theories of “underconsumption” are quite wrong.

But periodic overproduction is inevitable, for reasons explained here. It is only the overproduction itself, and its effect on the rate of profit, that can bring into play the mechanism for restoring a balance. The mechanism for restoring a balance is a collapse in the rate of profit, that is to say, the balance is restored by having an economic crisis.

Overproduction

During a boom, excess demand pulls up prices, including wages, and there is an overinvestment of capital so that more capital is being invested than can ultimately return the expected rate of profit.

More workers may also be attracted into the labour force. This may go on for a long time, with various ups and downs, as the demand for investment goods and services feeds itself, and as credit is stretched.

Each firm can only estimate its market from previous trends and price movements. It has no “guaranteed buyers” for the same reason that labour does not. Planning must proceed on the basis of an assumed expansion of markets, and generally that assumption is self-fulfilling.

The general expansion of investments itself creates a market for the goods produced and allows the expansion to continue. *Every firm is continuously engaged in a relative overproduction, producing more than it knows it has a market for. Yet while the economy is expanding generally, the consequences of a miscalculation will only be a local loss of profits and not bankruptcy or market collapse.

As long as business is brisk, capitalism hardly seems to be obstructing the growth of the productive forces at all. There is no barrier to production beyond the capacity of labour, natural resources and existing plant and stockpiles to produce more goods. But eventually the shit hits the fan and plant is installed to produce goods and services that just cannot be sold at the expected profit margins.

Then the nice “demand pull inflation” that was stimulating increased production turns into nasty “cost push inflation” with the opposite effect. It has to, since one firm’s costs are another firm’s demands. All that can postpone the equation between input “costs” and output “prices” is continued intensification of the excess demand of the boom, and the same factors that postpone it must intensify the crash when it comes.

It turns out then that there is a barrier to capitalist production, namely profitability. Goods can only be produced if they can be sold for more than it cost to produce them. When too many are produced to keep prices at that level, profits disappear and so does production.

It turns out then that for a long time investment has been taking place in the wrong proportions between the sectors producing consumer goods and those producing means of production. More should have gone to producing the means of production for producing more means of production. Less should have gone into directly producing consumer goods because the market there is mainly wages and the workers are not very rich.

But this could not have been noticed before, because production was being expanded more or less uniformly on the assumption of uniformly expanded demand. Why should anyone think that capitalist production has to produce a higher and higher proportion of means of production instead of a balanced output including the final consumer goods themselves?

When the boom stops feeding itself and stops being fed, there is a sudden collapse in the rate of profit and a “crisis of overproduction”. Consumer goods sectors crash because there is not a market for the amount that has been produced (not that we could not benefit from a higher standard of living, but we have not got the money to pay for it). Sectors producing means of production also crash because nobody is buying means of production to expand their capacity to produce goods that cannot be sold.

In the subsequent “bust”, wages are one of the things that have to come down before a new boom can begin, but a lot of other adjustments have to occur too. The crisis involves destroying or devaluing a large part of the overinvested capital and restructuring the whole economy.

When the crisis is over, capital has been restructured in favour of means of production so that much more productive techniques are used, with a higher organic composition of capital. This lays the basis for the next boom with a much higher standard of living than the last one.

Monopoly capitalism is much more flexible than laissez-faire capitalism and has mechanisms for relatively smooth variations of output to correspond to demand. Minor fluctuations will not produce large price movements or great changes in installed plant capacity, but only changes in plant utilisation, inventory levels, and credit stretching. As with the labour market and unemployment or labour shortages, these flexible mechanisms have to already be stretched considerably, before disproportions will actually show up as overproduction and reduced profits.

Even more stretching is required before overproduction could result in the sort of market collapse that used to occur quite regularly in the days of laissez-faire. But since there is no other overall regulator, that stretching is bound to occur, until it does produce the crisis needed to restructure the economy and restore a balance. Since the end of laissez-faire capitalism, crises have been much less frequent but far more devastating, when the flexible limits are eventually overstretched.

Are Wages Too High?

In the period between boom and bust, it is possible for the share of wages in GNP, and real wage costs per unit output, to be higher than usual, even while real wages are falling and unemployment is growing. Conservative economists conclude that this must be the cause of the problem, and the solution must be to push real wages down faster.

But wages appear to be “high” because profits are low. Real profits are falling because overproduction means the goods cannot be sold at their usual profit margins, even if nominal accounting profits at inflated prices are still “record”. This alone implies a higher relative share for wages. The real problem is how to raise profits, and that depends more in this case on prices than wages.

If there was simply a “fluctuation” in demand, with a smooth corresponding adjustment of production and employment, then there would be no problem. Real wage costs would not depart from their normal trend. This has been the experience in previous recessions in Australia, such as 1951-52 and 1960-61. But “overproduction” implies that the unsaleable goods have actually been produced, or the plant capacities to produce them have actually been installed, so that profit levels remain depressed and the ratio of wages to output is changed.

Overproduction implies that the prices of firms’ outputs cannot go up fast enough compared with the prices of their inputs, and this is described as “cost-push inflation” rather than the “demand-pull inflation” of the boom. But it really reflects a situation where there is not a sufficient market for the goods that have been produced. The result is excess capacity as firms cut back their production to keep prices up, and lower labour productivity since the labour force is not reduced in proportion to the restriction in production.

This lower labour productivity resulting from capitalist anarchy becomes the subject of sermons to the workers on not being too greedy. The underlying cause of changes in the relative share of labour in the GNP and the real cost of labour per unit output, is the overproduction and overinvestment, not any imbalance in the labour market. Nevertheless, the effect is similar to labour shortages having driven up wages (which indeed is one of the many things that does happen when overinvestment reaches its peak at the height of the boom),. The response is a slackening in job creating investment and increased unemployment.

One feature is that investment can become more capital intensive than normal, based on the apparently high real cost of labour per unit output. This can destroy jobs faster than they are being created. The unemployment created in this way can and does produce lower real wages since it implies a “slacker” demand for labour. The normal operation of the labour market, will bring down wages until this particular source of increased unemployment is no longer operating, even though the apparently high relative cost of labour is due to output restrictions rather than high real wages.

But the more important reason for growing unemployment is that since profit margins are not high enough on the overproduced goods, there is a lack of funds for any investment that would create new jobs at all – whether labour intensive or capital intensive.

Will Lower Wages Reduce Unemployment?

Lower real wages cannot increase employment since high wages were not the cause of investment drying up. So the apparent imbalances in the labour market continue growing and unemployment continues increasing without being able to produce any equilibrium.

Indeed it is even possible for real wages to rise during a depression, despite mass unemployment. This can occur because it is not wages, but markets, that are limiting investment and employment. Firms can continue their (reduced) production levels despite high wages, and will not expand production and increase employment just because wages come down. Unemployment exerts a downward pressure on wages, but since the employers demand for labour is not highly dependent on wage levels, that pressure can be counteracted.

Wage rates are determined far more by variations in the demand for labour with price than by variations in its supply. Thus the predictions of orthodox economists have been totally confounded by the simultaneous expansion of female employment together with equal pay, and by the trade unions present capacity to fight for shorter hours and higher wages despite more unemployment.

In both these situations we have a level of demand for labour that is not sharply dependent on its price. The first during a boom and the second at the end of one.

Even when the demand for labour is falling, it need not produce a fall in wages unless the demand depends on the wage rate. A firm that has already cut staff to reduce output and has excess capacity, will not necessarily cut staff further if wages go up. The same output will still be required to maximise profit, and the same staff will be required to achieve that output, even if profit is further depressed by increasing wages.

Thus even while the total demand for labour is reduced, that demand may become less “slack” – less variable according to wages, and the bargaining position of workers who are still employed may actually improve. Wages can still rise to the point at which it becomes more profitable to use less labour intensive techniques, or to cut back production and employment further. Given excess capacity, there may be considerable room for wages to rise before either of those points is reached.

Here the distinction between “slack demand” and “unemployment” as a cause of falling wages becomes important. Real wages actually rose at times during the last depression, despite mass unemployment. They also rose sharply during the “wages explosion” of 1974, despite increasing unemployment. They have still not fallen a great deal. The conventional conservative theory of wages and unemployment finds it difficult to account for these facts and compensates for this difficulty by hysterical attacks on unions.

Mass unemployment can compel a reduction in real wages, after working class organisation has been smashed. It can do this by compelling workers to accept wages that are less than the value of their labour power (ie less than the “marginal product” of labour they can obtain as unionists selling at a monopoly price). But that in itself is not enough to restore equilibrium. Unemployment will continue until the overinvestment and overproduction has been worked out of the system. More drastic cuts in real wages will not change the fact that goods are not being sold profitably enough for new investment to absorb the unemployment.

Further cuts in real wages will certainly increase profits, and will be welcomed by employers, but no amount of cuts can make investment profitable when there is no market for more goods. Even at zero wages, nobody is going to build new car plants, when the cars already produced are piling up unsold, or are being sold at low profit margins. More cars may be sold because they are cheaper with lower wages, but not enough more to absorb the excess capacity and encourage new investment. The lower wages will simply increase profits without increasing investment. By keeping up wages in a depression, unions are not doing the unemployed out of a job, but simply depriving capitalists of surplus profits.

Stimulating Demand

Keynesians argue that excess production capacity implies a “slack” in the economy which leaves room for employment to be increased by government action to stimulate demand, without necessarily pulling up prices. But this misses the whole point of the adjustment mechanisms that have produced the excess capacity in the first place.

Excess capacity has appeared because market demand does not allow firms to raise their output prices enough to maintain profit margins. Any stimulation of demand must therefore produce a rise in prices before it will produce an increase in output. There would be “slack” if plant was being underutilised because of a fluctuation in demand and the normal adjustment to it. But there is no “slack” when profit margins have already fallen. There is just “excess capacity”.

Once excess capacity has appeared, attempts to stimulate demand by extending credit with the budget deficit, amount to buying up the overproduced goods on the “never-never”. Extending credit means extending debt. Ultimately there has to be a real market or the postponement of bankruptcy by extending credit only adds to the size of the crash when it finally comes.

That of course may not be such a bad thing. There is no harm in demonstrating what heights of prosperity could be achieved by the permanent boom of socialism at the expense of a deeper crash by capitalism when it fails to maintain that prosperity. But we are already at a stage where the credit has been rather fully extended. While governments should and will continue to extend it as long as they can, that may not be all that long. Governments go bankrupt too.

Economic Crisis

The next phase of the business cycle, which we have not seen yet, involves market collapses to restructure production and get rid of the overinvestment. This is not the place to enter into a detailed analysis of the nature of capitalist crisis, and the particular characteristics and timing of the coming one. This would also involve considering the expansion and contraction of credit, the operation of financial and capital markets and so on. It would also be necessary to explain inflation and the real and apparent movements of relative prices. In any case I do not understand it well enough to say much more.

But the implication of all this for unemployment is simple. The whole world economy is out of balance and only an overall crisis will restore that balance. It is not just a matter of pushing down wages until the labour market is back in balance. Nor are there any other easy solutions.

At the moment we have both rising prices and growing unemployment and that is seen as a unique phenomenon different from any previous cycle of boom and bust. But in fact it is simply a more long, drawn out version of the usual pattern. The boom has basically ended and unemployment has started to grow. But the “bust” has not happened yet and we have not yet got a real crisis or massive unemployment. There is still real economic growth and rising prices and even room for some renewed mini-booms because the next phase of the business cycle has not yet begun. During the late 1920’s unemployment also started to rise while prices were still going up and before the actual crash.

The “price mechanism” we learn about in orthodox economics textbooks does work. A market economy, a capitalist economy, can develop the productive forces to higher and higher levels without central planning. But a pool of unemployed fluctuating between small and large is an essential part of how it works. The price mechanism does not prevent market collapses and economic crises. Crises are an essential feature of the way it works. Booms end in busts and busts pave the way for booms because there is no other regulatory mechanism in a market economy.

The “balancing mechanisms” and regulators of a market economy all sound quite neat and clever. But they are proving extremely destructive. What an incredibly archaic way to regulate an economy in this day and age!

The Great Depression of the 1930’s was the only way that the “roaring twenties” could end. That depression and the Second World War paved the way for unparalleled prosperity in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The post war boom was longer and reached greater heights than any previous boom in the history of capitalism. The period of teetering on the edge between boom and bust has been longer than any previous such period in history. We can reasonably expect that the coming crisis and depression, which is certainly not here yet, will be very much deeper than the 1930’s.

6. SOLUTIONS

The above background on the nature of unemployment is important because it suggests what could and what could not be solutions to the problem.

It follows from the above analysis that the unemployed form an essential “reserve army of labour” as necessary to ensure a continuous supply as the existence of stockpiles of commodities in the warehouses or unused production capacity in the plants. The size of this reserve army does not depend primarily on government policy, but on the objective state of the economy and the phase of the business cycle that it is in.

Australia is part of an interlocked world capitalist market where capital flows freely according to the rate of profit, and where movements in interest rates, prices, wages, and unemployment therefore take place in parallel among all the advanced western capitalist countries together. It would obviously be nonsense to blame the overall state of the Australian economy on the particular policies of any government here, since the same situation exists throughout the western world.

The conservatives are right to say Australia has to adapt to changes in the world economy or the situation will get worse. They are also partly right to say that to stimulate investment and reduce unemployment profits must be improved at the expense of real wages and living standards. But they are wrong to pretend that there will be much improvement without a major economic crisis.

Unemployment has grown because overproduction and insufficient expansion of markets has reduced profit margins and therefore reduced investment. Any “solution”must therefore involve expanding markets to increase profitability. That is the crucial fact which emerges from studying the causes of unemployment.

A lot of people in the labour movement do not like admitting this and instead come up with all kinds of fancy arguments suggesting that capitalism is really a wonderful system capable of continuously improving living standards and providing jobs for all – if only the government would follow correct economic policies.

Those arguments are very mysterious and technical, involving “multipliers”, “accelerators” and various tricks with mirrors. But you only have to look around at the real world to see they are bullshit. For what possible reason would the capitalists be ignoring this wonderful advice on how to keep their system going, if it could really work?

The conservatives are openly admitting that capitalism is a rotten system which needs to grind people down in order to keep going. They are admitting that full employment and rising living standards are not permanently compatible with the capitalist system, which has its own requirements contradictory to social needs. They are actually admitting that production for profit is the cause of our problems.

On that point every socialist, revolutionary or not, must surely agree with the conservatives. Only the wettest “liberals” could join the Labor Party in insisting that there is really nothing wrong with the capitalist system itself – the problem is that wrong economic policies are being followed.

Socialists will not disagree with conservatives about the existence of statistical facts, like the decreased share of profits in the GNP, “real wage overhang” and so on. We will not join the Labor Party in arguing that it can all be fixed by magic tricks with mirrors.

Where we do disagree with conservatives is about whether capitalism is such a wonderful system that we should put up with unemployment and reduced living standards just in order to keep it going a bit longer.

Where revolutionary communists will disagree with other “socialists” is whether capitalism is just getting worse in a gradual way that would make it possible to introduce socialism peacefully, or whether it is heading for major upheavals which make a violent break between the old system and the new, both necessary and possible.

Now let us consider some of the various “solutions” that have been proposed for unemployment according to the simple criteria – “will this proposal increase profitability”. If it will not, then we know from the analysis above, that it will not work.

Giving Fraser the Razor

Attempting to blame each other for the state of the economy happens to be one of the daily preoccupations of Government and Opposition politicians, and unfortunately the left generally goes along with this charade.

Conventional wisdom has it that government job creation schemes, more stimulation of the economy through deficit spending, and various specific adjustments in economic policy could improve the situation. Only Fraser’s “razor gang” mentality prevents these solutions being adopted.

In Britain the state of the economy is being blamed on the Thatcher Government, by business as well as labour. But tightfisted “monetarist” governments have come to power in Australia, Britain and the USA as a result of the previous failure of their opponents to improve the state of the economy. They may conceivably make things worse. But their predecessors have not done too brilliantly either. It will be interesting to see what happens in France. Does anybody on the left seriously imagine that France will now escape the economic difficulties embracing the rest of the capitalist world, because it has a more ‘progressive’ government?

At the first Australian Political Economy Movement conference in Sydney, there were a number of papers purporting to explain unemployment and economic crisis as an inherent feature of capitalism. None of them even suggested that the personal malevolence of Malcolm Fraser was a cause of the problem – let alone the cause.

Nevertheless, the conference plenary session adopted a resolution loudly denouncing the Fraser Government for causing our economic difficulties with its wrong policies!

If that is the response of people at a political economy conference, it is not surprising that the left generally completely capitulates to Labor Party views about the economy. The general feeling is that somehow or other, it must be Malcolm Fraser’s fault, even though unemployment actually grew much more rapidly under Whitlam than it has under Fraser.

Even people who know better tend to go along with this because there does not seem to be much else to do. Demonstrations and agitation have to have a target, and Malcolm Fraser, with his callous attitudes, makes a good one.

If we cannot blame government policy, what can we do? It is in the Labor Party’s interest to pretend that Fraser’s policies are the cause of unemployment. But the only way Labor could do better than Fraser at reducing unemployment would be if they know how to make industry more profitable. There is no evidence that they do, and no reason to doubt that Fraser is doing as much to increase profitability as he possibly can.

Certainly we should give Fraser the razor, along with Bill Hayden, Bob Hawke and the rest. It will improve public morale no end. But it will not bring down unemployment. Only improved profitability and expanded markets can do that.

Blowing Up the Balloon

The main thrust of objections to the Fraser Government’s economic policies seems to be that they could do more to stimulate the economy by increases in government spending. They are accused of wilfully refusing to do so because of dogmatic adherence to “monetarist” theories, and general hostility towards the working class.

Actually this argument amounts to dogmatic adherence to Keynesian theories that have long been discredited by the course of events. All the governments of the western world have been stimulating their economies by increases in government spending, and it simply is not working any more. Keynesian economic policies now amount to little more than attempting to prolong the “boom” phase of the capitalist business cycle by deliberately encouraging the overextension of credit to finance overproduction and overinvestment.

Credit expansion has deferred the crisis, and intensified the most prolonged boom in history. But only at the expense of deepening the structural imbalances that the crisis is needed to resolve, and therefore making the crisis far more intractable when it does come. There comes a point when it just does not work any more. If it still worked, they would still be doing it.

When asked what would happen in the long run, Keynes replied that in the long run, we are all dead. Glib claims that more deficit financing to stimulate the economy are the answer, are simply an assertion of faith, flying in the face of all recent experience. The conservative Ford Administration in the USA ran a breathtaking $60 billion deficit, and it has not done any more than postpone the problems.

Attempting to stimulate the economy by more government spending has been compared to trying to stop a balloon collapsing by blowing into it harder. At a certain point when a balloon is being inflated, the fabric tears and air starts rushing out the hole. You can keep the balloon’s shape for a little while by blowing harder, but the air keeps rushing out and the hole gets larger. Eventually the balloon has to collapse and the only thing to do is to let it go and patch the hole before re-inflating it again – if the hole has not got too big to patch while you were uselessly blowing air through it.

If government spending is paid for by taxation, then it is just a transfer of resources from one sector of the economy to another, with no necessary increase in employment, although the projects may be well worthwhile for other reasons. If the money is borrowed on the open market, then it drives up interest rates and diverts funds from other investments. If it is effectively “borrowed” from the Reserve Bank, then credit inflation can be the only result. The trick can not be done by mirrors.

“New Deal” policies did help speed up recovery from the last depression. But mainly by helping to keep prices up in those industries where they had collapsed more than necessary due to insufficient monopoly concentration. The “New Deal” stopped dumping, put a final end to “laissez-faire” and thoroughly established the system of state monopoly capitalism. But today nearly all industry is pretty well monopolised. Even the farmers have strong cartels, and with rampant inflation, dumping can hardly be an immediate problem.

Really it has been a remarkable performance since the last depression. Despite predictions of capitalist stagnation since the end of the fifteenth century, and with a social system straight out of the sixteenth century, the bourgeoisie has managed to sustain economic growth for another fifty years at a pretty fair pace.

While pathetic by future standards, the rate of economic growth has been sufficient for conservatives and reactionaries (including most of the “left”) to actually complain and want to slow it down. What more can state capitalist policies be expected to achieve? Permanent survival of capitalism?

Fine Tuning

When people say that government policy is responsible for unemployment being more than it should be, they usually argue that there should be a certain increase or decrease in interest rates, the exchange rate, taxes, deficits or what have you.

Perhaps there should be. Who knows and who cares? The argument always revolve around the fact that any effect in one direction is counteracted by other effects in the opposite direction.

Quite clearly there is some underlying movement in the economy itself that makes the adjustments in government policy necessary. People argue about whether interest rates should be marginally increased or decreased, but they have gone up from 2.1% on two year government securities in 1950 to 10.8% in 1974 on their own volition and for objective reasons. Nobody seriously suggests that any government policy could successfully halve today’s interest rates, let alone restore them to their 1950 levels.

Adroit handling or misguided policies could make a good situation better, or a bad situation worse, or vice versa. But in a market economy it is the market, not government policy, that determines the overall situation. And we are talking about a world market, completely outside the control of any group of governments, let alone the Australian Government.

A government that raises interest rates when it should be lowering them, or vice versa, can certainly make things worse. The same goes for other economic variables that government policy can influence.

But the best a government can do is get its economic policy absolutely right, all the time. In that case they will avoid precipitating any crisis before it is unavoidable, which is not quite the same thing as having “control”. No amount of “fine tuning” can determine the overall direction that the world economy is moving. Nor can it change the fact that interest rates and other variables must be adjusted in accordance with that movement and not against it.

“Fine tuning” has been likened to trying to straighten a piece of string by pushing it. The sort of “controls” available to governments are just not capable of determining economic developments. If you want to straighten a string you need to be able to pull both ends, not just push. If you want to control unemployment, you have to have complete central planning of investment and employment and indeed, production and consumption generally. The economy needs a new engine and new steering, not just “fine tuning”.

There is a branch of mathematics called “control theory” which investigates what observations one needs to be able to make, and what variables one needs to have control of, to determine the future path of a complex dynamic system.

Economists have a “simpler” procedure which consists of counting the number of “variables” and “policy instruments” and hoping they are equal. To predict the future course of the economy they do a lot of plotting straight lines through two points.

The fact is that even very simple dynamic systems are extremely difficult to observe and predict, let alone “control”. It is sheer stupidity to imagine that anything so complex as a modern market economy can be effectively controlled by anything so simple as government monetary and financial policies superimposed on market price movements.

A system like this is bound to have oscillatory movements and catastrophes. It is like trying to damp out ripples in a pond by making counter ripples. You will get pretty interference patterns, but nothing very stable.

Before you can control any dynamic system you have to at least be able to predict what the effect of any changes you make will be. If anyone knew how to predict that, for the world market, they would not be wasting their time giving economic advice to governments. Literally billions of dollars could be made by speculation on the commodity and financial futures markets if anyone knew how to predict what the world market would do next, let alone control it. The funds you could accumulate from speculation would give you far more control over subsequent market movements than any amount of government policy.

There seems to be no obvious reason why anybody on the left should want to enter into the argument about whose policies for fine tuning the economy would work better. But if we are to do so, there seems no compelling reason to enter on the Labor Party side of that debate.

There is good evidence that the conservative parties are better at that kind of thing than the Labor Party is, because they have more idea of what it is all about. At least they understand that the name of the game is “profits” and are therefore trying to make the capitalist economy work the only way it can. Labor Governments do end up adapting themselves to economic reality, and working as hard as they can to boost business profits. But it does not seem to come naturally, and we have to put up with an awful lot of hypocritical mumbo-jumbo about the workers’ interests, before they get on with it.

Labor Party supporters make persistent efforts to prove that the other party’s economic policies are stupidly wrong. This proves only one thing. It proves that these people, even if allegedly “Marxist”, have a very deep faith that capitalism can be made to work much better, and that their party is the one to do it.

Political Facts

Most voters understand how capitalism works, better than the Labor Party does, and they are aware that conservative parties know more about economic management than reformist parties do. That is one major reason so many workers vote for the party that frankly upholds the interests of their bosses. If people did not accept the basic idea of having bosses, they would be working for a revolution, not voting Labor.

Labor supporters seem to have a mental block about it, but Fraser is Prime Minister because he won by a landslide, not because John Kerr put him there.

People voted for Fraser because the economy deteriorated much more sharply under Whitlam than it did under McMahon. One statistic tells the story.

Unemployment rose by more than 100 for every day Fraser was in office, according to Bill Hayden speaking at the last Federal elections. It did, but unemployment rose by 150 for every day Labor was in office.

Another fact confirms that part of the reason for this sharp deterioration was Labor’s policies and not just objective conditions. The fact that Labor has abandoned nearly all the economic policies advocated by Whitlam and adopted those advocated by Fraser.

Bill Hayden fought the last election on policies to cut taxes and put money back in people’s pockets, reduce government spending, impose wage restraint and so on – exactly the policies that Fraser won with. It is hardly surprising that most voters preferred to let Fraser implement those policies himself, even though he obviously has not been doing much good with them either.

In government, Labor even had a policy of discouraging foreign investment – in a completely open economy largely dominated by foreign capital. When that policy actually started to work, and foreign capital dried up, Labor supporters complained about a conspiratorial “strike by capital” that was aimed at bringing down their Government. How contradictory and inane can one get?

That is a good illustration of how bad government handling can make a bad situation worse. But Labor supporters are well aware than even if the Whitlam Government had handled economic policy perfectly, instead of stuffing it up, unemployment would still have grown dramatically because of the general state of the world economy. Why should we not admit the same about Fraser?

Public opinion turned against the Labor Party because of the mess it was making, and also the mess it was not making but was blamed for anyway. The media mobilisation of that public opinion was carried out by the same newspapers that brought Labor to power in 1972 with viciously personal attacks on McMahon, and “It’s Time” as the front page headline. In 1972 McMahon was blamed for unemployment too. It was not his fault, was it?

To gain control of the Senate, which he had never tried to abolish, Whitlam resorted to open bribery of an opposition member, Senator Vince Gair, in the tradition of banana republics and dictatorships everywhere. When the Parliamentary opposition tried for force the Labor Government to elections by cutting off supply, that Government tried to rule without the consent of Parliament or the people.

Rather than face a democratic election, Whitlam was even prepared to ask the Queen of England to intervene in Australian politics; to sack an Australian constitutional official appointed by Whitlam himself, and allow Whitlam to rule by decree.

If a conservative government had done any of those things, Labor supporters would rightly have been outraged. But Labor supporters prefer to forget about the economic incompetence that cost them their chance in government. They prefer to distract attention from their undemocratic manoeuvres by a loud-mouthed phony republicanism – as though Kerr had caused the constitutional crisis by insisting on elections, rather than Whitlam by refusing to hold them.

Labor supporters adopt the classic conservative and reactionary argument, that an unpopular government should be given a guaranteed period in office so that voters can not throw it out before they find out what was really good for them after all.

After the Kerr business a lot of people suddenly realised what they ought to have known before. That Parliamentary forms do not mean very much and the conservative parties will use every dirty trick to stay in power. It ought to have also taught another lesson – that the Labor Party shares the same basic philosophy.

Neither party is so committed to Parliamentary government that it would fight against Parliament being replaced by military rule in the face of a genuinely revolutionary opposition.

It is sickening how people on the left pretend the economy is crook because of Fraser, when they know perfectly well it is an international problem. We should stop supporting Labor Party lies and start telling the truth about how the capitalist system really works.

Of course we need a target to fight. But if we do not know what that target is, then we had better take time off to find out, instead of just whingeing impotently about Fraser.

Shorter Hours and Higher Pay

Campaigns for a shorter working week and higher real wages have been put forward as a solution to unemployment. The argument is that higher wages will allow workers to buy more goods and so force employers to hire more workers. Likewise shorter hours will require more workers even to produce the same amount as now.

Of course we should fight for shorter hours and higher pay. That will become more difficult as unemployment increases. But it is still possible to win victories, even when there is mass unemployment, for reasons explained earlier. But the effect will be to reduce profits further, not increase them. So it cannot be a solution for unemployment.

In a communist society, any accidental “unemployment” could certainly be eliminated by reducing the amount of work done more rapidly than had been planned. Alternatively, people could work the same hours, but the extra workers could produce more goods so that everyone’s standard of living would rise. But that is because workers would not be “employed”. They would not be used by the owners of means of production to make a profit. They would be the “employers”, using the means of production to satisfy their own social needs.

In a capitalist society production is carried out for profit, not needs. General Motors can certainly be compelled, under some circumstances, to pay its workers more, or let them work shorter hours. But they are in the business of making money, not just making cars. If they can not make more money they are not going to hire more workers just so the workers can buy more cars.

There is no such thing as “overproduction” in the abstract. Whatever Friends of the Earth might say, it is not as though we have too many consumer goods or houses or schools or anything else. Nor have we too many means for producing them. Living standards are abysmally low is most of the world, and nothing to write to another planet about here in Australia. It is just that too much has been produced to be sold at a profit, and that is not a problem you can solve by reducing profits further.

Expanding the Public Sector

Calls to expand the public sector, are becoming more common, (especially from public sector unions!). This is partly just a reaction to government policies aimed at expanding the private sector at the expense of the public sector. But there is also some suggestion that in itself, expanding the public sector would create more jobs and reduce unemployment.

Government job creation schemes either have to be paid for by the rest of the economy, in which case they provide no net investment, or else they have to pay for themselves. In that case they have to sell their products on the market that is already suffering from overproduction and overinvestment. As far as employment is concerned, there is no difference in principle between expanding either the public or the private sector. The problem is that both are contracting, because they both face a lack of markets. Why should one be able to find markets when the other cannot?

In fact, of course, the public sector has expanded quite dramatically and will no doubt continue to do so. There are lots of things capitalist state enterprises can do better than capitalist private enterprises. But this has not prevented unemployment from growing and there is no reason to expect that it will. In Britain for example, some of the biggest layoffs have been in nationalised industries like British Leyland and the British Steel Corporation.

Whether a firm is publicly or privately owned, in a market economy its ability to provide jobs will still depend on its profitability and that will depend on selling its goods on the market. When there is overproduction it affects government owned enterprises exactly the same way as private ones.

It sounds plausible for Australian car workers to demand that the car industry be nationalised to safeguard their jobs. But how has that helped British car workers? What are railway workers supposed to do when their jobs are threatened? Demand that the railways be nationalised? In Britain some coal miners have actually been demanding that their industry be sold to private enterprise because the government is unable to invest funds in keeping their jobs.

Nationalisation is probably a good thing for all sorts of reasons, but reducing unemployment is not one of them. One need only look at Poland or Yugoslavia to realise that even economies completely dominated by the public sector, can have pretty much the same kinds of economic problems as the “mixed economies” of the west. The economic laws applicable to market economies apply whether the capitalise enterprises are owned by shareholders, bondholders, or the state.

Workers’ Co-operatives

There have been some instances of bankrupt firms being taken over by their workers to preserve their own jobs. The Clydeside shipyards, Lipp watch factory and Lucas Aerospace are well known examples. There is also a traditional “co-operative movement” associated with the labour movement, and a movement for workers control and/or “self-management’. Capitalists themselves are also trying to incorporate workers’ representatives in management functions, with extensive legislation for this purpose in West Germany and some other West European countries, and in Yugoslavia and China.

To some extent, workers’ co-ops can positively represent the new form of social production emerging within the old. Just as the emergence of huge transnational corporations and nationalised industries points towards the socialisation of industry, but more antagonistically.

If workers’ demonstrate that they can manage industry better than capitalists, that is certainly worth demonstrating, to pave the way for getting rid of capitalism in future. It may even save specific jobs in specific cases. But so, for that matter, could any other improvement in the management of an ailing firm.

Obviously improvements in the competitive position of a specific firm cannot reduce, but only displace, the unemployment resulting from overproduction in the economy as a whole. Other workers’ in the same industry will lose their jobs as a result of competition from the firm whose management has improved. This may encourage further takeovers, and be well worthwhile, but there is no need to pretend it will reduce unemployment.

Bankrupt industries may not be the best placed to attempt demonstrations of the superiority of workers’ management. If the prospects for a firm are so poor that its owners are prepared to let the workers’ have it, then they must be very poor indeed. The workers will quickly find themselves facing the same problems of finding a market for their products, that the previous management was unable to face.

The workers’ may do better, since they will show more initiative and will know how to increase productivity and so on. But they may also find themselves accepting worse conditions than they would put up with from their former bosses. (Many self-employed people do put up with longer hours etc – the compensation of not having bosses being well worth it). In the end they may find that they too are forced to carry out layoffs.

If we want practice at running industry ourselves, why not start by taking over some really profitable ones, instead of lame ducks? Presumably we cannot because the state power would be used to prevent us. So it comes back to a question of overthrowing the state. I

In itself a co-op need not be anything especially progressive. For example, the ultra-reactionary health funds in Australia are supposed to be owned by their contributors. So are some insurance companies and agricultural marketing organisations. Within a market economy a genuine workers’ co-op is certainly a more progressive form of organisation than the traditional structures, but it still only amounts to the workers collectively being “their own boss”. It does not abolish the status of workers as “employees” of “their” firm, who are “employed” (used, exploited) by it.

In Yugoslavia the entire economy consists of enterprises nominally under workers’ control, but exchanging products with each other, and allocating investments, through the market as in any other market economy. Yugoslavia has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe, as well as a very high rate of economic emigration.

If all the firms in an entire capitalist economy went bankrupt and were taken over by their workers, to sell each other goods on the market, they would all remain bankrupt. When the working class does take over industry, it will do so collectively as a class, and abolish the market economy, not ” be their own bosses” within it.

To abolish unemployment, we need to abolish the market economy. Any measures that train workers in economic management are beneficial to that, but none can solve the problems of a market economy without actually abolishing it.

We should support workers who take over their bankrupt firms, just as we should support workers fighting for shorter hours or higher pay, or unemployed youths looting shops, but we need not pretend that any of these activities will reduce unemployment.

Labor to Power with Socialist Policies?

Perhaps a Labor Government with more radical policies could solve the problem? Instead of capitulating to business pressure, they could really hit hard with resources taxes, nationalisation, and a siege economy protected from overseas influence. By taking control of the commanding heights of the economy, they could force industry to provide employment whether it is profitable or not.

This sort of program has gained some support in the British Labor Party. Presumably it could become popular here too, although events in Britain may pre-empt that. The “left” program has won some support from traditional Labor Party activists, because of the obvious bankruptcy of previous policies. But it has also been imposed on the British Labor Party by fairly manipulative means, by people who know they cannot get as much support for their program by going to the working class directly, as they hope to get by working through the Labor Party. It is not a socialist approach, let alone a revolutionary one, because it is based on making social changes from above, without the support and against the wishes of the only people who can really change society – the masses themselves. If it could succeed, the result would be a more bureaucratic and less democratic society – a corporate state, not socialism.

There is an ideological convergence between the interest of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie in state owned industries, trade union bureaucrats, state employed intellectuals and so on, in promoting this “statism” as “socialism”. A more fascist face of a similar basic ideology can be seen in Eastern Europe and in the French Communist Party. The techniques of demagogy and manipulation also have a lot in common.

A feature of this approach, is an identification between “socialism” and “government controls”. The solution to practically any problem is supposed to be a government regulation compelling private industry to act more in accord with the public interest. That identification is promoted heavily by ideologists of the right, like Milton Friedman, who exploit resentments against “big government” and bureaucratic regulations”.

In fact government regulations are required in a market economy because of the inherent antagonism between the interests of each separate producer, to maximise their own profit, and the public interest in things like a better environment, safe working conditions, better products and so on. The regulations are effective by making it more profitable for firms to modify their behaviour in the public interest, than to go on ignoring the public interest. The same effect is achieved by various selective taxes, allowances and so on. Where regulations cannot overcome the limitations of production for the market, the bourgeois state itself will step in and provide a “public service” – such as roads, broadcasting, education and so on.

There is always a need for more regulations, because the bourgeois state is unwilling to interfere with the private interests of various sections of the bourgeoisie as much as it should. So naturally, progressives often find themselves involved in campaigns for more government regulation to restrict some particular abuse or other. Likewise there is always a need for more “public services” because the bourgeois state is always reluctant to assume responsibility for an activity that might have been carried out by some particular section of the bourgeoisie. So we find ourselves involved in campaigns for more public services.

In these campaigns, the interests of sections of the bourgeoisie tied to state capitalism, often coincide with those of the working class. This is nothing new – a lot of social progress within capitalism has depended on one section or another of the ruling class breaking ranks from the others. But we should not delude ourselves that the bureaucrat bourgeoisie and their trade union hangers-on are in any way “socialist”.

The statist approach can never turn private production for profit into its opposite – social production for use. Regulations are symptoms of the basic antagonism persisting, while the elimination of unemployment and economic crisis requires a removal of that underlying antagonism. We need to abolish private production, not just provide more public services.

A socialist economy would actually require less regulations and controls than a market economy. Even the “public sector”, and as such enterprises became genuinely “public” they would cease to be separate enterprises having separate interests from the “public” at all. You do not make regulations governing your own conduct at home, so why should you do so at work?

The result of the “left” influence on the British Labor Party has of course already been a sizeable swing of Labor support to the new Social Democratic Party, even though the Labor Party has not yet fundamentally broken with its traditional “labourism”. This will presumably produce a Labor Party and trade union backlash against the “left” program that is alien to the traditional outlook of Labor Party supporters. Alternatively, the present two party structure in Britain may be replaced with a new one, leaving the “entrists” once again out in the cold, and the traditional Labor supporters once again bankrupt. You cannot change people’s political consciousness by stacking their party meetings, and most workers prefer their present bosses to the proposed new ones.

Economic Consequences of Statism

Let us leave aside the political aspect and look at the economic consequences of a statist program being implemented. Remember, we are not talking about a popular revolution in which the working class takes command of society and re-organises it. If that was the aim, the method would not be through the Labor Party. We are talking about policies to be implemented by a parliamentary government, with the existing state machine still in place, and with the working class still tied to its traditional organisations. Viewed in that light, we have an excellent recipe for a Chile style disaster.

Every measure proposed is designed to transfer economic power from private industry to a government hostile to private industry, without actually expropriating private property. The present owners and managers of industry are to be directed to carry out economic policies hostile to their own interests. But why on earth should they comply?

In themselves, the measure proposed as an “alternative economic strategy” could only reduce profitability and jam up the economy completely. Not capitulating to business pressure must mean reducing profits and therefore reducing private investment and job creation. “Controlling” foreign investment must mean less foreign investment and so less jobs.

Legal nationalisation would just mean saddling the government with a lot of businesses that were already in trouble, plus additional debts to pay off their owners. If capitalism survives the coming crisis it will certainly be with a great deal more nationalisation and state capitalism, but that would be part of the emergency re-structuring after the crisis, not a means of preventing it.

Perhaps the aim of crippling business profitability would not be legal nationalisation, but to force capitalists to hand over their enterprises to the government without compensation. A roundabout sort of expropriation. But if the aim is expropriation, this is a rather odd way to go about it. Expropriation means confiscating the property, worth thousands of millions of dollars, of the class that has up till now ruled society. That class has shown a definite tendency towards hysteria when its property rights are even mildly infringed upon, let alone denied entirely. What on earth is the point of leaving them in charge of industry while you are expropriating them? If they are not kept under lock and key, surely they should not actually be the people asked to implement government directives against their basic interests?

What else could they do except sabotage things in every possible way, and ensure the government is blamed for the economy being in a far worse state than it was before? In war, when one army defeats another, the first thing it does is confiscate the losing side’s weapons. It does not put them in charge of guarding the armories and performing sentry duty. The bourgeoisie’s weapons are its control over industry (not to mention its military weapons).

If our aim is to confiscate the property of the ruling class, then we need our own state and our own army to establish that state. Trying to do it through cabinet ministers in their state, surrounded by their officials and their armed forces, seems rather odd. It sounds like just a complicated way of getting those ministers killed, and anyone silly enough to be associated with them, killed also.

Fortunately, the chances of a Labor Party with “left” policies gaining office seem quite remote. So we need not worry too much.

Protectionism

Unlike other “solutions” proposed from the labour movement, increased tariff protection could have an immediate positive impact on employment in Australia. By restricting other countries from access to Australian markets, the opportunities for employment creating investment in Australia are necessarily widened, at the expense of course, of jobs in other countries.

It is amazing how “leftists” put forward the most blatantly chauvinistic proposals for displacing unemployment from Australian to Asian workers, with pious references to opposing their low wages, exploitation by fascist regimes etc.

Apart from elementary class solidarity, the catch with protectionism is of course, that it cuts both ways. It is to the selfish advantage of any country to restrict its markets. But when all countries do it the result is a loss of markets for all.

While world trade is expanding, there is an increasing “cake” and different countries have been able to agree on how to divide it up. As the crisis intensifies pressures for protectionism will become stronger even though everybody knows the result will damage everyone. So will the pressure for trade wars, and real wars.

Protectionism is inevitable as world trade spirals downwards, but we have no interest in promoting it.

“Militant Struggle”

In their newspapers some political groups urge “militant struggle” as the workers answer to the “employer’s offensive”. It is not entirely clear what this means, if it means anything. But presumably it must be intended to suggest that layoffs and the like are not the result of blind market forces, but are some kind of conscious conspiracy by the capitalist class in order to weaken the working class. By fighting back hard enough, workers can force employers to abandon their “offensive” and restore full employment.

This is obvious nonsense, nor worth discussing. But it does raise the question of how much can be achieved by resistance to layoffs and cutbacks. The answer is, of course, that “if you don’t fight, you lose”. People have to fight or they get ground down, and you can win specific improvements by fighting.

But you cannot change the overall working of the system by this sort of fight. Since we are going to be forced into all kinds of defensive struggles, often losing ones, it is pretty important to be developing an offensive strategy that can win as well. Otherwise it gets rather demoralising. We need to be able to say what could be done about the economic situation as well as just resisting its consequences.

Instead of that, trade unions tend to just resist and lose, in a fairly hopeless sort of way, or even turn the battle against other sections of workers. Often, trade union responses to unemployment ignore the fact the employed and unemployed workers are both part of the same labour force, with common class interests. Trade unions often emphasis protecting the jobs of people who already have them, and especially those who have had them longest – at the expense of school leaves, housewives, part-timers, casual workers and others who need jobs, and perhaps need them more desperately than those protected by “seniority”.

Like demarcation disputes, these trade union efforts can be very “militant” without any positive result. Trade unions are basically conservative organisations concerned with selling their members’ labour power at the best price they can get. We should aim to unite the employed and unemployed workers rather than just protecting the separate interests of employed workers from unemployed ones.

Militant struggles against redundancies, factory occupations and so on, can also suffer this problem to a certain extent. Even if they can actually save the particular job at stake, which is unusual, they can not reduce the size of the pool of unemployed and can only displace unemployment from one group of workers to others, often within the same industry, or even the same firm.

Employers may conceivably be forced to keep a particular factory open, although that is often just as hard as finding new jobs. But it is pretty difficult to change the fact that the total amount of labour required in an industry has declined. The question will be whether a particular factory gets closed down or other factories stop taking on school leavers to replace retirements. Either way, unemployment will grow, but it will affect different groups of workers directly.

The same applies to struggles against “the cuts”. The plain fact is that the government is forced to cut its expenditure because it just has not the resources to sustain it. There is no conspiracy. Nevertheless, what gets cut where, and how much of the brunt is suffered by who, will be influenced by class struggle. So it is worth fighting back. As long as the fight is not just suggesting that some other, more vulnerable section of the working class should cop the lot.

Just saying “cut defence” sounds like an easy way out. But the whole defence budget would not make all that much difference, and it avoids some hard questions about how to deal with Soviet aggression. In practice, if the budget cannot be increased, struggles against the cuts will, whatever people might say and want, just divert cuts from health to education, or education to welfare, or welfare to health.

If we want to not only oppose any cuts at all, but also demand improvements in welfare and public services, we need to have definite proposals about how this can be achieved. We should certainly support militant defensive struggles. But they cannot be put forward as a general answer to unemployment and economic decline.

Revolutionary Optimism

This whole paper so far may sounds rather pessimistic and deterministic. It seems unemployment is inevitable and there is nothing that can be done. But that is only true if your perspective for “something” is for some reform within the capitalist system. Things are grim for reformism, but not for revolution.

Recognising the inevitability of certain laws under capitalism is not deterministic. It implies that the way out is to abolish capitalism. Revolution is a voluntaristic act that must be carried out consciously. The next section, to be published later, (editor’s note: this refers to part 7) discusses revolution. It suggests how the economic situation could be resolved by revolution and suggests that revolution is a perfectly matter of fact “solution” that makes far more sense than the others that have been put forward.

7. REVOLUTION

Draft 4. August 1982

(Note: A number of comments on earlier drafts of this section have pointed to the conclusion that it really ought to be rewritten completely. However, it seems better to get the thing out, and allow others to comment as well. Please bear in mind that this was originally intended to simply round off the paper “Unemployment and Revolution” in DB 11, by suggesting that revolution is a more “practical” solution to the problem of unemployment, than the various other “left” schemes to deal with it, that were analysed there. It is not intended to satisfy people’s desires for a meaningful answer to the general problem of “revolution”, but merely to say something about what a revolution could do about unemployment. Unfortunately everything, like everything else, is related to everything, as well as being a class question…, which makes it very difficult to complete an acceptable article about anything…)

In its normal state, capitalism has become an obsolete oppressive system that ought to be got rid off. A relatively small minority recognise this and are consciously anti-capitalist, but the masses continue trying to satisfy their needs within the system rather than by overthrowing it. So there is no real possibility of overthrowing that system and attempts to do so degenerate into futile reformism and/or terrorism, whatever the “revolutionary” rhetoric.

But during periods of economic crisis, the contradiction of capitalism sharpen and the possibility of actually getting rid of it arises. A substantial proportion of the population is drawn into active political struggle as they confront questions of what society is to do to get out of its impasse. There is no crisis that the ruling class could not resolve if it was allowed to, but with the masses politically active, the possibility arises of the ruling class not being allowed to, and of people taking things into their own hands.

In boom conditions, capitalism develops the productive forces at its maximum rate. That may be far slower than would be possible for a communist society, but there is no basis for comparison, so the obstruction is not so noticeable.

The “development of the productive forces” is not some abstract question. It means concretely that the wealth of society is increasing, not just materially, but also culturally and in every direction. Opportunities for development are open and people who want to better their own situation can do so by grasping those opportunities. Most workers can expect better jobs, with a higher standard of living and better conditions. Capitalists can find opportunities for profitable investment. International trade is expanding and the different nations, classes and sectional interests are fighting over their share of an expanding “cake”. Such fights may be acute, but there is always room for compromise about who benefits more, when nobody is actually asked to accept being worse off than they are already. Reforms may be fought bitterly, but there is scope for reform without shaking the whole system apart. Within a “pluralistic society”, there can still be “consensus”.

In crisis conditions all this is reversed. The cake is contracting and the fight is over who is to bear the loss. Among capitalists the fight is over who is to survive and who is to eat whom. Between capitalists and workers there is no room for compromise. Reforms become impossible and even past achievements may be rolled back. “We can’t afford these luxuries any more”. Within the working class too, there is less unity as people find themselves in “hard times” where it is “everyone for themselves”. The “social fabric” unravels, consensus breaks down and capitalist society stands revealed as based on sharply antagonistic interests.

The last major capitalist crisis was the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Subsequent economic fluctuations; including the present one, have not amounted to much more than “recessions”; so the inevitability of capitalist crisis has been forgotten until the next crisis again smashes the illusion. But even in “recession”, the sharpening of contradictions can be seen, together with the complete inability of the reformist “left” to come up with any serious alternative program. All the signs point to a gathering crisis, much deeper than the 1930’s, and the necessity for a serious revolutionary alternative opposed to trying to patch capitalism together again.

Internationally, overproduction intensifies the struggle for markets between imperialist nations as well as between individual financial groups. International conflicts that could have been resolved peacefully become intractable because the economic barriers have gone up and there is no room to manoeuvre. The “underdog” or “latecomer” imperialists can no longer hope for a place in the sun by peaceful competition in an expanding market. They can only expand at the direct expense of the established “status quo” powers and so they seek a re-division of the spoils by force. Despite its costs and risks, for them war becomes a more attractive alternative to economic collapse.

On questions of war and peace, the general “left” attitudes are perhaps even worse than the whining domestic demands that capitalists should continue running things but should do so more humanely and with less unemployment. Just as they shut their eyes to the real impossibility of continuing capitalist prosperity and “demand” a boom economy, they also shut their eyes to the real inevitability of imperialist war and “demand” peace. Pretending that the Soviet superpower is not aggressive, and that its arms build-up is not preparation for war, but a figment of Reagan’s imagination, becomes another way of avoiding the critical issues of war and revolution.

Workers have no stake in the existing imperialist division of the world nor would they have a stake in the proposed new one, they do however, have a stake in opposing aggressive predatory wars and the accompanying overt denial of national and democratic rights. (The first world war was a different situation not arising directly from an economic crisis, in which both sides had essentially similar expansionist aims). As we had to fight the fascist powers in the second world war, we would have to fight any fascist power that launched a third world war. (Although the Soviet Union still describes itself as “socialist, if it actually launched a third world war, the correct description of “social-fascist” would be more widely understood.)

If we fail to defeat social-fascist war preparations, we could be stuck with fascist domination holding up social development for decades. If we fail to organise independently around our own revolutionary program, we could be stuck with social development continuing sporadically in capitalism’s self-contradictory manner, lurching forward to the next crisis and the next war. If we get our act together, while the bourgeoisie’s act is in a mess, then we have a world to win.

All this relapse into the barbarism of crisis and war occurs as on obvious result of capitalism itself. Workers are unemployed, goods and services are unsaleable, plant capacity stands idle, and consumers are forced to do without, for no “unavoidable reason”. All that stops the continued expansion of wealth and opportunities is the capitalist system of production for private profit. All that is needed for the unemployed workers to use the idle plant to produce goods that people want and need, is a communist system of production for use instead of profit.

We Need a Program

Obviously we are not in a revolutionary crisis right now, and no question of overthrowing any western government arises immediately.

But a major economic crisis and/or a world war would certainly lead to a revolutionary crisis. The question of an alternative to capitalism will certainly be posed. Capitalism will survive if we let it. Crises can resolve the contradictions temporarily and allow a new period of expansion until the next crisis. The outcome of the 1930’s crisis was the post-war boom, not communist revolution in western countries. In retrospect this appears hardly surprising, since the Communist Parties devoted themselves to fighting fascism on a purely defensive basis, and advanced slogans like “Make the Rich Pay” that implied no intention to abolish capitalism.

In its present state of confusion, the left in advanced countries is hardly capable of even fighting fascism let alone challenging the bourgeoisie for power, let alone winning that challenge. There is even a strong tendency to be “soft” on social fascism and adopt a tolerant, apologetic or defensive attitude towards the overt denials of national and democratic rights by the Soviet Union. This can only make it easier to undermine those rights in the West as well. Certainly no movement unable to defend bourgeois democracy against (“socialist”) fascism can hope to overcome the limitations of bourgeois democracy and replace it with communism.

Fortunately however, the confusion on the left is so great there is at least a chance the existing “left” movements and ideologies will disintegrate completely before the actual crisis breaks out, and there will be room for something new and genuinely revolutionary to emerge.

The task of building a revolutionary left is at present primarily destructive – exposing and undermining the reactionary ideology of the present “left”. But we need to at least think about construction at the same time. The aim of destruction is to open the way for a revolutionary left that is fighting for progress rather than reacting against capitalism, and that is quite serious about winning political power to actually implement the social changes it is fighting for, instead of whining about the present rulers of society.

It has been said often enough that there can be no blueprints for the future because the people themselves will decide how to build the new society as they are building it. Fundamentally I agree with that, and will therefore refrain from attempting to present any blueprints. Nevertheless, it is appropriate to put forward a few ideas for discussion about what a revolutionary government might do to start building socialism. Consistent refusal to do so suggests that we are not fair dinkum about having an alternative. “No blueprints” is often a cop-out excuse for “no ideas”.

Revolutionaries need to have a “program” that is more than an analysis of the present society and a promise for the future. We need to develop a clear statement of the concrete measures a revolutionary government would aim to take, so people can decide whether or not they want to fight for a revolution. Too many “parties” talk about “revolution” in the abstract, and none at all seem to be serious about it concretely.

These days people are rightly cynical about the “policies” and “programs” of political parties, whether “revolutionary” or not. Revolutionary Leninist ideas are widely discredited by the sterility of their apparent supporters, and Marxist concepts that sum up important truths from the history of revolutionary struggle seem empty because they have been repeated so often as banalities. One hesitates therefore to use the word “program”, let alone “party”, for fear of being taken for yet another loony with pat simplistic answers to all the world’s problems.

Nevertheless, in a crisis situation, people will judge according to how the measures proposed by revolutionaries compare with those advocated by the existing regime. It will be a very real life and death question for a revolutionary party to have clear policies to deal with unemployment and similar questions. If the revolutionaries do not form a political party that aims to take power from the old regime then the old regime must continue. It will not just disappear in a burst of anarchist enthusiasm. If the revolutionary party does not propose policies that are more desirable and effective than those of the old regime, then why should anyone support a revolution? Even if there was a revolution, there would be a counter-revolution when the new regime failed to solve the problems that had discredited the old regime in the first place.

So, we need to go beyond denouncing what the existing regime is doing and start offering constructive alternatives, even though any such proposals are bound to be half-baked at this stage. Reformists will make constructive proposals as to how the present regime should deal with problems, with or without a change in the political parties administering the regime. Revolutionaries will make proposals about how a new regime, a workers’ state or “dictatorship of the proletariat”, would cope with these questions.

Only left sectarians will talk about revolution in the abstract, without having in mind anything so mundane as taking political power and running the joint. But unfortunately the “revolutionary” organisations in western countries are overwhelmingly sectarian. Their concern is to defend their own organisations and “principles” and not to make revolution. A discrete veil is usually drawn over the question of what a revolution might actually do about unemployment or anything else for that matter, because the alleged “revolutionaries” have no idea what they would do, and have not even thought about it. This does not worry them much, because they are not serious about actually establishing a new regime, but only wish to denounce the present regime more extravagantly than a “mere reformist” would denounce it.

So, let us talk about what communist revolutionaries should do, if we had the political power to do it. No doubt anarchists will disapprove, and insist that discussion of government policy implies we are bureaucrats no better than the old regime. But the choice society faces at present is between revolutionary government or counter-revolutionary government, and the road to abolishing all government lies first through establishing a revolutionary government (but certainly doesn’t end there). Therefore if we want to eventually abolish the state, we need to start exchanging views about proposed government policy now. The reformists talk about government policy because they are perfectly serious about governing, and there is nothing “unrealistic” about this intention of theirs. Revolutionaries should do so too, for exactly the same reason. Those who disdain to talk about government policy obviously have no belief in either reform or revolution, but only a slave’s inclination to whinge occasionally.

The discussion below will not go into the many problems of building a new society and transforming human nature. It will not sketch any exciting vision of how wonderful a new society could be, but will discuss the more mundane problems of what a revolutionary government could do about unemployment in a society that still had not been transformed. Obviously this is not the main point of a revolution. It would be just as boring to have a revolution simply against unemployment as it would be to have one to improve living standards. But this is an article specifically about unemployment.

In the first phase of communist society, the period generally known as “socialism”, there would still be wage labour and commodity exchange through money. It would be quite impossible to abolish these social relations left over from capitalism all at once.

People would not work if they were not paid for it, and they would grab whatever they could get if they did not have to pay for what they consumed. Production would still be geared to market exchange. Basic social relations would still be bourgeois. There would be a bourgeois society in which the bourgeoisie no longer held political power.

A revolutionary government would presumably come to power only as a direct result of a profound political and social crisis, like the last Great Depression. Very likely too, it would arise in the aftermath of a devastating world war. Either way, or both ways, the new regime would be faced with severe economic dislocation including unemployment, as well as all the problems of a regime born in civil war. So what should it do about unemployment?

Obviously a revolutionary government should not attempt to deal with unemployment by any of the methods currently proposed from the labour movement. It could not simply reduce working hours, or raise wages, or increase government spending etc. From the previous analysis we know that these measures would not work in a market economy.

“Revolution” does not mean that we would “demand” that the multinationals do this or that. It means that we, the working class or its advanced sections, take over the running of industry and make the decisions ourselves. To eliminate unemployment, a revolutionary government would have to proceed with abolishing the market economy.

That will be a long struggle and there will certainly be setbacks. The democratic revolutions in Europe were spread over hundreds of years interrupted by various wars and counter-revolutions. They culminated in the establishment of the modern imperialist powers and not some “utopia”. That result was a lot better than the medieval feudal societies that existed before. The democratic revolution was worthwhile and the sordid power struggles undermining feudal power were important. The Russian and Chinese revolutions suffered reversals too. But they, and their power struggles, were worthwhile. The coming Communist revolution will also be protracted and tortuous. But it has to start somewhere and we ought to be discussing it now.

It may seem odd to be discussing concrete economic policy for a regime that is nowhere near existing yet. But it is no more odd than the usual discussions of how to make capitalism work better, or how to retreat from it.

Expropriating Big Business

The first step towards abolishing the market economy and eliminating unemployment, would be to establish state control of the labour market by expropriating the big businesses that employ the large majority of workers. It would not be a matter of “kicking out the multi-nationals”, but of taking them over, and advancing on the basis they have already laid.

Most likely it would have to be done on an international scale. The world economy is already “transnational” and we certainly would not want to retreat from that to any kind of economic autarchy in the name of “independence”.

Expropriation of capitalist property obviously relates to what the revolution could do about many other concrete problems as well, and also relates to implementation of the maximum program, towards socialism and communism. But in an immediate sense, the state taking over most industry is not in itself socialism, but can be state capitalism. It is only a pre-condition for socialism and a pre-condition for abolishing the market economy. Nevertheless, we will not discuss other aspects of the transition to communism here.

In Australia, like other advanced capitalist countries, a very large part of the labour force, about one third, already work for the state at one level or another, or for public corporations like Telecom, or government owned corporations like Qantas. These are already state capitalist industries.

Most of the rest of the labour force is employed by large corporations, often transnationals, whose owners play hardly any direct role in administering them, but are purely passive shareholders or bondholders. These firms could be converted to state capitalism by simple decrees transferring ownership to the revolutionary government, and by the cancellation of government debts. They would remain capitalist because they would still be employing labour to use it for making profit by selling goods on the market. But expropriation without compensation would undermine the economic basis of the old bourgeoisie, and pave the way for communism. It would make the state responsible for hiring and firing the bulk of the Australian labour force, and therefore place the state in a position where it could take responsibility for employment and unemployment.

Many other workers are employed by small firms that are really little more than outside workshops for the big corporations, or “self-employed” in the same, completely dependent, situation. It would be difficult to simply establish state capitalism in these enterprises by decree. But taking over the big corporations on which they are dependent, means making them dependent on state owned enterprises. Control of the big firms would make it possible for the state to influence hiring and firing by the small firms, and so establish state control of that part of the labour market indirectly.

Naturally there is no great problem for a capitalist state to nationalise capitalist industries when it is necessary to the continued survival and development of capitalism – and no great benefit either. A revolutionary state doing it for revolutionary purposes is another matter.

The major obstacle to all this would of course be the state power of the previous regime, including local and foreign armies, navies and air forces, as well as terrorists, saboteurs etc. But we are talking about measures to be taken by a new state that rests on the power of the armed working class, so we may assume that these obstacles are being overcome through revolutionary civil and national war.

There are still a number of major economic obstacles that would persist even after victory in a revolutionary war. Let us look at a few examples.

First, the directors and top management of big industry, whether public sector or private, would side with the present ruling class against a revolutionary government. Unlike the owners as such, these people do play an important role in the actual organisation of production, and can not simply be dismissed by decree.

Second, many lower level executives, engineers, public servants and so on, who play an essential role in production, could not be relied upon by a revolutionary government, even though they have no direct stake in the other side. They see themselves, and are seen by others, as “middle class” (although their real status might be better described as upper strata of the proletariat, since their income is obtained from wage labour, not property ownership).

Third, there are substantial sectors of the economy, even in the most advanced capitalist countries, where people are still self-employed or work for small employers who do play a direct and important role in the actual organisation of production – for example, farmers, shopkeepers, professionals such as doctors, and a good deal of small manufacturing, construction and services enterprises. These could not simply be taken into government ownership be decree, nor are they all directly dependent on firms that could be. They would have to remain for some time as a “private sector” (quite different of course from the present “private sector”dominated by huge transnational corporations).

Certainly capitalism is already replacing small shopkeepers with supermarket chains, and family farms with agribusiness. Doctors will eventually be forced to work for salaries and so on. But it takes time, and a workers’ state would want to do it less blindly and destructively, and with more attention to the problems faced by the people concerned, than under capitalism.

As long as there was a private sector, relations between it and the state sector would have to be based on commodity exchange through money, and this would remain true even when privately owned businesses were being transformed into co-operatives as part of the process of socialisation. In connection with the private sector, there would still be a labour market. This would continue until the state sector was able to offer jobs doing everything that needs to be done, on terms more attractive than the private sector. That could be quite a long time.

Fourth, there are links between the ownership of bigger industries and smaller ones, and even links to the savings, superannuation and insurance funds, and housing and consumer finance, of ordinary workers and working people. We cannot simply expropriate shareholdings and assume we have hit only big capitalists.

These problems all have to be faced up to, if we are serious about solving unemployment, because we cannot solve unemployment without expropriating capitalist private property in this wholesale way. International ramifications are left aside, on the assumption that we are talking about some sort of world revolution, at least in the advanced capitalist countries together. But that whole question needs to be gone into as well.

It may be repetitive to again emphasise that eliminating unemployment requires wholesale expropriation of capitalist private property. But usually this central point is left out entirely. The “socialists” and “communists” who agitate about unemployment without focussing on this issue, must in fact be demanding a solution within capitalism. They could not possibly believe in socialism or communism, or they would mention it at least occasionally, if only in their prayers.

Central Planning

Assuming we are able to solve the above problems, how would the establishment of state capitalism allow the revolutionary government to deal with unemployment? And how could it avoid becoming some drab,boring and repressive system like East Germany?

Economically, it would be a “fairly straightforward”(!) question of subordinating the state capitalist enterprises to a unified central plan, instead of production for the market. Socially and politically, this would be part of the same process that transforms capitalist production for profit into communist production for use, and wage labour into communist labour for the common good.

Since most workers would be employees of state enterprises, “manpower planning” or rather “labour force planning” could be carried out seriously. Instead of independent hiring and firing from a pool of unemployed, there would be a planned allocation of labour. Individual workers would all be permanent employees of the public service, not liable to hiring and firing as in private industry.

At present, about 5% of the labour force are in career public services and there are also career services in some corporations like Telecom and BHP. In general these workers do not get hired and fired according to the needs of capital investment in their industries. Their firms manage such a large sector of the economy in a centralised way, that they are able to engage in labour force planning alongside their other investment planning and transfer and promote workers within the firm’s career structure. There seems no reason why similar personnel practices could not be very quickly extended from 5% of the workforce to 80% or 90%, thus establishing complete state control over the labour market. (A large section of the Japanese labour force are “permanent” employees already, with another large section being “casuals”to provide the slack necessary in a market economy).

This would not in itself eliminate unemployment, as witness the present staff ceilings and cutbacks in the public service, and the redundancies from the state sector dominated economies of the Soviet bloc and China. But it would create the minimum organisational prerequisite for the government to take responsibility for unemployment. After all, if the government is not the main employer, it is not responsible for employment, so how can it be responsible for unemployment?

As well as control of the labour market, the revolutionary government would have in its hands, all the operating revenue and profits of big industry, and therefore the decisive funds for investment. Instead of the present anarchic distribution of investment through the capital markets, there could therefore be a planned allocation through the state budget. This, and this alone, makes it possible to eliminate unemployment, simply by making full employment an essential criterion of planning. As long as firms decide their investments privately, and hire and fire accordingly, there can be no real “labour force planning”. Once investments are centrally allocated, then the labour force can be planned too.

A single central plan would co-ordinate the requirements for labour of different occupations and skills in each industry and locality, and indeed in each establishment. The plan would take into account changes in labour force participation, the education system, immigration and emigration flows etc. The same plan would allocate funds for investment, together with the labour force required by that investment.

Far from discouraging new technology, to save jobs, the plan would facilitate its speediest implementation, to provide leisure. But the same plan that provided funds for a labour saving innovation in a particular industry or establishment, would also provide for the transfer and re-training of those workers made redundant, and the investment of funds in the industry that is to employ them, or the reduction in working hours that goes together with increased productivity.

The decisive point is that things would not just be left to “sort themselves out” through the interaction of wages, prices and profit rates on investment, and the consequent formation and absorption of a pool of unemployed. No matter how much state ownership and “planning” there may be in a market economy, if production and investment decisions are at all regulated by “the market”, they must to that extent be allowed to “sort themselves out” through market movements, including unemployment.

A fundamental distinction should be recognised, between this kind of central planning, in a state owned economy, and the sort of bureaucratic planning implied by “statist” proposals mentioned earlier. Here we are not talking about government “controls” imposed on separate, privately owned enterprises from above, while those enterprises are still basically geared to employing workers to produce goods for sale at a profit on the market. We are talking about a transformation of the enterprises themselves, in which they cease to be separate entities, and become social property working to a common social plan. That involves a political struggle, by the workers in the separate enterprises and in the whole society. It implies a social revolution as profound as abolishing the ownership of slaves by slaveowners.

The same distinction should be recognised between the central planning we are talking about, and that which exists today in the Soviet bloc and China. The “economic reforms” of the 1950’s in the Soviet bloc, and more recently in China, established the same kind of relationships between central planning authorities and separate enterprises geared to the market, as were described as “statist” rather than “socialist” in section 6 above. Some forms remain similar to socialist central planning, but the content is commodity market relations and even the forms increasingly resemble those common in the west.

The injustices of slavery and serfdom were eliminated by abolishing the social institutions of slavery and serfdom themselves, not by prohibitions against maltreatment of slaves and serfs. The injustices of wage labour, including unemployment, will be eliminated by abolishing the social institution of wage labour itself, not by directions to employers to treat their workers better.

Labour Policy

The planned allocation and transfer of labour need not be bureaucratic like the present public service, although it probably would be at first. It can be made far more flexible than the freest labour market, simply by leaving enough vacancies unfilled all the time, to allow a wide choice of jobs. Industrial conscription has been required in both capitalist and socialist economies under wartime conditions, but it can never be the peacetime norm in any post-feudal society.

Under capitalism, easy job changing only occurs in boom conditions. In a planned economy it can be deliberately maintained all the time, at the expense of some loss of efficiency in the establishments that have unfilled vacancies (but with an overall gain in efficiency due to labour mobility).

Imbalances would inevitably occur, but could be corrected by revision of the plan. Apart from other miscalculations, the plan would also have to take into account unplanable variations in the demand for labour by the relatively small private sector, just as it would also have to correct for other anarchic movements in market forces generated from that sector.

Even capitalism is normally able to maintain an approximate balance between the demand and supply for labour, with only the market price mechanism as a regulator. So there seems no reason to doubt that unemployment could be rapidly abolished with central planning. This has been the case even in relatively backward socialist countries like China, where the state sector was a relatively small part of the economy compared with agricultural co-ops. Only since the widening of market relations between separate enterprises has mass unemployment become a problem there.

In advanced capitalist countries like Australia, a revolutionary government would immediately have control over a far larger state sector than either the Soviet Union or China had when they were socialist. The remaining private sector would be insignificant in comparison, so there should be little problem.

At first however, the relations between state owned enterprises would still be market relations, just as the relations between Qantas,TAA,Vicrail and the SEC are market relations today, with all the anarchy and waste that implies. The struggle to subordinate them to the plan, would be part of the struggle to solve the basic economic problems of transition to communism.

Simply directing state owned enterprises to adhere to a central labour force plan could not work while they were still basically oriented towards a market economy. If the products have to be sold on a market, and there is no market to sell more of that product, then its no good having the government telling a state owned firm to hire more workers. Those workers might just as well be paid unemployment benefits direct – their services are not required.

Labour force planning can only work to the extent that labour power is not a commodity that is purchased to produce other commodities for sale on the market. When production is being carried out by society as a whole, rather than by separate enterprises engaged in commodity exchange, then society can allocate its labour time,as well as other resources. To the extent that separate enterprises exchange their products, then they must buy their labour power too, and to the extent that labour power is bought and sold, it cannot be allocated according to a central plan.

A necessary requirement for centralised labour force planning would of course be centralised wage fixing. Enterprises could not be free to determine their own wage rates if labour is being allocated between them according to a central plan. Otherwise the allocation of labour would be influenced by wage rates as in any other market economy. At the same time, as long as people still work for wages rather than for the public good, wage incentives will be required to attract workers from one industry or occupation to another, if unemployment or other forms of coercion are not to be used.

Clearly wages and wage relativities must be fixed centrally – as though the present Arbitration system really did perform the function it purports to. But this also implies moves towards an abolition of wages as payment for the sale of labour power.

In a fully communist society, income would not depend on “wages” at all. Instead of price and wage fluctuations and unemployment, any imbalance in economic planning would simply result in shortages in facilities available for people engaged in various projects, and/or surpluses of things people do not really want. Annoying, but not a major social problem.

But even in the early stages of transition, wages could conceivably be paid directly from the central budget, together with other “welfare” income. In that case enterprises would not “hire” their labour force directly, but from an employment bureau (as occurs now with some kinds of labour such as temporary staff). The rates paid by firms to the employment bureau need have no direct relation to the combined wages and welfare payments paid out of the state budget to the workers concerned. Imbalances can result in state subsidies to employment (or penalties on it), rather than unemployment (or labour shortages).

Similar proposals have been made for capitalist governments to encourage or discourage employment by altering taxes on wages. But there is really very little scope for that when the government’s own revenue is dependant on those taxes. Moreover such adjustments could not cope with mass unemployment due to overproduction. It is a very different matter when the government revenue coincides with the whole revenue of big industry, and when central planning ensures a basic balance between production and consumption, leaving only minor deviations to be compensated.

When production is geared to social needs rather than profits, it is quite feasible to cope with increased labour productivity by simply reducing the hours of work required for given wages. Eventually, as technology continues to develop, and social attitudes change, very little work would be performed in “exchange” for wages. But from quite early on, the funds available for investment and job creation would not depend on profits, but could be allocated, just like wages and welfare payments, directly from the total revenue. Productivity increases that increase the total revenue can be used any way society wants. Cutting working hours in a non-market economy would not have the “paradoxical” effect of choking off investment and increasing unemployment due to reduced profits. Nor would increasing foreign aid or social welfare or wages have that effect. The total size of the “pie” would be the only constraint once there was no mechanism for the economy to “jam up” whenever “profits” had an insufficient slice.

With the transition from wage labour to communist labour, an increasing proportion of incomes would be based on needs (or desires), rather than payment for work (as a matter of right not charity). Correspondingly, work would have to be an increasingly voluntary activity. Wage and welfare increases, and reduction in working hours, could then be planned together with the necessary investments in consumer goods industries, with additional flexibility provided by the increasing “social wage” of”public goods”. When work has become a voluntary community service, there is of course no question of a “labour market” to require a “labour policy”.

In making the transition, it would be necessary to arrange social services, foreign aid, public benefits, wages, insurance and housing and consumer finance, as well as investment, as allocations from total revenue all at the same time. In expropriating big industry, the revolutionary government would take the whole of that revenue into its hands directly, including those “profits” previously paid out through taxation or via insurance funds to provide pensions etc.

Universal social welfare coverage financed from current revenue rather than “funds”, would compensate for most “savings” tied up in shareholdings etc, and small property owners could have their property redeemed rather than expropriated. The maximum number of people should gain from the expropriation of big industry and only a tiny minority should be losers. “Labour Policy” would have to embrace policy on these questions too.

The Struggle for Control

The social revolution required to transform capitalist enterprises into communist collectives obviously involves far more than government decrees transferring ownership. The revolution itself would have produced workers’ councils in many establishments, which would have taken over responsibility for management from the previous authorities. But that only establishes pre-conditions for the transformation, without actually solving the problem itself. Moreover, in many enterprises the workers’ councils would be weak or non-existent, or a screen behind which the old bosses are still in charge, since revolution develops unevenly.

While the left is in opposition, it seems natural to assume that all problems of control should be resolved by “decentralisation of authority”. After all, the people in charge at the top are reactionaries, so the more room there is for lower level units to determine their own affairs, the more chance there is to adopt more progressive policies in at least some places where radicals happen to be concentrated. The problems in other places, where radicals have no influence at all, are simply not worth even thinking about. Often a focus on “local” or “community” issues seems to reflect an acceptance that there is really nothing we can do about national and international issues.

With a revolutionary government in power, the situation should be reversed. The highest levels of the hierarchy should be more radical than the lower levels, and radicals at lower levels would be demanding obedience to government directives aimed at changing the social system, rather than agitating for autonomy where that would mean continuing in the old way. (Of course this can change, if the revolution is defeated and the “revolutionary government” ceases to be revolutionary – but that simply means the radicals are in opposition again – it does not mean that the whole problem could be mysteriously avoided by “decentralisation”.

Anarcho-syndicalists seem to imagine that if everybody democratically discusses everything, production units will be able to exchange their products to supply each other’s needs, and to supply consumer goods for the workers, with no more than ‘co-ordination” by higher level councils of delegates from the lower level establishments. Actually things are not so simple, and any attempt to realise that vision would only mean preserving market relations between independent enterprises, still not working to a common social plan. The concept involves a sort of “parliamentary cretinism of the workplace”, even though anarchists and syndicalists are generally well aware that the right to vote can not in itself transform bourgeois social relations into co-operative ones.

So far, modern big industry in the advanced capitalist countries, has always been based on capitalist production for profit, and nobody actually has much experience in how to run it any other way. Indeed many people allegedly on the “left” seem to be unable to conceive of it being run any other way, and dream of somehow going back to a smaller scale of production, for it to be “more human”. On the contrary, it was precisely small scale production that was suitable for capitalism, while the development of huge transnational corporations with a single management for entire sectors of the world economy, proves that the socialisation of production makes private ownership an anachronism.

The only experience we have of communist labour for the common good has been in a few “community projects” providing voluntary services to the public. Everything else is based on people working for wages under the supervision of bosses to produce commodities for sale on the market. Often voluntary community projects also end up adopting a boss system too, or remain hopelessly inefficient and get entangled in factional disputes that can not be resolved without a clear chain of authority, and in effect, “ownership”. Then they go under and reinforce the idea that capitalist production is the only system that can really work.

We should study the positive and negative lessons of the way small scale community projects and co-ops are managed, as well as studying capitalist management of big industry, in order to prepare for transforming the management of big industry. The mentality that equates “popular”, “democratic” and “co-operative” with “local” or “community” projects is a slave mentality that accepts the necessity of a bourgeois ruling class to manage big industry and the affairs of society as a whole. We do not just want to create some free space within which slaves can manage some of their own affairs, although that may sometimes be useful. We want to overthrow the slave owners and abolish slavery altogether.

If modern industry is to be run in a fundamentally different way, then essential policy and planning decisions to run it in that different way will have to be taken by somebody. Whether they are called the workers council, the revolutionary committee, or the state appointed management, somebody will have to take decisions about the sort of questions currently decided by the boards of directors and top management of BHP, the ANZ Bank, the Treasury and so on. More importantly, people will have to take decisions about economic, as well as other questions, currently resolved by the boards of directors of General Motors, ITT, the Chase Manhattan Bank, the Morgan Guarantee Company, Mitsubishi, the Central Committee of the CPSU or CPC and so on. Even more importantly, we will have to take decisions about questions which none of these bodies have the power to decide, since none of them controls the world market, either separately or together.

No amount of elections from below, directives from the revolutionary government, or consultations with the masses will change the fact that these people will be responsible for the policy decisions in industry and will have to know what they are doing. Nor would it change the fact that they are doing the job currently done by capitalists “bosses” and will have ample scope to develop into new capitalist bosses themselves (and bosses with wider and more totalitarian powers).

Most workers expect to have bosses, and that would not change overnight in a revolution. There would be a tremendous unleashing of workers initiative, but there would also be a strong tendency to retain or return to the old ways of doing things, with new bosses, or even the same old bosses, in charge. Electing new bosses does not abolish the boss system.

The big issues are not decided “on the shop floor”, to use a phrase much loved by advocates of “self management”. Capitalism is already transferring more and more authority on the shop floor to workers themselves rather than supervisors or lower level line management. This only highlights the fact that questions like unemployment are imposed by market forces outside the control of “shop floor” management, or higher management for that matter.

Elected workers’ councils would be in exactly the same position of having to lay off staff, if there is no market for the goods they produce. Revolutionaries have to raise their sights above the shop floor, to places where more important decisions are taken, and to issues on which decisions simply are not taken in a market economy, because there are no decision makers with authority over the economy as a whole, and our fate is still subject to the blind workings of economic laws beyond our control.

If we want a revolution, then left-wingers, revolutionaries, will have to take on the functions of directors and managers of big businesses, as well as government ministries. Not many genuine left-wingers and revolutionaries have any great hankering to be on the board of directors of the Reserve Bank or BHP. But if revolutionaries are not leading the workers’ councils to implement a socialist economic policy, then it can only be right-wingers, or unreliable middle-of-the-road “experts” who are doing (or sabotaging) the job of management. Indeed in socialist countries, economic management functions seem to have been breeding grounds for revisionist bureaucrats.

Just saying “the workers will do it” does not solve a thing. Who are these workers who will do it after the revolution, without discussing what they will do, before the revolution? Power will pass from the hands of the bourgeoisie to the hands of the working class, because the working class will put forward a clear cut program to rescue society from the impasse it finds itself in under bourgeois rule. Slogans simply demanding a change in power because it is “more democratic” will get nowhere. The issue of “who decides, who rules” only arises in the context of “what is to be done”.

Revolution occurs when those who presently hold power are unable to do what has to be done, and when the only way it can be done is for their opponents to take the power to do it. The most class conscious and politically conscious workers will be the ones discussing these problems beforehand, and if we do not
have any ideas, how can we expect others to?

Socialist Management

The main areas of “management” in a typical capitalist firm are production, personnel, sales and finance. Research and development is another significant area in a small proportion of enterprises.
A lot of production management has become a fairly routine function which could be readily taken over and transformed by workers’ councils. Workers should have no difficulty rapidly improving productivity over what can be achieved under a basically antagonistic system of bossing. While workers’ productivity undoubtedly improves as a result of capitalist “bossing”, the very need for that bossing is itself a demonstration of how capitalism restricts productivity. Slave productivity was increased by harsh overseers, and also by having heavy tools that were hard to break (as well as hard to use). But productivity jumped much more with the elimination of slavery.

Capitalist bossing actually tries to keep workers stupid. “You’re not paid to think” is the supervisor’s catch cry, as soon as a worker starts saying “I think…”. But in fact workers are paid to think much more than slaves, serfs or peasants would think in their work, and they get sacked if they do not think. It is just that they are not supposed to think too much. Moreover modern technology places increasing demands on workers’ intelligence and requires a more and more educated labour force in greater and greater conflict with the old techniques of capitalist bossing. Communism would resolve this contradiction and unleash workers’ intelligence in production, so that “management”, “engineering”, “research”, “science” and so forth would cease to be restricted to an elite, excluding the contributions of the vast majority. Research and development would become much more widespread, be much closer to production, and require much less “management”.

Likewise personnel management is an essentially routine function that will be made much easier by the elimination of “industrial relations” between hostile employers and employees. There should be no problem organising the recruitment, training and allocation of labour in a plan based on full employment.

Purchasing and sales management does still involve an element of capitalist “entrepreneurialism”, although the work is done by salaried employees. But it can nevertheless readily be grasped and transformed, by the employees already engaged in it, and by other workers. The flexibility and dynamism of modern capitalism can be greatly exceeded by unleashing the workers’ initiative in this area too, as well as in production, to seek out new needs and new products. Even in a state capitalist market economy, the elimination of useless competition would save a lot of trouble, with unified marketing and supply arrangements under central planning. As the “market” is abolished, the supply function would become another aspect of production planning, rather than a separate problem of “marketing”.

The weakness of supply and marketing in socialist economies has been due to the general backwardness of those economies. They are (or rather were) “socialist” only in the sense of having *had revolutionary governments determined to accelerate the transition from capitalist to communist social relations. As far as the actual level of social development is concerned, the advanced capitalist countries have already reached a higher level, and this includes a higher level of centralised management and a higher level of organisation of marketing and supply, as well as the well known higher level of productivity in most industries.

Monopoly capitalism has abolished purely commodity relations in many areas, since the “exchange” is taking place between units under the same control, while labour power, and capital itself, remains a commodity. Although commodity production has been more restricted in socialist countries, as regards labour power and capital, central control of many products was actually less developed than in advanced capitalist countries. The improvements in supply and marketing when socialist countries have restored capitalist market relations does not reflect any inherent superiority of capitalism. It reflects the superiority of free market capitalism over bureaucratically controlled capitalism. A classic cartoon shows a “socialist” factory overfulfilling its production quota for nails (measured by weight), by producing a single giant (completely useless) “nail”.

The revisionist solution is to find more rational ways for central planners to co-ordinate the factories output to social requirements – mainly by setting goals in terms of market profits rather than arbitrary physical measurements. But exactly the same problem is faced by the top managements of large corporations in advanced capitalist countries. Solutions include the establishment of separate “profit centres” within the one enterprise, so that local managers will be more sensitive to market profits rather than blindly responding to higher directives.

In both cases the problem is that there can be no substitute for the market in an economy based on commodity production. If social production is divided between separate enterprises with antagonistic interests, then they can really only be brought together through market exchange, the best measure of which is money prices. If instead they are brought together by some other form of external coercion, there will inevitably be some misallocation of resources because the quotas set do not exactly correspond to money – the only measure of social needs in a market economy.

The communist solution is to dissolve the antagonism between separate enterprises so that each is directly aiming to meet social needs as best it can, rather than responding in its own separate interests, to an external compulsion to do so. Setting quotas in terms of numbers of nails, or the price of nails, would not solve the problem (although the latter would improve it). Having a factory management (the workers themselves), who are dedicated to meeting social needs, would solve it completely, since they would interpret planning directives from a social viewpoint rather than a narrow one.

The question of centralisation and decentralisation of enterprise management, is quite separate from the question of abolishing commodity production. One may advocate more local initiative at the same time as completely abolishing market incentives. Indeed it is noticeable that in both China and the Soviet Union, revisionists have strengthened central controls over individual enterprises, at the same time as widening markets relations. Increasing bureaucratic regulation there is necessary for the same reasons that it is necessary here.

Enterprises already under bourgeois management in socialist countries show more initiative when given material incentives and market “freedom”, just as socialist enterprises lose their drive when asked to produce just for profit. Overall, supply and marketing workers in an advanced economy working for the public interest should be able to introduce new goods to meet new needs far more dynamically than where this is done only to squeeze extra profit for their employers.

“Socialism” does not imply the restricted range of products available in economically backward socialist countries any more than it implies the lower standard of living, longer working hours or lower cultural levels common in those countries as compared with advanced capitalist countries.

Backward capitalist economies in third world countries have far worse problems with shortages and misallocation of production etc than backward socialist countries have had. There is no reason to anticipate major problems with the replacement of “commerce” by unified supply and marketing arrangements in advanced industrial countries.

Although the above functions of “management” present no special problems, financial management and investment planning is still an exclusive “entrepreneurial” function of capitalists, and it is precisely this that is decisive in abolishing the market economy and eliminating unemployment. The job is done by salaried employees as well as actual capitalists, but many of the employees are accountants, lawyers, bankers, investment analysts and so on, not ordinary workers. We shall consider this problem in more detail than other “management” problems.

Investment Planning

How do you decide whether to build a steel mill, or a hospital, or a thermal or hydro-electrical power station? Not just by democratically consulting steel workers, or hospital patients, or construction workers, or delegates from all three and others concerned. There must be some definite economic criteria for decision making. It is no good just saying we will build socially useful things like schools and hospitals instead of profitable things like steel mills or power stations. You need steel to build schools and hospitals, and you need electric power to run them.

The contempt a lot of “left” intellectuals have for industrial development, let alone “finance”, reflects a lack of seriousness about really doing anything. It implies either that we expect capitalist industry to somehow produce these things for the public benefit, or we postpone social change until everything can be produced free by magic (or we reduce our living standards below the appallingly low level that capitalism has managed to achieve).

At present the only criterion according to which goods and services are produced and investments are made to produce them, is market profitability. Some public services superficially have different criteria, but the “cost-benefit analysis” they use includes interest on capital as part of the costs, and measures benefit by what would be paid for the service if it was marketable. Government funds can only be invested if the overall social rate of return is sufficient to allow payment of interest on borrowings directly, or by taxes raised from sections of the economy that have benefited indirectly. Despite loud squeals from the “private sector”, no government projects are based on expropriation. It all has to pay for itself on the market, and return interest on the funds borrowed from the private sector.

The actively functioning capitalists today are the financial managers and similar functionaries (or party officials in “socialist countries”) who are not the nominal owners of the capital they control, but carry out the social functions of the capitalist controlling it, and live it up accordingly. Both in east and west, ownership is usually mediated via various “trusts” and capitalist luxury consumption owes as much to “perks” as to direct property income.

“Private ownership of capital”, in the sense of an individual capitalist directly owning means of production, is fairly obsolete. The difficulty Trotskyists have in finding a bourgeoisie in the Soviet block and China, ought to be just as great in the west, where capital is not usually privately owned by individuals either, and is certainly not passed on legally by inheritance, when death duties can be avoided. There are important differences between being a beneficiary under a trust, or enjoying perks as an executive, in the USA, and having a senior party position in the Soviet Union. But they are not as important as the differences between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat – between those who employ or exploit labour and those who are employed or exploited.

It is a specific function of the capitalist ruling class to allocate investments. It does this rather blindly, and with colossal waste, but it does do it and whatever is wasted, is often a loss to the particular capitalists concerned, as well as to society as a whole.

If the new regime had no criteria for regulating investments there would be general chaos as each workers’ council decides what it thinks should be produced and only finds out later that it lacks the necessary inputs or their is no market for the outputs.

In fact to begin with, the old criteria of market profitability would have to be used. To some extent even some of the old personnel, familiar with finance, would have to be used also. They would be disposing of state capital rather than private capital, and getting their perks from that, as before.

Starting from the old system, it would be a long struggle before the new system was really being used for planning, and experience in the Soviet Union and China shows that there is plenty of room for reversals along the way. As long as commodity production and wage labour exists, even the complete suppression of the old bourgeoisie and its replacement by a genuinely socialist state can not prevent some cadres of that state themselves degenerating into a new bourgeoisie.

Of course the top managers and administrators who can not be bribed or coerced into co-operating can simply be replaced by the workers’ councils. But most workers do not even know what they do, let alone how to do it differently, so there will be a pretty strong tendency to continue doing things the same old way. Workers would work, bosses would boss and financiers would finance, if these categories are not systematically uprooted.

Technically, it is not hard to imagine criteria for investment planning that are not simply based on “profitability” in disguise. There is even a substantial branch of orthodox “welfare economics” devoted to the problem of production for use.[1]

But implementing new criteria means going from private production for profit to social production for social needs, and requires fundamentally changing the way things are done.[2]

About 4% of the Australian labour force work directly in the “financial industry”, apart from those doing similar work in the industries being financed. That is about half the labour force employed by the construction industry, and most of its effort is tied up with just trying to keep track of who owns what and transferring profits from one pocket to another (and to or from the taxation system), rather than actual investment planning.

The capitalist parasites are not even very good at keeping track of their own wealth, as is shown by the various multi-million dollar frauds that have been coming to light. They certainly do not do a brilliant job of investing it more wisely and frugally than public servants would, as is constantly suggested by apologists for capitalism. In fact even their investment function is carried out for them by accountants, advisers, brokers etc who receive a share of the spoils, but are not the actual owners of the capital they invest.

After a revolution these workers could be employed far more productively to ensure that resources are used as efficiently as possible and to keep track of public property so that it is not misappropriated.
There is no great technical mystery about financial work that means it could only be done by and for an old or new bourgeoisie. It just requires a major struggle.

Under slavery, public officials were necessarily slave owners. Under feudalism magistrates were necessarily landowners and under capitalism captains of industry were necessarily capitalists. But social relations change. All it needs is revolution to change them.

“Experts”

Bourgeois “experts” can work for the new owners of industry just as they used to work for the old ones, being bribed with high salaries if necessary. Or they can work for their own account, as “Nepmen” did during the “New Economic Policy” following “War Communism” in the 1920s Soviet Union. But unless the new proletarian owners at least know what they want, the “experts” cannot be forced to work in a fundamentally new way. In the long run they have to be replaced by the workers themselves, and in the short run they have to be tightly controlled by the workers councils, while the workers develop their own expertise.

In the immediate period after winning power, real control of day to day management in most enterprises would continue to be in the hands of bourgeois “experts” who know how to do it, but only know how to do it in a capitalist way. Where managerial power was not in their hands, effective management would still be paralysed to some extent by the initial incompetence of workers who are taking on unfamiliar functions. No amount of decrees giving power to the workers councils would change those facts, unless we are supposed to wait until the working class has already completely changed, before having the revolution that will change it.

There would be considerable scope for resistance to and sabotage of government economic policy. There would also be difficulty reconciling the different priorities and demands of different sections of the working class itself. Only the practical takeover by the workers could gradually change this situation, and then only with reversals and a long historical struggle, combining mass pressure from the workers councils below, and coercion and inducements from the revolutionary government above, before the dictatorship of the proletariat has really effective control of even the state sector of the economy, let alone education, culture etc.

Nevertheless, the working class in advanced capitalist countries like Australia is already literate and quite highly educated compared with the workers that took power in the Soviet Union and China. Most “experts” are not bourgeois, but just highly trained workers, perhaps with a few airs. Even the managers and engineers in overall charge of industry at present are themselves salaried employees, mostly at no great social distance from the mass of workers. Engineering is already a basically proletarian occupation. Management not yet, but headed that way.

Where the workers councils are strong, it should not be all that difficult for them to encourage or compel most managers and engineers to cooperate, and take on the functions of those that won’t. It will be more difficult where the workers councils themselves are weak, which is bound to be the case in many places, since the revolution develops unevenly. But it would hardly be impossible.

Conclusion:

The problem of abolishing unemployment by having a revolution is nowhere near as difficult as the impossible task of trying to abolish it without one! There is no need to politely cover up the absurdity of “left” schemes for dealing with unemployment within capitalism. We should say directly that these schemes are nonsense and go on to work out the realistic problems of preparing for revolution.

As the Communist Manifesto argued, we should raise the “property question” to the forefront of all immediate, practical struggles. Just how we can have a communist revolution in an advanced industrial society remains to be seen – it’s never been done before. But we should be quite clear that this is “what we are on about”.

[1] It can be proved mathematically that the capitalist pattern of investment according to the rate of profit can never lead to an efficient allocation of economic resources, and that “marginal cost pricing” amounts to a labour theory of value.
[2] The debate among allegedly “Marxist” economists about the so-called “transformation problem” relates closely to the problems Soviet bloc economies faced in allocating investments without using the traditional capitalist calculations based on an “average rate of profit”. A “rate of profit” is essential when enterprises have separate interests, and “marginal cost pricing” is only feasible when they do not. The “optimal” allocation of resources according to a central plan is not the same as the “equilibrium” possible when resources are privately owned – whether competition is “free”, “perfect” or monopolistic. “Equilibrium” situations can include unemployed labour and other resources, as long as the rate of profit is equalised and maximised.

Click map for a detailed view.

April 6, 2013

On the last day of my Easter holidays, Dr. Phoebe Abe (or, as I know her, my mother) sat down in her living room with me and several women from Somalia, Egypt and Sudan. My mother, a GP, had for some time been looking at the issue of female genital mutilation, or FGM, with Dr Comfort Momoh MBE. However, this was the first time that I had ever met people with whom she worked. Each of these women had undergone FGM early in their lives, and now, encouraged by her, they were talking frankly about how they felt. One of them spoke of the agony that the procedure still caused her three decades later. Frequently, when bent over with pain, she would receive little understanding from those in her community who did not know what she had experienced. “Sometimes they just call you lazy”, she explained. “Most Somali women are very big,” she said, swiftly outlining the curves of her hips with her outstretched arms. “‘You need to exercise, you need to lose weight’, they tell you.”

When going to see doctors, she had met with an attitude that was no less frustrating. “Sometimes you feel like maybe they don’t care”, she said. On several occasions when she went for an appointment, complaining of severe backache, she was prescribed painkillers without further examination, which merely led to complications elsewhere: most notably, the ibuprofen that she was given led to stomach pains, only compounding her discomfort. The true problem lay deeper, and was only diagnosed after she fainted on one of her weekly visits to her GP. As a result of the removal of her clitoris as a child, she now had incessant trouble with her back, and found it very difficult to hold her urine, which she found “very embarrassing”, as a result of which “we have isolated ourselves”, she said, looking round at each of her friends in the room. They nodded in agreement.

Part of the problem, she continued, was that Somalis were a people whose daily lives went mostly unnoticed in the UK. “The British call us the ‘invisible community’; we are there, but we are nowhere to be seen’”, she said. Not only were there lingusitic and cultural problems to contend with – the thought of her talking this openly with English people was unthinkable – it was also “very, very rare” for women like her to speak out about these issues, and so I said that I would maintain their anonymity in any article that I wrote.

This, she said, is how it typically happens. When you’re six years old, girls in the year above at the local school, or madrassa, go and have the procedure done; after that, they return to school and they tell you that you’re dirty for not having gone through it. “We look up to them like they’re big girls”, she said. At that point, the young girls will go to their mothers and ask when they can have it done too. Then they go and have and it done; and, she says with a wry laugh, “then you get disabled”.

Having gone through this, their male agemates will look at them with renewed respect, telling each of them that “you’re a good girl, you’re clean now eh?” By the age of 14, most if not all of the girls will each have been paired off with a man, “and you’re expected to have your first baby at 16”. One of the women got married at 16 to a 36-year old man, and one of the others recalled that, when she got married, “I was 18, he was 43”.

“Back home, men can have wives in another country”, one of them noted, revealing that “when my father died, we [found that] we had Indian sisters, [and] sisters in Norway”. Having said that, due to the extreme discomfort that is the legacy of FGM, they took a very pragmatic approach to these affairs. They would rather that they fulfilled their needs elsewhere. “Why don’t you just have another wife? “Go and get yourself a minyire [a second wife, pronounced min-year-ray]”, one of them told her husband. “Sex for me is like a chore…We were not meant to enjoy sex. We were supposed to be machines to have babies.”

Another woman described how she felt when her husband returned from work in the mood for sex. “You are scared when your husband is coming to you,” she said. “I hate sex…When I come home, I find myself a lot of things to do. I make a lot of jobs for myself.” The terrible pain caused by vaginal intercourse was little surprise, my mother pointed out to me, given that the clitoris was exceptionally sensitive, with eight thousand nerve endings. Following the removal of the clitoris, the vagina would then be sewn back up so tight that it would be difficult to urinate, let alone have penetrative sex.

Often the women would just pretend to enjoy it, so as to get it over with. “You don’t want to disappoint him, so you lie”, one of them said. “You say, yes, yes, yes,” she panted, rolling her eyes theatrically as the others laughed. It was after sex that the complications always arrived. “I have been married for 10 years and have only had sex seven times,” said another woman. “[After sex], I cry for two hours and then have paracetamol. You can use hot water, to soothe yourself [between the legs] with a shower. The first time is the worst, because the skin [which has been sewn back up] gets ripped.”

Every now and then, there would be women for whom these sensations came as a particularly unpleasant shock. “Sometimes women don’t know if they’ve had FGM because they’ve been cut so long ago – [as long ago as] four years old – and they have to ask their parents”, my mother explained. “‘Have you been circumcised?’ I ask them, and they say, ‘Oh, what’s that? I don’t know…let me call me call my mum. And they’re told, ‘oh yes, you were done when you were four years old.’…‘One woman’, my mother continued, ‘saw her daughter’s clitoris, and she was shocked. She’d never seen one before.’”

The dearth of resources in this area had dangerous consequences, said my mother, who saw one or two cases of FGM in her local surgery each week. GPs throughout the UK needed training so that they were aware of this problem. “These women might die from renal failure without anyone knowing that they are suffering”, she said. Moreover the numbers were sobering. In the UK, there are 20,000 girls at risk of this procedure every year; in Africa alone, that figure is 3million. An estimated 66,000 young girls and women in the UK have gone through it; in Africa, the number is thought to be more than 90million.

My mother recommended that several centres, or “pain clinics”, should be set up across the UK, whose staff should include a gynaecologist and urologist who each specialised in FGM. That way, she said, “we can make their lives a little bit better, and see if there is any way they can have a more enjoyable and comfortable sex life.” She said that local MPs and Mayors should be made aware of this problem; and, noting the Government’s recent announcement of £35million to address FGM in ten countries, she also proposed arranging FGM conferences in Africa, where women who had undergone this procedure could talk openly about their experiences.

What was it, I wondered, that had emboldened these women to speak out about this now, of all times? “Mostly people are [now] on our side,” said one of them. “And there are a lot of women who are now coming from Africa, who are talking about it because they don’t want it to happen to their children.” How public, I asked, did she want to go with her story? “I’m not going on Somali TV!” she laughed. “‘Why, they will ask, ‘is she on there talking about her vagina?’”

The women noted the social stigma that was now emerging around FGM. “Men in this generation don’t want to marry women who are cut,” said one of them. “The men are angry, they don’t want their daughters to be done.” As the conversation drew to a close, one of their husbands arrived to pick them up, and I took that opportunity to ask him what influence Somali men could have in this area. With regards to FGM on a day-to-day basis, he said, “men are on the sideline. This is not their thing. They wouldn’t interfere – they wouldn’t even talk about it.” Instead, he said, it was something presided over by the female elders in the village. However, he said that “male politicians – Parliament, and the Minister of Health – can change the law,” and that this was vital. “[FGM] affects the whole family”, he said. “If the mother is not happy, then the whole family is not happy.”

For their part, each of these women saw no basis in Islam for FGM, which originated in Egypt from the times of the Pharaohs. “It’s haram – it is prohibited – in our religion to do anything to your daughter”, one of them said. “It’s completely unnecessary. There’s no medical evidence that it helps. [After FGM] you’re physically disabled, in a way, but you’re also mentally traumatised, hating yourself. Every time you go to the toilet and you look down there, you know that there is another woman out there who is normal.”

However, though they had endured this, the women were clear that this was not an exercise in recrimination. “I would not blame my parents for this”, said one of them. “They didn’t do this because they wanted to torture us. It’s time to educate our people. [And] what we want is not sympathy. What we want is to be heard. As we are sitting here talking, this minute there is a child who is being taken to the mountains to be done…It is a crime against humanity. We have daughters: are we going to do exactly the same to our daughters?”

from http://www.okwonga.com/?p=622#comment-262

Book Review: Bright Future: Abundance and Progress in the 21st century – From Outside the Box, a Positive Vision for the Planet

REVIEW Canberra Times (Saturday 3 February 2007, Panorama supplement, p. 17)

Author: David McMullen
Publisher: brightfuture publications http://www.lastsuperpower.net/bright-future/  240 pp $20

Reviewer: Barry York

As a young long-haired student radical in the late 1960s, I used to gain inspiration from a cartoon that appeared in my university newspaper. The multi-panelled strip commenced with two characters crouched tightly in a sparse door-less little room. One of the characters stretches out his arms, accidentally damaging a wall. He becomes curious and starts making a hole in the wall but his companion is distressed and urges him to desist, lest he damage the room. The final panel shows an aerial view of the scene: both figures are actually confined in a tiny box but outside the box is a beautiful big sunny world. The message was and is clear: creativity requires destruction, a better world only comes from overturning the familiar safe one.

David McMullen’s book is refreshing in that it revives that spirit in consideration of the future. His analysis will jar anyone who uncritically accepts the prevailing ethos of ‘doom and gloom’. He reclaims rational optimism and rebelliousness, rejecting the inherent conservatism of opposition to globalisation and modern industrial society – which he characterises as pseudo-left.

Bright Future is no mere polemic. McMullen’s training in economics informs his view as much as his decades of involvement in left-wing movements. His analysis is essentially a Marxist one, though this is not stated in the book. The text is meticulously researched and there are nearly 700 endnotes to lead the critical reader into sources of substantiation for claims made. The book will either be ignored or, hopefully, will have an influence in promoting debate about the issues canvassed, including, controversially, the author’s support for ‘collective ownership’ as an alternative to capitalism.

The content is wide-ranging but focuses strongly on the question of food production and world hunger, affluence and resource exploitation. Specific issues discussed include GM foods, soil degradation, water, fisheries, non-renewable resources, fossil fuels, global warming, alternative energies, nuclear power, pollution, deforestation and species extinction. He shows how food production can be increased through technological and scientific advance and better management practices.

It is possible he argues, to eliminate hunger by the end of the century ‘The planet’s capacity to comfortably accommodate us’, he says, ‘is limited only by the application of human ingenuity, something we are never going to run out of’.

While not downplaying environmental problems, McMullen’s take is that Nature is remarkably resilient and human impact is minor compared to the planet’s ‘battering on a regular basis from super volcanoes, meteors and ice ages’. Moreover, the affluence of modern industrial societies is what allows for environmental awareness and protection. For example, the best way to save the tropical forests is to integrate the children of subsistence farmers into the modern economy rather than to idealize their way of life.

The author sees capitalism as playing a continuing progressive role in those places still emerging from pre-industrial feudalistic systems and a section of the text dealing with the problem of kleptocracy in Africa is particularly informative and cogently argued. What makes McMullen’s book unusual and important however is that it does not reach the conclusion of those who argue from the Right that material progress under capitalism is our benefactor and that this system is therefore the ‘end of history’.

McMullen points out that affluence under capitalism continues to mask gross inequality and is only achieved through the alienation of wage slavery which chokes personal development and human initiative.

He argues that the continuing industrial revolution creates the conditions necessary for capitalism’s demise. As technological change progressively does away with the old back-breaking, dangerous and boring jobs, making work more complex, interesting and challenging, the need for a capitalist ruling class becomes less and less. More than half the workforce in the most advanced industrial societies now requires post-secondary education. With the automation of the most unpleasant jobs, who needs the profit motive? And who needs what McMullen calls “the master class”?

Collective ownership, he argues, will be ‘the obvious way to go’ and would unleash the creative energies of the individual, ‘freeing the economy from the distorting effects of sectional interest’. This, he says, is ‘real free enterprise’.

The obvious challenge to McMullen’s thesis is that socialism, when attempted under Communist governments, has failed. To this he responds that the experience of such socialism has been limited to places that had barely emerged from feudalism and had not yet developed advanced forms of industrial capitalism. ‘Bright Future’ is a scintillatingly dangerous book; a threat to the stability of walls and boxed thinking everywhere.

An update regarding possible reforms for Saudi women who are extremely vulnerable to so called ‘honour violence’ etc..It seems they are not holding their breath. Universal suffrage, and Proportional Representation would seem to be a high priority of an alternative political agenda. Driving Licenses For All Not Just Petty Tyrants! Hope they are adopting the Mandela strategy of using their brains and not their blood in this campaign.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Women driving on Human Rights Commission Agenda.

The story is by P.K. ABDUL GHAFOUR

On December 4, 2013 the English language daily the Arab News is reporting that the Saudi Human Rights Commission will be discussing issues related to the rights of women including the driving issue. A link to the story is here, and the text is below.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has instructed authorities to study some 72 proposals made by the Human Rights Commission (HRC) on various social issues, including the granting of citizenship to the children of Saudi women married to foreigners, said Ibrahim Al-Sheddi, a spokesman for the HRC.

“Our proposals have also covered the issue of male relatives exploiting their authority on women,” the spokesman said, while emphasizing women’s right to movement and transport to meet their daily requirements and to reach places of work, referring to women driving.

He said the proposals were made on the basis of more than 400 complaints received by the HRC during the past five years.

In its report presented to King Abdullah, the HRC pointed out that many women were being wronged by their husbands, fathers and brothers who wanted to control their freedoms and usurp their wealth.
Al-Sheddi said that the existing law for protection against violence covers prevention of harassment. He disclosed that a new law to prevent violence against children would be issued soon.

“I think this is a welcome move. Finally, a Saudi rights institution is acknowledging the difficulties, obstacles and discrimination women face in their life on a daily basis under the male guardianship system, which always puts them at a disadvantage and makes them vulnerable,” Maha Akeel, a senior Saudi journalist, told Arab News.

The fact that the HRC also addressed the issue of women driving is courageous considering the vicious campaign and vehement objections by members of society, she said.

“The issue of children’s citizenship is a major problem for many families,” Akeel said. “I hope the issues raised by the HRC are taken seriously by authorities in order to find quick and viable solutions.”