More odds and ends

During the last five years, world leaders and opinion makers have repeatedly asserted that the catastrophic situation of world finances is just a passing phase and will soon be resolved. Supposing they are wrong, badly informed or lying, and that this is the beginning of a destructive process equivalent to the 1940s and on the scale of to-day’s much greater wealth. There is too much capital, far more than the needs of production, and it is taking too much added value, thereby reducing demand and endangering supply. The system will have to be purged, and it would be quicker and less messy to obliterate the global derivatives market than to reduce major cities to rubble.

The Spanish civil war opposed the Popular Front, who had won the 1936 elections, and the Spanish Phalanx, who had lost them. The Phalanx was supported by most of the officer class and their leaders, generals Mola, Sanjurjo and Franco, who brought over well armed experienced combat troops from occupied Morocco. The Popular Front government had few army units on its side, but it had the backing of the major labour unions, the Stalinist UGT, anarchist CNT and Trotskyist POUM. When both side solicited outside help, Mussolini and Hitler sent arms, munitions, pilots and troops to the Phalanx, while French and British governments hummed and hawed, maintained an arms embargo and tried to stop people joining the International Brigades. The Spanish Phalanx was in line with Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, whereas the parliamentary monarchy and republic were repulsed by communism and anarchy. And so the Phalanx won the war and installed Franco as dictator for the next 35 years. Not to mention the encouragement this gave the Axis Powers in the lead up to WW2. The civil war in Syria presents a similar dilemma. Assad has most of the army (dominated by Alawites since the French protectorate 1920-1946) and the support of Russia and China, plus Iraq, Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran. Opposing him are popular organisations and army deserters, mostly Sunni with some salafists and a few international units not necessarily affiliated to al Q, with some help from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile Europe and America are humming and hawing over aid to the opposition forces, hoping they will just go away so as to avoid deciding anything. If Assad’s military regime wins out, it could be a sign of things to come, as was Franco’s victory in 1939.

Still more of the same is the best that seems on offer. Yet everyone knows, or at least senses, that the natural and financial ecosystems have reached their limits. Planet Earth can no longer absorb the waste matter of production/consumption, and the global market can no longer absorb the accumulation of capital. Unfortunately, the habits of the past two centuries are deeply ingrained and shape all aspects of society, making change an improbable occurrence and total collapse a looming threat. The “No Future” prospect of youth in the 1970s is slowly dawning on all humanity.

Back in the 60s and 70s the Black Panther Party was severely harassed by police, FBI and CIA, who mounted a series of covert operations against its leading members. In 1980 Huey Newton presented a doctoral dissertation at Santa Cruz University entitled “War against the Panthers: A study of repression in America”. After a summary of Agency and Bureau political manoeuvres since their origins, Newton details COINTELPRO activities, aided and abetted by police and CIA, targeting the BPP. Organisations that are allowed to act in secret will always abuse that power. Surveillance must be surveyed attentively, and accountability before the law must be enforced on law enforcers. The alternative is a police state.

It has been shown that rats who receive half the food they would eat if there were no restrictions live much longer healthier lives than a comparative group who are not rationed. All life forms have evolved to manage natural cycles of abundance and scarcity. Fat and lean years, wet and dry ones and solar seasons were recurring events that varied the intake of nutrition for all species. In some parts of the world, this paradigm began to change a century or so ago. Since then on an expanding scale, crops, livestock and humans have been crammed with nutrients. After this long bout of gluttony it is increasingly apparent that less is best, especially when so many are still far short of the half portion.

Market prices are determined by three main causes. The blatant one is speculation financed with credit. The discrete one is monopoly and collusion. The historic one is the sharing of added value between capital and labour. Speculative prices inflate and deflate periodically. Monopolist prices are generally condemned and occasionally prosecuted. The division of added value has long term fluctuations. When labour’s share increases, prices will follow the same trend to maintain capital’s proportional part. When labour’s share is reduced, prices can fall without changing the part of capital. These three factors are essentially political and ideological, but they pass themselves off as supply and demand, as neutral and objective market forces.

Capital owns bonds, shares and real estate, and its mobility allows it to move from one investment to another in search of the best return. At present, the yield on housing is uncertain and rates of interest are minute, which leaves company profits and dividends. As they are quite substantial, share prices should continue to rise until dividends are as small as the interest paid on bonds. At that point, any rise in interest rates will knock down the prices of all three forms of investment, and renew speculative buying of commodities and gold in the same old roundabout. All this wealth washing around the world just to get more is a major hindrance to the welfare of planet Earth’s inhabitants.

The world’s duality is manifest, up and down, male and female, hot and cold, light and darkness, etc. This obviousness produced several interpretations that developed into universal concepts. Taoism divided everything into passive and active, Mazdeism into good and evil, Platonism into mater and spirit, and dialectics into contradictions. However, the world’s duality is a permanent state and the opposites cannot exist individually. Lao Tzu’s opposing forces could not be exclusive, whereas Plato believed the spirit survived its material envelope, and Zarathustra taught that good would overcome evil. They thought one could be without the other, which is a negation of dualism. The dialectic approach keeps the opposites and sees their contradictions as an evolving process. As with capital and labour, the two aspects of a whole called production. In consistence with this dual reality, what do change are the ownership of capital and the sale of labour. Yin and Yang interact to generate new relations and transform the immutable.