Ideas oppress and liberate

The revolutions of the past are no longer exemplary. The overthrow of an established power structure by the force of arms has always resulted in armies fighting a civil war with the intensity of a foreign one. The government in place has armed forces at its disposal, and some of these may join the revolutionaries. But the military are trained to obey orders, and wise governments closely control their generals. However, whenever two armies could be constituted there was war and its ensuing misery, destruction and uncertain outcome. Also these previous experiences were intent on ending absolute monarchy and feudal aristocracy. They were the expression of a change in economic power from land to industry, and from the countryside to the towns. The structures of government and the rules of property had to change to allow industrialisation to expand without constraints. Capital needed free labour it could employ and dismiss, as well as access to land and exploiting its rivers, soil and anything underneath. Land and labour became commodities, priced on the market according to supply and demand. And supplies had to grow to keep ahead of demand. The US had a continent to expand into. Holland, Britain and France were obliged to reach overseas to Africa and Asia. These early “republics” were expansive and imperialist because capital accumulation demanded it. Meanwhile, labour was kept plentiful by rural exodus in Europe, bonded workers until industrial capitalism proscribed them, and immigration.

Whatever their discourse may have been, the revolutions of the past opened the way for the expansion of capital. They brought down the old world order of divine right and feudal land ownership, and constituted the rule of interest and profit over a global market. They have nothing to teach about the future demise of the system they put in place. Alexander Berkman was already quite clear about this ninety years ago. “How do you imagine a revolution could be fought in these days of armoured tanks, poison gas and military planes? Do you believe that the unarmed masses and their barricades could withstand high-power artillery and bombs thrown upon them from flying machines? […] And no less ridiculous is the suggestion that the workers should form their own regiments, “shock troops” or a “red front”, as the Communist parties advise you to do. […] It is time to have done with this obsolete idea of revolution. Nowadays government and capital are too well organised in a military way for the workers to be able to cope with them. It would be criminal to attempt it, insanity even to think of it.”(1) He promoted a General Strike, because “you can shoot people to death, but you can’t shoot them to work.” However, people can be, and generally are, starved to work. And, though general strikes have obtained concessions, they have never threatened capitalism for want of an alternative vision. Workers can show they control production, but this does not give them control of the state apparatus. Stopping production is a strong bargaining tool that cannot contest the structures of power and wealth, as they are doing the bargaining. At best it obtains a more generous distribution.

Past revolutions consecrated the reign of capital, albeit unwittingly. Monarchic divinity was transmuted into prosaic gold. Instead of power bringing wealth, wealth bought power. Armed might no longer commanded merchants, merchants commanded armed might. A new force confronted the old, and vanquished, though two centuries later some nations are still ruled by autocrats. It was the victory of finance and industry over the land-owning aristocracy. However, the novelty of the 1800s is now worn out and beyond repair. The profit factor is ruining and poisoning life on the planet. It must be restrained and eventually terminated. And, though it commands force and has recourse to extreme violence, profit (and interest) is just a concept, an idea that became an ideology, and it must be combated on those terms. Future revolutions will be won by the force of ideas, not the force of arms. Profit needs to be denigrated, and shown to be irrational and opposed to the common good, just as an extraordinary accumulation of wealth should be seen as a mental pathology presenting a danger for society, and obsessive consumption be treated as a psychiatric illness, to paraphrase J.M. Keynes (2).

1. The ABC of Communist Anarchism (1929), Ch. XXVII, p. 229, (Red and Black Publishers)

2. https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/1930/our-grandchildren.htm