It's the profit, stupid!

Dr Don Huber, Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology, Purdue University, US, speaking about GMO crops and glyphosate, said: “Future historians may well look back upon our time and write, not about how many pounds of pesticide we did or didn’t apply, but by how willing we are to sacrifice our children and future generations for this massive genetic engineering experiment that is based on flawed science and failed promises just to benefit the bottom line of a commercial enterprise.” Rosemary Mason (1)

Profit is the part of labour’s added value taken by capital. It can increase by paying less to labour or by having labour work longer days. But both possibilities are limited if the work force is to survive over time. That leaves a third way, which is to increase productivity through organisation and technology. The intent, of course, is not to constantly increase profits, but to compensate their continual decrease on a competitive market, where price and novelty determine sales. Peter Harrison argues that capital’s expansion is synonymous with technological development (2). That they feed off one another and came into existence together. This means that today’s technology has been modelled by profit, and non-profitable or less profitable alternatives have not been considered. And the most lucrative – biocides, fossil fuels and plastics - have turned out to be the most destructive.

Technology has fashioned humanity from the start, from the first hand held weapon that could be wielded far more effectively while moving on two legs. And most technology through the ages has been concerned with getting more produce out of less energy and time. This process has often been very slow, with sudden accelerations after fundamental modifications, such as the discovery of bronze and steel. Europe’s Middle Ages only added the stirrup and the windmill, until gunpowder, paper and printing arrived from China along the Old Silk Road. Guns brought military power, but the printing press was a blatant example of the linkup between capital, technology, productivity and profit. Nothing as significant would happen until the steam engine, more than three centuries later. Guns and steel got deadlier but, though wind and water were being harnessed, muscle power still drove just about everything, until fossil fuels became a source of motor energy.

The printing press had shown how a different process could hugely accelerate production, and how a machine modified the profit that could be extracted from labour. This logic was applied to weaving by mechanical improvements to the hand-loom. But the decisive moment was the transformation of heat into movement. Max Weber imagined the origins of capitalism in Protestant sobriety, investing rather than spending. But for most of history the only investments available were land and slaves, which put considerable restrictions on entrepreneurship. The steam engine, theorised by Denis Papin and finalised by James Watt, offered vast new possibilities for investments and set off the fossil fuel age. The use of coal to drive machines was the dawn of capitalism and of global warming. Since then profit and energy resources have determined the path of history.

Technology has maintained profits, and profits have guided technology. And productivity has multiplied, except in some domains that have remained labour intensive. Parts of agriculture still need a lot of hands, as do health care and cleaning. In these sectors productivity stalled a while ago, and profits have relied on greater workloads and reduced wages. Mining, industry and finance have hugely increased their profitable technology and have massively outsourced to cheaper labour markets. But their productivity gains and profits are past their peaks, and no new technological surge is visible on the horizon. The digital acceleration has run its course. There is nothing faster than instantaneous. The linking of profits and technology to produce more with less labour is not getting any more traction, and is beginning to feel the head wind of climate disruption. Wildfires are annihilating forests on all continents, and recession is lurking in the not too distant future. The 2020s will see the shape of things to come, mutation or extinction.

1. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/17/gone-fishing-no-fish-but-plenty-of-pesticides-and-a-public-health-crisis/

2. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/01/16/the-wonders-of-modern-life-briefly-explained-an-anthropology-of-the-industrial-revolution/

And this interesting piece on how the poor are forced to accept miserable, insecure, low-paid jobs:

https://monthlyreview.org/2019/12/01/from-mass-incarceration-to-mass-coercion/

Absolutism or revolution

All reactionaries are paper tigers. In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying, but in reality they are not so powerful. From a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful. Mao Zedong

Power may seem monolithic, but is in fact divided. Political power makes the law, controls the state apparatus and commands the armed forces. Financial power controls the circulation of money and credit. While industrial and commercial powers master the production and distribution of goods and services. These elements of power are interdependent. Government needs the support of finance for its spending. And both need industry and commerce to supply their material needs. In a system of private profit capitalism these powers compete for a share of the common wealth. Commercial and industrial profits are opposed. And they oppose the interest taken by finance. And all unanimously oppose the taxes levied by government. This constant internal struggle for the benefits of power advantages one or the other, but the balance is in the hands of those who make the law and enforce it, the legislative and executive branches of government.

Power determines the distribution of wealth, and wealth is a source of power. The political sphere decides, legislates and insures compliance, but those who make up that sphere have an agenda that is ideological and personal. They believe, or pretend to believe, in a social model and they promote their careers. And when these two motives are contradictory, a career often weighs more in the balance than an ideological stance. Careers exist in the other domains of power, but in those cases power is ownership not promotion. Whereas in politics there is no ownership, only successive levels of power with the most at the top. Mounting those levels needs an agile mind, an eye for opportunities and financial backing. And, when being elected is part of the ritual, a proficiency in gaining votes, mostly the gift or acquired technique of speaking to assembled crowds. A promising orator will find he has friends who have wealth and influence. Sometimes it works the other way round. Someone who has wealthy and influential friends finds he has an oratory talent.

Government holds and wields the powers of law and enforcement. Its professed objective is the nation’s wellbeing and that of all its citizens. But its main function is to arbitrate the distribution of wealth, a domain where class prejudice and corruption habitually determine the outcome. This advantages the rich and is detrimental for the rest. But government must also decide how it shares the loot with finance, industry and commerce. This is where the ties of friendship and corruption come into play and splits the body of politics into opposing parties. Do they favour bankers or those who produce and sell? And among the latter, which sector gets the largest share of the booty?

Government holds the stick and the carrot and belongs to one side or the other of the party divide. It favours the “liberal” virtuality of banking or the “conservative” materialism of labour exploitation. But whichever side it is on it must compromise with the other, as one side cannot function alone. This flux of power and wealth excludes the people, who must fill the roles assigned to them and be content with fatty, sugary food and crass entertainment. At regular intervals the electoral circus gets under way with a lot of glitter and illusive promises. Then the votes are cast and all goes back to normal. As has been remarked, if voting changed anything they’d make it illegal (Emma Goldman?), which it was for quite a while. The distribution of wealth and power occurs beyond the reach of the people who are just a work force. And labour only receives what it needs for its renewal, from day to day and generation to generation.  But the necessary income for a home and family can be contested by employing immigrant labour or foreign labour abroad, both of which are already adult and trained. As long as it was irreplaceable in the production process, labour could bargain with power and wealth. Automation and the plethora of capable workers in the developing world have made that capacity redundant. The upkeep of labour is no longer a necessity, so let the poor live in tents and eat out of dustbins. If they die young, so be it, they are so easily replaced. Such a devaluation of labour seems equivalent to the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, supplied by a massive rural exodus. Then machines were replacing human muscle. Now they are replacing human intelligence. Then as now workers are excluded from the process of wealth accumulation.

The conscription of millions of young men during World War 2 made labour a scarcity, to the point where women were employed in positions they had never filled before. In the US, far from the actual fighting and bombing, closed borders, interned foreigners and the boom in arms’ production gave workers the unprecedented capacity to have their demands accepted. This was followed by a post-war period of strong economic growth and social mobility. That trend floundered in the 1970s and began to regress in the 1980s. It is now just a distant memory and, in an idealised form, provokes nostalgia. Even though women and gender or ethnic minorities know that the past was more hazardous and oppressive than the present. The past four decades have been a time of social regression and wage stagnation, but the same period has seen considerable ethical and moral transformations. This is probably a voluntary coincidence. Granting freedoms and legal rights to minorities and promoting women does not impede the private accumulation of wealth, whereas increasing wages and social benefits does. The people’s attention has been distracted from sharing the wealth produced to sharing human rights, which costs nothing. This policy has effectively opened up society, but it has also led to the grudge felt by those who lost on wages, gained no new rights, as they were white male heterosexuals, and felt abandoned until Donald T. came along. They had been set aside and forgotten for thirty odd years, and have now staged a comeback. But their attention is also distracted away from wealth distribution by the supposed threat to their identity by all that is different.

The spotlight has been on minorities and women claiming rights they have been deprived of. These struggles have made some progress, but the attention they solicited left out all those who were not concerned. Today’s demagogues have connected with those “silent majorities”, played on their fears, given them voice and used them to rise to power. This seems to be a critical moment in world history, even neglecting climate disruption, when the two classic paths of socialism or barbarity present themselves. There is a choice between a profound constitutional remodelling of society for a radical redistribution of wealth and power, or a majority against minorities blamed for all the imaginary dangers they could represent, either revolution or totalitarianism. The world has been there before, and the lessons of the past do not necessarily forewarn and guide present and future actions. How can the majority be shown it is being misled, that it is aiming at the wrong targets? The dangerous aliens in their midst are not those with darker complexions or different affective attractions. The real peril is a small group of people who own most of the world and rule with their sole interests in mind. How can that despicable gang be shown up for what it is? How can they be countered when they command overwhelming force and control finance, production and communications? In the past, revolutions have succeeded because that absolute power was weakened by external events. The American revolution benefited from the Anglo-French war and France sending troops and warships to support the insurgents. The French revolution a decade later profited from that same war, as it had emptied the state coffers and weakened the monarch, to the point of pleading to the nation for more money. The Russian revolution was facilitated by World War 1, and the Chinese revolution by World War 2. And all the anti-colonial revolutions were encouraged by the Cold War and by Europe’s post-war economic and military weaknesses. Today’s “global war on terror” and the forever wars waged by the US, Britain and France right across the Western Empire (more discretely by some other nations) are showing signs of fragility and fatigue. And the cost of this perpetual belligerence is paid for by reducing other spending. But neither aspect is significant enough to deteriorate the power structure’s hold on society. They could escalate faster than they have so far, and that would change things. But a more imminent menace, other than climate disruption, is the colossal accumulation of public, private and corporate debts.

Power is a combination of politics, finance, industry and commerce. If one of these elements fails to function properly the whole setup is in trouble. And at the heart of it all is the circulation of money. Where does it come from and who gets to spend or invest it? Whether it has the material form of banknotes and coins or is some kind of credit arrangement, money is a promise of value. That promise can be based on past income, cash, or on future income, credit. The historic trend that has accelerated over the last decade has been to increase the promises of future incomes. And these have now reached astronomic proportions (1). If, or when, the financial house of cards falls down from mass defaults, the value of money will be ravaged and the power structure will be devastated by the loss of that crucial instrument. Living off income further and further into the future cannot be sustained for long. At some point doubt sets in and interest rates rise. Debts are not renewed and cannot be paid back. Exchanges freeze up. When this chain of events occurred ten years ago, it was resolved by central banks creating money, buying up debt and thereby pushing down interest rates. A lot of cash corresponding to nothing was poured into “too big to fail” banks. It has allowed them to lend even more than before, but there has been no trickle down to wages, so that households are still borrowing as much as they can. Will the next downturn, or whatever sets things off, be resolved by just more monetary creations, and so on for ever? This seems unlikely, so a considerable confusion is to be expected. That could open the way for people to organise themselves differently and to contest and overthrow the powers that rule over them. It could also be a first step towards the resilience that will be needed to survive the increasingly horrendous weather conditions caused by global warming.

1. Estimated at about 244 trillion US dollars, world debt is three times larger than the world’s yearly product.