Forever war

Since the dawn of urban societies armies have determined the path of human history. Professional soldiers have made and unmade governments, potentates and ruling dynasties. They have ruined cities and massacred or enslaved whole populations. Paying off mercenary armies probably originated the minting of coins as a means of exchange and a store of value. After pottery, the mass production of identical items first concerned military dress, weapons and equipment. Even science and technology have been the docile servants of war. The whole of humanity has been shaped by the impact of arms, on skin, flesh and bones. People have been constantly slashed, pierced, crushed, disfigured, dismembered and vaporised. This seems so normal because the past is cluttered with murder and the present shows it as a permanent spectacle. It is as though humanity's sole purpose was to kill or main one another and all other forms of life. Not everyone is on the front line, of course, and not a few claim they reject this reality. But all are accomplices, wilfully or under constraint, and even the victims play their part.

With fire and ever more sophisticated weapons, humans became the planet's top predatory species, able to kill anything and everything. The only valid adversaries were other humans. Though developing technologies would give Europeans the upper hand and the fire-power for global conquest. Since the end of the “Pax Romana” some sixteen centuries ago, Europeans have been fighting a forever war, among themselves, crusading, and for the past five centuries all around the planet. Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian rulers relied on sheer numbers of soldiers, whereas the success of the Greek phalanx and the Roman legion was built on training, equipment and tactics. Europeans had steel and guns, when most of the world was still in the Stone Age or at the early stages of metallurgy. Europeans also had the accumulated experience of a millennium of war-making. And both advantages are linked. Perpetual war is a strong incentive for innovation, for a novelty that decides the fate of battles. Belisarius (500-565) disposed of heavy cavalry thanks to someone's invention of the stirrup and someone's breeding of bigger horses. This gave the first crusaders (1096-1099) victories in pitch battles as they progressed down the coast to Jerusalem. But it was of no use east and west of that narrow band, in the steppes of Syria, Arabia and Sinai where light cavalry and Damas steel could harass and wear down crusader incursions. In 1453 Europeans lost Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, which would be followed by Greece and the Balkans. But in 1492 the last Arab stronghold in Spain, Grenada, was overrun, and the same year Columbus crossed the Atlantic, and five years later Vasco da Gamma sailed round Africa and reached India. Except for Russia, European conquests would thenceforth be sea-born, though they never ceased fighting each other in hot and cold wars. Naval power would determine the outcome of the next four and a half centuries, culminating with the sea battles in the Pacific (1941-1945). but even then air-borne power was imposing its dominance, which it has kept to this day.

Forever war has been the driving force of human history. It has been fought for territory, plunder, slaves, personal glory, religious beliefs, and to distract popular dissent. And when the production of weapons and armour became a profession and a source of profit, producers could only encourage more fighting by producing ever more effective instruments. The union of military and industry is also a forever story, and one would be nothing without the other. War has long been presented as defence, but the best form of defence is attack. And military might must constantly prove itself by open acts of war inflicted on any form of rebellion. It must crush it opponents and discourage others. In 1945 the nuclear vaporisation of two Japanese cities was a signal to the world, as was the carpet bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with high explosives and “Agent Orange” (1). The message was that the US and its allies would resort to mass murder to “defend” their interests. The interests of capital came before those of any nation. Even at the heart of empire, citizens had to pay for war instead of their own well-being, guns instead of butter. The forever war just went on, fuelled by plunder and ideological certainties.

From 1989 to 1991 the Western World's attention was focused on the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, effectively ending forty years of Cold War. But the preceding years had seen two nasty, bloody wars. In Afghanistan, a military dictatorship supported by Moscow was increasingly unable to suppress a traditionalist religious uprising. At the end of 1979 soviet troops occupied the country, for a savage counter-insurgency operation. The insurgents, with help from neighbouring Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the CIA, would force the soviets to leave in 1988 – by which time the USSR was on the verge of collapse anyway – and would go on fighting among themselves for another eight years. Finally in 1996, the mostly Pashtun Taliban controlled most of the country and set up a government in the ruins of Kabul. By then the world's attention was elsewhere. Following the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the isolation of the Shia Islamic Republic, and having a large Shia population, Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein felt his Sunni backed regime was under threat. Pretexting a contested territory, and with support from the US and its European allies, he sent his troops across the border into Iran in 1980. there ensued a protracted conflict, fought in trenches and not unlike the 14-18 war in Europe, that would last to 1988. All the bloodshed in the mountains of the Hindu Kush and the marshes of the Shatt al-Arab would have far reaching consequences.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dismembered in1991, Russia's constitution changed and the state-owned economy was put up for grabs. The profitable parts were taken over by “oligarchs” and foreign investors. The rest was abandoned to dereliction, a majority of Russians fell into poverty, and not a few into alcohol and drug abuse and homelessness. There was even a marked drop in population. Meanwhile, the US and Western Europe had lost their arch-enemy. The communist subversion was defunct and Russian military power was decomposing. Peace was on hand but, fortunately, Saddam Hussein came to the rescue. During the war with Iran, he had built up a huge army and did not know how to disband it, as there were no civilian jobs on offer. So, with possibly a conniving word from a top US diplomat, and because it had been part of Iraq before its creation by British imperialists, he decided to occupy Kuwait. This allowed war-making to continue with a show of new weapons, “precision” bombing, cruse missiles, “depleted” uranium and the usual “collateral” damage to life and limbs. Desert Storm was a massacre of ill-prepared and poorly equipped Iraqi soldiers, and the opportunity to install permanent military bases in the region, a permanence that would anger many faithful Muslims who saw them as a foreign occupying force. This was felt most strongly in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and would provoke a declaration of war by a Saudi led and financed organisation, with an ultimate attack on American soil.

The hecatomb in Iraq inaugurated the post-Cold War conflicts. America and, to a lesser extent, Russia would wreck the cities of very inferior opponents. Bush Senior had done it to Baghdad, Clinton did it to Belgrade, Yeltsin and Putin did it to Grozny. The hijacking of planes and their voluntary crashing in New York and Washington by a group affiliated to Al-Qaeda (the Base) set off a new military surge. The guerilla war fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet occupation had brought to the fore several military commanders, each with a regional and ethnic foundation, Pashtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Baloch. And, as is frequent in these circumstances, there was an International Brigade that operated in the Pashtun region. Its leader and mentor was the son of a Yemeni who had immigrated to Saudi Arabia and made a fortune in real estate. His proximity with the Pashtun was linked to the Talibes, educated in madrasas under strong Wahhabi influence. And the world network of schools financed by Saudi Arabia and teaching the Wahhabi doctrine was probably used to recruit foreign fighters for the Jihad against the Soviet infidel and to create a separate web with its base in Afghanistan. By 1996 the Taliban controlled the country and imposed their reading of the law. The fighting was over and foreign combatants were returning to their homelands, where they galvanised opposition to the new enemy, the USA and its European allies that had ruined Iraq and desecrated the land of the Prophet.

Forming a nation entails uniformity. This means a common language and culture, common laws, and even religion and appearance should not be too distinctive. When a state of vassalage becomes a nation, the necessary conformity is only achieved by violence. Vassals tend to neglect their duties and must be constantly reminded by force or the threat of force. But the system is pyramidal, where each level deals with the level below it. Whereas a nation demands compliance from every individual to the dictates of a centralised rule. Regional particularities must disappear or be reduced to nostalgic folk-law, language must comply to set rules, exchange value is regulated, a single historic tale is told and ideology is standardised. This nationalisation of all society into a unique model is accompanied by constraint and by a focus on the military as a means of enforcing it. Conscription moulds the citizen into an obedient patriot and breaks would-be rebels. General conscription supposes a large standing army and generates a temptation to put it to use. And mass armies are a boon for their suppliers and an ever growing expense for national budgets. Napoleon used that new found energy to conquer and plunder Europe, before overreaching in Russia. A century later it plunged Europe into four years of deadly, pitiless conflict on multiple fronts. And just another thirty years and most of the northern hemisphere was drawn into a much greater massacre, where millions of civilian victims far outnumbered the military death-roll. War had taken to the air, and battle fronts were no longer a protection.

Monarchs made war to enhance their kingdoms, which they could also manage by marriage. Weddings and battles drew the outlines of future nations. These began to take shape in conjunction with the sudden colossal expansion of colonial conquest. The Americas, coastal Africa and South Asia were being visited and taken by armed entrepreneurs from Spain, Portugal, Holland, England and France. These vast territories, acquired with superior weapons, built and strengthened the national sentiments of each colonial power. The nationals were above the natives they had subjected overseas. Empire gave a sense of superiority, and imposed continual fighting to prove it. England went to war with Spain, briefly with Holland and for a long time with France. Waterloo confirmed the English hegemon, Britannia ruled the waves. Russia had taken over vast territories, east to the Pacific and south to the Caspian and Black Seas, without opposition. But in the late 19^th century, three new nations reached a form of unity, Germany, Italy and Belgium were latecomers and were keen on getting their share of the global cake. There were few places left, so they contented themselves with the remaining parts of Africa. The world was divided up, and European nations had nothing more to conquer except from each other. They would fight two extreme wars, drawing most of the planet into the conflict.

Forever war is humanity's story, and nationalism intensified it. The conflicts between monarchs, or between monarchs and vassals were transformed into the confrontation of whole nations. Total war of annihilation or absolute subjection had been practised in the Americas, Africa and Asia, and it came home to roost in the first half of the 20^th century, a first round in Europe and a second one involving a large part of the Northern Hemisphere. Nuclear weapons made total war a promise of mutual destruction, but fighting went on unabated, using conventional weapons in insurgence and counter-insurgence, with large numbers of civilian deaths and mass migrations fleeing the combat zones. And so it went on throughout the Cold War and, when that ended in 1991 by default, guns were turned to the War on Terror. Now there is a switch to Asia, with China in the crosshairs. But the world has changed since 1949, and isolating China, the way the Soviet Union was back then, would create an unimaginable chaos in the global circulation of goods, services and finance. The Orwellian war games between Eastasia, Eurasia and Oceania, and their sudden reversals of alliances were inspired by those that occurred just after 1945. Then the rubble of war was in London, Stalingrad, Berlin, Tokyo, etc. Today it is in Aleppo, Mosul, Gaza, etc., whereas the centres of power have been subjected to just a few retaliatory attacks. And the whole world is bound by a tight mesh of trade, transport and finance. War is as obsolete as stone axes, but so much wealth has been and continues to be invested in its propagation that it just goes on and is never seriously questioned. Over the ages it has become normality, for those who bear the brunt and especially for those able to ignore it. The cost of the world's military machines is astronomical, and the available numbers do not take into account the destruction they have caused. Just like the oil industry, the war industry prefers to ignore the price of collateral damage. Making a profit and running a private jet are far more important than the environment and human lives. Who cares about the millions fleeing the bombs and the oceans of poisonous waste, if there is a quick buck to be made.

Nationalism intensified war, and capitalism was not far behind. Precious metals and slaves have always been the plunder of war, but industrial capital also needed raw materials and foreign markets. Capital has long been closely associated with warfare, the conquest of India was primarily a commercial enterprise, the East India Company founded in 1600. But, more generally, capital supplies the military and encourages it to buy ever more, and regularly expects forceful interventions to insure and protect its investments. The national army's role is to police the planet and impose the rules and laws of profit capitalism. And, as there are always several nations in competition, the rules of one police empire must confront those of different ones. The brute force of power and wealth is given an ideological glazing of inherent superiority around the notion of nation, with a racial subtext. Capitalist greed dominates the world. It can only be satisfied by plunder and oppression, so the war machines play a central role and the fighting goes on and on, for ever.

1. A scary story going back to the 1940s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange

The falling leaves...

Autumn is a difficult season for the stock market. As the end of year approaches, budgets need to be balanced, income tax payments are looming and the Xmas spending session is not far off. Everyone needs cash, and that often means the sale of equity such as stocks. This annual phase is well known and many wisely anticipate it, by selling beforehand or by deciding to sit it out. What cannot be predicted, however, is the extent of the sell-off. Most years it is just a blip, where stock market indexes fall less than 10% and quickly recover their losses. But very occasionally the cliff is much higher, and the breakage at the bottom is much more extensive. These exceptional events have exceptional causes. Extreme evaluation is one of them. As Keynes noted a long time ago, when the revenue from an investment drops below 2.5% something is going wrong (1). Another factor is the amount of credit and debt in circulation. The more there is, the greater the probability of defaults setting off a chain reaction. Psychology probably plays a part, with general optimism or pessimism helping or aggravating the situation. And global concerns, be they climate disruption, war and peace, COVID, raw materials or currencies, must have some impact. There may be other influential elements, but just these are actually all in the amber or red zones. Autumn 2021 could have one of those “black” days that are recorded in history books.

1. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_trap

Pre-cpitalist or post-capitalist?

A considerable part of humanity still lives in tribal societies, where extended family allegiances predominate. The rules that govern these social organisations are very different from those based on the divisions of wealth, class and profession that are the basis of industrial societies. A tribesman knows his extended family will support him, as he would them, and will favour him over an outsider. There is an obligation of all for all, a mutual indebtedness. Going back far enough in time, tribal societies were universal, and probably went back to the primeval stages of humanity. But at some point that ageless tradition was broken in some parts of the world, while it continued elsewhere. Tribal members became serfs or slaves, and social relationships were completely transformed.

Serfdom would have resulted from conquest. In the early Bronze Age, exterior forces with superior weapons could easily take control and impose their rule on neolithic agricultural societies. In the early Iron Age, the invading Dorian Greeks who would become Spartans did this to the Messenian helots. The Aztec society was divided into priests, soldiers, merchants and peasant-artisans, but this hierarchy was open to all on merit - though merchants were a sort of hereditary cast - and the perpetual wars were for trade, tribute and sacrificial victims, not for labour. Serfdom resulted from the foreign conquest and occupation of a territory, and the bondage of its native population. Slavery was the fate of a vanquished army. Originally, vanquished armies were put to the sword (as in Joshua 6, 21), though the Aztec kept prisoners for their gory rituals. The early Romans would humiliate their beaten adversaries by having them crawl under a portal made of three spears and representing an animal yoke. However, they soon found it more profitable to make slaves of them. And as the Roman legions expanded their operations, slave labour became preponderant in the republic and later the empire. Rome's Athenian model had also relied on servile labour, but Roman hubris took it to a much higher level.

The Romans destroyed tribal societies and divided humanity into owners and owned, a condition transmitted from parents to children or acquired in the outcome of battles. This heritage evolved over time, as Roman expansion stopped and contracted. Chattel slavery became serfdom from a lack of fresh supplies, labour was chained to the soil and could no longer be bought and sold, and the Germanic invasions installed feudal vassalage. The Saxons, Francs, Vandals, Goths, etc. soon abandoned their tribal cultures to become owners of land and people, while continuing to fight one another for supremacy. Old and new habits shaped the European Middle Ages and continued the divisions of ownership, passing from the property of land and people to that of money as the source of power, the power of a new ruling class, the merchants, bankers and industrialists.

Slavery and serfdom transformed tribal societies into ones based on class. People were no longer born as members of a clan or tribe, but as members of a social category, separated from the others by unpassable barriers. The social hierarchy was no longer a community. Territorial expansion by a tribe is hindered by its neighbours. They can be allies or enemies, but cannot be incorporated as their parentage is different. Societies structured by class do not have this handicap and can expand indefinitely. Conquered nations are obliged to adapt to the new rules of social stratification based on ownership. There are the owners and those who are owned, and later those who own just their muscles and minds and must sell them as best they can to go on living. Tribal societies are proto-feudal, with the mutual obligations of vassalage, but without the serfs. Their territories are held in common and are unalienable. Only the usage is private. Rosa Luxemburg has described the difficulties confronting the colonial powers in their attempted conversions of tribal to class based societies, Britain in India and France in Algeria (1). Neither was successful and both colonised nations still have large tribal regions long after their independences in 1947 and 1962 respectively.

Tribal common property and capitalist class property produce two very different worlds. They are incompatible, and the second tries to destroy the first, pretexting modernity and “progress”. But there is resistance, and that modernity is increasingly perceived as a source of anarchy and global havoc. Tribalism may have an unexpected tailwind due to capitalism's blatant failure and its path to annihilation of the planet's ecosystem. Capital's accumulation in private hands and its obsessive quest for profit is completely alienated from the common good. That attitude has had fatal consequences for too many in the past, and the number of victims is growing faster than ever. With tradition and religion, the Afghan tribes have resisted and obliged to leave a coalition of at least half the world's arms dealers, and the onslaughts of capitalist corruption were restricted to cities and army bases. Capitalism's seemingly irresistible ethnocidal and sometimes genocidal conquest has lost its momentum and is on a declining path. And a neo-tribalism may well rise up from the ashes of empire.

1. A must read on the subject.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/ch27.htm

Apocalypse now

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has published its 6^th Assessment Report, with gloomy predictions and recommending a stop to carbon dioxide emissions. It is much the same as their five previous reports, but with a rising level of urgency. Just a few days earlier, a study of North Atlantic ocean currents signalled that they are slowing down and may change their patterns completely. This complex system (AMOC) carries hot surface sea water north from the Tropics, while cold sea water flows down to replace it. This circulation is being slowed down by the masses of fresh water from melting ice and permafrost rushing into the Arctic Ocean, whose principal outlet is into the North Atlantic. As this melt-off does not contain salt, it is lighter than sea water and stays on the surface, and pushes back the hot surface current coming from the south. And that pile-up is slowing down the whole process. If the hot currents no longer circulate, heat will accumulate in the Tropics and colder conditions will affect Western Europe. Both weather patterns will be seriously modified towards more extreme events.

The IPPC has declared unequivocally that global warming is the consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, largely due to the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels. The affect of rising temperatures on sea levels and atmospheric phenomena is computer-enhanced speculation, and actual meteorological disasters are more precocious than predicted, as is the rate of melting ice in both polar regions. It is happening now, instead of in a few decades. However, there is one aspect of the subject that is seldom mentioned. There is a lapse of time between the increased presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and their complete warming effect. This delay is estimated to last at least ten years, and possibly as much as thirty years, depending on the sources of information. So that the droughts and floods, the hot and cold that the planet is experiencing today are caused by emissions that occurred one, two or three decades ago. And those decades are just when emissions accelerated, from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, from forest fires and Arctic methane leaks, and the oceanic absorption of carbon dioxide is slowing because of saturation, and could be reversing from carbon sink to carbon emitter, like the Amazon forest. There has been a 10% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide just this century, whose effects have yet to be felt. Meanwhile, emissions continue to rise, governments are showing their incapacity to organise a turnaround, and most of humanity would not survive very long without cooking, heating, cooling and transportation, all of which depend directly or indirectly on carbon combustion.

Fifty years of negation, corruption and disinformation have brought life on planet Earth to a cliff edge, a dead-end with no way out except a desperate and futile scramble back against the flow. The climate refugees from the South are a prelude to mass movements everywhere, as ecosystems collapse from the stress of persistent droughts, repeated floods, extreme temperatures and rising sea levels. The urgency expressed by the IPPC report seems to have surprised, but it is quite insufficient and, as some have noted, there is no mention of the overriding rule that only profit determines human endeavours. There is criticism of government ineptitude in reducing fossil fuel combustion, but the system that functions exclusively for profit is ignored, as though its influence on governmental actions was not preponderant. By taking governments to task instead of the system, the report absolves it and guarantees its perpetuation, until its own mechanisms ultimately fall apart.

The planet is subjected to fires and floods, and a growing number of people are the victims of governmental and/or criminal ultra-violence. Survivors are seeking refuge elsewhere, but safe havens are becoming rare and far less welcoming, and ever more millions are camping on the margins of society. In all this darkness, stock markets - the NYSE in particular - are cavorting enthusiastically from record highs to record highs. The signal should be, all is well, the future is bright, but the causes are not at all reassuring. Central banks have been transforming debt into cash on an astronomical scale, and that fresh money has gravitated to the stock markets. And it has inflated other prices as well, from housing to goods and services. The central bank alchemy of transmuting future incomes into past ones can only be a short term strategy, but once started it is difficult to stop. The debt cycle showed its limits in 2008, and monetary creations took up the relay to keep spending above income and insure profits. A decade later and no end in sight, colossal reserves of cash are piling up with nowhere safe to go, as everyone knows the financial bubble is close to bursting point.

Capitalism based on interest and profit must have perpetual growth to accumulate those benefits. Its nature is imperialistic and it strives to be hegemonic. Monopoly is its guiding star. In the past countless empires have built themselves on plunder, overreached and fallen. But their expanse was limited by slow transport and communications. Relays of runners or horsemen might average ten miles an hour, while troops and wagons might average twenty odd miles a day. Things accelerated with large sailing ships and again with steam power, and soon after with the telegraph, internal combustion engines, radio, etc. The reach of empire became global, and the empire of capitalism holds the world in its grip. There is no escape and no other model to turn to, just small pockets of resistance on the verge of extinction. Past empires have fall and humanity has moved on to new ideas and different imperial dreams. Today's capitalist empire is so overwhelming that its breakdown, like climate disruption, will spare no one. The IPPC's wakeup call may be better than nothing, but it carefully avoids the real cause behind the destruction of the planet's complex ecosystem. Private profit is always detrimental to the wider well-being.

The destructive power of wealth accumulation

The amount of money in circulation – cash as opposed to credit – must be sufficient to allow all transactions that demand that form of payment to take place. As the volume and value of exchanges grows, so must the amount of circulating money. However, the speed at which money circulates is also a factor. The same money can change hands in quick succession, but it may also be hoarded for months or years. If there is more money than is needed, prices tend to rise. And if there is less than needed, prices will tend to fall. The persistence of price inflation, whether high or low, seems to signify that circulating money always increases faster than exchanges, that there is always a bit more cash around than the goods and services on offer. But, of course, cash is not the only form of payment that fuels demand. An ever growing amount of credit exists alongside it.

Credit is granted by the seller or, more usually, by an intermediary such as a bank. It must pay interest, hence costing more than a cash payment, and is returned either by instalments or as a lump sum. There are also revolving credits that are constantly renewed at term and only interest is paid. Credit can be used to buy just about anything, and in that aspect resembles a cash payment. But cash symbolises a past income, whereas credit is the promise of a future income. One represents something that has happened, the other represents something that should happen at a later date. Granting credit has a risk factor that is proportionally or excessively compensated by interest. It is profitable for the lender and useful for the borrower, but its consequence is that future incomes have been spent and cannot be spent again. More spending today means less spending tomorrow, unless that spending is on an investment that generates an income and pays itself back. Though the interest on the credit means the investment must return more than has been spent. Consumer credit reduces future consumption, unless incomes are rising, in which case it merely reduces that growth. Invested credit must get more out of the market than has been put in.

Money mediates transactions, selling the produce of labour to buy the produce of some other, different labour. But, very early on, people realised that if selling to buy was possible, then buying to sell was also a possibility. Selling to buy is an exchange of use values, and the intermediary money gives them a similar exchange value. Money is a token of value that changes hands and facilitates the exchange of use values. Buying to sell is a very different process. Here use value is the intermediary, and the exchange is money for more money. Between the two transactions the use value has acquired extra exchange value. Either it has been bought for less than its exchange value, or it is sold for more than its exchange value. The original seller, the final buyer, or both are being cheated (1). This getting more for less accumulated wealth and allowed the rise and fall of many splendid merchant cities along maritime and caravan routes. It would lay the foundations of profit capitalism.

Credit preceded coins and bullion by a few thousand years (2). But it still needed a standard measure of value. This was often a certain measure of locally grown cereals that could be stored and kept, and represented wealth. And, being food, it was also a measure of labour time, which in turn compared the relative values of exchanges. Before the minting of money and its general usage, payments were promises. Going farther back in time, early societies practised a system of gifts and returned gifts. The returned gift being equal or exceeding the one received. This may have been the case with the early forms of credit. It certainly was later on, when merchants became bankers and demanded interest on credit and loans of money. The gift system tended to accumulate wealth at the top of the social hierarchy, but a periodic potlatch would redistribute or destroy it. The early credit system tended to accumulate debts, but they would be remitted periodically. Coins and bullion, however, cannot be written off, and their metals are all but indestructible. When precious metals became the standard measure of value and coins the means of exchange, wealth accumulation acquired new, much vaster dimensions.

Money and its debt companion rule the world. Wealth buys the support it deems necessary and reduces the rest to debt serfdom. Voluntary servitude or forced labour seem to be humanity's only destiny. The volunteers have the illusion of free choice, the rest knows only compulsion. The incentive for compliance is moving up the ranks and getting more of the crumbs. And it is instilled in childhood by the bells and rules of education, where submission brings praise and prizes, and rebels are no-future outcasts. Cash and credit have all the planet under their yoke, and their need of always more is their undoing. Getting more out of the market than is put in means looting the environment and spending future incomes. Both sources of profit are on the verge of collapsing and are already in intensive care, with money transfusions and frequent organic emergencies. The system is moribund, but it is still capable of killing the planet before it dies.

1. The environment almost systematically gets less than the value it produces.

2. See David Graeber's masterful book, Debt: The first 5,000 years

Could it be different this time?

Criminal activity has a double face. There are crimes committed by the rich and powerful and their subordinate governments, and there are crimes committed by the poor and their organised gangs. However, governments write the laws that make some crimes legal and penalise others. For example, it is legal to poison rivers, aquifers, the atmosphere, land and oceans, whereas selling sex and drugs is severely punished. War can be made, countries invaded and cities obliterated, but armed robbery is heavily condemned. The rich have laws that suit them, and others that justify their oppression of the poor. The rule of law is the rule of wealth over the rest of society.

Upper-class criminality aims at squeezing more out of the system. Working-class criminality is survival in a difficult environment. Organised crime is partly supported by the law and partly against the law. It is the symptom of a society divided by class, where a small minority decides what it can do and what the rest are not allowed to do. Plutocracy rules and makes the rules. But as wealth concentrates to the extreme, those left out grow in numbers and repressive forces grow in consequence. Consent to government is a function of equality. Excessive inequality can only be governed by force. New laws create new crimes, and police powers expand into new domains. Consent is replaced by constraint. A police state and a vast penal system are the logical conclusions.

Inequality breeds repression. The ruling few must defend themselves against their subjects. As wealth concentrates, inequality grows, and so must the defence system, external defence against competing nations and internal defence against rising numbers of rebellious poor. Military and police become the only support of the ruling class, when the middle class is no longer mediating. When their incomes, their wealth and their aspirations are degraded, they no longer function as role models for the lower classes who live pay-cheque to pay-cheque. This degradation is the result of extreme wealth, which can only be obtained by taking from those who actually have something. The work ethic no longer holds, as hard work no longer pays. When the middle class is déclassé, when people have to mortgage their homes to get by, there is no longer a buffer zone between the ruling class and the dangers of working-class rebellion. However, by its numbers – some 40% of the population in industrial nations – the middle class has a determinant role in politics and ideology. It is the best placed to take power from the ruling class. This means battling on two fronts, to maintain its dominion over the working class and to break the plutocratic rule of absolute wealth. The middle class is the backbone of government administration and corporate management. It is strategically placed to take over from the ruling class, whose only legitimacy is ownership.

Since even before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, workers have seen their manual skills replaced by machines, and their labour has been devalued accordingly. From master-craftsmen, they were reduced to mechanical servants. This happened in industry and services, and concerned blue-collar workers. The Digital Revolution is doing the same to white-collar workers, which is the domain of the middle class. Algorithms are replacing their various competencies, and artificial intelligence may soon make them even more superfluous. The middle class did not preoccupy itself with the fate of the working class. It came to seem a fatality, as in most cases machines were faster and more precise than human hands, and they did not slacken or feel fatigue. But now it is the middle class that is being replaced and made the servant of machines. And those made redundant are beginning to react. The whole middle-class status is being undermined and the tremors are getting stronger. So far there are no signs of solidarity with the working class. On the contrary, there is antagonism and defiance, especially towards minorities. The middle class continues to fear the working class as violent and dangerous, but it has lost its respect, or subservience, concerning the ruling class.

The middle class is the most obsessed with rank. The rich and the very rich often know one another, personally or by reputation, at least in their part of the world, and this unites them as a class where they interbreed. Though gang and union bosses may have extravagant lifestyles, the poor are mostly preoccupied by keeping a roof over their heads, clothing their children and having food on the table. The middle class is in contact with both ends, and individual aspirations are to move up. This perpetual competition relies a lot on status symbols and denies any class solidarity. However, that upward movement that characterised the post-WW2 years lost its momentum in the 1970s, slowed down in the following decades and stopped some ten years ago. For a while now, the middle class has been keeping up appearances with debt. But that debt burden has reached a maximum, and growing numbers are finding it unbearable because of shrinking incomes.

The middle class has neither the criminal opportunities of the working class, nor those of of the ruling class. This situation distils a strong, often bigoted morality, tainted by religious beliefs and ethnic privileges. When middle-class status and incomes are rising, the ruling class is perceived as virtuous and the middle class is content with supervising and controlling the working class, and will even encourage its upward social mobility. When wealth concentrates in ever fewer hands, manual workers are the first to suffer from the end of trickle down. And then the middle class progressively joins the victims. This leads to a questioning of ruling-class ethics. Is it benevolent or just greedy? Is it concerned by the nation's well being as a whole, or is it only absorbed by its own wealth and power? As the second alternatives become increasingly apparent, the middle class feels abandoned and its compliance to authority diminishes.

The ruling class is threatened when the middle class is dissatisfied and makes a pact with the working class. This happens when the aura of government is seen to be just the glitter of gold, and when the mastery of words and numbers is devalued like the mastery of tools. A class alliance is possible when the middle class loses faith in the system. But falling income and status are not enough. Rebellions need leaders with a vision of unity, and able to convince both parties that they should be together. In the past, that class alliance put an end to feudalism and absolutism, opening the way for capitalism. More recently it has made war, opposed war and even given failing finance a new lease of life. But it never lasts, and the hierarchy of wealth and power reinstates itself relentlessly. When the middle class and the working class join together with a determined leadership, they have the power to transform the world. But the ingrained ideology of individual success and the intoxicating effect of commanding the masses end up with more of the same. "For things to remain the same, everything must change" (1). Marx was very critical of this class alliance and imagined that the working class could and should go it alone, though it is unclear what role the “lumpenproletariat” is supposed to play (2). And the idea persists that education and class consciousness can insure that workers are able to depose the ruling class and impose their own dictatorship (3). But experience shows that education alienates people from their working class origins. They no longer have a shared vocabulary, and their mental experience has been expanded beyond the daily grind by literature and science. Most will join the ranks of the middle class and adopt its ways. The rest will be in a kind of limbo of neither/nor, a lumpen-bourgeoisie, a sort of Oort cloud propelling artistic comets blazing round the sun.

The middle class has the power of knowledge, but is subjugated to the power of wealth and its mercenary forces. The pen is the sword's servant, and both bow down to money. Except when money is not forthcoming (4), when their share of the loot extracted from labour shrinks and that of their rulers grows exorbitantly. In the workplace the middle class is being replaced by algorithms, and in the domains of ideology and politics, of literature and science, artificial intelligence is a growing threat. Can machines crush the middle class the way they crushed the working class? In fact it is already happening surreptitiously. The ranks of the middle class are thinning and their prospects are increasingly uncertain. For some time, the middle class has been riding on debt, as has the world in general, dreaming of a new rush of wealth production that would wipe those debts away. The pandemic has put a damper on that dream, and the growing devastation of climate disruption is destroying it for many. The return of middle-class prosperity and expansion will not happen, and one of two paths will have to be followed before they are completely gutted. The choice is between a hard, uncertain climb to revolution and a gentle slope down to mechanised totalitarianism.

The middle class has risen to power in the past, lifted by working class energy. But the coercive means it deploys against the ruling class are then turned against the working class to keep it in subordination. Taking power from those who hold it involves violence, because power is founded on violence. The middle class has a mostly cerebral function, and does not experience the physical violence of manual labour and of working-class circumstances. The violence it mobilises to impose it class rule is that of the working class, and it does this by promising freedom, equality and fraternity/happiness. Abstract notions that sound good and obfuscate the fundamental question of national and international property rights. Who owns the national wealth, the land and all its produce, the money and all its benefits, the knowledge and all its advantages, the machines and all their productivity, be it at home or, for imperialist nations, abroad? Does that wealth belong to individuals, corporations, governments, or to the vast majority who actually create and circulate it? Just like government, the nation's ownership can be by the few for the few, or by all for all. And the pendulum swings one way or the other.

Over the past few decades, the distribution of wealth and power has become increasingly top heavy. Without consulting the people, political decisions are made and laws are passed by a tiny minority of “representatives”, when things are not simply decreed by the head of the executive. As for wealth disparity, it has outstripped historic records, with a situation where some see their fortunes increase by millions every day, while countless others are lucky to earn more than a hundred, and half the world's population tries to survive with less than five. Not to mention those who eat mud-cookies to calm the pangs of hunger (5). For all this to be possible, something must be seriously wrong. It is neither moral nor inherent, it is structural and ideological. The structure is profit capitalism that is obliged to take more than it gives, and the ideology is that there is no alternative. Capital is held by the ruling class, but its propaganda grips the middle class. The first group, one presumes, knows the system advantages it. The second is led to believe the system can work for anyone who tries hard enough. The middle class is brought up on the idea of constant striving, whereas fun and games are distractions and almost guilty occupations. This goes back to the very beginning of profit capitalism and its Puritan morality, according to Max Weber. Four centuries of always wanting more and the frustration of never having enough. The more started by taking from the natives. In the Americas this was simplified by superior weapons and transmissible diseases. Those proud nations were destroyed, decimated and finally parked like animals in reservations. And once all had been taken, the newcomers could only take from each other. Always more, not as a society but as individuals created by the protestant religion's personal relation to god. Which in turn resulted from the diffusion of printed matter and the spread of literacy (6).

The middle class will not throw away its ingrained beliefs in the accumulation of wealth, but it is slowly being obliged to admit that there are limits that should not be exceeded. The dangers of extreme wealth and poverty, and of climate disruption can no longer be denied in good faith. And both have reached a stage where reforms and “nudges” are no longer of any use. Radical action is needed, but it will have to be preceded by a profound modification of mental attitudes. The challenge is not ethnic, or religious, or national, it is global. Humanity survives or it disappears. Thinking in planetary terms is not simple, especially if one is running all the time to keep up with the bills. And centuries of taking from others, their land, their labour, their souls, will not easily turn to sharing, especially for those who have taken the most. The alternative to this almost spiritual transformation is belligerence and having the working class fight itself, inside or across borders. Making war, civil or foreign, has often resolved social unrest in the past. A nation at war can be made to obey. The temptation is strong to go there again, but finance and climate concern the world as a whole, not some parts as opposed to others. There are no dividing lines. East-west, north-south no longer make sense. However, reason very rarely prevails, and economic tensions are reviving the Cold War oppositions. The perpetual struggle over who owns what, in a game of global Monopoly.

The collusion between middle and ruling classes to exploit manual labour goes back a long way, insuring that the hands that hold tools to transform matter and create use value do not get all they produce. For most of history the lords of the land did the exploiting, while merchants and artisans only took the profits of trade and the labour of their apprentices. Mechanisation changed that. When workers were assigned to precise, repetitive and timed operations, the middle class became their natural overseers. And it was the middle class that took up experimental sciences and imagined technological applications. Mass production and wage labour came into conflict with the old order of landed aristocracies, feudal serfdom and slavery. Industry prevailed and generated a new even greedier aristocracy, the capitalist Moguls of the late 19^th century. Hereditary power structures were replaced by the absolute rule of profit capitalism. After hard times, the Second World War brought the middle class to the fore and multiplied its numbers. In the military, the essential links in the chain of command - leadership in combat - were middle-class, or became so by moving up the ranks. And government control of production multiplied the administrative domains and their personnel. After the war commerce and commercials took off fast, and they recruited competence not class origins. At the same time small businesses and corporate management were growing in numbers. By the 1960s, some imagined that the middle class in developed countries was humanity's future. It was not to be. Capital accumulation was back and its concentration was on the rise, while wartime government control and administration were deconstructed, and wealth taxation was reduced. The middle class saw its wealth stop growing and go into reverse, and the working class was criminalised and jailed in lucrative penal archipelagos.

Profit capitalism is backed into a corner with no exit. It is assailed by the growing intensity of rain and drought, by a phenomenal mountain of debts, an abysmal wealth divide and a devastating pandemic, all of its own making. It still holds the reins of power, but its ideological control is weakening as reality uncovers its impostures. The lies and duplicity, the fraudulent claims, the corruption of wealth and the power it gives, the indescribable mismanagement of global affairs from war to warming, and countless other deceits are coming out in the light of day. Profit capitalism has lost its credibility, and people are desperately searching for something to replace it. This should lead to a middle-class dictatorship, of a more or less “enlightened” nature. Will it be nationalist, exclusive and belligerent, or will it be humanist, inclusive and peaceful? Will the new rulers open up to the top or the bottom? Will they mimic and incorporate their predecessors, or will they welcome the poor and the hungry to a share of the feast, what is left of it? Precedents do not encourage optimism.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AThe_Leopard

2. “The February (1848) Revolution had cast the army out of Paris. The National Guard, that is, the bourgeoisie in its different gradations, constituted the sole power. Alone, however, it did not feel itself a match for the proletariat. Moreover, it was forced gradually and piecemeal to open its ranks and admit armed proletarians, albeit after the most tenacious resistance and after setting up a hundred different obstacles. There consequently remained but one way out: to play off part of the proletariat against the other.

For this purpose the Provisional Government formed twenty–four battalions of Mobile Guards, each a thousand strong, composed of young men from fifteen to twenty years old. They belonged for the most part to the lumpen proletariat, which in all big towns forms a mass sharply differentiated from the industrial proletariat, a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, gens sans feu et sans aveu [men without hearth or home], varying according to the degree of civilization of the nation to which they belong, but never renouncing their lazzaroni character – at the youthful age at which the Provisional Government recruited them, thoroughly malleable, as capable of the most heroic deeds and the most exalted sacrifices as of the basest banditry and the foulest corruption. The Provisional Government paid them 1 franc 50 centimes a day; that is, it bought them. It gave them their own uniform; that is, it made them outwardly distinct from the blouse-wearing workers. In part it assigned officers from the standing army as their leaders; in part they themselves elected young sons of the bourgeoisie whose rodomontades about death for the fatherland and devotion to the republic captivated them.

And so the Paris proletariat was confronted with an army, drawn from its own midst, of 24,000 young, strong, foolhardy men. it gave cheers for the Mobile Guard on its marches through Paris. It acknowledged it to be its foremost fighters on the barricades. It regarded it as the proletarian guard in contradistinction to the bourgeois National Guard. Its error was pardonable.”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch01.htm

3. “The petty bourgeoisie becomes not only as reactionary as the upper bourgeoisie, but even more so. Any steps taken to establish links with it are tantamount to opportunism, destruction of the revolutionary forces, and solidarity with capitalist preservation. This is valid today for the entire western world”

https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm

4. "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, scorn all others".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus#Death_(211)

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mud_cookie

6. See Marshall McLuhan's “The Gutenberg Galaxy”.

The big lie

Freedom is a difficult concept to define. But what seems clear is that it cannot exist without equality. Master and slave are both bound by their respective roles. Neither is free. And this applies to all class and wealth distinctions. Inequality limits possibilities for everyone. Society is congealed in hierarchy, with the bottom under pressure to rise and the top fearful of falling. Celebrity and riches do not have the same constraints as anonymous poverty, such as hunger and cold, but they do not bring freedom. The chains may be made of gold instead of rusty iron, they bind just as tight. The wealthy can eat what they want and sleep where they want, but they cannot do what they want. They are the servants of that wealth. A voluntary servitude, but a servitude nonetheless. Their every action is commanded by a superior force. They are the slaves of mammon. As for the masses of wage earners, they must abandon most of their waking hours to the will of their employers, and spend their lives trying to catch up with the debts they have been obliged to contract, for a roof, transport, a washing machine, university, etc. The people are told they are free and equal, but they are just parts of a pyramid of power and wealth that rules them all and dictates their thoughts and actions.

The structures of profit capitalism hold everyone in a tight grip. Its necessities have become those of all humanity. And as capital accumulates, its profits take an ever larger part of the value produced. When capital accumulation is productive, its growth keeps the value produced in line with profits. But, when capital becomes increasingly financial, profits (interest) grow faster than the value produced. This means that the debts that realise profits must do the same. The inequality of power and wealth is reinforced by the inequality of debt. There are those who lend and those who borrow, and lenders are often themselves borrowers, but only the final borrowers, those who spend on consumption, actually pay the costs. This brings to light the inequality of investment and consumption, where some incomes allow for investments and others do not.

Capitalism denies equality and freedom, while pretending to be a promoter of both. Like some ancient god its rule is absolute, down to the smallest detail, and humanity is its servant. However, the structures of capitalism are built with debt, the present spending of future incomes. That construction seems to have no limits, but it presumes that future incomes will materialise in ever larger quantities. It relies on the idea that the production of wealth can grow to infinity. This notion appeared and progressed with the harnessing of energy, fossil fuels, hydroelectric, nuclear, wind, sea and sun. Before the steam engine, energy had been human and animal muscle power, with wind for sails and some water-mills. The capacity to bring muscle power together and its endurance had limits. The steam engine and other increasingly powerful motors broke that barrier. Tens, hundreds, thousands and more horse-powers could be assembled to run 24/7. The technology to produce boundless energy brought more inequality, between those who possessed it and those who were left behind. Over time, however, even the poorest nations joined the rush to increase energy production by all the means at their disposal.

During the past fifty years, the world's energy consumption has more than doubled. And its distribution has remained as unequal as ever, with a few guzzlers and many only accessing very limited biomass (charcoal for cooking). Over the same period of time, the world's population has almost doubled, which helped widen the disparity in energy consumption. The propaganda claimed that all would ultimately dispose of boundless energy. There were developed nations and developing ones, and all would eventually be in the same boat. The newcomers increased their energy consumption, and the leaders stabilised theirs, largely by outsourcing their more energy intensive productions. All seemed well, as millions climbed out of dire poverty. But the increasing energy consumption was based on fossil fuels, and questions were raised on its sustainability. First, would there be enough coal, oil and gas to supply the growth? And then, would the planet be able to absorb all that carbon dioxide? Presently, peak-oil, gas and coal seem a long way off, and greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing year on year. And global warming is resulting in a new and possibly fatal form of inequality.

Freedom is a vain word in an unequal world, for those at the top of the social pyramid as well as for those at the bottom. All are the servants of a monstrous system that always takes more than it gives. A universal bondage to the production of profit, with every muscle and every brain straining for that outcome. But the extra value obtained on the market can only be paid for with plunder and debt, and both seem close to their ultimate stages. The planet has been plundered to exhaustion, and debts have reached a summit that will be increasingly difficult to exceed. Debt slavery and an abysmal class divide are negations of freedom and equality, and they deny the pursuit of happiness. The private accumulation of capital has been a continual disaster. It is now approaching its terminal stage, and its collapse will leave a global wasteland ravaged by pollution, climate disruption and bankruptcy. And that supposes that nuclear warfare does not close the book definitively. All the lies about freedom and equality are being exposed in the glaring light of reality, but it is already too late to unravel the system and start anew. The only hope is that it goes out with a whimper, not a bang.