On Exploitation and other stuff.. for the nth time
(monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com)
“Dear Maoist-Third Worldist,
Here is a question that may have been asked before but perhaps needs further elaboration. I will divide this question into three parts.
1. The United $nakes has a parasitic economy, nearly everyone recognizes this except First World ‘leftists’, even Republicans and Democrats to some degree recognize it’s parasitic nature and the fact that it does not produce anything of significance. Yet, your concept that workers in the United States do not produce surplus value needs some further elaboration. As Marxists we know that income does not equate class, even in extreme scenarios. If a worker’s labor-power is worth $200/hr, but, a capitalist makes $400/hr from it, that would be a surplus of $200. I know that the capability to PAY workers $200/hr, the capacity to value labor so highly is due to parasitism, but, that hardly detracts from the fact that surplus value is still extracted. I have read your other articles on this and it is still not clear to me. Could you use, perhaps, an analogy or an easier example to grasp this concept?
2. On the concept of workers-being-exploiters: While it is true that workers would be exploiters given unequal exchange and other mechanisms of parasitism, granting that this worker is not exploited by virtue of value-added from the Third World, there is in fact an ontological problem in this. A grande capitalist is conscious of exploitation in a way. He is conscious that he is extracting profit. A First World worker is not conscious of his exploitation of others, in fact, his exploitation of others is not the worker’s ‘choice’, it is a fact of life outside of his political capacity and control. A worker may be an exploiter in the First World but he does not think like grand bourgeois, he has no method of advancing the extract of surplus in the third world, this is in fact the duty of the grand capitalists. The fact this divorce exists needs some elaboration.
3. Does the fact that the U$ is mainly unproductive, mainly services to realize profits produced elsewhere, make the wealth of the U$A a house of cards? An economy cannot be sustainable without production of surplus value. Iceland is an example of a parasitic economy collapsing. Any thoughts?”
*
Serve The People of MSH answers:
1. Your example is correct in principle. The problem is that it has nothing to do with reality. Labor-power is NOT worth $200/hr anywhere in the world. The value of labor-power–the cost of the commodities (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) needed to keep the worker alive and ready to work again another day–does not vary much from place to place. It is approximately a couple of dollars an hour–much less than the minimum “wage” in the U$ and most other First World countries.
Furthermore, we need to be clear on what we mean by making money from an employee’s labor. The situation that you describe might occur in a law firm in the united $nakes. If a lawyer gets paid $200/hr and the law firm charges $400/hr for his services, does that mean that $200/hr in surplus value is produced? No, mainly because no value whatsoever is produced. And even if the employee in this case produced value, it would not necessarily follow that he produced surplus value. We have discussed this issue many times before: the employer’s profit does not prove that the employees are exploited. In the First World, the exploitation of the Third World accounts for all profits AND a considerable portion of First World employees’ “wages.”
2. I don’t see any ontological problem there. Of course there are differences between groups. That’s nothing new. But a First World “worker” is an exploiter whether he recognizes that fact or not. besides, you haven’t proven that the big capitalists are more “conscious of exploitation” than anyone else. Doesn’t everyone know that capitalists get their money through the extraction of surplus value? That would seem to make everyone just about equally “conscious of exploitation.”
In any event, the exploitation (frequently the superexploitation) of the Third World is a systemic phenomenon: it is done by the First World as a whole (and certain countries in particular), not by individual enterprises, capitalists, and “workers.” A vagrant in the U$ is still an exploiter even if he does no “work” at all: he gets thousands of dollars’ worth of value every year from various sources (begging, welfare, charity, etc.), just because he is from the First World. Consider also a small company that makes, say, wooden furniture. If it gets all of its inputs (wood, nails, etc.) from First World countries, probably the owners and the employees would all say that it did not exploit the Third World; they might even pride themselves on that claim. But they do benefit from the exploitation of the Third World, albeit indirectly, because the superprofits from the Third World pervade the entire First World economy and benefit everyone (including undocumented migrants).
In addition, First World “workers” ARE able to contribute to the extraction of surplus value from the Third World. For example, they promote U$ militarism, they enlist in the U$ armed forces, they demand even more restrictions on migration than the haute bourgeoisie wants (which makes them MORE reactionary than the haute bourgeoisie in that department).
3. Yes, the U$ economy is a house of cards. Without other countries to exploit, the U$ would be far worse off.
End Imperialism of MSH answers:
Surplus value is not “extracted” from a worker merely because they are able to deliver profits to their employer over and above the cost of wages. If a worker is (a) unproductive and (b) a recipient of superwages, then no surplus value is being “extracted” from him whatsoever.
The idea that First World workers are unaware that they exploit Third World workers is totally belied by the fact that they vote imperialist, they act imperialist and the bastards think imperialist and talk imperialist every single day. Perhaps this writer thinks First World workers are chomping at the bit to smash imperialism, but just feel they have no choice in the matter, and so go along with imperialism despite themselves. I don’t.
This idea that First World workers are not supportive of imperialist policies is just another fairy tale which the (First Worldist) Left likes to tell itself before going to sleep. Besides the aforementioned First World “working class” support for imperialist politics and culture, and not to mention their predilection to racist abuse, in actual fact, routine First Worldist demands for more savings, higher wages, better jobs, etc., etc., precisely ARE imperialist demands, because they are not at all related to the political task of effecting imperialist disengagement from the Third World. Why would they be? That’s what makes such demands realizable in the first place.
Prairie Fire of MSH answers:
1. While it is true that profit does entail exploitation at some point in the production-distribution chain, it is not true that every employee in the production-distribution chain is exploited nor does it mean that every employee in that chain is producing value. It is a vulgar misconception of Marx’s works that holds that every employee produces value and also is exploited. In fact, Marx, in his discussion of merchant capital chains in Vol 3 of Capital, is very clear that non-productive workers such as clerks do not produce value. Just because an enterprise employes people does not mean that those people are necessarily the source of the profit. The clerks aren’t growing lettuce in the back of the super-markets. A bank does not make its profits by exploiting its tellers. Just because these enterprises are employing people does not mean that the employees are producing value and it does not mean that they are exploited. Whether one produces (surplus) value or not is a different, but related, issue from whether one is exploited or not. The US economy is one where the vast majority of employees are both non-productive (do not produce value) and are not exploited.
According to Marx, the value of labor-power is what it costs to reproduce labor-power. So, the value of labor-power is basically the what it costs to keep the worker alive and working, subsistence level wages. In a pure model, the value of labor power converges with what workers are paid. However, in the real world, there are obviously employees who are paid much more than the value of labor-power and, in other places, there are employees who are paid less. As others have pointed out, labor-power is not worth 200 dollars/hour.
We have shown in numerous articles that there is no reasonable sense in which First World workers are exploited. Let’s say that one defines exploitation as extraction of surplus value. If this is the case, then the majority of the US workforce is not exploited because they are not employed doing productive labor. Rather, they are employed in management, distribution, etc. They are employed in realizing value, not in its creation. Another method: Let’s say that one sets the bar for exploitation by holding that exploitation is when a worker makes less than the global social product divided by the number of laborers who contributed to the global social product. By this approach, even an Amerikan who earns a minimum wage is not exploited. (1) Another method: Let’s use an egalitarian distribution as a regulative idea to determine who is and who is not exploited. One is exploited if one receives a smaller share than what one would receive under an egalitarian distribution. Again, by this approach, even the poorest Amerikans are not exploited. (2)
To say that Amerikans are exploited is to basically claim that they deserve more of the global social product. An Amerikan who earns a minimum wage falls within the world’s richest 15 percent. 20 percent of the world’s population, mostly in the First World, account for nearly 80 percent of private consumption and income. To say that Amerikans, or First World peoples, deserve more is to say that Third World peoples deserve less. It is social imperialism, not Marxism, that maintains that First World peoples are entitled to more.
2. Ontology is the study of what kinds of things exist. “Ontology” is basically another word for metaphysics. For example, traditional ontological problems are problems such as whether universals exist or whether there are natural kinds. Whether or not a worker knows he is an exploiter would fall within the purview of epistemology, not metaphysics. In any case, there is no problem here at all. Just because a capitalist or First World worker does not know he is an exploiter does not have any bearing on whether he is one. Whether one is aware of one’s social position does not affect that social position. Being an exploiter is an objective social relationship.
3. That so much of the US economy is non-productive is a sign of its decadence.
Notes
1. http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2008/07/06/blast-of-the-past-from-irtr-a-rough-estimate-of-the-value-of-labor/
2. http://monkeysmashesheaven.wordpress.com/2009/08/05/real-versus-fake-marxism-on-socialist-distribution/
Thanks. I understand some of your distinctions now. What interests me above all else is the collapse of a parasitic economy based on exploitation of the Third World (see: Iceland.) Iceland had such a collapse and it’s people elected a lesbian president (under the bourgeois legal system, although, still, somewhat significant.) Does the fact that the United $nakes produces no value of its own lend itself to a structural contradiction that could cause an economic collapse before the forces of the Third World isolate the United States?
Furthermore, India, China, and South Korea – I don’t think these nations can be placed within the context of the ‘Third World’. To what extent is the U$ financial ‘crisis’ the fact that these nations are moving beyond the United States in capital accumulation?
I do think ontology is important. Even Marxism has an ontological basis: the presence of the proletariat, the fusion of subject and object as the dictatorship of the proletariat, the fact that humans ‘labor’ for no other reason than for the sake of labor itself as in the Manuscripts of 1944. These are ontological claims, certainly. And there is nothing wrong with, in addition to Marxism, using philosophy: What I meant to show is that there is a decisive break.
One cannot say that U$ worker-exploiters are conscious of their exploitaiton because they vote Imperialist. That can be said of any number of third world nations that vote comprador. In fact, most Amerikkkans vote on domestic issues and issues based around fear. I do not think there is an inherent want for war and exploitation within the average Amerikkkan consciousness, although, there is an inherent want for that “Amerikkkan dream” and the willingness to protect it by any means necessary- thus the susceptibility to fearmongering on behalf of the grande bourgeois. In this sense they act very similar to a reactionary petite-bourgeois.
A grande bourgeois may not be conscious of surplus value, may not be conscious of the act of exploitation (although, I do think Henry Kissinger admits the validity of Marxism and I’m sure knows a lot about it.), does consciously guide the production process, does consciously invest in areas where wages are deflated. This is tantamount to consciousness of parasitism and exploitation. An average Amerikkkan worker-exploiter has no consciousness of this, although, still remains an exploiter. What remains to be studied is at what point, or, points, to be more dialogical, the Amerikkkan proletariat ceased being a proletariat and became petite-bourgeois, at what point did the economy become based on knowledge and realization rather than commodity production.
In that sense, the entire First World, it values it’s “workers” based on technical knowledge or the ability to service, to realize profits. There is not yet a critique of service-based political economies, not yet a thorough understanding of First World division of labor and the contradictions it produces. This may be something we all take up as Communists in the future.
I do think workers in the First World are exploiters. I do now fully understand that FW workers do not produce surplus value. But, what I do not see is a real critique of this kind of political economy, the oppression it produces. There are First World people that are oppressed, why do we value whether someone is exploited over whether someone is oppressed? What about the psychological impact of a sincerely alienated First World, where virtual reality becomes prominent in the sense of Baudrillard or the Situationists? What are the deliterious effects on the worker-exploiters that parasitic imperialism has and are they deliterious enough to produce a political subject capable of bringing about change or are they incidental enough that they should be ignored? I imagine these are vital. What does everyone think?
There’s a lot to discuss here, and I think we should discuss some of these issues separately; otherwise the discussion will become tangled and confused.
Iceland is an interesting case of an imperialist country that was itself a colony just three generations ago and was poor less than a century ago. For some time we have been intending to write an analysis of the transformation of Iceland. Feel free to take this job on; I’m sure MSH would consider publishing your work. Some salient facts: Iceland is tiny, with only about 300,000 people; Iceland’s remoteness and geographic position make its territory useful to U$ imperialism; Iceland’s economy is based largely on exports of fish to other imperialist countries, and that is major avenue for flows of superprofits from the Third World to Iceland. (It also explains much of Iceland’s vulnerability, since Iceland actually *does* produce a considerable amount of value but is a sort of banana republic, disproportionately dependent on a single commodity.)
We have never said that the united $nakes produces no value. Clearly it does produce some value.
I don’t see why you don’t regard India, China, and southern Korea as being in the Third World.
It is a mistake to excuse Amerikkkans’ alignment with imperialism on the grounds of “fear.” Amerikkkans’ CLASS INTERESTS are also aligned with the interests of imperialism. Furthermore, there is no significant anti-imperial resistance in the united $nakes–not even on the starkest issues, such as the U$ invasion and occupation of Iraq. (The pallid Amerikkkan “anti-war” movement, always in the minority, was based mostly on selfish Amerikkkan concerns such as keeping Amerikkkan soldiers out of harm’s way and saving Amerikkkan tax dollars, not on internationalist concern for the Iraqis, never mind principled opposition to U$ imperialism.) Phony “communists” often try to jU$tify Amerikkkans’ imperialist politics as a manifestation of “false consciousness,” but we say that Amerikkkans are showing TRUE consciousness–of an arch-reactionary nature.
You are right to liken the Amerikkkan mAsses to a reactionary petite bourgeoisie. All of Amerikkka is bourgeois: it’s part of the global bourgeoisie.
I don’t know what sort of critique of service-based economies you are seeking. You seem to be asking about conditions within the imperialist countries. You’re welcome to prepare an analysis. We tend not to focus on this, however, because of the considerable danger of magnifying the problems of “poor” First World “workers” out of proportion. Nonetheless, we have done some work in this area. You might wish to read our review of Ehrenreich’s book _Nickel and Dimed_, a mAss-market screed that portrayed bottom-end service-sector “workers” in Amerikkka as an “exploited” population.
It’s good that you recognize that First World “workers” are exploiters–beneficiaries of exploitation. You’re right that oppression exists within the First World; we have always said so. It may even have inspired some Maoist-Third Worldists to become leaders in the international communist movement. But we have to recognize exploitation as a particular form of oppression that generally trumps the others. Why? Because it creates class alignments that generate the class struggle that moves society forward. Many people in the First World are oppressed in some sense (national, sexual, etc.)–but do they organize for socialism, or are they largely pacified by the superprofits that they receive in abundance? By contrast, most people in the Third World are exploited, and even superexploited. They have a class interest in fighting for socialism. People in the First World have a class interest in fighting to perpetuate capitalism.
To drop exploitation for the vague idea that everybody is oppressed and therefore everyone can be revolutionary — that everyone can be aligned along some social fault line toward a revolutionary future — is not new. It is found in the works of Herbert Marcuse for example: Everyone in the modern world is reduced to living sad, uninteresting, boring, one-dimensional lives, therefore everyone is a potential rebel. To hold such an idea is really to abandon scientific Marxism and uphold a kind of pseudo-militant humanism. Today, this is most visible in a dumbed-down form in the writings of the Avakian-Ely school.
Most thinking people on the left in the 1960s recognized that Marx’s traditional concept of the proletariat no longer existed in the First World. So, many of them began trying to invent stand-in proletariats, i.e. stand-in revolutionary subjects. For some within the Black Panther Party, the stand-in social base was the nationally oppressed lumpen. For others, it was youth, even White youth. Others assigned what they described as the “prison proletariat” to this role. Others looked to an alignment of these various groups for their stand-in revolutionary subject(s). Others threw economy out the door entirely and said everyone was oppressed. One problem with the leftovers from the 1960s is that they have no perspective. They fail to draw the correct lesson of that time: even in the context of a global, decolonization movement, even in the context of a revitalized socialist movement (in China at least before the implications of the fall of Lin Biao and the adoption of the Three Worlds Theory of the 1970s became known), even in the context of a period of heightened national oppression and rebellion in North America, still super-profits trumped all these things. Whatever the rhetoric of Paris of 1968, the workers were easily bribed with double digit raises into supporting the system. The problem is that the leftovers from the so-called New Communist Movement can’t see the forest for the trees. They compare the 1960s to the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and see success in the 1960s. But, the overall trend even in the 1960s in the First World was toward reaction not revolution.
We can invent theories all day long that claim that First World populations are part of the revolutionary subject. The problem is that these theories have nothing to do with reality. Those who embark on this kind of project already know what they are after: some metaphysical theory that let’s them have their cake and eat it too. Such isn’t the method of science. Contrary to this, a scientific theory should account for overwhelming empirical and historical data that points in the other direction. A scientific theory should account for the importance of the economic in making revolution. Chinese peasants made revolution because of terrible economic oppression. A super model may suffer depression or may have a bad body image, a First World suburban housewife may hate her husband and be addicted to painkillers, a First World worker may hate his job, but where are the revolutions to go along with these examples? First World peoples may not like everything about their lives, but that does not mean they are revolutionaries just waiting for Avakian, Ely, the mass line, or a magic key to unlock their mind. In fact, radical First World protest against the system almost always takes the form of fascism, not socialism. Whatever “oppression” First World peoples face, it is not so great that First World peoples are willing to leave all their privilege behind and tie their lives to the vast majority, those making less than 2.50 a day. All oppressions are not equal. The economic sphere weighs more than other spheres. And, in the most important areas, First World peoples are principally oppressors. They are principally oppressors in terms of class, nation, and gender. Reality matters.
I’m going to write a more detailed reply to you Prairie Fire but I think it’s deriding to say that Western Marxists are “inventing” theories. Sure, the theorization and philosophical work is in fact caused by the lack of a Marxist proletariat in the United $nakes, but, that does not negate the work of Marcuse, Baudrillard, and so forth. “Workers” in Amerikkka really _are_ one-dimensional, really _do_ live in a spectacle-commodity society that contains it’s own contradictions. What’s wrong with uncovering them and using them to the advantage of Revolution? In this respect, the Red Army Faction had a good line, one that needs study and advancement, they too recognized that the First World were totally made up of labor aristocrats though did not see FW “workers” as exploiters. Regardless, the RAF was one of the first groups to assert this thesis and revitalize the theory of L.A.
2mv,
One doesn’t have to agree with everything Mao wrote in On Contradiction. However, Mao’s distinction between between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions is useful. The First World has plenty of contradictions. And knowing something about them could be of limited use. However, contradictions in the First World are almost always non-antagonistic. The social conflicts in the First World are not such that they lead to radical social confrontation and transformation. Richard Rorty’s observations about the contemporary West, like Francis Fukuyama’s discussions of the end of history, are picking up on this fact about the First World. If the First World was an island unto itself, then it would look as though the end of history had arrived because there are no significant social contradictions that can rock the boat — except, perhaps, environmental ones. From such a perspective it looks like the “age of the big idea” is over. It would appear as though post-modern, liberal, social democracy was here to stay. However, the First World is not an island unto itself, it is part of a world system that includes the Third World. Thus the First World will be transformed by the global people’s war, the proletarian and anti-imperialist movements, of the Third World.
Exactly. The history of the united $nakes may have “ended” in one sense: class struggle in the U$ is finished, now that Amerikkka has become one big giant bourgeoisie. The same is true of many (if not all) other First World countries. This “end of history” merely means that the First World has ceased to have any progressive potential. It is in fact a fetter on the world’s social development: it is hampering the progressive forces, which are to be found almost exclusively in the Third World.
Ricard Rorty’s picture of postmodern liberal societies is more accurate than Marcuse’s dreary picture. Life in the West is not one-dimensional and cog-like necessarily. Even though jobs may be boring, outside of work, Amerikans have all kinds of ways that they can define themselves. Amerikans have all kinds of lives they can lead. There are numerous ways (music scenes, youth cultures, art scenes, religions, sex scenes, leisure activities, etc) that people can live, Amerikans have the cultural space to write their own life narrative as long as it doesn’t threaten the system. And super-profits create the access to leisure time to do it.
Baudrillard and the situationists are anarchists. When you strip away the waffle, the situationists are arguing that workers in the West are oppressed because they have to submit to management authority. This is not Marxism. Marxists see oppression as a function of exploitation. If there is no exploitation, there is no oppression. Unless the exercise of authority serves to sustain exploitation we do not need to struggle against it. Marxists do not struggle against the laws against drink-driving, for instance, although they are an exercise of authority.
Marcuse argues that bourgeois society suppresses individuality (Negri has a similar line). What this has to do with Marxism has always escaped me. Essentially, Marcuse is a Freudian. I suppose those who uphold Freudianism might see some sense in his ideological stance. Those of us who do not will tend to see his work as rather pretentious and unscientific.
The Red Army Faction absorbed a lot of this nonsense and tried to stir up revolution in West Germany, believing that Germans were ‘alienated’ by consumer society. This was just stupid.
We can admire the courage of the RAF if the 1970s in standing up to imperialism and trying to struggle against America’s illegal, genocidal aggression against Vietnam. Would that we today in the West had a tenth of their courage and commitment. However, attempting to revive their half-baked nostrums about the existence of an oppressed proletariat in the West is just going to lead to the repeating of their errors. Those who seek to pursue armed struggle in the West in the pursuit of Marxist revolution in First World countries will achieve nothing. It is hopeless to attempt armed revolution when the majority of the people in the nation you are struggling in have class interests opposite to those of the proletariat.
I think there is more to it than that. Aside from the fact that oppression exists even without exploitation (blacks, gays, etc.), writings such as “The Society of the Spectacle” are a philosophizing way of portraying the real effects of commodity fetishism in capitalist culture and the worldview people are trained to form. While they may tend too much toward individualist anarchism and idealist understandings, I think there are few books that so effectively convey the manner in which capital presents itself as a necessary, inevitable and productive force, when in reality it is a social relation of oppression by dead labor. Just like the Frankfurter Schule, the Situationists’ analysis was flawed, but nonetheless highly stimulating and a useful resource for more materialist approaches.
Yep. Revolutionary struggle in the First World will most ceirtainly lead you down the road of military adventurism. It leads to the failed attempts by the Weather Underground. It leas to isolationism. Even an armed struggle of minorities that are part of an internal semi-colony, such as the Black Pathers, too faced similar class contradictions, generated by First World material conditions, which hindered their struggle at large. To make matters worse, anyone attempting to revive strong anti-war sentiments and revolutionary struggle is stacked up against far more odds, given that there is less of a substantial working class in the US than in the 60’s-70’s.
Military struggle of the focoist kind in the first World isn’t revolutionary struggle. Revolutionary struggle is still possible, it just doesn’t take a military form. Those who write for the Maoist Third Worldist movement are, for example, doing more good for the revolutionary movement than focoists even if they are in the First World. Revolutionary struggle is always possible, it just has to take more sophisticated, intelligent forms. The main revolutionary struggle right now takes the form of spreading Maoism-Third Worldism, education and organization. It is patient, protracted work. It’s a long march period for revolutionaries in the First World.
The works by the authors of this journal will be used by revolutionaries all over the world. The importance of the work here should not be under estimated. MSH is the leading revolutionary journal in the world right now.
“Marxists see oppression as a function of exploitation. If there is no exploitation, there is no oppression. ”
Wait, so, police brutality against the nationally oppressed is ‘not oppression’?
Indeed, the author above was mistaken. Oppression does exist in the absence of exploitation. Pig brutality against Blacks in U$-occupied territory is a good example: Blacks are not exploited but are nationally oppressed.
I don’t understand the point about national oppression. This line would have to be explained to me. I can’t really comment on the conditions black people face in the US due to lack of personal knowledge.
In general no-one is oppressed simply because of ‘who they are’ or because they are ‘different’ (as the post-modernists believe). The racism that occurs everyday in Britain is to do with the desire of the white majority to preserve their privileges in terms of career and employment prospects. This means black people are more likely to be in the lower socio-economic groups, suffer unemployment and so on. Maybe this view makes me a ‘vulgar Marxist’ but frankly it’s just reality. The recent mass strikes in the UK calling for ‘British jobs for British workers’ were not carried out by people who objected to the diet, dress habits or accents of foreign workers. The question was over pay and maintaining privilege.
Like I say, I don’t really understand a concept of oppression, national or otherwise not related to economic exploitation of some kind but I am prepared to keep an open-mind on the issue.
Oppression is the subjugation of one group by another. It does not have to have a primarily economic basis. Homosexuals have long been an oppressed group for reasons that had nothing to do with jobs or money. Disabled people face oppression. Religious minorities and atheists face oppression. And, as we know all too well, communist revolutionaries are oppressed in bourgeois society.
If we carry this to its logical extent, we can argue that EVERYONE is oppressed to some extent. That would be a nihilist argument for denying the significance of struggle and conning us into giving up. Our response is that some forms of oppression lead to antagonistic contradictions and some do not. For the purpose of social progress, the most significant form of oppression is EXPLOITATION, whereby one group (which happens to include the whole First World) lives at the expense of another (most of the Third World). We DO recognize other forms of oppression, and we are acutely concerned about some of them, but we know that only a few of them will spark revolutionary activity that will result in major social progress. Exploitation (class-based oppression) is one; national oppression is another. Gender may be a third, but it’s too complicated for this brief discussion; indeed, we still have not fully formulated our gender line.
Blacks (I’m talking about the Black nation occupied by the U$) ARE systematically oppressed, and not just in economic terms. You are right that Blacks in the U$ are worse off economically than whites (although both populations receive massive amounts of superprofits stolen from the Third World and therefore count as exploiters). But Blacks are also targeted for imprisonment and other pig repression far more than whites.
Also, I think that any self-respecting Marxist should be broadly familiar with the conditions of Blacks under U$ occupation in North America, even in the absence of personal experience. I have no personal experience of being oppressed by kulaks in 19th-century Russia or being shipped in chains to a distant continent during the triangular slave trade, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t say anything intelligent on those subjects.
The Black Nation does not have a significant proletariat. They are not exploited, except, possibly, for those in prison. However, this latter point still needs to be investigated thoroughly. Even if those in prison are exploited, conditions are such for prisoners that , for the most part, they don’t form the requisite class consciousness for revolution. In other words, they aren’t a revolutionary agent, a proletariat.
Usually exploitation and national oppression go hand in hand, but not always. Blacks are economic beneficiaries of their status as an internal semi-colony within the US. They, like Whites, appropriate massive value from the Third World. At the same time, however, Backs suffer national oppression. They suffer discrimination, police brutality at a higher rate than the non-Black population, they receive harsher prison sentences than Whites, and so on.
There may be some exploitation of prisoners in U$ koncentration kamps. I tend to doubt it, but I haven’t fully investigated the matter. If there is any exploitation of U$ citizens within U$-occupied territory, the prisons are the place to look for it.
Nonetheless, as the comrade said above, even some exploitation of prisoners would not necessarily imply a proletariat within the U$’s imperial borders. Any exploitation of prisoners is temporary at best. Once prisoners get out of the koncentration kamp, they rise right back into the bourgeoisie, along with the rest of Amerikkka. That’s a weak basis for “proletarian” class consciousness.
It’s also quite obvious that the First Nations suffer national oppression: their land has been taken from them, their numbers have been decimated (some First Nations have been exterminated), they’ve been corraled onto remote “reservations,” and they’ve been forcibly aSSimilated to white oppressor-nation kulture.
Super-profits have transformed many aspects of society beyond just the economic. In the First World, there is the trend of toward Peter Panism, or at least the option of extending one’s youth. 30 is the new 20. 40 is the new 30, and so on. Due to super-profits, especially since World War 2, the adolescence in the US has been extended. People remain identified as part of the youth culture with less responsibility into the late teens even up to the early thirties. This is a big change from earlier times in US history where people entered the workforce and started families in the mid-teens. This extended adolescence, where the youth population remains economically less active, is made possible by super-profits. There is so much value pumped into First World economies from the Third World that the First World can afford increased non-productivity, leisure time, for its populations. In other words, so much value is appropriated from the Third World that Amerikans are able to opt out of work longer than they did in the past. So much is this the case that some anarchists have raised becoming a pure parasite to the level of principle, seeking to exist entirely off the fat of the First World without having to work at all. Crimethinc, for example, are the ultimate First Worldists, valorizing consumption without production. The “tun in, turn on, drop out” ideology seeks an adolescence that extends forever.
Perhaps a comrade could do an investigation of Peter Panism.
A study of Amerikkkan Peter Pan-ism would indeed be beneficial. I hope that a comrade will investigate this and write an article on the subject.
Anarchism is a luxury that only the First World can afford.
So should bums on the steet shape up and become productive members of Amerikkkan society? A bum may be a parasite but not as big of a parasite as someone working an office job earning a 100k salary. I mean, at the end of the day, almost all of the entire first world population is parasitic. Right? There are bums that geniuiniely can’t hold jobs because of mental disabilities and from this they experience oppression.
Crimethinc speaks about living on the margins of society as a way to reduce parasitic first world cosumption as much as possible by only consuming what you need. Yeah, it is stupid lifestyle politics but I think that’s better than aspiring to become fully integrated into the imperialist economy, like the Trots do, and at the same time spend your time wishing to have a vested interest for socialism in the Third World.
Whether one person is “as big of a parasite” as someone else is not very important. Of course there are divisions within parasitic Amerikkka. The parasite getting $8/hr at the doughnut shop isn’t in the same subclass as the parasite sitting on $100 million. But both are parasites, and both fully buy into Amerikkka and U$ imperialism. Both are class enemies of the international proletariat.
The comrade’s point about Crimethinc is that it IS fully integrated into the imperialist economy: it lives ENTIRELY at the expense of the Third World. Many Amerikkkans at least do some work, but Crimethinc advocates 100% parasitism. That’s actually more reactionary than typical Amerikkkan bourgeois ideology. Similarly, I’m not convinced that a bum in the united $nakes is less of a parasite than an office worker getting $100k a year.
When I hear that people “can’t hold jobs,” I want to know why. Plenty of people with disabilities manage to hold down jobs, including jobs that they “can’t” do (according to chauvinists among the temporarily able-bodied). Amerikkka used to stigmatize disabilities, but nowadays it is positively fashionable to assert a “disability” of one type or another–frequently “dyslexia” (a twentieth-century fabrication), a “learning disability,” “attention deficit disorder,” or some other purported mental problem supposedly requiring abundant dispensations. Often the “disability” is just severe enough to prevent the person from working but by no means so severe as to hamper his many recreational activities. Obviously we communists are in favor of helping disabled people to live full lives, and we understand that “From each according to her abilities” means that some will be able to do more than others. For various reasons, some people may be temporarily unable to do any work at all. But it is very, very rare for a person to be unable to do any work at any point in her life. Socialism will take care of the disabled but not the lazy. We communists endorse a line (taken from the Bible) in the Soviet constitution: “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”
I understand your point STP. But, don’t you think that an alcoholic bum who scraps up just enough money to buy some food and a beer will have more of a material and overall inclination towards socialism than the aforemantioned technocrat? Just like the alienated blacks of Harlem who’ve lost all hope in the capitalist system and have resorted to a life of crime, they too the natural allies of the oppressed peoples of the world. Have you heard about the “inner Third World” in the US? There are people who are truly alienated by capitalism and even if they benefit from imperialism to a ceirtain extent, that doesn’t mean that they are “class enemies”!
Comrade Marx said that a portion of the lumpenproletariat would join the proletarian cause. He deemed the lumpenproletariat an unreliable ally of the proletariat.
The “lumpenproletariat” in the united $nakes, like the rest of the population, is bourgeois. That means that it is a class enemy of the Third World: the interests of the two groups are opposed.
Of course, individual bums, and for that matter individual billionaires, in the U$ may side with the Third World against imperialism. That does not, however, gainsay the fact that their CLASSES are enemies of the Third World. Only by BETRAYING those enemy classes, as Comrade John Brown betrayed his enemy nation, can these people ally themselves with the international proletariat. I don’t expect very many Amerikkkans of any status to leave the enemy camp. Even most Amerikkkan “communists” are First Worldists that objectively seek to perpetuate the imperialist exploitation of the Third World.
There is no “inner Third World” within the US, at least not in any significant sense. Such rhetoric is hyperbole used by First Worldists to justify social imperialism. The claim that conditions in the US are like those in the Third World is ridiculous.
There are plenty of exploiters who are “alienated,”whose lives are not perfect. The claim that anyone who doesn’t like their life is a potential proletarian revolutionary is the humanist thinking of the Avakian-Ely school, it is not Marxism. Marxism puts scientific class analysis at its center. Plus, such a position has no basis in historical fact. Rebellion in the US by these groups almost always takes the form of fascist and social imperialist rebellion, not socialist or anti-imperialist rebellion.
Those who are outside the “mainstream” US economy, who exist on the bottom rungs, are better described as a “lumpen bourgeoisie” or “lumpen petty-bourgeoisie,” rather than a “lumpern proletariat.”
Someone above lamented the plight of an Amerikkkan bum with money to buy beer. Beer is a luxury. People that can afford to consume significant amounts of luxuries are unlikely to be proletarian.
Also, the food that that bum buys is not going to be a bag of rice: most likely, it’s something from a restaurant. Again, a luxury.
Peter-Panism , or eternal youth ,eternal sexual virility and preservation of wealth and power has always been a dream of individualist ,and religious priest ideologists of the ruling classes ,either in this world or the next imaginary world . From Pharaohs burials to alchemists to kabala ,magic and medical charlatans encouraging ignorance so as to profit from elixer of life formulas etc. In some early slave societies burials of a noble might include burial of slaves and concubines too as servants for the next world.
So, this is not and individualist thing but the result of class society and its illusionary ideologies of eternal power and wealth .
For years in modern medicine this had its practicality in the international blood product industry where the poorest were are forced to sell their blood and its products to the rich first world.
Nowadays there is widespread drug testing and vaccination and contraceptive testing carried out on the worlds poor for the profits of the first world pharmaceutical drug companies .And now the body parts transplant industry for rich first worlders able to rob and plunder the actual bodies of third world people so as to improve their own health and longevity at third world peoples expense. Poor slum people are plundered by the rich Peter Pans from India to the Philippines and forced by their poverty to sell their body parts simply for survival. Palestinians today are much concerned about this body part trafficking transplant business and claim IDF military involvement in this class medicine of the first world ,organised under the system of ”Free Trade” Globalist anti-social privatised health systems .
There has been recent official comment about body transplants from executed prisoners in China too.
Religious groups like Falon Gong claim that this business in China also caters to rich international clients under “market socialism”.
For an historical perspective a short story of and unscientific ignorance and hope in old China
Lu Xun
Medicine
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lu-xun/1919/04/x01.htm
The international communist movement must be re-formed on a real scientific basis. The international proletariat cannot afford to be misled down the road of failure by First Worldists again. Today we are seeing the sad result of the First Worldists of the (defunct?)-RIM.
It is necessary to sweep away all the illusions. If First Worldists want to continue to toy around with building First World cults and liberal organizations, then they should get out of the game of calling themselves communist. They should not keep selling their pack of lies to Third World revolutionary organizations. To do so only helps the imperialists. First World sectarian ambition is not worth selling out the Third World masses.
There is a real communist alternative: Maoism-Third Worldism. And, we have momentum right now. Our works are read all over the world. We cannot allow it by allowing fence sitting and waffling. The stakes are too high.
I agree. I sometimes wonder what type of misleading bullshit has the ISO pack been selling to Puerto Rican socialists in all the years that they’ve had a branch down there. I’m Puerto Rican (Boricua) and I can tell you that the left there faces huge organizational problems, and that’s not even to speak of all the state repression they’ve endured.
It must be emphasized that First Worldism is by no means confined to the First World: most Third World “communist” organizations are also infested with First Worldist ideology. Whether they admit it or not, they look upon First World society as a model. They think that the Third World should “catch up” with the First World’s standard of living.
That sort of thinking ushers in revisionism. First Worldism in the CPSU helped to destroy the glorious Soviet Union. In the 1950s, the Chinese comrades made the First Worldist error of putting forward the slogan “Surpass England and catch up with the U$,” which both put profit rather than social needs in command and denied the parasitism of exploitation on which the English and U$ economies were and are based. The people’s war in Nepal was betrayed by First Worldist scum. Over and over again, the failure (refusal?) to view the First World–all of it–as the class enemy has set back the international communist movement. The divide between First Worldism and Third Worldism is the single most critical issue for the international communist movement today, much as the divide between Trotskyism and Bolshevism was the most critical issue decades ago.
I’m trying to figure out the essence of Maoist-Third Worldism, extrapolated from a lot of the verbiage put forth here:
1. Negation of the Theory of the Productive Forces
2. Primary contradiction is First World vs. Third World
3. The First World’s class composition is petite-bourgeois and grande bourgeois exploiters. There is no proletariat.
Things that we need to investigate:
#3. #1 and #2 are factually obvious. #3 is theoretically sound, but, we need empirical investigation into the following figures:
1. Profit generation within unequal exchange, international financial situation, fdi, .. etc vs. profit generation domestically
2. A review of the international ‘average’ wage that MSH uses as a ‘bar’ of exploitation, something around $4.20 an hour if I remember correctly. (This would mean much of Puerto Rico is exploited.) A more rigorous forumulation of this ‘bar’ is necessary.
Subjectivity:
1. I would argue that people do not ‘rebel’ out ‘exploitation’, out of an understanding of themselves being robbed, but, out of oppression: Oppression by a boss, oppression by the state, and so forth. How did so many West Germans struggle against the state for maintaining a non-military capacity, etc, etc, or even in support of the RAF? Serious state suppression of ‘the left’
2. Based on this, organizing against oppression in the FW is not counter-productive; organizing against black national oppression does not serve the interests of First World Imperialism, similarly organizing against women or gender oppression (As long as it is not linked to the FW myth of the super-oppressed Third World woman justifying Imperialism.); organizing against evictions of a tenant is neither reactionary; speaking of which..
Landlords and tenants; Land rent is a form of exploitation. Is the tenant of a landlord exploited by ground rent or not-exploited being offset by influx of profits from the Third World? The tenant may not be exploited at work, but, exploited by rent. Lenin spoke about the ‘rentification’ of the world. Any ideas?
Support for the RAF was tiny. They were highly marginalized. Most people within the “left” of the First World have never supported such groups. When the Weathermen went underground, they lost more support than they gained. And, as far as rebellion in the First World, it is almost never on an internationalist, proletarian basis. First World rebellion is almost always fascist and social imperialist. Occasionally, it will mix anti-imperialism in with its message, but the overriding direction is always First Worldist: higher wages, more and better leisure time, more privilege, etc.
First Worlders are not exploited, period. They are net-exploiters of the Third World. Proletarian revolutionaries generally don’t involve themselves in the fights between exploiters unless there is some way to channel that struggle to the advantage of the masses in the Third World. We do not involve ourselves is landlord versus tenant issues for the same reasons we don’t involve ourselves in the hostile takeover of one corporation by another. So what if one thief steals from another? In general, First World struggles are struggles between groups of people who are all principally exploiters and principally oppressors. Maoism-Third Worldism advocates for the vast majority of humanity exploited and oppressed in the Third World.
There are lots of organizations that spout a revolutionary rhetoric, but tail after the Democrats: WWP, Mike Helies, Bob Afakean, etc. It is important to break completely with the old, First Worldist “activist” mentality. Maoism-Third Worldism is something entirely different. Our path is our own.
Nah. I’ve been doing a lot of research on the RAF and the mass movement sprung around them. 25% of youth under 30 were sympathetic to them. That’s two or three million people at the time. Furthermore, at least a few hundred thousand participated in the political prisoners campaign around them. You did not answer any of my questions anyway. You hardly touched on it’s subject matter. The subject was OPPRESSION not exploitation. I _know_ that FW peoples are not exploited and are in fact _exploiters_. This is not in question. What is in question is a strategy to utilize domestic contradictions for the world-wide proletarian revolution- what kinds of oppression exists here in the U$A and how we can utilize that to the advantage of revolution-
Also a technical question on rent. Rent is exploitation. MSH has not talked much about Rent, mostly about surplus value extraction as exploitation.
Let’s see some evidence in support of the claim that 25% of young Germans were sympathetic to the RAF. That “sympathy” doesn’t seem to have translated into very much real action.
Signing a petition against political imprisonment does not a revolutionary make.
We’ve discussed rent below. It is not exploitation. Sorry, but spending your money does not make you exploited.
Support for the RAF in western Germoney was negligible. And even the marginal bit of organizing for “non-military capacity” in the First World is not necessarily progressive. Much of it revolves around reactionary ideas of keeping “our jobs” or using “our tax dollars” for the exclusive benefit of “our” parasitic asses.
We calculated $4.20 an hour as an UPPER BOUND on the value of average socially necessary labor-power. Even in our first article on the subject, we said that the true value was probably substantially lower, for various reasons (among which the fact that not all of production can be distributed for private consumption: much has to go into infrastructure, future production, social services, and other social projects).
It’s possible that many people in occupied Boricua are exploited. I haven’t checked the data lately, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
I’m not sure which passage in Lenin you have in mind, but “rent” in that context refers not to payment for the use of land but to profit in general. Land rent is not a form of exploitation. It can count as exploitation in a feudal or semi-feudal situation in which peasants have to turn over much of their agricultural production to a landlord, as they commonly do in India and many other parts of the Third World. But rent paid for an apartment or whatever is not exploitation. Let’s remember our Marxism 101: exploitation is the extraction of surplus value. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with charging rent: people in most socialist and pseudo-socialist countries generally had to pay rent (or else mortgage payments), although the amounts were tiny by First World standards. Housing does cost money, you know. We could do away with rent under socialism, but then we’d just have to lower wages.
There are lots of struggles that may not be reactionary in their own right but that nonetheless don’t really concern us. We would not ordinarily get involved in blocking the eviction of a bourgeois tenant by a bourgeois landlord in the First World; we have more important, and more progressive, things to do. Note too that some struggles that may look progressive on the surface have a reactionary aspect. The current efforts to achieve a single-payer health-care system in the united $nakes are an example: although “progressive” rhetoric says that “no one should go without health care,” what it really means is that no AMERIKKKAN should go without health care. Health care in the united $nakes is paid for largely by the Third World proletariat. We don’t choose to get involved in this issue, just as we don’t tell pirates how to divide up their booty.
The tenant may not be exploited at work, but, exploited by rent. Lenin spoke about the ‘rentification’ of the world. Any ideas?
2mv – September 2, 2009 at 6:12 pm
STP said: “I’m not sure which passage in Lenin you have in mind, but “rent” in that context refers not to payment for the use of land but to profit in general. Land rent is not a form of exploitation. It can count as exploitation in a feudal or semi-feudal situation in which peasants have to turn over much of their agricultural production to a landlord, as they commonly do in India and many other parts of the Third World. But rent paid for an apartment or whatever is not exploitation. Let’s remember our Marxism 101: exploitation is the extraction of surplus value. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with charging rent:”
On rents: STP may be right about not being concerned about fights between first world pigs. However one way or another rent revenues are derived from exploited surplus value and the primary source of that surplus value may be in the third world .Capitalism is a total system and surplus value is extracted and re- distributed amongst the capitalist and landlord classes in other ways besides directly in industrial and capitalist farming production . Rents interest/dividends too. But, it is not Marxism 101 that land rent is not a form of exploitation except in feudal or semi feudal states.
Rents ,especially land rents is a subject of great importance to Third World peoples who mostly live in agricultural societies. Marx not only developed a theory of surplus value ,but a theory of money and on the nature of rents too as the extraction of surplus value by capital .
What keeps small farmers and tenants
impoverished for example in the third world , even in a capitalist farming economy is according to Marxism a result of property and rents and the prices they the big landowners get for their produce on the most fertile lands , benefiting
the owners of the best lands and not just feudal land owners.
“Agricultural products are therefore sold at prices corresponding to the cost of the output that has been produced under the conditions of production prevailing on inferior plots of land, i. e., higher than the overall price of production.” Revisionist era economic dictionary
http://leninist.biz/en/1985/DOPE397/Absolute.Rent
Marx on the Gotha program points to property (and therefore rents N.A.A) as the underlying basis of capitalist society too.
“In present-day society, the instruments of labor are the monopoly of the landowners (the monopoly of property in land is even the basis of the monopoly of capital) and the capitalists. In the passage in question, the Rules of the International do not mention either one or the other class of monopolists. They speak of the “monopolizer of the means of labor, that is, the sources of life.” The addition, “sources of life”, makes it sufficiently clear that land is included in the instruments of labor. “
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
Capital Vol. III
Part VI. Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent
Extract:
The fact that capitalised ground-rent appears as the price or value of land, so that land, therefore, is bought and sold like any other commodity, serves some apologists as a justification for landed property since the buyer pays an equivalent for it, the same as for other commodities; and the major portion of landed property has changed hands in this way. The same reason in that case would also serve to justify slavery, since the returns from the labour of the slave, whom the slave-holder has bought, merely represent the interest on the capital invested in this purchase. To derive a justification for the existence of ground-rent from its sale and purchase means in general to justify its existence by its existence. ..
Another source says :
“Rent is the revenue extracted by landowners for use of their property. Since only labour-power creates new value, rent represents a claim to a proportion of the social surplus.”
For Marxists, the various revenues accruing the various sections of the capitalist class and their hangers-on, such as rent, interest, licences, as well as charges accruing to government, such as tax, land-rates and so on, are all simply means of distributing the surplus-value which is extracted from the working class in the process of production.
http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/r/e.htm
However in addition to production mentioned above there is also apartments rents ,housing mortgages etc that function in the redistribution of surplus value to property owners -to investors of capital.
As for rents and Leninism as raised by 2mv Lenin spoke of rentier states of imperialism.
A revisionist era dictionary of economics says:
http://leninist.biz/en/1985/DOPE397/Rentiers
http://leninist.biz/en/1985/DOPE397/Absolute.Rent
The link on this site to the entry on differential rent forms appears not to work.
The rental income of the owner of an apartment building in the First World does indeed represent surplus value–but the surplus value is created not by the First World tenant but by the Third World.
Think of it this way: the rich landlord may stay at a hotel in midtown Manhattan for $1000 a night, but that rent is not surplus value that he created, and he is not exploited for paying it.
Comrade STP you seemed to have missed the point I raised on the revolutionary importance of Marxs Theory of Rent , as exploitation of surplus value to the third world peoples. The apartment rent is only a small part. The point I attempted to make, in my usual longwinded way , was about Rent as exploitation of surplus value in the countryside and not only in a feudal society, but in capitalist society too. And that Marx’s theory of rent as exploitation of surplus value is a central part of Marxist economic theory .As important to the third world peasantry and small farmers as Marx’s revolutionary theory of surplus value to the industrial working class.
Quote your view : “ Land rent is not a form of exploitation. It can count as exploitation in a feudal or semi-feudal situation in which peasants have to turn over much of their agricultural production to a landlord,”..
Marx after concrete investigation of the capitalism of his time, the whole capitalist system and society, industrial production and agricultural production , the services sector etc. and the existing property based relations of production and wealth distribution , developed and proved a theory of surplus value a s the source of all capitalist profit ,this had revolutionary significance necessarily leading to the theory of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That without revolution , the wageworkers as a class were condemned forever under capitalist relations of production to exploitation, to getting paid only the value of their labour power ,with the capitalists seizing the unpaid for surplus value they created for free as their profit , as their property right.
Of equal significance to small farmers , Marx’s theory of rent explains how the capitalist relations of production and exploitation of the small owners and peasantry works in the countryside too , condemning the poor third world peoples to poverty forever just like the industrial proletariat “A much more general and important fact, however, is the depression of the actual farm-labourer’s wage below its normal average” Forcing them to live at subsistence or near subsistence income levels just like the industrial proletariat . Those who can afford it , if lucky, get only marginal land ,or to pay rent to landlords as property right and can be exploited forever for surplus value and by depressing the price of their labours product. Therefore this economic analysis in Marxist theory of rent explains the necessity of a revolutionary class alliance of workers and peasants against bourgeois property relations and against capitalism in the third world not just feudalist rents. Marxists in industrial societies tended to only pay attention to and see
exploitation of the industrial proletariat. And some may still view that industrial form of surplus value as being the important bit to focus on . But in the predominantly agricultural third world where the majority of the third world, it is the poverty creating rent and property relations in their world for exploiting surplus value from them that is what is important to them in their everyday lives.
I refer again to Marx’s actual theory of rent exploitation under capitalism and for third wordlists to consider its significance in the era of imperialism and revolution against imperialist exploitation of the third world and of the necessity of the fight for national independence for achieving food security
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch37.htm
Trotskyists and revisionists took this fixation on the western industrial proletariat and industrial surplus value to the extreme with their idea that the backward nations could only be liberated at the hands of the advanced industrial nation workers ,And that revolution and socialism were impossible without first developing the productive forces and that capitalism was necessarily the best for that ,they claim .(as Deng did later in China. But, capitalism will inevitably and spontaneously again develop out of small land ownership commodity production in the countryside. )
Yet socialist revolution has broken out in the weak links of imperialism Russia ,China etc. and then proceeded to create industrial development and collective and socialist relations of production under the dictatorship of the proletariat AND peasantry , revolutionising the relations of production in the countryside too, in struggles not only against feudal land ownership and for land reform , but then moved on to socialising and nationalising the land.
Why? What was the economic basis of that class alliance against CAPITALISM and for socialism in the countryside , if non- feudal rents capitalist rents and property relations are indeed non exploitative ? That view is only a recipe for capitalist land reform not socialism. Even capitalists can carry that out, divide up the land with more bourgeois equality(as in the French Revolution or even by the U$ imperialists in Japan after ww2) with the bourgeois pretence that capitalism by getting rid of feudal relations is the only progress required as rent exploitation has disappeared with feudalism and democratic capitalist relations of production won in the countryside . Mao famously listed his achievements to the effect of ( I do not remember the exact words) 1. carrying out land reform 2 leading the fight and achieving victory in armed struggle for national independence , by getting rid of the imperialist agent Chiang .But with the question of winning socialism still as yet undecided.
Marx said:” Landed property is based on the monopoly by certain persons over definite portions of the globe, as exclusive spheres of their private will to the exclusion of all others.[26] With this in mind, the problem is to ascertain the economic value, that is, the realisation of this monopoly on the basis of capitalist production. With the legal power of these persons to use or misuse certain portions of the globe, nothing is decided.”
Under imperialist /globalism with the imperialists owning huge productive farms (mostly stolen free land )using the best machinery ,technology etc with free trade competition and subsidised food produced
international dumping price wars and by using derivative speculators control of the worlds food markets , this forces even small efficient land owners in the third world to get only low, below production costs prices , for their produce. As Marx explains. will occur by his theory of land rent.
This explains the need for national independence for food security and to get out of poverty it is an economic necessity for the agricultural proletariat and poorer peasantry to unite with the working class in the third world against capitalism and not just against feudalist rents and property relations.
Comrade STP you seemed to have missed the point I raised on the revolutionary importance of Marxs Theory of Rent , as exploitation of surplus value to the third world peoples. The apartment rent is only a small part. The point I attempted to make, in my usual longwinded way , was about Rent as exploitation of surplus value in the countryside and not only in a feudal society, but in capitalist society too. And that Marx’s theory of rent as exploitation of surplus value is a central part of Marxist economic theory .As important to the third world peasantry and small farmers as Marx’s revolutionary theory of surplus value to the industrial working class.
Quote: “ Land rent is not a form of exploitation. It can count as exploitation in a feudal or semi-feudal situation in which peasants have to turn over much of their agricultural production to a landlord,”..
Marx after concrete investigation of the capitalism of his time, the whole capitalist system and society, industrial production and agricultural production , the services sector etc. and the existing property based relations of production and wealth distribution , developed and proved a theory of surplus value a s the source of all capitalist profit ,this had revolutionary significance necessarily leading to the theory of the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That without revolution , the wageworkers as a class were condemned forever under capitalist relations of production to exploitation, to getting paid only the value of their labour power ,with the capitalists seizing the unpaid for surplus value they created for free as their profit , as their property right.
Of equal significance to small farmers , Marx’s theory of rent explains how the capitalist relations of production and exploitation of the small owners and peasantry works in the countryside too , condemning the poor third world peoples to poverty forever just like the industrial proletariat “A much more general and important fact, however, is the depression of the actual farm-labourer’s wage below its normal average” Forcing them to live at subsistence or near subsistence income levels just like the industrial proletariat . Those who can afford it , if lucky, get only marginal land ,or to pay rent to landlords as property right and can be exploited forever for surplus value and by depressing the price of their labours product. Therefore this economic analysis in Marxist theory of rent explains the necessity of a revolutionary class alliance of workers and peasants against bourgeois property relations and against capitalism in the third world not just feudalist rents. Marxists in industrial societies tended to only pay attention to and see
exploitation of the industrial proletariat. And some may still view that industrial form of surplus value as being the important bit to focus on . But in the predominantly agricultural third world where the majority of the third world, it is the poverty creating rent and property relations in their world for exploiting surplus value from them that is what is important to them in their everyday lives.
I refer again to Marx’s actual theory of rent exploitation under capitalism and for third wordlists to consider its significance in the era of imperialism and revolution against imperialist exploitation of the third world and of the necessity of the fight for national independence for achieving food security
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch37.htm
History was once the history of class struggles but as the US is lacking a proletariat it cannot evolve and change, as it is fixed metaphysically in the heavenly firmament forever without possibility of any class struggle in the future emerging ,even between its petty bourgeois and big bourgeoisie who are united in perfect ideological harmony in divvying up their appointed classes fixed shares in consuming wealth from the third world and the bourgeoisie will be able to bribe its L.A. forever as the Third world will always be willing to deliver up its surplus value in exchange for rag paper .Never be able to have any effect by its military resistance to resources theft either ,or in cutting off the level of bribes to the LA. From transferred surplus value. The debt crisis and near economic meltdown last year and the resultant green shoots of recovery proves this is so. Stable system ,stable classes no class struggle forever amen!!
Material interests on which these old ideologies of class of kkk unity of the white settlers and labour aristocracy with the imperialist U$ bourgeoisie have evolved but can never diverge ,therefore the petty bourgeois can never evolve different ideologies based on a separate class interest.
Should we only recognize the “solidarity of unanimity” and that is as “hard as a rock.” Unity between the petty bourgeois and big bourgeois . And that unanimity is the “motive force of social development.” Thereby declaring formally an end to U$ history. That is of class struggle?
This recognizes only the unanimity of solidarity but not the contradictions within a society, nor that contradiction is the motive force of social development. Once it is put this way, the law of the universality of contradiction is denied, the laws of dialectics are suspended. Without contradictions there is no movement, yet society has always developed through the movement of class struggle in contradictions over material class interests.
In one period of history the bourgeoisie achieved its dominant position, its rule over the petty bourgeois and the working class ,as in the French revolution, not only in the struggle against the feudal aristocracy but also in chopping up the property rights of petty bourgeois and feudal peasantry ,so as to achieve a capitalist farming mode of production . Before and after the revolution . Class struggle actually occurred between these classes with hardly an ideological role by the small proletariat at that time
As for me I see a class struggle easily developing between the dominant now failed “free trade” imperialist financial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeois and L. A. .That contradiction could easily take the form of a struggle for protectionism and isolationism, over material class interests , the need for real jobs and incomes and re- industriaisation by an LA. that has mighty ,often racist illusions ,on its own amerikan workers wealth creating ability the superior productivity of it labour of amerikan industry etc. As the third world is oppressed by that “ free trade” globalist system of U$ imperialism this could be a good thing . A developing class contradiction the proletariat can exploit to help to move the free trade globalists off their back?
Protectionism is linked by the free trade bourgeois with its own racist ideologies , but need that be always the case ? As Joseph Ball says in the UK “The recent mass strikes in the UK calling for ‘British jobs for British workers’ were not carried out by people who objected to the diet, dress habits or accents of foreign workers. The question was over pay and maintaining privilege” .
What is in the interest of the third world proletariat today ? Globalism? “Free trade “ or encouraging movements for protectionism and independence for national development everywhere ?
Marx thought it was better for Communists generally to support ‘free trade’ over protectionism, because it would more swiftly and clearly make the contradictions in capitalism visible. But I think it is quite possible he was wrong, since protectionism can often function as a shield against foreign exploitation, and allows indigenous development based on local needs and opportunities, which is an important part of the process of socialization of an economy. In my opinion, it is probably proper to support free trade within the First World (although things like ‘fair trade’ are obviously still better), but not so in the Third.
Martin is right “Fair Trade” is a better concept , but imperialist domination of world trade under the dollar hegemony tries to ensure that will never happen till imperialism is dead. . The third world must fight for national independence and mutual help aid if there is to be progress for humanity with fair trade and mutual aid.
Thus we see unity building in the third world for anti-imperialist mutual aid E.G Catholic Venezuela finding unity in struggle against the great Satan and the sulphurous Bush stink that Chavez found in the UN with Iran .Unity in struggle of Venezuela with an independent ,after an armed anti imperialist Islamic revolution , Iran on the other side of the world. Sure they are both countries where anti imperialist national bourgeois is dominant but that is still progress .
The will of humanities justice supporting gods ,gods created by humanity, it seems are expressing themselves and their human dreams and ideals no longer in Hebrew or the English of the King James protestant bible or even in the tongue of the amerikkkans bourgeoisies Supreme Being, But humanities gods of justice , having now moved to the third world ,are now mutually understood in Catholic
Venezuelan Spanish and Muslim Persian .They are both saying ‘unite the third world to cut down on the transfer of surplus value to the first world “ Fair trade O.K.! In one tongue it appears human progress is pronounced as fair trade and social justice and in the other as internationalist Shia Jihad for solidarity with the worlds oppressed .
http://politicaltheatrics.org/2009/09/05/ahmadinejad-chavez-vow-to-back-revolutionary-nations/
Free trade has been the official dogma of progress of the dominant bourgeoisie since Adam Smiths day.
There is no fixed permanent Marxist “ line” on free trade . Marx in 1848 was mainly discussing food security in England the dominant country in the whole world trade at that time. Marx may have been right at that time, to support free trade when capitalism was still seen as a progressive force bringing railways to India and revolutionising the old mode of production everywhere in the world . As described in n the Communist Manifesto printed at about the same time. That progressive view of capitalism , is no longer the case in the world today when a now reactionary capitalist imperialism impedes the industrial development of most countries in the third world and dominates the world food markets
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/01/09ft.htm
Yet in 1888 Engels again discusses the historical conditions at the time of Marx’s speech , but by
then Engels was actually cheering for protectionism in America. While claiming that “absurd” protectionism was destroying and impeding Germanys economic development . What was perceived as in the interest of the working class was the deciding factor on attitude to ’free trade” or protectionism
by Marx and Engels in the concrete conditions.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1888/free-trade/index.htm
Well I would like to see a bit of “absurd” anti globalist protectionism and isolationism rise in amerikkka today as a result of a spiralling out of control debt crisis. A movement that can be led by smarter nationalists in fighting the free trade bourgeoisie of globalism for jobs, with the demand to re-industrialise amerika and by reactionaries desperate to restore their amerikan DREAM.
Bring it on ideological dumbos ! Especially the isolationism that is rising as a reaction to the trillion dollar cost of imperialist free trade militarism and its foreign wars. That would be much better than the “free trade” Obamaites of the Democrat “left” who are expanding wars everywhere from Pakistan to drones in Somalia on behalf of the finance capitalist globalist bourgeoisie.
Isolationists and protectionists of America should be encouraged .
The third world will love you!
Yankee go home.
I agree. Third World countries would generally be better off if they set up protectionist regimes to limit or eliminate imperialist exploitation: they would keep surplus value within their economies, and the imperialist countries would lose sources of superprofits. That’s an example of a progressive demand of the national bourgeoisie–as opposed to the comprador bourgeoisie, which is aligned with imperialism.
MSH if you decide to use this comment supporting amerikan protectionism above ,please adjust the name “martin” in the first line of the comment
to Matthijs .
And I have already told you i am never offended if you do not use my comments and you may edit or shorten them to suit your own purposes. Its your blog.
To “not an atom” above:
You’re right that your prolix comments are hard to read. Since our principal task at this point is to correct the First Worldist rot in the international “communist” movement by educating progressive leaders (mainly in the Third World) about Maoism-Third Worldism, we should strive for clarity in our writing. You would do very well to organize your thoughts better before taking up the pen. Consider deciding which main point you intend to make and then sketching out the structure of your argument. Sometimes I reread your messages and still cannot tell what exactly you had in mind to prove.
Clarity of writing is part of our responsibility as revolutionaries. In his speech “Oppose Stereotyped Party Writing,” Comrade Mao explained the importance of effective communication and the drawbacks of obscurantist practices.
Your comments above seem to say that I have neglected the exploitative nature of rent charged for the use of farmland under semi-feudal conditions. I have not: I spoke to this issue in my very first message here on the subject of rent. It’s quite relevant in, say, India but irrelevant in the First World, where the renting of agricultural land is a thing of the past (as are sharecropping, slavery, and similar practices that reek of pre-capitalism). The question about rent seemed to pertain to housing in the First World. That does NOT constitute exploitation.
We often get questions from people that claim that people in the First World are “exploited” because prices are allegedly too high. Those questions only underscore the appalling decadence of the First World, where people are so accustomed to shopping and so unaccustomed to production. As I said above, exploitation does not occur at the cash register.
I agree with comrade Serve the People.
I don’t understand the point “not an atom” is trying to make. If “not an atom” is asserting that rent in the First World countries constitutes a form of exploitation of First World peoples, then she is wrong. Comrade Serve the People has already explained the difference between rent in the exploiter countries and rent in the exploited countries.
The question on whether rents were exploitative or not was raised by 2MV who claimed ‘Land rent is a form of exploitation…and… Lenin spoke about the ‘rentification’ of the world. Any ideas?”
And ..“Also a technical question on rent. Rent is exploitation. MSH has not talked much about Rent, mostly about surplus value extraction as exploitation.”
Comrade STP usually does a very good job of defending the third world, the major source of value and surplus value imported to the First World and showing the First world ’worker” is in fact a decadent unexploited labour aristocrat. STP denied that apartment rents under first world conditions of capitalism were exploitative.
Bur also denied that rents were exploitative at all under capitalism.
“Land rent is not a form of exploitation. It can count as exploitation in a feudal or semi-feudal situation ..and … Let’s remember our Marxism 101: exploitation is the extraction of surplus value. In principle, there’s nothing wrong with charging rent:”
It seems that STP“in principal” only recognises capitalist surplus value exploitation in the industrial worker form? So I am having trouble getting thru on imperialist predatory food trade exploitation for surplus value too. In fact, I myself mostly avoided above the discussion of apartment rents in the first world etc (Quote I said: On rents: STP may be right about not being concerned about fights between first world pigs)
So I concentrated on the “rentier” bit 2MV raised. But, concentrated especially on the effect of agricultural rents on third world agricultural peoples ,by claiming that Marx’s Theory of rent was exploitation of surplus value in all class societies ,feudal ,semi feudal OR capitalist society and that this was central to Marxist Economic theory. So as that, was not simply put as my own opinion ,but as Marx’s own theory 101 on rents ,that required a little “stereotyped Party writing” . Quotations from the man himself. Stressing the effects of rent on agriculture under capitalism too.
STP replied defensively as if I was not restating Marxism on rent exploitation in CAPITALISM but perhaps only talking with my “pro amerikan” hat on and simply nit picking, criticising STP for neglecting exploitative rent in semi-feudal conditions. Something I never even discussed ,except to say it was all exploitative, just like any rent paid to property titleholders, just because they had dead past labour value invested as capital . ’It costs money you know” as STP puts it.
But as STP believes capitalist rent is not exploitative and agricultural rent has even disappeared in the first world she /he is unable to see that I was even talking about .Capitalist rents. and their effects on the agricultural third world.
STP says: “Your comments above seem to say that I have neglected the exploitative nature of rent charged for the use of farmland under semi-feudal conditions. I have not: I spoke to this issue in my very first message here on the subject of rent. It’s quite relevant in, say, India but irrelevant in the First World, where the renting of agricultural land is a thing of the past.”
Rent of agricultural land with the rise of agro biz capitalist farming taking over the land in the First World , has it seems Become a thing of the past and has disappeared in the First World along with its sharecroppers form. Supposedly Agro – biz now gets the land free?
But, we see land in the first world still has a value and Agro- biz actually has to purchase or lease it. According to Marx “The price of land is of course nothing more than capitalised rent. Even in the case of cultivated lands, it is only future rents that are paid for in their price”. So if land value still exists so must rents?
So someone must be returning back the investment of constant capital in the land titles and if it is not the sharecroppers paying the rent now who is?
Marx’s land rent theory under capitalism shows how the third world poor, not the displaced sharecropper of the F.W. now pay the rent , as well as subsidising all the profits of F.W.Agrobiz . Marxist theory of rent and resulting “market price” shows why small, even capitalist, agricultural producers on inferior land ,or unable to compete with the technically superior machinery and mass production of large scale agro-biz get screwed . That profits obtained by these First World Agrobiz corporations ,who are monopolising portions of the globe best lands and dominating the world food markets and prices , with often state subsidised exports ,are robbing the third world.
So their monopoly profit (after paying land costs or rent) is not so much now obtained by exploiting their own first world sharecroppers or workers farm labour,(labour aristocrats) but , are primarily obtained by exploiting surplus value transferred from third world agricultural working people .Who are forced to sell their own product competitively in “free trade’ at market prices .and in unequal trade valuations of exports of cash crops , often below the cost of production, returning only subsistence proletarian levels of existence. Under neo colonialism this suppression of local food prices to below subsistence levels forces many countries to turn to export of wealth cash crops for capitalism as the only way they have to try and afford food. But that’s another trap that enables agrobiz to monopoly price the food supply even more.
So ,what’s my longwinded point? Apart from trying to get people to study Marx’s theory of rent.
MTWists and third world peoples should understand it is the capitalist exploitation of surplus value by ‘market price” of the predominately agricultural third world COUNTRYSIDE that creates the necessity of anti-imperialist PEOPLES wars for national independence for food security and survival .
And should not only just see the exportation of surplus value in third world industry as the only , or main form of third world exploitation for surplus value . Marx’s theory of rent explains the form of how that capitalist exploitation in agriculture takes place. It is often somewhat invisible exploitation in surface appearance, because hidden in the Market Price. Just as exploitation of wage workers is hidden in the surface appearance of the wages system form of wages, with the appearance that the wageworker gets paid the full value of his labour power. Marxist analysis shows a different reality.
The industrial proletariat in the third world is often very small numerically in many countries. But not so, the agricultural and urban proletarian masses forced to live at subsistence levels by capitalism. With food costs forming a large proportions of their living costs out of their incomes of a dollar or two a day.
It is the cost of surplus value that they deliver up to agrobiz for food that effect their everyday life the most. Talking say to an unemployed slum dweller(paying capitalist rents too) , in say Columbia ,about industrial exploitation of an industrial worker in distant Vietnam, who actually has a job ,may not seem very important to him/her. Explaining how he is being ripped of in food prices everyday is very important to her and shows the practical need for revolution. You might say this is the MSH main “market” so MTWists should be very clear on the nature and effects of rent exploitation including from capitalist rent in the third world food markets.
Here is a Marx on differential rent discussing how “market price” is cooked up after a discussion on production price. ‘The production price of the worst soil that yields no rent is always the governing market price.”….So any price and that can be got above or even below that local subsistence price in the competition that gets a profit by more efficient First World agrobiz is surplus value extraction for jam.
Part VI Vol 3 Transformation of Surplus-Profit into Ground-Rent
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch39.htm
The big landowners, today monopolising the best lands and lowest cost of production are first world AgroBiz creating a whole world of agricultural poverty , mainly resulting from the system of neo-colonialism and the fruits of the capitalist land rents system of surplus value exploitation , that keeps the predominately agricultural third world poor . Armed struggle against exploitative semi feudal rents, as in China will help, and is urgent and necessary but, will not solve the basic problem ,of imperialist agrobiz food exploitation . Only national independence, collectivist socialism in agriculture and protectionism, against predatory imperialist Agrobiz for food security, can.
I’m late to this debate so I’m playing catch up.
On surplus value;
when I was a member of a neo-Trotskyist group in the 1980’s it was argued that a worker in the service sector may not actually produce surplus value but that they facilitate it’s production by assisting others. So now, as a worker in the transport industry, in theory I help to facilitate surplus value by helping people get to and from their workplaces. The only problem with this idea is that 97% of the people I assist on their way to work don’t produce surplus value either. It seems that workers in Britain and elsewhere in the First World are so far removed from the production process as to make the foregoing neo-Trotskyist argument defunct.
One caveat to what I’ve just said. It could be argued that you don’t actually have to produce anything physically to produce surplus value. If a group of hotel workers get paid 150 pounds, dollars or whatever to service a guest who then pays 200 for his/her stay then haven’t those workers produced surplus value? (obviously this takes place in the wider context of where the guest’s 200 units of currency came from in the first place).
Some of the ideas expressed in the debate are very similar to the work of the Marxist sociologist Nicos Poulantzas. I wonder whether MSH and their allies have read him. I also wonder (if he’s still alive) what Poulantzas would say about Maoism Third Worldism given that according to his theory the direct creation of surplus value is what defines the working class and as we can agree, this takes place almost entirely in the Third World today.
Trotskyists specialise in convincing anyone with a wages form of income that they are exploited “workers” even if they are not actually a part of the working class. This is their ‘Marxism” and services to the Labour aristocrats and petty bourgeois class . Their historical and current social base .
Marx defines productive labour under capitalism “as that labour that is directly exchanged with capital Not ,that labour “that is exchanged for revenue”. Marx differentiated between the spheres of non material and material production and between non-productive and productive labour . Under capitalism ‘That labour alone is productive who produces surplus value for the capitalist ,and thus works for the self-expansion of apital” .But that ‘the urge to define productive and non-productive labour on the strength of its material content” ..was a manifestation of commodity fetishism.
It seems then. that Poulantzas was basicaly agreeing with Marx on this point, at that time.
Marx , counted transportation of raw materials and commodity transportation as an integral part of the material production process itself. Adding value if only by a change of place from the commodities point of production to distant markets. Where, it then enters the sphere of distribution where profits are realised as cash .
Merchant capital and independent transport contractors may take this transport part of the productive process out of the hands of the manufacturing capitalists, thereby saving on costs by efficiency ,in return for a cut in the share of the surplus value created in industrial production, integrating the transportation , as part of the distribution of commodities in the wholesale and retail sectors .
Similarly, I suppose ,efficient transportation of PRODUCTIVE workers to their workplace could be considered a necessary part of the production process ,facilitating efficient labour supply and extraction of surplus value from these workers and in the reproduction of the necessary conditions for capitalisms existence and profit making.
Concrete analysis is required because while individual concrete labour creates use values these use -values are valued as abstract labour -the amount of socially necessary labour time expended in their creation- It’s not sufficient to declare all people movers ,as wages income earners are all productive workers , part of the production value creation process,because Marx counted transportation of materials as part of the production process.
E.G. As for transportation of service workers to their workplaces .Well they may create use values in services and exchange their services at their value . But they ,the service workers do not create surplus value . They simply exchange their services for revenues at their value. Even if their services may even leave a definite useful result in consumption . At the sale of the service to the consumer the use value ,if not embodied in a material form ,disappears ,but not its value . Its value acquires a money form and remains in that form even after the service has been consumed and the service has ceased.
But, transportation of these service workers to workplaces, or of shoppers does not add to the creation of new value for society .Nor , in the transportation of tourists , they are simply consuming value and the bus driver is exchanging his services for revenue ,in exchange for a material result ,the people are moved from here to there , a valuable service.
Some government workers may be contributing necessary labour for ensuring the necessary conditions for the smooth everyday functioning of capitalist society FOR the ruling class, for the reproduction of capitalist society , but they too create no surplus value and are a tax burden on the workers.
So ,say , government workers may pay fares to and from work ,but as their incomes are derived from government tax revenues , the transport worker is exchanging his bus driver labour for revenues in the hands of unproductive government workers. But may, in that process help his/her boss to make a profit. Therefore it is productive labour for capital and capitalism ,even if it is not productive from the whole of human societies viewpoint. That is ,the labour expended on the service and the profits that are derived from that are simply part of the overall (sometimes indirect) distribution of surplus value shared out amongst the whole parasitical capitalist class.
But, as this sharing out of surplus value amongst the capitalist class goes on ,it is also necessary to consider its original value and surplus value sources and analysis of capitalist profit flows in the First World shows they are primarily sourced in the Third World , gained by exploiting “cheap”, because underpaid wage labour ,even if the surplus values indirect distribution,may , provide a high wage for a productive for capital first world bus driver. Who may be paid a wages subsidy by the capitalist class above the value of the services she provides .
For more clarity on this see Marx himself.
Theories of Productive and Unproductive Labour
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch04.htm
I would like to go back to the discussions about anarchists and the Red Army Faction.
Many anarchists I know seek to live as far outside the system as possible. They do this by exercising the kind of frugality and co-operation which all First Worlders may have to adopt to survive in the future either as a result of environmental changes or Third World liberation. I’m talking about things like skipping (dumpster diving), squatting, organising free shops and free food distribution. Whilst I would admit there is a strong element of sub-cultural lifestylism in all this, there is also a degree of consciousness concerning Third World exploitation and the environment.
Whilst I understand some of MSH’s reticence towards armed struggle it is clear that in several First World countries a culture of direct action is developing in which individuals and cells are engaging in small scale vandalism (graffiti, gluing locks etc.) graduating on to window smashing, arson and (literally) improvised explosive devices. The origins of much of these tactics seem to stem from the animal rights cause but have found their way into many other radical movements; e.g. environmentalism, anti-fascism and anti-imperialism. Concerning the latter, attacks on army recruitment centres in the US and (in one case) the sabotaging of two helicopters on the production line may only be pinpricks but they add up; and at a time when the military were struggling to fill their recruiting quotas for their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and when helicopters are being shot down in battle, such attacks can surely be seen as complementing the anti-imperialist struggle. Similarly many of the so called ‘eco-terrorist’ attacks target the same corporations who are in the front line of Third World exploitation.
Whilst not engaging in this kind of thing myself I do find it encouraging that others are prepared to take such action and I think their efforts should be seen as positive.