MAX BOUND
Marxism, as an analytical, tool can help to provoke creative thinking in terms of how we might develop ideas and actions to create a world in which peace, creativity, tolerance, democratic procedures ecological sustainability and equitable distribution of wealth are major features.
Economic and Ecological Crises, the Change Vector and Marx
Both major political parties remain bogged in the mire of a political, economic ideology that is designed to concentrate power in the hands of a few corporation chiefs, namely the economic fundamentalism of neo-liberalism. True the February 2009 Rudd essay admits that “ … the great neo-liberal experiment of the past 30 years has failed”. However, Labor Leader Rudd, as well as refusing to effectively take on the polluting corporations that contribute heavily to climate change, avoids confronting the Labor Party’s key role in introducing deregulation and other neo-liberal policies in Australia. His essay, strangely enough, admits his purpose as being “to save capitalism from itself.”
Rudd’s actions include continuing to subsidise major polluters at the expense of the public purse. The Rudd-Gillard so called Fair Work Act, second only to Howard’s Work Choices in recent times legislative expression of anti union anti worker bias, is another bad omen.
The collective strength of Trade Unions, with what J.K. Galbraith called their “civilising influence “ on the market economy based system, has been vital to the success of many struggles for people’s rights. The erosion of union strength is now being pursued in the legislative actions of current leaders of the party that the Unions founded – namely the Labor Party.
Part of the way out of this political mire is finding ways to unite two currently divided victims of the Corporation’s relentless drive for more profit and power, namely environmental activists and unions. Examining attitudes towards the role of much of currently practiced science and what the ‘Change Vector’ in deciding our future needs to be are essential aspects of finding acceptable and workable alternatives to our present course.
The Change Vector Issue
In his “Challenging the Change Vector in Left Progressivism” a paper delivered to the Hobart, April 2008, SEARCH Round Table Dr. Peter Hay calls on the left to re-examine several aspects of left progressivism and uncritical or determinist attitudes towards science and technology. He makes the point that – “the fact of climate change powerfully challenges the core progressivist belief in the technology – fuelled, eternally- upward vector of change.”
Several years earlier in his “Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought” Hay had written “Western civilisation’s basic stance towards non-human nature stems from the value position of mechanistic science that untrammelled intervention in biophysical processes is appropriate and justifiable”. Hay challenged this position and agreed with Biggins 1979 that far from being value free “…scientific knowledge is laden with values and via such values it motivates certain lines of activity in the world.” Hay then records Biggins argument that human actions need to be based on values derived from knowing the world. “ If there is continuity… an ethic is needed that takes into account the subjective as well as the objective reality of other living things.” (Hay P 2002 p135)
On page 155 and several later pages Hay writes about person-place relationships. He notes different approaches, as between individual Marxist geographers on this issue. Agreeing with the American Marxist geographer – David Harvey’s view of person-place relationships as being matters of importance Hay discusses “Marxist explanations for the commodification of space “. This discussion brings out the connections between various capitalist’s abilities to acquire control of particular spaces for the purpose of private profit and “the alienation and obliteration of place”. There are many examples of how this happens and, among other things, leaves at least many of us saddened by the physical obliteration of a fond memory.
Profit from Place Destruction
Re-reading Hay brings to mind that just a few kilometres to the South East of Hobart there is currently a dispute about a proposed development at Ralphs Bay. This particular issue highlights the sheer stupidity of a system that gives serious consideration to projects that are based purely on a schemata for the developer to make short term profit.
This is a scheme that, if it proceeds, would leave the cashed up victims, to say nothing of current residents, relying on the public purse to try and rescue them from their folly and the folly of Governments and approving bureaucrats. The effects of rising sea levels and the effect on several native species are issues. There is also a history of a previous, long silted up and closed, canal that sort to connect the Derwent Estuary with Frederick Henry Bay a hundred or so metres to the East at that point. The difference in tide times and in water levels was much more powerful than the engineer’s efforts in this debacle.
There are developments in other States that also warn us of the folly of what is proposed. Yet a combination of short term market forces, involving quick pick profits, and questionable behaviour of government and top bureaucrats are keeping this project in the pipeline. Little wonder that there is such strong opposition from local residents and other responsible Tasmanian citizens to the Ralphs Bay project. But despite the above mentioned realities the hopes a few who think they can make money out of the venture remain a serious danger to yet another part of ‘Clean green Tasmania’.
At the other end of our Island in the Tamar Valley the Gunn’s Mill project threatens even more ecological damage and destruction of place. Societal structure and where the ‘focus of power ’ in a society actually resides is important in this issue also. America’s most eminent economist of the last century, J.K. Galbraith, in the context of expressing his concern about the diminishing power of workers in modern capitalist societies, and the need for unions that stand up for worker’s interests – wrote in 1996. “In the market economy the natural focus of power is the employer, most often the business firm”.
On the Gunn’s Mill issue some workers, from unions led by individuals heavily influenced by timber corporation chiefs, are supporting a cause that could play a large part in destroying their own future. A cause that would limit job opportunities, as well as downgrade the quality of life, of their own and other’s families. To understand the reason why this can happen – it is necessary to consider who has power over the media, many politicians and so called experts. It can certainly be argued that the wealthy business firm Gunn’s appear to be successfully, if in some ways indirectly, exercising considerable power over the ideas of many of the players here.
Ideas and values are of course important, but so is the societal, including the economic structural context within which ideas and values arise and might or might not be given practical expression. The power of today’s corporations extends well beyond their power in the workplaces in which the wealth they appropriate is created. Corporation chiefs use part of the wealth they accumulate to invest in a variety of projects designed to influence political/ cultural issues and the ideas forming aspects of our society.
A British scholar and writer Eric Hobsbawn, in his invited contribution to the May issue of “The Monthly “ discussion on the February 2009 Rudd Essay wrote “…Kevin Rudd’s own sketch of the post-crisis system almost certainly underestimates the scope and need for future state or other public action.” And that confronting climate change and the current economic crisis requires a shift from – “an economy moved by the market to one directed by the priorities and imperatives of public interest.” Hobsbawn also commented “Paradoxically, some intelligent practising businessmen, more firmly in the real economy than ideology bound economists and politicians, anticipated trouble. After 1998 they even rediscovered the relevance of Marx”.
How come Marx could be relevant?
Marx explained why and how capitalists, particularly in boom periods, live so well off the labour and poverty of others. And raised the vision of a world in which peace, equity and cooperation for the common good could emerge as the underpinning aspects of a world in which people lived in harmony.
Marx died in 1883 in the century before the effects of trying to “conquer nature’ become more widely recognised as the life threatening issue they represent today. Why then is Marxism still relevant today? Some short answers include-:
1. Marxism provides reference points and insights that are vital to understanding the current financial /economic crisis our economic system has led us into. Marx may not have been an ecologist or have for-seen all of the consequences of the control and use of technology for the purpose of private profit and capital accumulation. But he did understand that human kind’s interaction with our natural environment was a necessary aspect of human life.
2. Even more important Marx’s analysis can help provide guidance in the development of economic and social frameworks, and policy approaches that can allow us to live in harmony with nature.
3. The social/economic frame work Marx envisaged, in broad terms, is based in organising human productive activities and lifestyles primarily to meet the needs of people – rather than primarily to provide short term profit and long term control for a few capitalists. In other words the society Marx envisaged, as distinct from the societies built in the Soviet Union and China, could make it possible for economic and lifestyle decisions to be made in open democratic discussions that take to account real human needs and ecological and social sustainability. The ‘hidden hand’ in commercial decisions and the hidden behind closed doors making of vital decisions, that we are so familiar with today, would no longer need to be the order of the day.
In his “Main Currents in Western Environmental Thought” Dr Peter Hay made the point that “Marxism best explains how capitalist society functions and reproduces” and he contends “that it can provide guidance for the intermediate or strategic dimension of political envisaging”. Marx’s analysis of capital can be utilised as a background to understanding the complexities of the world we currently live in and in aiding our thinking in terms of developing approaches, attitudes and policies for an ecologically and socially sustainable future.
The Left and Technological progressivism
In his above mentioned paper to the Hobart Round Table Hay discusses “ …the threat climate change science poses to the core paradigmatic assumption of the fundamentalist technological progressivism of the intellectual right.” In this part of his paper Hay notes the reality that parts of the ‘left’ are also affected by similar assumptions about technological progressivism.
The distinction Hay draws is that the thinking of rightwing worshipers of market forces is, at least in part, driven by recognition that growth and continued attacks on nature is necessary to enable large scale accumulation of capital in private hands. On the other hand for the left, in their quest for equity and peaceful human cooperation, there need be no inbuilt conflict with nature provided there is recognition that we live on a finite planet. Further that the political, social, economic agenda of the left can include, and indeed must include, sustainable relationships to our physical environment. Here a genuine left agenda that rejects the neo-liberal nonsense that is also called economic rationalism is being considered.
There is potential room for human development and to paraphrase Nugget Coomb’s final message in his last book – our enjoyment of life could be found in our relationships to one another and in our quest to meet the challenge of developing ways of living life to the full in the context of recognition that we live on a finite planet and need to act in accordance with that reality (Coombs H.C. 1990 p165).
Put another way humans are capable of intelligent consideration of what we do – and how what we do fits with ecological limits and social considerations. Market forces have no such potential, currently they are a means for a few to realise private profit and accumulate, in addition to political social and cultural power over others, a grossly unfair share of the wealth available. The market must become a useful aspect of a cooperative society rather than a key tool for exploitation of the many by the few it currently is.
Some brief aspects of Historical Context
In the public mind, Karl Marx has been associated with the now defunct Soviet Union which came into existence in 1917, 34 years after Marx’s death in 1883. It is true that the name and some of the ideas of Marx were taken over by the leaders of the Soviet Union. Whether or not Marx bears responsibility for the lack of democratic procedure and the crimes Stalin and others committed against the people, including a great many communists, in the Soviet Union is another question. Although it seems obvious that the over centralisation of the Leninist Communist Party and lack of democratic procedures in the Soviet system helped create a situation for the disasters that happened.
The comments that immediately follow are made with a personal and close up awareness of the many positive sides of the work of the Communist Party in Australia in the decades of its existence.
The intervention, in 1917, of the 17 foreign armies which invaded and tried to crush the new Soviet Union compounded the lack of a democratic history in Czarist Russia. The highly centralised soviet and communist party model, even after the new Soviet Union had driven out the Churchill organised invaders, became a source of serious problems. The over centralisation was clearly an important part of the background to enabling the crimes of Stalin and later Mao Tse Tung against their own people.
Mao had an additional source for his ruthless violence against others. In their chilling “Mao The Untold Story” Jung Chang and Jon Halliday quote Khrushchev on Mao’s megalomania as follows “Mao thought of himself as a man sent by God to do God’s bidding. In fact Mao probably thought God did Mao’s own bidding.” ( Vintage Books 2005 p502)
Both Stalin and Mao repeated the history of their own immediate social/cultural environments, and of all too much of human – kind’s history of the gore and horror involved in Colonialism and Empire (Khrushchev was the Soviet Leader who, despite later revealed faults, published to the world the extent of Stalin’s crimes. Mao’s failed ‘Great Leaps’ and the cultural revolution provides strong evidence to support Khrushchev’s estimate of him).
In Tasmania /Australia my generation, (I am well established as an octogenarian,) grew up largely ignorant of, and or encouraged to be tolerant of, the massive crimes against the original owners of what we now call ‘our land’. And more recently the horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza by some descendants of the victims of Hitler are but one of many instances of current modern day State directed terrorism. The structure and actions of what were called Marxist Leninist Communist Parties in Power turned out to be negative blip in history but, even so, bad as they were, the events concerned were not the only, or the main, source of modern human suffering.
Marx’s extensive, well documented and detailed, writings are primarily about how capitalism functions. He explains the source of profit and the history of the accumulation of wealth by capitalists and establishes that wealth is created by human labour interacting with our natural environment. Marx revealed that Capital is a social relationship between capitalists, who have in the process of a variety of historical processes been able to exclude most people from ownership of the means to produce life’s necessities, and workers who have to sell their ability to labour, or work, in order to access what they themselves have collectively produced. In other words without workers who collectively produce values in considerable excess of the value of the wages they receive there could be no rich and powerful capitalists.
There are, of course, immense differences in the conditions in which workers perform their work and create the surplus to their wage payment that constitutes the income of the capitalist. However regardless of these complex and very substantial differences, to paraphrase Marx, the socio-economic system called capitalism forces workers into the position of recreating the conditions for their own continued exploitation and lack of control over vital aspects of their own lives.
Marxism, as an analytical, tool can help to provoke creative thinking in terms of how we might develop ideas and actions to create a world in which peace, creativity, tolerance, democratic procedures ecological sustainability and equitable distribution of wealth are major features.
Max Bound
