WeeklyWorker

Letters

BDS hurts

Last week’s letter by Tony Greenstein on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement marks a new low in the ongoing debate (February 3).

Six weeks earlier, Moshé Machover acknowledged in the Weekly Worker that the BDS campaign “cannot possibly” have a significant economic impact on Israel and therefore has had “no effect, positive or negative, on the adherence of the Hebrew working class to Zionist colonizing chauvinism” (‘Israel’s singularity’, December 16). Mike Macnair subsequently offered the view that BDS is largely “symbolic” and that, in any case, “it is preferable from the point of view of working class interests not to have a Götterdämmerung of the Israeli state” (‘No change of line’, January 20) - meaning, as I understand it, that it will do the international proletariat no good if Israeli society goes down in flames and takes the Israeli working class with it.

Whatever their errors, both comrades at least agree that punishing Israeli workers is not the goal. But now we have Greenstein saying the opposite. It “is perfectly correct to say that the Israeli working class is no ally” of anti-Zionists, he writes. “… Of course, BDS will affect Israeli workers, but socialists ally themselves with the workers of the oppressed nation, even against workers in the oppressor group.”

So Greenstein recognises that BDS will hurt Israeli workers, but doesn’t care, because the Israeli proletariat is part and parcel of an oppressor nation. It “identifies with its own bourgeoisie”, it accedes to the ongoing existence of a “unique … settler-colonial state” and therefore it must go down in defeat, so that Palestine can be free. Greenstein freely admits what others hesitate to say out loud: that politics in Israel-Palestine is a zero-sum game and that one group can advance only at the expense of the other.

This is as unMarxist a formulation as one can imagine. To understand how Greenstein arrived at such a reactionary position, it’s helpful to revisit another piece he published (‘Self-declared heretic replies’. January 6). He doesn’t repudiate the principle of the working class as the motor force of history in that earlier article, at least not completely. But he comes awfully close by dismissing whatever role the proletariat may have to play in the current epoch. To wit:

The international working class is irrelevant - today, tomorrow, and beyond. We can’t look to it for answers, because its role is nil. The implications in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are obvious. Since an international working class solution to the crisis is nothing more than a Marxist pipedream, the struggle will continue to unfold along national lines, leaving Marxists no choice but to side with the nation that is more aggrieved. Nationalism of the oppressed is all socialists can hope for.

But Greenstein is wrong. Working class militancy is indeed at an ebb. But socialists know this can’t continue, because capitalism is every bit as unstable as it was in the 1930s, if not more so. Hence, the Marxist outlook is clear: even if the international proletariat is not responding now, it must do so shortly, because deepening capitalist decay will leave it with no choice but to fulfil its historical mission. If it doesn’t, then we all know what will happen next: a worldwide nationalist upsurge that will intensify the crisis all the more.

Needless to say, vast political problems must be overcome before the working class can respond effectively - most notably the lingering legacy of Stalinism, which has served to equate socialism with economic and political stagnation in the eyes of all too many workers. But this does not make the struggle for internationalism any less pressing. In fact, it makes it more so, as the breakdown intensifies.

But Greenstein is not just wrong on an international level - he is wrong on a local level too. Just as nationalism can only lead to an intensification of the global crisis, it can only lead to an intensification of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis by causing battle lines to harden. The more Palestinians continue to wage their struggle along national lines - to the cheers of ‘friends’ like Greenstein - the more they will be locked into the same losing position they have occupied for the last century. If martyrdom is what they want, then martyrdom is what they will get, as long as they remain on the same track.

There is a way out. Since military or economic pressure on the Jewish state as a whole causes Israelis to bind together all the more tightly, the solution is to attack Zionism from within by driving a wedge between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. This means relentless class struggle - not just within the Jewish state, but on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. To accomplish this, several things are necessary:

After all, the Middle East is not just a prison-house of nations à la tsarist Russia, but a veritable torture chamber due to the barbaric treatment of Yazidis, Alawites, Shi’ites, etc. As a minority in both Israel-Palestine and the region as a whole, Jews have a right to have their concerns addressed no more and no less than other minorities.

Finally, there is Greenstein’s statement that “members of the oppressor group have no right to dictate to the oppressed how they must conduct their struggle”. This is not just nonsense, but pernicious nonsense. As Macnair put it back in 2007 - in an article he is now trying to take back - “to be a ‘tribune of the oppressed’ means to oppose oppression: it does not mean to do what the oppressed call on us to do. The oppressed as much as anyone else are divided by political choices” (‘Boycotts and working class principle’ Weekly Worker October 11 2007).

Quite right.

Daniel Lazare
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Rate of profit

Michael Roberts has got overexcited in relation to data on the rate of profit collated by him and his co-thinkers. He objects to the fact that most Marxists disagree with his catastrophist insistence that crises are caused by Marx’s law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall (‘A world of declining profit’, January 27). However, the data which he claims shows such a fall in the global rate of profit, over a long period, does not change anything in respect of this disagreement in relation to its significance.

Roberts fails to recognise that Marx’s definition of the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall is significantly different to that of his predecessors, Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, whose explanations did indeed result in crises. For them, it was important, precisely because it led to these catastrophic conclusions, which Marx himself rejected. For Marx, the law is important, because it is the basis of the average annual rate of profit, and prices of production, and so explains the allocation of capital to different spheres of the economy. He did not see it as relevant to the accumulation of capital in total.

Marx’s law is founded on changes in the technical/organic composition of capital, whereas the theories of Smith, Ricardo and Malthus rest on changes in the value composition of capital, and primarily a rise in wages that squeezes profits. The two are opposites: Marx’s theory depends upon rising productivity resulting from technological change, which causes wages to fall and profits to rise.

Marx’s explanation of a crisis of overproduction of capital does rest upon conditions such as those described by Smith, in particular, in which, as a result of an expansion of capital at a faster pace than the social working day, it is not possible to expand absolute surplus value and, as the demand for labour pushes up wages, relative surplus value is also reduced (eg, the 1970s). It is in response to such crises that capital introduces technological improvements that replace labour, so causing wages to fall and profits to rise (eg, the mid-80s). Those conditions, required for the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall are then a consequence of crises, not a cause of them, as Roberts contends.

This also explains the cyclical nature of crises. Having introduced new labour-saving technologies, capital goes through a period in which it rolls out more of this same technology (eg, the late 90s), having replaced all of the previous technology - intensive accumulation gives way to extensive accumulation. The rise in productivity inevitably slows and, as output expands, more and more labour must be employed, until the conditions exist again where labour is in relative short supply, wages rise, profits are squeezed, and so capital is overproduced relative to the labour supply. A new technological revolution is required (it takes time for the necessary new technology to be introduced.

New technology creates a moral depreciation of existing fixed capital, which leads to a rising rate of profit, as well as a massive release of capital. It reduces the value of raw materials, with the same effect, but, as economies enter new periods of prosperity, the higher productivity causes the demand for materials to expand faster than existing supply can match, leading to sharply rising material prices (eg, post-1999), until such time that investment in new sources of supply reduces those prices once more (2014). Sharply rising material prices and physical shortages cause disruptions to the circuit of capital, which can lead to crises. In periods of intensive accumulation, where new technologies are still replacing existing technologies, gross output grows faster than net output, manifest in rising profits relative to output, which is the real basis of falling interest rates during such periods (eg, post-1985). Falling interest rates lead to rising asset prices, which leads to speculation in these assets. It is the basis of bubbles and subsequent financial crises, such as that of 2008.

Roberts accepts the Ricardian argument that investment is a function of the rate of profit, so that, if the rate of profit falls, then investment will also subsequently fall. Marx makes clear that is not true. In times of expanding markets, each capital seeks to obtain its share and invests accordingly. In times of squeezed profits and tighter markets, each capital is driven even more by competition to produce at its maximum possible limit to obtain benefits from the division of labour and economies of scale and so undercut its competitors. The minimum efficient size of capital is then driven up and also capitals are driven into taking over their competitors to achieve greater size. Gross output rises faster than net output, resulting in rising interest rates and falling asset prices.

In failing to distinguish between a fall in the rate of profit resulting from a change in the value composition - as against the long-term tendency for the rate of profit to fall as a result of increases in the technical/organic composition of capital - Roberts fails to distinguish how the former can cause the rate of profit to fall in some periods, with consequent crises, whilst it rises in others, as a change in the value composition in the opposite direction occurs, due to the effects of rising social productivity and a change in the technical/organic composition of capital.

Roberts accepts the basis of Say’s Law, as amended by Keynes (equating saving/profit with net investment) that supply creates its own demand. Roberts says that all demand comes from either wages or profits (ie, just v + s, not c + v + s, as Marx describes), which is based on Smith’s absurd dogma that the value of total output resolves entirely into revenues. That means that he omits the value of constant capital from the calculation of total output, as he does GDP and national income data, which means his calculation of the rate of profit is necessarily wrong. Roberts’ calculation of the rate of profit is essentially a measurement of changes in the rate of surplus value, not the rate of profit modified by the inclusion of the fixed capital stock, but valued on the basis of historic prices, not current reproduction costs. Because the technological revolution, required as the basis of the law of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, itself brings about a huge moral depreciation of the fixed capital stock, calculating the rate of profit on the basis of historic prices systematically and massively understates the actual rise in the rate of profit it induces.

Marx noted that the fall in the rate of profit described in his law is very small and only detectable over long periods of time, and is not therefore a credible cause of crises. It depends on the quantity of materials processed increasing at a faster pace than the corresponding fall in the unit value of materials, as a result of rising productivity. But changes in the nature of production means this is no longer the case, and the shift from manufacturing to service industry, which does not process materials, makes it redundant as an explanation of changes over time.

Arthur Bough
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Lopsided

I have just read ‘Remembering and forgetting’ by James Harvey (Weekly Worker February 3).

I agree with a fair amount of the analysis, but it is seriously lopsided. The battle between revolution and reform was led by my organisation in Ireland - then People’s Democracy, now Socialist Democracy - and supported in Britain by the International Marxist Group. We are still opposing the political settlement today, but James seems unaware of this.

Lopsided historical interpretation leads to a lopsided current interpretation. Bernadette McAliskey may have been able to finish her speech in 1972, but Sinn Féin retained overall control, treated genuine protestors with contempt and defined the commemoration in terms of constitutional nationalism and peace with British rule.

John McAnulty
Socialist Democracy

Big lie

A new documentary film will expose the “conspiracy of smears” to destroy former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The film, Labour: the big lie, documents an orchestrated attack on Corbyn and his supporters, involving forces from across the political spectrum. A conspiracy of smears was used to bring down Jeremy Corbyn and this film will give chapter and verse on how it was done. The film is also relevant to the current leadership crisis in the Conservative Party.

Boris Johnson tried to get himself out of trouble by trying to smear Keir Starmer with the Jimmy Savile scandal. Ironic, really, since Starmer himself has used fake allegations of anti-Semitism to purge hundreds of members of his own party. But it just illustrates the way smearing has become the weapon of choice in politics today.

False smears, using social media and the press have had a deeply corrosive effect on political life in Britain and date back to the Tory-LibDem coalition government. Our research has revealed that the smearing really began with small numbers of alt-right activists, who were attacking middle-of-the-road members of the Tory Party. But the smearing came into its own when Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader.

The feature-length documentary is being produced by the independent film maker, Platform Films, which made the award-winning People’s flag TV history of the Labour Party for Channel Four. The producer is inviting anyone with stories of smears or who wishes to donate financially to get in touch with them at platformfilms.co.uk/contact.

To see a trailer for the film go to youtu.be/s3Vb8APbUGM.

Norman Thomas
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