Letters

Decline

Arthur Bough asks how the view that capitalism is in decline fits with the fact that the Chinese economy is growing at around 10% per year (Letters, May 24). The answer is that it fits very well.

Firstly, the International Monetary Fund predicts that China’s expansion will be cut in half, as the crisis in Europe worsens. This year growth fell to 8.5%. A property slump is underway, which will see growth fall to 7.5%. This trend will continue, as the housing bubble deflates. Between 25% and 40% of China’s recent growth consists of unproductive investment in property supported by loans from nationalised banks. The 10% figure was only made possible by China’s nationalised banks’ creation of money. Readers will remember that the growth of unproductive investment, regulation and nationalised banks is a consequence of decline.

Secondly, growth rates in individual countries do not prove there is a long-term boom underway in the capitalist economy as a whole. Gross domestic product statistics reveal nothing about underlying trends, such as the growth of the labour force or growth of productivity. In fact, it can be argued from other statistics that - even in China - there is little evidence of a long-lasting boom. For example, if surplus rural labourers are included in figures for unemployment, 20% of the labour-power of Chinese workers has no productive use. This is not a “marginal” rate, as Bough states.

Moreover, China’s workforce remains excessively underpaid. According to China Labour Bulletin, the annual per capita disposable income of urban workers is approximately $3,000. For rural workers it is roughly $800. Rural workers have no entitlement to social security or welfare benefits. From 2005-07, Chinese employers withheld the payment of $10 billion in wages. This is typical of a Stalinist system that relies on forced, semi-slave labour. The effects of extensive political and bureaucratic controls on workers’ productivity are well researched. They are poor. Readers will also recall that the growth of these kinds of controls is evidence of decline.

Thirdly, GDP statistics are not compiled by Marxists. They do not indicate whether or not labour-power is used to generate surplus value. Put differently, they do not show the proportions between productive and unproductive capital. Bough’s statistics (eg, global trade rising from $12,000 billion to $28,000 billion from 2002 to 2007) prove only that investment has expanded. They do not explain the nature of that expansion.

The view that capitalism is in decline holds that the expansion of investment in the 1990s and 2000s was an expansion of finance capital. Finance capital is unproductive. It attempts to make money out of money through bypassing the productive process. It is interested in speculative forms of accumulation, such as derivatives and futures. In 2007, the growth of investment in derivatives had reached $596 trillion. This was a huge expansion. In 2008, $582 trillion was wiped out. This investment was productive of nothing but insolvency. The contemporary long-term slump is a result of large corporations saving, not spending. In other words, there is no growth and no boom because capitalists refuse to invest.

Fourthly, Bough does not seem to understand Marx’s basic categories. His remarks on Marx’s distinction between abstract and concrete labour prove either that he has not yet read Capital or he profoundly disagrees with Marx. Nor does he seem to know about the Marxist distinction between productive and unproductive labour. He does not have an idea of finance capital. This may explain why he thinks that Lenin’s characterisation of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism is “shoddy”. It may also influence his false belief that Trotsky’s theory of long waves is somehow at odds with the facts of decline.

Finally, readers interested in this debate might like to look at Hillel Ticktin’s article, ‘Decline as a concept - and its consequences’ (Critique Vol 34, No2, August 2006, pp145-162; he has also written on decline in the Weekly Worker). Ticktin is the most articulate and informed exponent of the view that capitalism is in decline. He is therefore worth studying.

Decline
Decline

Wave goodbye

Arthur Bough is still refusing to face up to the unfolding contradiction between the new Kondratiev long-wave cycle, which started around 1999-2000, and world peak oil, which began around 2000-05.

Capitalism, since the industrial revolution began, has gone through five Kondratiev long waves, which have been statistically established, taking into consideration the movement of prices. The global economy is now in the sixth long-wave cycle, which started around 1999-2000. None of the growth phase of the previously recorded cycles has ever been undermined by the depletion of an essential, non-renewable resource, or occurred in a context of a global population of over seven billion people. In the case of oil, production grew annually in the period 1859-2005.

The question we need to ask is: which will prove stronger, the new long wave, or the global peak in oil production? For Arthur Bough the Kondratiev long wave can overcome all obstacles. This is a worship of the market - ie, demand-supply economics. I fear this is wishful thinking. My argument is that peak oil will undermine the Kondratiev long-wave business cycle of capitalism, which was simply a long period of economic growth in each cycle powered by cheap energy.

Rather than facing a rosy future for the next 25-30 years, what we actually face, as a result of the coming decline of oil production, is a period of permanent austerity and economic contraction. This process will affect all countries unevenly around the world. This period has already started and those who are looking for long-wave number six to save the day will be disappointed.

Arthur Bough hopes gas will come along to save the long wave. It’s not going to happen. While there may be some uncertainty about the world gas peak and how much of it remains, one thing we can be certain about is that Britain’s gas production in the North Sea has already peaked and is in decline. Gas fields in America, mentioned by Bough, are not going to help Britain. We are being kept afloat by Russian gas.

In fact, the downfall of capitalism is inevitable, unless the ruling class have some energy secrets they are not telling us about. This is not a Marxist prediction based on the circulation of capital: it is prediction based on our energy realities, as publicly perceived.

Capitalism is a historical anomaly which came into existence because of cheap energy. It is an economic system which to stay alive needs permanent growth, a fact which is in contradiction to the ecological limits of the planet. As a result, capitalism is slowly undermining the conditions which support life. Capitalism gave rise to the modern long-wave cycle, but it was cheap energy which gave rise to capitalism. That is why we can wave goodbye to the Kondratiev long-wave capitalist business cycle, as we approach the end of growth.

Wave goodbye
Wave goodbye

Questionable

That last article by Lars Lih on Lenin’s ‘Leftwing’ communism was very welcome (‘Bolshevism and revolutionary social democracy’, June 7). It’s a positive assertion, compared to the politically biased criticisms of the likes of Gilles Dauve (The renegade Kautsky and his disciple Lenin). However, ‘Leftwing’ communism is particularly questionable as a work for revolutionary strategy before a revolutionary period.

When Lenin said, ‘Merge, if you will’, it is clear from the context that his perception of the merger formula (the party as the merger of revolutionary socialism and the worker-class movement) was corrupted by this point, no matter what ‘historians’ like Hal Draper like to believe. The party ideal wasn’t so much preserved as it was corrupted. If one looks at most left and ultra-left groups today, they see ‘the party’ and ‘the movement’ as being separate, when in fact real parties are real movements and vice versa!

Lenin’s conception of ‘Merge, if you will’ was closer to Lassalle’s agitate-agitate-agitate machine (although way more political than many left and ultra-left groups today) than to the institutional might of Alternative Culture and all things pre-World War I SPD, itself the German worker-class-for-itself at that time.

Questionable
Questionable

Shoddy

I thought the Lars Lih piece was a bit shoddy for him. To argue that Leninism post-1912 was not for a different kind of party than the RSDLP uniting the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks is clearly at odds with empirical reality.

It is true that in a polemic with the ultra-lefts Lenin can emphasise those elements of the SDP model which point to the need for a Marxist party, but it is politically weak to glibly pass over the central point of the Third Internationalist critique of Second Internationalism in the need for communists to organise separately from the reformist socialists as somehow just being a continuation of the Second Internationalist model.

Shoddy
Shoddy

They enjoy me

Heather Downs claims that “most mainstream sex researchers identify intercourse as being unsatisfactory for about 75% of women” (Letters, June 7). By strange coincidence, all of the blokes I have ever spoken to, including myself, have only ever had sex with the other 25%. Isn’t that fortunate?

But, seriously, such a huge statement requires some actual source qualification: the size of the survey, the location, the group representativeness, and so on. We are told: “Most mainstream sex researchers have come to this finding”, but what is meant by ‘unsatisfactory’ and how were you allowed to answer and qualify the answer? If we are asked, ‘Is sexual intercourse satisfactory?’ most people would actually answer, ‘Well, not always’. But if we are only given a yes/no option, we might record a high percentage of ‘no’. There are so many unknown quanta in the question as to make the statement meaningless.

Most women, I would guess, are heterosexual, choose a male partner and choose sexual intercourse, along with the full range of options and techniques available to any other sexual tendency. If the claim is that most women reach an organism other than through penis penetration, I could easily accept that is the case, but that wouldn’t mean they didn’t want and enjoy that too. The suggestion here is that sexual intercourse is somehow a blokey thing and women have to be coerced, forced, bribed or otherwise have it imposed upon them, which frankly is an absurd suggestion, and actually deeply sexist.

They enjoy me
They enjoy me

Thanks, comrade

Thank you to Simon Wells for understanding the situation for sex workers in ‘End harassment of sex workers’ (June 7). It is a good article that shows the complexity of the problem, with false figures circulating and the wrong approach of prohibition still defended in a broad part of the left. It is good to read strong support for decriminalisation and labour rights. Well done.

Thanks, comrade
Thanks, comrade

Predators

In Simon Wells’s article, yet again we see a socialist organisation addressing the sex industry from the wholly mistaken perspective that it is primarily an issue about prostitutes, or “sex workers”. This stems from the idea that women are the gatekeepers of sexual morality, since we have no autonomous sexual desires of our own - unlike men, who are naturally insatiable. This assumes that the demand for this industry is in some way inevitable and natural. It is beyond question; it pre-exists the social relations in which it occurs.

The emphasis is therefore always on women (and, less often, men) in prostitution; harm reduction, state repression and - of course - choice. This is presented as in some way ‘radical’ and free from traditional notions of prudish moralism, particularly regarding women. Sadly not. The focus in prostitution has, historically, always been on prostitutes, not ‘clients’. The market is beyond question - it is obvious why men buy sex, right? So the global industry is unchallenged. You say sex workers are workers like any other, but no other field is analysed as if initiated by workers, not employers.

The sex industry is no longer a marginal issue. But why are socialists so enthusiastic in their support for global capitalism’s commodification of the human body? In what way do socialists anticipate their support of the sex industry’s pandering to male ego will promote their stated aim (in the CPGB Draft programme) to “turn formal [gender] equality into genuine equality”? The Draft programme continues with aims to “Decriminalise prostitution to remove it from criminal control. Prostitutes to be provided with special healthcare and other services to reduce the dangers they confront.”

Let’s look in a little more detail at these mysterious, disembodied “dangers”. An interesting formulation to find in the defining document of an organisation committed to the principles of dialectical materialism. Is no human agency involved in these “dangers”? We might look to the experience of women in prostitution to discover a bit more about the material reality.

“To know prostitution, you must enter some very dark places. On that first night, I was gang-raped. That was the test to see if I was suitable material for prostitution. Prostitution is where any man can perform their porn fantasies on real women and girls. That is what is wrong with prostitution.”

Rebecca Mott was 14 at the time, the average age for starting prostitution. Obviously then, many are younger. Any ideas on how these people might achieve happy, mutually satisfying sexual relationships in later life? You say you favour self-organisation of prostitutes. Is Survivors Connect what you had in mind? I guess not, because they include survivors of sex trafficking, which you believe is a figment of the bourgeois imagination. There are many other first-hand accounts by trafficked women available, presumably not subject to the cited accusation of methodological inaccuracy in the Poppy Project’s research, which apparently invalidates any criticism in my previous letter (June 7).

Knowing the difficulty some readers have with believing women subjected to sexual abuse, it may help to read what punters have to say. “Men pay for women because he can have whatever and whoever he wants. Lots of men go to prostitutes so they can do things to them that real women would not put up with. Surveys show large numbers of men who use prostitutes hold some interesting opinions: that prostitutes cannot be raped; that men are entitled to do anything they want once they have paid; that they would rape women if they knew they could not be caught; that a woman who dresses ‘provocatively’ is ‘asking to be raped’” (M Farley, etc Men who buy sex London 2009). That goes some way to explain how it is that between 62% and 85% of prostitutes had been raped by ‘clients’, according to studies in various countries.

Quite how the CPGB’s policy of provision of “special healthcare” will resolve the problem of sexually transmitted infections with this level of rape and the ubiquitous resistance of ‘clients’ to use condoms is unclear. Will the “special healthcare” include similar tests on the ‘clients’? Post-traumatic stress disorder, which is suffered by 68% of prostitutes, requires specialist therapy. Over half of ‘clients’ in recent research believed the majority of prostitutes had been lured, tricked or trafficked. Did it cause those men to make an anonymous report of their suspicions? Five out of 103 did so; their beliefs don’t seem to have had much effect on their actions.

It is alarming that there seems to be a genuine belief that the sex industry has a timeless inevitability and should be sanitised for the welfare of humanity. Any questioning of this formulation is greeted with howls of protest and denounced as aiding and abetting state repression of perfectly healthy sexual expression.

“The abolitionist argument has never been about ‘cracking down’ on women who work in the sex industry, but rather has been about ending male privilege, male violence and the exploitation and abuse of women and women’s bodies. It is about pointing out that, in a truly egalitarian society there is no ‘deal’ in which men are allowed access to women’s bodies simply because they have the cash and women need the cash. In a truly egalitarian society we would not believe that men have this right or that men somehow need to use women’s bodies” (Meghan Murphy). There is nothing complicated and there should be nothing controversial about this.

The ridiculous lionisation of ‘personal choice’ in the sex industry is remarkable for its unique character. Is any other sphere of employment justified by the liberal mantra of ‘personal choice’? My cousin chooses to work as a manager for British Aerospace. Does his individual choice justify either ‘management’ of other workers or the international arms trade? Of course not. Even theorists of classic liberalism, in which the free individual is limited by the restrictions of the state, concede that conceptualising the ‘individual’ as pre-existing ‘society’ is deeply problematic, in fact contradictory.

The libertarian argument focuses on women exercising something liberals like to call ‘agency’, their ‘personal choice’, ‘individual preference’ and so on. The few women who find the sex industry a comfortable environment are not my primary concern other than in their capacity to act as cover for the 85% who do not. I am much more interested in the motivation of the men who use prostitutes who they know or believe to be underage, trafficked, controlled by violent pimps or otherwise unwilling to engage in an abusive simulation of sex. More than that, I’m extremely interested in their justification by socialists.

Do you imagine that the sex industry is unique in being unaffected by the forces defining all other aspects of life? Why are you so determined to agree with a challenge to one piece of research quoted in my letter and so reluctant to challenge the existence of trafficking and prostitution itself? Why so committed to maintaining an industry based on the fundamentally and self-evidently flawed assumption that men ‘need’ sexual access to women’s (and more rarely) other men’s bodies?

How can you possibly deny the obvious truth that the sex industry is both the cause and effect of sexism; not because all prostitutes are passive victims, but because all users of them have an overweening sense of entitlement? There is nothing natural or inevitable about the sex industry because there is nothing natural or inevitable about sexism. Why have you got such a low opinion of men? Surely, socialists must believe that men are not inevitably sexual predators. If not, we may as well all give up now.

Predators
Predators

Adult

I read Simon Wells’ article and Heather Downs’ letter about prostitution with interest.

I prefer to use the word ‘escort’ rather than ‘prostitute’ or ‘sex worker’. The media stereotype of a prostitute is of a short-skirted, heroin-addicted young woman on a street corner with a pimp standing in the shadows in the background. The reality is very different.

The police are correct to target street walkers and brothels. Local newspapers are receiving hundreds of pounds each week from adverts for brothels. The sooner this income is stopped, the better for all readers. The aim should be to encourage all escorts onto the Adult Work website, which is the number one website in the UK for putting escorts in touch with potential clients.

When I last looked, there were more than 18,500 women in the UK with profiles on Adult Work. A brief look at the profiles shows that more than half of the women are either married or in some kind of relationship. All the hogwash about sex trafficking and drug-taking is disputed by those 18,500-plus women who freely advertise their services.

All the leftwing sects are very prudish about prostitution, particularly the Socialist Party in England and Wales, who, in an attempt to win over the feminists, do not see sex work as work at all. They are against prostitution because they see that it reinforces the bourgeois institution of marriage. For example, it is better for a married man to see a prostitute than for him to have an affair with his secretary, which usually ends in divorce.

The recent book, The sex myth by Dr Brooke Magnanti, exposes the 10 most common myths in the media about sex, including sex trafficking and drug taking. Most of the women with Adult Work profiles are women who enjoy sex, some being swingers or ex-swingers who would rather earn £100 an hour working as an escort than work on the tills at Tesco for £6.95 an hour.

The website of the International Union of Sex Workers explains that in all the Anglo-Saxon countries there is a very high incidence of Asperger’s Syndrome, wherein many men find difficulty in forming relationships with women. Escorts, therefore, provide a valuable service to society. At the same time, escorts can enable men to get over bereavement or divorce. Escorts can also help shy or disabled men find sexual fulfilment. By seeing an escort a few times, the cycle of sexual failure and depression can be broken. Men can then concentrate on getting to know women as women without coming over as being desperate for sex.

Finally, the Adult Work website gives a glimpse of what sexual relationships will be like under communism. Some women, who are in relationships, will have sex with other men, as happened during the age of primitive communism.

Adult
Adult

You could laugh

We wrote to you on January 17 regarding our concern about the lack of any real unity on the left despite the most ferocious onslaught on our class in living memory.

We mentioned our concern about dwindling attendances at meetings of the Left Unity Liaison Committee in 2011. We asked why your organisation thought this had happened, so that together we could decide how best to promote greater unity across the left in the future. We asked that this situation be discussed within your organisation and a collective response be sent in by early March.

We asked three specific questions: Does your organisation want to help promote left unity? If so, why does your organisation no longer attend LULC meetings? What concrete suggestions does your organisation have that would promote greater unity on the left?

The response to the questionnaire provides further evidence to back up our initial concerns. Only one out of the 15 organisations which have been, to varying degrees, part of the LULC bothered even to respond - and that was the Socialist Alliance, which had initiated the questionnaire! You could laugh if this was not serious. Do no socialist or green left organisations want to work with others on a broader basis than any coalition/project they are presently involved with? Does no-one want discussions which could, at the very least, avoid electoral clashes and inform others of events that should be supported?

For what it is worth, the SA suggested that the LULC could set up a left notice board - a website that enabled left organisations to publicise their events. This could include announcing where candidates had been selected to stand - and any clashes could then be discussed between the organisations concerned. But it would appear, from the lack of interest in left unity, that even such a minimalist project would be unlikely to gain support.

This clearly demonstrated lack of any serious desire for left unity amongst socialist and green socialist organisations will almost certainly leave our class without the coordination needed to combat the austerity programme being enforced by the establishment, despite a handful of commendable, though somewhat limited, examples of unity in action through coalitions and networks.

You could laugh
You could laugh

Draconian

Shawn Carter raised an important point about free speech in last week’s paper (Letters, June 7).

I joined a group calling themselves the ‘Diggers 2012’, who are attempting to set up an eco-village on Windsor Great Park Estate. We set off from a community centre on Saturday, camping near Sipson village and hoping to set up a final camp on Sunday. However, even before we left the community centre on Saturday, the group was served an injunction threatening arrest for setting up the camp. The consensus was to continue the plan.

From Saturday onwards, police trailed the group, accompanied by two officers, occasionally a police car, and on many occasions a police van with officers taking photographs of the invading hoard. About three miles from Windsor we were met again, this time by two solicitors representing the crown estate, serving each of the group with more stringent injunctions. However, the group decided to carry on with the plan, with the police continuing to trail us.

Camp was set up outside the estate, but the next day part of the group entered it. Simon Moore, the Save Leyton Marsh activist served with an anti-social behaviour order banning him from “taking part in any activity that disrupts the intended or anticipated official activities of the Olympic Games or diamond jubilee celebrations”, was arrested and could now be sentenced for up to five years - all for trying to stop a patch of grassland in London being turned over to make way for an Olympic structure.

This is only one example of the way the police and the state use draconian powers to stop any form of legitimate protest and direct action.

Draconian
Draconian

Bond theme

What was so interesting about the recent diamond jubilee were the cries of protest - that is, from the monarchists, particularly in the press. The rage of rightwing disappointment at the ‘fiasco’ was palpable.

Was it just the populism of the BBC (following the royal household itself, which has been trying to appear closer to the people since at least the late 60s)? Was it the disagreements over what constitutes the queen’s pop music? (What, no Handel, no Brian May?) Was it guilt at making two seniors stand in the cold for hours on the river? (The pageant organisers had two years and they couldn’t even allow for the weather - something your average barbecue planner seldom forgets.)

Or was it a fiasco because Britain is so disunited - by income and ideology - that even this long-serving family (in an institution which has served the bourgeois state since 1689) can no longer meet the demands of representing national values in an approved way? Those unhappy commentators, in mourning for past power and propriety, cannot though admit they find no satisfaction in the aloof/accessible balancing act that the royals, and their PRs, go in for now, as the ‘Firm’ continues to postpone the coming disaster - the succession of King Charles the Opinionated and his widely loved consort.

Time for a new ceremony, a new social bond, which can only be equality.

Bond theme
Bond theme