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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-041
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
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Other issues:
Palestine:
China:
Europe:
Trump admin:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
Liberal and Marxist Conceptions of the Class Struggle
Allow me to borrow the title of one of Lenin’s works for this comment.
In the work, Lenin drew a sharp demarcation between the Roger Boyd/Constantine/Cynic strain of liberal class struggle and the Marxist/socialist/communist conception of class struggle. Roger Boyd/Constantine/Cynic frames class struggle entirely as workers bargaining for better wages from their paymasters. That’s where the liberal class struggle begins and ends. The liberals cannot conceive of a future where paymasters are ultimately done away with.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/may/31b.htm
Every class struggle is a political struggle.[2] We know that the opportunists, slaves to the ideas of liberalism, understood these profound words of Marx incorrectly and tried to put a distorted interpretation on them. Among the opportunists there were, for instance, the Economists, the elder brothers of the liquidators. The Economists believed that any clash between classes was a political struggle. The Economists therefore recognised as “class struggle” the struggle for a wage increase of five kopeks on the ruble, and refused to recognise a higher, more developed, nation-wide class struggle, the struggle for political aims. The Economists, therefore, recognised the embryonic class struggle but did not recognise it in its developed form. The Economists recognised, in other words, only that part of the class struggle that was more tolerable to the liberal bourgeoisie, they refused to go farther than the liberals, they refused to recognise the higher form of class struggle that is unacceptable to the liberals. By so doing, the Economists became liberal workers’ politicians. By so doing, the Economists rejected the Marxist, revolutionary conception of the class struggle.
Lenin is not alone in recognizing the limitations of the liberal conception of class struggle that revolved around wage slaves begging for better treatment from their paymasters. Here’s Errico Malatesta clearly identifying labor unions/labor organizing as merely a preparatory step to – and not a substitute for – a higher form of class struggle.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/malatesta/1900/the-irreconcilable-contradiction.html
Labor organizing, strikes, resistance of all kinds can at a certain point in capitalist evolution improve the conditions of workers or prevent them from worsening; they can serve very well to train workers for the struggle; they are always, in capable hands, a means of propaganda;—but they are hopelessly powerless to resolve the social question. And thus they must be used in such a way as to help prepare minds and muscle for the revolution—for expropriation.
Anyone failing to grasp this, is reduced to pleading to the prefects… and being mocked.
The problem with Roger Boyd, Constantine, Cynic and their ilk is that they are adherents of conservative liberalism. They are not leftists/socialists/Marxists, despite their pretensions.
The liberals are particularly adept at being duplicitous when peddling their politics. The liberals aim to prevent the development of leftism by presenting liberalism as leftism. The liberals are the first to wield identity politics as a tool to break solidarity among workers. “You are DEI, so you’re not a true worker!” or “You are a migrant, so you’re not a true worker!”
Here is one example straight from MoA:
#115 Beatrice
I agree with Constantine in that Die Linke is faux opposition and not left wing in the classical sense anymore. It’s focus is on cultural marxist dogmas derived from Herbert Marcuse, aimed at dividing the working class, destroying all vestiges of class consciousness. Also they endorse the endless import of cheap labour force, undermining all possibility for the workers to gain leverage in wage negotiations.
By labeling themselves as left wing they act as a poison pill for the political left. And successfully so! Die Linke is a result of a decades old project of the plutocracy to thwart the creation of a Arbeitereinheitsfront, the awareness of a common identity of all working people on this planet.
Evidence for my view on die Linke does not just lie simply in the statements of Die Linke itself but in how favourable the Leitmedien are treating them and how the same media ignore/berate BSW.
Posted by: Hamburger | Feb 25 2025 10:02 utc | 154
MoA commentator Hamburger calls for the solidarity for “all working people on this planet”, yet migrant workers are targeted for exclusion in Hamburger’s call for solidarity. The liberal worker cries out in pain as he strikes the migrant workers. Pity the poor liberal.
Liberals are not exclusive to Germany. In the US, the rallying cry is “Migrants took our jobs!” In Australia, it translates to “Fuck off, we’re full!” Over in Switzerland, it takes the form of a illustrated poster where a white sheep kicks a black sheep. “Sicherheit schaffen” it says. In the name of security, job security even!
I agree that migrant workers are imported to suppress wages. But I, as a Marxist, don’t see migrant workers as the problem. To me, the fundamental problem is the capitalist class attempting to use any and all means to extract surplus value from workers, including the deliberate introduction of migrant workers. In short, capitalism is the problem. The liberals disagree with Marxists. Like crabs in a bucket, liberal workers/crabs see fellow workers (liberal or not) as the problem and not the bucket itself. All crabs should be working together to overturn the bucket.
As the liberal conception of class struggle that is advocated by Roger Boyd/Constantine/Cynic gains power in the West, leftism becomes distorted to the point where instead of advocating for worker power, the Roger Boyd/Constantine/Cynic types are advocating for capitalist power.
And just who do you think would be forced to pay “reparations” to people and countries abroad (doubt the poor would see a penny of it!) … it certainly would not be the mega-rich.
Privatise profits and assets, socialise debts and liabilities…
Roger (aside from global-warmism) is actually representing the “left” that ordinary people would, given a fair chance, support and elect.
Posted by: Cynic | Feb 23 2025 0:49 utc | 375
The brand of leftism/socialism where the oppressed masses have no power over the capitalists, where the workers allow capitalists to socialize their losses unchallenged, where the worker has to beg the capitalists for higher wages – that is the brand being sold by Roger Boyd/Constantine/Cynic. That’s not leftism. That’s liberalism.
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Mar 2 2025 22:51 utc | 35
The brilliance of Lenin is in predicting the future.
The tragedy of Lenin is that the West failed to avert the predicted future by having a socialist revolution.
The West’s deindustrialization, American capitalists selling to China the rope (the industry) with which the global proletariat will hang them, service industry being the main driver of GDP in the West, the creation of G7/NATO, the collective West’s desire to plunder China – all these outcomes of capitalism were foretold by Lenin 100 years ago, and in one tiny chapter of a short book: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch08.htm#bkV22P280F01
Outsourcing:
As for the second circumstance, Hobson writes: “One of the strangest symptoms of the blindness of imperialism is the reckless indifference with which Great Britain, France and other imperial nations are embarking on this perilous dependence. Great Britain has gone farthest. Most of the fighting by which we have won our Indian Empire has been done by natives; in India, as more recently in Egypt, great standing armies are placed under British commanders; almost all the fighting associated with our African dominions, except in the southern part, has been done for us by natives.”
Looting China (note how Westerners always complain about China’s capital markets being too heavily regulated after China’s reform and opening-up):
Hobson gives the following economic appraisal of the prospect of the partitioning of China: “The greater part of Western Europe might then assume the appearance and character already exhibited by tracts of country in the South of England, in the Riviera and in the tourist-ridden or residential parts of Italy and Switzerland, little clusters of wealthy aristocrats drawing dividends and pensions from the Far East, with a somewhat larger group of professional retainers and tradesmen and a larger body of personal servants and workers in the transport trade and in the final stages of production of the more perishable goods; all the main arterial industries would have disappeared, the staple foods and manufactures flowing in as tribute from Asia and Africa. . . . We have foreshadowed the possibility of even a larger alliance of Western states, a European federation of great powers which, so far from forwarding the cause of world civilisation, might introduce the gigantic peril of a Western parasitism, a group of advanced industrial nations, whose upper classes drew vast tribute from Asia and Africa, with which they supported great tame masses of retainers, no longer engaged in the staple industries of agriculture and manufacture, but kept in the performance of personal or minor industrial services under the control of a new financial aristocracy. Let those who would scout such a theory (it would be better to say: prospect) as undeserving of consideration examine the economic and social condition of districts in Southern England today which are already reduced to this condition, and reflect upon the vast extension of such a system which might be rendered feasible by the subjection of China to the economic control of similar groups of financiers, investors, and political and business officials, draining the greatest potential reservoir of profit the world has ever known, in order to consume it in Europe. The situation is far too complex, the play of world forces far too incalculable, to render this or any other single interpretation of the future very probable; but the influences which govern the imperialism of Western Europe today are moving in this direction, and, unless counteracted or diverted, make towards some such consummation.”[7]
G7 and NATO (China remembers what the Eight-Nation Alliance did to it. Note the conspicuous absence of Russia, the only nation which underwent a communist revolution, from the modern-day G7. The G7 did become P8 and G8 when Russia joined post-USSR collapse, but Russia was unceremoniously kicked out in 2014. Interesting to see current attempts to lure Russia back in to the G7 to form a G8 again.)
The author is quite right: if the forces of imperialism had not been counteracted they would have led precisely to what he has described. The significance of a “United States of Europe” in the present imperialist situation is correctly appraised. He should have added, however, that, also within the working-class movement, the opportunists, who are for the moment victorious in most countries, are “working” systematically and undeviatingly in this very direction. Imperialism, which means the partitioning of the world, and the exploitation of other countries besides China, which means high monopoly profits for a handful of very rich countries, makes it economically possible to bribe the upper strata of the proletariat, and thereby fosters, gives shape to, and strengthens opportunism. We must not, however, lose sight of the forces which counteract imperialism in general, and opportunism in particular, and which, naturally, the social-liberal Hobson is unable to perceive.
The constant fearmongering about Muslims and dark skinned folks, the establishment of NATO, the establishment of a globe-spanning military force by the US, the false promise of social democracy:
The German opportunist, Gerhard Hildebrand, who was once expelled from the Party for defending imperialism, and who could today be a leader of the so-called “Social-Democratic” Party of Germany, supplements Hobson well by his advocacy of a “United States of Western Europe” (without Russia) for the purpose of “joint” action … against the African Negroes, against the “great Islamic movement,” for the maintenance of a “powerful army and navy”, against a “Sino-Japanese coalition,”[8] etc.
Deindustrialization and “The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”:
The description of “British imperialism” in Schulze-Gaevernitz’s book reveals the same parasitical traits. The national income of Great Britain approximately doubled from 1865 to 1898, while the income “from abroad” increased nine-fold in the same period. While the “merit” of imperialism is that it “trains the Negro to habits of industry” (you cannot manage without coercion … ), the “danger” of imperialism lies in that “Europe will shift the burden of physical toil—first agricultural and mining, then the rougher work in industry—on to the coloured races, and itself be content with the role of rentier, and in this way, perhaps, pave the way for the economic, and later, the political emancipation of the coloured races.”
Service industry taking hold in the West:
An increasing proportion of land in England is being taken out of cultivation and used for sport, for the diversion of the rich. As far as Scotland—the most aristocratic place for hunting and other sports—is concerned, it is said that “it lives on its past and on Mr. Carnegie” (the American multimillionaire). On horse racing and fox hunting alone England annually spends £14,000,000 (nearly 130 million rubles). The number of rentiers in England is about one million. The percentage of the productively employed population to the total population is declining
Posted by: All Under Heaven | Mar 2 2025 22:57 utc | 37
Posted by: jinn | Mar 3 2025 16:04 utc | 89
Before 2008 the main asset of commercial banks was loans to their customers which was roughly in balance with the banks deposits (the main liability of banks) on the other side of the ledger.
All parties need to read in context. In this case, @85 was speaking of commercial paper like mortgage backed securities. This is not very responsive. If it is meant to deny the role of the collapse of MBS value, and their ability to pay interest/count toward reserve requirements/both, it would be better I think to say so. A little documentation of this would be even more effective?
The bank makes money on loans (interest and fees) and it pays interest on its deposits. The difference between interest earned and interest paid is the bank’s gross income. From that gross income the bank pays expenses which includes losses when bank borrowers lose their jobs and default on their bank loans.
And I agree. The thing is, I suspect @85 does too. But it seems to me in context that @85 is assuming that the collapse in MBS (which it implicitly asserts, unlike @89?) means that the interest paid to banks declines, decreasing gross income. How does the Fed buying worthless securities counted as interest paid to the bank increases the interest paid by the bank?
Anyone who thinks banks benefited financially from the 2008 meltdown and Fed QE that followed… The effect on banks of many borrowers losing their jobs and then force fed deposits by the Fed was the banks were left with a decrease in their main money-making assets (loans) while at the same time an increase their main money-paying liabilities.
Mortgage backed securities were by and large not loans to customers backed by the bank’s lien on the property, but repackaged mortgages held by the bank and issued as new loans to the purchasers, who would pay interest to the banks…except the value of the mortgages, the collateral backing the loan, collapsed. The MBS was a bad loan, thus accordingly a deduction from the gross income, even if there was no individual customer losing their job then defaulting. So again, how did the banks receiving face value on MBS hurt them?
A larger issue perhaps is the work apparently done by the phrase “benefited financially…” The Fed’s QE replaced worthless MBS at face value, taking what had previously counted as assets no longer paying interest, with deposits from the Fed. No, these deposits did not count as interest-bearing loans adding to the bank’s income as such. But isn’t the banks’ loss of interest income from the MBS moot, as they were no longer paying interest to the bank? What isn’t moot is whether the banks were saved from bankruptcy? Personally I don’t believe a correct policy by the Fed could cure the effects of the business cycle and guarantee banks would make the same amount of profits. Regardless, I do think that being saved from bankruptcy counts as financial benefit. That’s true I think even if the volume of interest paying loans decreased, cutting bank income. Making less money is not precisely the same as bankruptcy.
Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 3 2025 16:56 utc | 99
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