ALB
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And would be filled up with twice the number a few weeks later such is the desperation of many people to try to get a better life.
My guess would be that the most likely “solution” would some processing (and maybe detention) centre in France with all the Iraqi Kurds and others who don’t qualify as “refugees” being rounded up and shipped back.
But if we are in the game of thinking up ideal solutions within capitalism, how about ending sanctions on Syria and Iran or the support given for Saudi bombing in Yemen?
Unfortunately capitalism is capitalism. Geopolitics, wars and other conflicts of economic interest, together with mass poverty and misery are built-in to it.
All we can do is describe and record this.
The problem with your suggestion about what the capitalist state could do to deal with the problem (lay on air flights, instal in hotels, etc) is that many of the migrants cannot be classified as “refugees” under international law. A lot of them are self-confessedly economic migrants. It seems that most of those who drowned in that disaster were Kurds from Iraq. The Kurdish autonomous region there is probably the safest place to be in Iraq so I can’t see how anyone from there could meet the criteria for being a refugee under international law.
This is not to criticise them or say that they should be left to their fate as many are probably trying to join family members who were political refugees from when Saddam Hussein was oppressing the Kurds and who are already established in Britain or are even now British citizens.
In any event, I can’t see the point of speculating what capitalist states could do if they wanted.
Our case is not that taxes are not levied on things that workers buy or on wages but, wages being tied to the cost of living, anything that increases or decreases the money cost of living, including an increase or decrease in taxes, will affect the money wages paid. It won’t necessarily affect what workers consume, their standard of living, which will remain the same as what they need to consume to recreate and maintain their (particular type) of labour power.
This works both ways. The standard of living will not be permanently increased if taxes on what workers consume or taxes on their money wage are reduced or removed, as money wages will eventually adjust to the decreased money cost of living. The standard of living (what workers consume) will remain the same. So anything that decreases the money cost of living is ultimately self-defeating. It won’t increase the standard of living.
Similarly, the standard of living won’t be permanently reduced if taxes on what workers buy or on their pay are increased. In so far as this increases the money cost of living it will eventually lead to an increase in money wages, leaving workers with the same standard of living as before.
So, who benefits from a reduction in taxes or suffers from an increase since, in either case, the workers standard of living remains the same? On which class in society are taxes a burden? On who do they fall in the end?
Actually, in the period we are talking about (pre-WW1) this theory was employed more to show that a reduction in taxes on what workers consumed would not benefit them rather than to show what would happen if taxes were increased. The question of direct taxes on wages did not arise as it was generally accepted (by capitalists too) that workers simply weren’t paid enough to allow this ie that they couldn’t pay this as they didn’t have enough money to.
You introduce a new element by arguing that today workers are paid more than enough to buy what they need to consume in order to recreate and maintain their particular type of labour power:
“But what if the “necessary” cost of reproducing labour power is well below the average wage, as it is in most countries of advanced capitalism today?”
In other words, you are challenging the basic assumption that money wages are tied to the money cost of living as a worker, and are claiming that they are in fact higher than this.
But are wages really higher than the cost of creating and maintaining a modern worker’s labour power?
The floor is yours to try to make that case.
Keynes, writing in the 1930s (when the general price level went down as well as up) noted an advantage for employers of a slow depreciation of the currency. As a textbook puts it:
“Keynes expressed, in numerous passages in The General Theory, the view that wages were “sticky” in terms of money. He noted, for example, that workers and unions tended to fight tooth-and-nail against any attempts by employers to reduce money wages (the actual sum of money workers receive, as opposed to the real purchasing power of these wages, taking account of changes in the cost of living), even by a little bit, in a way they did not fight for increases in wages every time there was a small rise in the cost of living eroding their “real wages”.
A slow depreciation of the currency (of around 2% a year) is in fact now the coordinated policy of the G7 countries. So the so-called “wages-prices spiral” is started by governments depreciating their currency; and of course it’s not a “spiral” as it’s all prices including wages (the price of labour power) going up more or less together.
Whether this trick still works is a moot point as workers, like Alan and BD’s one-time work mates, learn what is happening and act accordingly through their trade unions.
This article, reprinted in the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard from an American publication of the time, shows that our position on taxes and the working class was held by others besides us.
The last-but-one paragraph sets out clearly the case against some popular reforms under capitalism. Today we could add UBI as a universal payment.
Interest rates are not included in the consumer price index. They tend to be higher when there is high inflation (depreciation of the currency), otherwise those lending money would not be getting back the same purchasing power as they lent. They go up with currency inflation.
There is an article on rising prices in the December Socialist Standard, being sent out today.
The House of Lords (critical) report on Quantitative Easing mentioned by Mervyn King was discussed in the September issue here.
King is right. While central banks can control rising prices due to depreciation of the currency (as they control that and in fact cause it), they cannot control rising prices due to other factors such as prices rising through shortages of materials. Which seems to be the main cause of rising prices at the moment (also misleadingly called “inflation” when it’s caused by demand exceeding supply without affecting the purchasing power of the currency).
The outcome of Pieter Lawrence’s campaign was this compromise resolution carried by Conference in 1991:
“That this Conference recognises that rules and regulations, and democratic procedures for making and changing them and for deciding if they have been infringed, will exist in socialist society. Whereas a ruling class depends on the maintenance of laws to ensure control of class society, a classless society obtains social cohesion through its socialisation process without resorting to a coercive machinery. However, in view of the fact that in socialist theory the word “law” means a social rule made and enforced by the state, and in view of the fact that the coercive machinery that is the state will be abolished in socialist society, this Conference decides that it is inappropriate to talk about laws, law courts, a police force and prisons existing in a socialist society.”
A comrade had a similar experience in 1908.
I meant it was rubbish from the point of view of clarifying what the term “ecofascism” might mean.
The word “fascism” of course originated in Italy as Mussolini’s name for what he was up to. It was the Stalinists who extended it to mean any authoritarian regime (that was inimical to the interests of state-capitalist Russia) including, in fact especially, Nazi Germany. But as far as I know the Nazis did not call themselves or regard themselves as Fascists. It is as the Stalinist meaning that it has become part of the political vocabulary and why we should avoid using it ourselves except in a historical context.
Since there were clear parallels between the totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia it is not surprising that some opponents of the Stalinists called it “Red Fascism”. We have even used it ourselves on occasion, even if more as a debating point than strictly an accurate description.
It is in fact a moot point as to which is worse. A totalitarian regime that openly proclaims that that is what it is or a totalitarian regime that pretends to be democratic? Both Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia claimed to be socialist.
You’re right, Marcos, that one’s a load of rubbish. Now I am more than ever convinced that we should not use the term “ecofascism”. We should attack ecologists who say the world is overpopulated and that the population should be compulsorily reduced, but on the ground that the premise is wrong and so their conclusion does not follow. not on the ground that it is “fascist” (which is merely a way of saying that you very strongly disagree with it).
Just read the Wikipedia entry on “eco fascism”:
“Ecofascism is a theoretical political model in which a totalitarian government would require individuals to sacrifice their own interests to the “organic whole of nature”. Some writers have used it to refer to the hypothetical danger of future dystopian governments, which might resort to fascist policies in order to deal with environmental issues. Other writers have used it to refer to segments of historical and modern fascist movements that focused on environmental issues.”
I expected to find something more substantial than “theoretical political model” or “hypothetical danger” of what some future government “might resort to”. The only substantial thing is that it was part of the ideology of historical fascist movements and governments.
Are there or are there not ecologists who actually advocate that without having any connection with historical fascist governments or current grouplets inspired by them? And if there are, calling them “fascist” would just be a way of discrediting them.
So, “ecofascism” is a useless term too.
In that interview Traverso is accepting that “fascist” is not an accurate description of the far-right parties that have managed to win an electoral following. To call them “post fascist” is to say that they are not or at least no longer “fascist”. But I don’t think that’s the word we are looking for.
“Eco-fascism” is not as bad as “fascism” on its own but the suggestion is still there that they are some sort of “fascist”.
Yes, Jack, I think that’s right. Here’s our analysis of the rise of Nazism from the 1978 edition of our pamphlet Questions of the Day though it was in previous editions.
The trouble is the word “fascism” has a history as a political term as has the term “anti-fascism”. It has been used as the ultimate “evil”, so evil that all non-fascists are duty-bound to unite against it. This was the line of the old CP in the 1930s and has been inherited by the SWP. It leads to the struggle against those designated “fascist” being considered more important than the struggle for socialism; to “popular fronts” and the like with openly pro-capitalist parties.
Capitalism, not fascism, is the enemy. In fact it was capitalist conditions in the 1930s that gave rise to fascism as a mass movement as a reaction to the inevitable failure of democratic reformism.
