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If, as ALB says, “our (SPGB) position on taxes and the working class was held by others..” I am wondering why I cannot find in the posted article any explicit reference to the SP central proposition – that which started this thread – that the burden of taxation falls on the capitalist only. In the penultimate paragraph, the writer says that the great majority of workers don’t pay tax because they have nothing to tax. John Keracher said the same thing twenty-six years later when I imagine worker’s real wages were higher than in 1909. Simple common sense I’d call it. Nothing about burdens or tax incidence there. The second sentence in that paragraph refers to a worker who possesses a “small property” (not many of those I think in 1909!) and so may pay tax in the form of rates. These taxes “enter into the cost of living, and, again, the necessary cost of living determines the wages.” He doesn’t define what he means by “the necessary cost” but his general statement in the first paragraph makes it fairly clear: “wages always hover about the cost of subsistence”. So the necessary cost is the cost of reproducing labour power just sufficient to ensure that the “(employer’s) wage slave is in working condition”. Just like the farmer’s horse that needs hay. So a rational capitalist must increase the worker’s wage to cover the tax impost which has reduced his wage below the level where his labour power can be reproduced. What capitalist is going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg? So in the case of the worker who pays rates, likewise the worker who has to pay rent, the cost of housing is usually included in official measures of standard of living. Fair enough.

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? Marx suggested it could be because of an historical/social/moral component in determining the cost of re/production of labour power. Which makes labour power an exception to the “law of value”. If the worker’s wage is set well above the “necessary cost” of reproducing labour power, then the State can take a chunk out of the worker’s wage but not so big a chunk obviously that the after- tax wage is reduced to bare subsistence level. Since the State doesn’t produce any wealth or income from its own activities it can only get funds to pay for what it does from those who do receive income and/or own wealth. So the worker’s income is taxed, the capitalist’s income is taxed, the landowner’s income is taxed, the financier’s income is taxed, all bar the worker’s tax coming out of profits, rent and interest, the money equivalents of surplus value. But the worker’s tax (income tax) comes out of his/her wages which are paid out of variable capital, and they are not transferred or redistributed to fall as a burden on the capitalist.

I’ve just been reading a piece by Jack Fitzgerald, published in 1904, called The Bogey of the Taxes. It reads very well despite being written 117 years ago. Again, I can’t find anything in it which suggests that the burden of taxation falls upon the capitalist only. Fitzgerald’s argument seems to be that tax imposts (he’s talking about a tax on consumption goods)
do not have a determinate relationship to prices. He uses empirical evidence to make his case. Eg: “articles that are easily produced are often taxed without affecting the retail price at all, as shown in the taxes on beer, tea and spirits”. And “when duty was removed the wholesale price of corn rose”. What I found significant is that Fitzgerald’s argument at heart is that workers should forget about taxes because whether high or low, they have no effect on the worker’s wage because “subsistence is all that upon average he obtains”. The upshot of all this is that the tax issue obscures the only real issue that matters, which is that while the worker produces all the wealth in existence, he only gets a small share of it – the rock-bottom socialist argument. Forget so-called tax robbery, this is the real robbery, so “tax reform” is not something that workers should concern themselves with. This is much the same as the conclusion in the posted article “Where Labor is Robbed” (last para). And when I listened to Parts 1and 2 of the FAQ on taxation, I began to think that this was the main point being made. One of the participants suggested that if workers get concerned about the inequities or whatever of the tax system, they are prone to believe that they “have a stake in the system”. But according to him, workers don’t have a stake in the system. OK, I can accept all that, but why stick with a crappy theory about tax burdens falling only on the capitalist, using a blinkered reading of Marx’s LTV, when it’s unnecessary? You already have an appropriate response to tax reform etc. under the SP’s common policy on reforms and reformism. Why build a sound socialist political strategy on bad theory? I guess I’ll never understand it.

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When I read the comments here by PJS and ALB I think at last I can understand what Wittgenstein was getting at when he said that the meaning of a word is given in its use in a particular “language game” – a human rule -governed activity integrated with social behavior which is context dependent and purposeful. It’s clear that SPers and I are in different “language games” and so our opposing arguments, and the words we use, pass “like ships in the night.” Take for example ALB on income tax deducted at source as in any PAYE scheme: “Workers can’t even be said to pay that, let alone it being a burden on them. It doesn’t come out of their pocket. They don’t even see the money. It is paid by the employer direct to the tax people.”

For Marxists who put so much store on emphasizing the difference between appearance and reality, I find this very odd. Since when does “seeing the money” mean that money belongs to you only if you can see it – when it’s already in your hand so to speak? The reason that workers don’t see the money is, as ALB says, because “it is paid by the employer directly to the tax people”. But that doesn’t make it the employer’s money. The employer’s money pays the employer’s tax – company tax, profits tax, payroll tax etc.- not the worker’s tax. Here we can see the confusion in conflating different meanings of the word “pay”. There is pay(i), a verb, which means to give money due for a debt incurred, like eg. the debt the worker owes to the tax office; and pay(ii) a verb, which means to pass on or transfer a money payment from debtor to creditor via a third party, like when an employer passes on the employee’s tax to the tax office.

Perhaps I can make my position clearer by referring to two examples, similar but different to the tax business. When I worked for a while in a government department, my union dues, payable each fortnight, were paid directly to the union by the department (my employer). I didn’t see this payment. It was shown on my fortnightly pay slip, along with my tax deduction which I also didn’t see. Does this mean that my union dues were not actually paid by me? Certainly the union never thought so: when I left I received a notice from them asking where my dues were (they hadn’t caught up with my change of job).
Second example: I once worked with a guy who had been through a bitter divorce. As a result, he was ordered by the court to pay maintenance to his two children. For a while he succeeded in avoiding this, but the state eventually caught up with him and then ordered his employer to garnishee his wages to cover the amount he had to pay to his former partner. Again, the money payable under the garnishee order was taken directly from his pay, same as his tax. He never “saw” either. So, applying SP logic, does that mean that in fact he did not pay maintenance to his family? Of course he did. The money was taken directly from his wages. It was his money.

The anecdotal evidence cited by PLS shows that a business pays its workers’ wages on one day of the week and sends money off to the tax office on another. But that tells us nothing about the source of the money that is paid on different days to different people. The source surely is the same; it’s the workers’ wages. The employer pays the workers’ tax out of the workers’ gross wage, and pays what’s left – the net wage or take-home pay – to the worker on pay day. There is no rule saying that these two payments must be made by the employer on the same day from the same pot of money surely? Listening to the participants in the SP’s FAQ The Tax Argument (Pt.1) responding to PLS’s question left me feeling that they saw the two day/two pot theory of employer payments as “proof” that the burden of tax falls upon the capitalist. I haven’t yet listened to Part 2.

ALB doesn’t see the problem with the $400 I referred to in my example of tax paid by the worker which, in my view, is a burden upon the worker and not upon the capitalist. Whether or not the $400 is reflected in the level of wages is not part of the “problem” I was referring to. As the $400 would become state revenue it would probably end up being part of the income of an unproductive worker, like a bureaucrat or whatever, whose income would also be taxed just as it was for the worker who paid the initial $400 to the tax office. The $400 considered as a direct money payment like council tax or whatever may indeed enter into the reproduction cost of labour power. OK, but I wasn’t discussing that.

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What does “burden” mean in a discourse on taxation? Reading the SPGB position (from the FAQ webpage) I learn that “In the long run, taxes are a burden on the capitalist class only”. So what I logically infer from this is that taxes are not a burden on the working class. So I then reasonably assume that, according to the SP, the workers don’t actually “pay” income tax because it is reasonable for people to think that if you actually “pay” for something you bear the cost (the burden). But ALB says that this is not the SP case. So what I now infer is that although workers do indeed pay tax, the amount of tax they pay is – in the long run – passed on or transferred to the capitalist, which then means that it is the capitalist only who bears the burden of tax initially paid by the worker. This formulation does agree with the conventional meanings given to tax burden or tax incidence, which can be read in any one of a number of dictionaries of economics or, as ALB has indicated, from Wikipedia.

Now when SPers unpack this formulation to show how valid it is, I have noticed that they always use the example of a change in tax, like a tax increase or a tax cut – which is the sort of thing at the centre of so-called “tax reform” by the state. In that context, the SP position is coherent because it adverts to two factors to explain why, say, a new tax impost on workers’ wages will eventually be transferred to the capitalist: the operation of the Marxist “law of value”; and the effect of collective action of workers via TUs to force the capitalist employer to increase their money wages . The successful outcome (never automatically guaranteed of course) is that the workers net wage after the new impost returns to its pre- impost level and real wages therefore are restored (assuming no price increases in the meantime). And the capitalist now bears the burden of the tax increase that initially was imposed upon the worker. I have no problem with that. But hang on – what about the bulk of the tax I regularly pay to the state? That hasn’t changed. Like, where I live, average FT weekly earnings are around $1,700 and the average tax (at 24%) on that would be around $400. A tax increase from 24% to say 25.5% would raise my weekly tax burden by around $33. Now, as explained, the typical SP response to this tax increase would be to say that ultimately or in the long run, the burden of that $33 would fall upon the capitalist. Accepting the major assumptions behind this reasoning, I agree. But what about other $400? This hasn’t been passed on to anyone, so the burden of the workers tax doesn’t fall upon the capitalist.

I have never read any convincing answer to this question. Because any answer to it invariably must focus on the difference between gross and net income, most responses I have read treat (or are logically compelled to regard) gross income as something of a “mystery” or as “unreal”. Which of course it isn’t. So this response cannot resolve the problem of understanding what is meant when you say that “the burden of tax falls upon the capitalist”, when your average worker knows that it doesn’t. The upshot of all this is that we are bound to expect a response of incomprehension or failure to understand when workers respond to the SP position on tax. As some evidence for this, I recently listened to the SP’s FAQ The Tax Argument (Pt.1) where the lead speaker refers to the tax issue as a “well-worn trope” and says “workers just don’t get it, and when I try to explain it they still don’t get it. Or they see it as a technical curiosity with no wider significance, or more likely just glaze over. Has anybody found a good way to put this argument so that the workers do get it?’ Has anyone bothered to think that maybe workers don’t get it because the SP argument on tax defies common sense?

ALB, yes I have read Ricardo’s writing from Chapter 16 on taxation. I always feel a bit uneasy when, in answer to questions about the SP position on tax today, I am given remarks made by Ricardo in 1817, when no worker in the UK paid income tax and wages were at a minimum subsistence level (Ricardo was a Malthusian after all). Ricardo’s model is far removed from the reality of capitalist economies and their tax structures today. Because he strongly believed that wages and profits were always inversely related, then of course a tax on wages, because they could only be paid by the capitalist as part of the workers gross wage, will mean an equivalent fall in profits – effectively becoming a tax on profits. I can’t see how this helps answer my question above.
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I’ve just seen the two quotes on your last post ALB. Bax and Quelch say that the workers “..have nothing wherewith to pay taxes” (because their wage on average is at subsistence level). John Keracher, the US Marxist, made much the same point in 1935 when he said that because workers’ wages were always at subsistence level, they can’t pay taxes because they don’t have the necessary money: “They could pay taxes if wages were just about double what they are at present” he said. This commonsense claim rests on the primary assumption that average wages are at minimum subsistence level, a view held by both Ricardo and Marx , but it doesn’t bear upon my question because average wages in all advanced capitalist societies today are well above subsistence level.

I think the MIA glossary statement is not too bad actually. It recognises that workers’ concern over tax levels is a genuine and justified concern. And this suggests to me that reducing tax inequality in capitalism is a feasible political aim for the working class. But crucially, it clearly implies that reducing income inequality under capitalism is not possible. For that, you would need socialism. Why can’t this be made the SPGB position, rather than persist with the abstruse and ill-defined views on taxation which you still hold?

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AJ: Your quote from Marx 1847 is from the same source as mine, but I fail to see how it has any bearing on the SP position on tax which says that the burden of tax falls upon the capitalist and not upon the worker. Marx’s comments are directed against the Prussian state monarchy where in 1847 around 40% of tax was indirect (a tax on consumption goods) and only 29% was direct (a tax on income). In advanced capitalist states today, the position is more than reversed. Marx and Engels both took a strong line against any attempt by the state to alter the tax take by increasing the tax on consumption goods and lowering the tax on income, clearly because this would disadvantage the worker and the poor generally but give advantage to the capitalist. In Marx’s example wages would be reduced “if all taxes bearing on the working class were abolished root and branch.” That’s because the worker’s wage, being at a minimum, would have to cover the tax on workers’ consumption goods since the tax is included in the price of those goods (a tax on flour, a tax on bread, a tax on beer etc.) So in Marx’s hypothetical example, the removal of all these taxes would of course reduce the worker’s wage by the same amount he needed before to pay tax on his consumption goods. The employer’s profit would rise by the same amount (all other things being equal) because he now has lower labour costs. Marx’s alternative scenario is much more realistic: the employer now pays the worker’s tax directly to the state, so the employer now becomes a tax collector – what Marx refers to as “an alteration in the form of tax collecting.”
His profit levels remain the same and the worker’s real wage remains the same. But my question still is: what has any of this to do with SP position on tax? The only sense in which one can speak of a “burden” is the burden placed on the employer now that he has to collect the worker’s tax and pass it directly to the state.

I don’t have much to say about your other paras. AJ. You are looking at the tax issue arising from a change in tax where TU action can shift any tax increase on the worker onto the employer – as can happen. Of course, the employer can then shift it onto the consumer by raising prices, so the initial tax impact shifts from the worker to the capitalist to the consumer (who if poor may not have any protection, being outside the class struggle). In the long term tax ends up being borne by people who are least able to transfer it to another group or jurisdiction (the SP as far as I am aware sees this process of tax burden transfer in a limited way because it ends with the capitalist).

ALB: I am uncertain what you mean when you say “(I) have missed the key passage which states the situation from the point of view of what is now called Marxian Economics ..etc.” You cannot be referring to the source (MECW Vol. 6) used by myself and AJ, because no such passage can be found there. I didn’t know Marx had a “Law of Wages”. I know about the so-called “Iron Law of Wages” which as you know Marx rightly rubbished. Marx certainly had a theory of wages, which is derived from his Labour Theory of Value because the economic relation between capital and labour is an exchange relation. None of the old-time Marxist political economists (Dobb, Meek, Sweezy) refer to Marx’s “Law of Wages” as far as I know. I agree as you say that the price of labour power tends to reflect the money cost of creating and maintaining it, and if taxes are part of this cost then that would be reflected in the total money cost of wage goods. You then say that the taxes that workers pay are “passed on” to the employer and it is this that in effect constitutes the “burden” on employers. But this is to use “burden” in a completely different sense to how it is conventionally used in any discourse on tax, because there “burden” refers to the actual “imposition” of tax on the employer, not the mere “passing on” to the state. Your sense of burden on the capitalist is no burden at all, because he is merely a collector and passer-on of the tax paid by the worker out of the worker’s gross wage who continues to suffer the real burden of paying tax on his wages.

Re your provisos: 1 and 2 I agree with. On no. 3 I agree that taxes on capitalists come from surplus value as does all profit, rent and interest. But a tax on workers comes out of their wages, which are not part of surplus value. Unless of course you mean that workers pay all taxes because labour alone produces all wealth. But that is just a truism having no explanatory value IMO. As to the claim in the 1853 article re “the middle class man generally indemnifies himself..etc”. it is an anomalous statement I guess, but I thought Marx is referring to how the middle class man can transfer his own tax imposition by paying his employees less and so maintain his level of profits, or he can increase the price of the goods he sells. So he can “indemnify himself.” The worker however has no such luck, because he cannot transfer his tax imposition or burden on to anyone (except he may via the class struggle – but this is 1853 after all). Of course as ALB indicates, we need to add an “all other things being equal” caveat to that.

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“The Socialist Party takes the uncommon, but very much the orthodox Marxist position that the ultimate burden of taxation, despite a few minor exceptions, falls upon the capitalist class.”
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Well, I can agree about the “uncommon” bit, though “unique”
would be more accurate. On what evidence from Marx (or Engels) do you claim that the SP position on taxation is “orthodox Marxism?” Marx wrote very little on taxation. Most Marxist economists say little or nothing about Marx’s views on taxation. But what he did write – mainly in his journalism and letters – suggests a position at odds with the SP position. Take for example Marx writing on the Prussian monarchy in 1847: “The monarchy, like every other form of state, is a direct burden on the working class on the material side only in the form of taxes. Taxes are the existence of the state expressed in economic terms.” And here is Marx excoriating Whig finance policy in 1853: “…it lightens the burdens of the rich and increases the burdens of the poor. As to saying that the Income Tax does not effect the working man, it is a patent absurdity, for under our present social system of employer and employed, the middle class man generally indemnifies himself for additional taxation in diminished wages or increased prices.”

What these two examples indicate is that Marx acknowledged the importance of tax as a burden on the working class and the poor generally. And reading them in the wider context it is clear that Marx (and Engels) had a strong preference for direct over indirect taxation, largely for the reason that many do today: indirect taxation (on consumption) is inherently regressive, direct taxation (on income) is not. Despite the different tax landscape in Marx’s time compared to the present, the principles governing tax policy and debate are much the same. To say that the SP position on tax is “very much the orthodox Marxist position” is a nonsense.

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L Bird says “Marx was a democrat”. No, Marx was not a democrat! At least, not in the same way we might say that J S Mill was a liberal, or Edmund Burke a conservative. To Marx, democracy defined a political state, conventionally associated with a democratic republic which he saw as the “logical form” of bourgeois rule. Beyond that, democracy was seen as a means (a “mere means” according to Engels) and not an end in itself. Regarding Marx’s socialism, democracy was a means for the proletariat to gain power.

As far as I know, there is nothing in Marx’s work where he explicitly states that socialism/communism will be a “democratic” society. Not in Critique of the Gotha Program where it might be expected to be found. There is no mention in CGP of democracy – neither in the lower phase nor the higher phase of socialism/communism.
Nor in Capital 1 where he talks about “a community of free individuals carrying on their work with the means of production held in common”. Since Marx identified democracy with a political state, and given that socialism would bring an end to state and politics of any kind, then it made sense for Marx not to call socialism a “democratic society”. I am not suggesting that Marx was anti-democratic. Far from it. I think he was committed to an ideal of direct democracy (best understood through his early works). But he never addressed the important procedural issues of what concrete forms of collective choice and decision making would apply in a socialist society. He didn’t provide recipes for the cookshops of the future.

It is not enough to call socialism “democratic social production”. The SPGB definition appropriately identifies property and purpose as central to an adequate definition: a socialist society holds economic resources in common (no-one owns) under democratic control, and production is for use, not profit. L Bird’s definition would better fit Britain’s early 20th century Guild Socialism than it would revolutionary socialism. Calling Marx a democrat would have him rising from his grave in Highgate cemetery.

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Hi L B Neill

As someone living in Oz, but in NSW, I was very interested in your remarks on the Victorian Socialists and the recent Federal Election, where I see your candidates in the three seats contested each gained between 4 and 5 percent of votes cast. On a realist measure, this is a good result. But you say that those who voted for these candidates voted for socialism. I’ve just looked through VicSoc Federal Election policies and can find no reference whatever to socialism. There are policies re tax increases on the wealthy; nationalisation of mines and banks; aboriginal land rights; protection and support for asylum seekers; anti-racism; GBI for all; raise pensions; real climate action (100% renewables in 10 years); women’s rights; LGBTQI rights; free healthcare; increase funding for the national broadcaster (ABC); animal welfare, and more. This puts the Victorian Socialists in the Left of Labor spectrum, although many of its policies resonate with those of Labor and also the Greens. In the UK context, I guess these policies would be shared by many members of Momentum, although considering the structure of the Vic. Socialists perhaps a better comparison would be with the (now defunct) TUSC. Both were formed as alliances with existing left parties – in Australia, Socialist Alliance and Socialist Equality – and both have/had a strong TU component. Perhaps the only difference is the prominent “identity politics” element in the Vic Soc policy mix.

What I can’t understand is why you appear to identify your position as more or less consistent with the SPGB’s political aim of socialism. But they are light years apart. In the eyes of the SPGB, the Victorian Socialists is a reformist organisation. Reformism is the prime cardinal sin to the SPGB, and always has been. The SPGB would argue that the Victorian Socialists is a party supporting capitalism, albeit trying to make it kinder – which in the end serves the interests of capital, not the worker. You say that the workers who voted for your candidates in the recent election “intentionally, consciously deliberately” voted for socialism. In SPGB eyes, they were voting for capitalism. How do you square this with your obviously sincere and conscientious beliefs?

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Sympo's original question as to what is "decisive" in the making of history (re Engels to Bloch, 1890) clearly places the meaning of "decisive" in the context of Marx's theory of history, and the bedrock of that theory is that the expansion and development of productive forces occur regardless of social form, ie. there is throughout history a perennial tendency to productive progress, exceptionally so in capitalism.  In this context, M&E saw economic factors as "decisive" when the productive forces are "fettered" by the social relations of production.  Because the social relations divide people into classes, class conflict is an expression of the conflict between forces and relations of production. Ultimately, in a period of class struggle and social revolution, the social relations are changed and "the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed" (Marx, 1859).  The forces of production are "unfetttered" for a further round of development.Fairly clearly, the "history" of the MCH is epochal history, the history of modes of production and of social formations which may evolve over hundreds of years. So the problem I have is how to relate Marx's architecture of grand theory to major historical events, like say the Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation of the Soviet Union. I gather that twc regards economics as "decisive" in this case, because economic conditions in Russia at that time determined that any attempt to build socialism in Russia was bound to fail. But while there is some truth in this argument, it owes nothing to M&E's historical materialism IMO. Where is the evidence that Russia's productive forces had developed to the point where they came into conflict with the relations of production? Sure, economic conditions are an important factor in explaining the Bolshevik revolution.  We might even say that they were a necessary condition – impoverishment as a result of war, peasant revolt and the breakdown of the traditional agrarian commune etc. – but they were not sufficient conditions.  The decisive (because sufficient) condition was Lenin and his vanguard party without which there would never have been a Bolshevik revolution. So in this case I would say that it was politics that was "decisive", not economics, which is my answer to Sympo's question:"Why exactly weren't the Bolsheviks decisive in the making of history?"  They were.

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LBird wrote:

I suspect the Engelsist ideology that you hold, but seem to be unaware of, which tells you that there are only two alternatives, materialism and idealism, leads you to always see only a dichotomy, and since Marx stresses 'theory and practice' (which requires both ideas (consciousness) and inorganic nature), you have to ignore this and categorise any talk of 'ideas' as idealism.

This is Engels in Dialectics of Nature:  "Natural Science, like philosophy, has hitherto entirely neglected the full influence of men's activity on their thought; both know only nature on the one hand and thought on the other.  But it is precisely the alteration of nature by men (Engels' emphasis) , not solely nature as such, which is the most essential and immediate basis of human thought, and it is in the measure that man has learned to change nature that his intelligence has increased".These remarks of Engels are hard to reconcile with LBird's view that Engels' materialism makes 'matter' the 'active' side.  Isn't he saying much the same as Marx about the "unity of theory and practice" which LBird recognizes as central to Marx's epistemology? Fairly clearly, Engels' remarks are completely at odds with Lenin's view that thought is a "copy" of the real world (the copy theory of knowledge).  Anyway, to believe that Lenin's materialism, via Engels, leads inevitably to Leninist politics (elite control over workers, autocratic rule etc.) is one of the weirdist ideas I have ever encountered.  When Lenin declared that, left to themselves, Russian workers would never get beyond a trade union consciousness, he was speaking as a realist, not as "Engelsian materialist". Materialism and Empirio-Criticism had zero influence on his political strategies even though it was the one "philosophiocal" work on materialism which he wrote.  It may be worth noting that Bogdanov, a major subject of Lenin's hostile polemic, said that the most characteristic feature of Lenin's attitude in M and E-C was its authoritarian quality, embodied in the way he tried to parade his philosophical erudition to impress his readers, and to persuade them of their own ignorance in philosophical matters in order that they would believe him; that they would regard him as an authority.  Now who does that remind me of?

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DJP wrote:

FWIW. I'm working on something for the 75th anniversary of the start of the Spanish civil war.

You had better hurry, the 75th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War was in 2011.

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Quite a good song I think AJJ, but what is reformist about it?

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Spot on twc.  I was about to say the same myself.  Steele was not sacked for his "Lamarckism" by a "neo-Darwinist papacy". I will only add that Steele took his case to the Australian Federal Court which found against the University, and he was subsequently reinstated. The University appealed against the Court's decision but lost a second time. It eventually settled with an undisclosed payout to Steele. As far as I am aware, he chose not to return to the Uni of Wollongong but took up a position at Murdoch University in Western Australia.

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Thanks AJJ for starting this thread which follows from a response I made to Robbo (on the Hunter gatherer violence thread) who said that socialists, as "self-respecting hardline materialists", argue that war in the modern world is all about "commercial rivalries in capitalism", in relation to which religious and political beliefs are "ethereal" and "merely ideological smokescreens" hiding these "real" motives. I said it would be hard to explain the present war between ISIS and its opponents as a war arising from commercial rivalries in capitalism and that what drives ISIS et al is not material interest but religious faith. I also put the view that one of the reasons why Marxists in particular might find it hard to accept this (the primacy of religious faith) is that in Marxist terms religion is part of the "superstructure" and so is explained by reference to the "base" (economic activity). It seemed to me that Robbo's position is quite consistent with this – what I called the "conventional historical-materialist analysis of war". Robbo later (#147) restated his claim that the real motives for war are economic whereas religion and ideology serve as a smokescreen by specifically citing the example of ISIS and Boko Haram as cases which reinforce his claim, though he added the caveat that while these religious beliefs help to explain their actions, they don't really explain how or why ISIS et al have come to such prominence. Hence, an argument that wars are fought over religious beliefs, says Robbo, "stops short of a fully rounded explanation". OK, I can agree with that – who wouldn't, regarding anything as complex as war? But it's a long way from seeing religion as "merely an ideological smokescreen" which hides the "real" (economic) motives for war.  Robbo says that ISIS et al "appeal to a constituency whose economic interests have been thwarted …and that the story of these organisations cannot be fully grasped outside of the context of conflicting capitalist interests…" I think there is some truth in the first part of this. I 'm not so sure about the second part. It's easy to see why ISIS would appeal to people who are jobless, have low educational attainment, and have difficulty finding social acceptance, like many Muslims in Western European countries. But many Jihadists don't fit this picture. eg; the Londoner who allegedly decapitated hostages is a university graduate trained in computer programming, or the French middle class teenagers and medical students from atheist families who joined Jabhat-al-Nusra. The attraction of Jihadist groups cuts across classes. And their motives are not material or economic motives, but messianic religious ones which draw on apocalyptic currents in Islamic culture. Of course, it could still be the case that these motives are an ideological "smokescreen" for the "real" motives – but what exactly are these conflicting capitalist rivalries which will presumably lead me to discover what these "real" motives are? Hud (#145) says "there are reasons to believe that religion is not the principal factor driving ISIS to kill, nor, from what we know, does religion even seem to be providing an ideological framework for the killing." Well, I'd like to know what these reasons are. And I'd sure like to know what "ideological framework for the killing" drives ISIS if not religion. What I know may well be limited, but I am relying on writers like Patrick Cockburn and Robert Fisk, the two pre-eminent Independent correspondents on the Middle East; Fawaz Gerge, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy; Malise Ruthven, Lure of the Caliphate, and Sarah Burke How ISIS Rule, both in New York Review of Books; and others. This is Cockburn writing in The Jihadis Return: "The ideology of al-Qaida and ISIS draws a great deal from Wahabbism…..the fundamentalist 18th century version of Islam that imposes sharia law, relegates women to second-class citizens and regards Shia and Sufi Moslems as heretics and apostates to be persecuted along with Christians and Jews ." What else should we call this but a religious ideology? You say, Hud, that even if religion is identified as the primary cause driving individuals to join ISIS, that in itself would not demonstrate that religion is the determining cause of ISIS' actions. It’s possible, but I don’t see that there is much of a difference between the reasons why people join ISIS, and the purposes for which ISIS exists. Everything I have read says that the purpose or motives of ISIS is the establishment of a theocratic state, a so-called New Caliphate. Since the creation of a new state must involve politics, then it would be fair to say that ISIS' motives are not only religious, they are also political. But that's only because ISIS has to act politically to secure a theocratic state (or any state). What I don't see is that their real motives are "material" in the way most socialists use that term, ie. as an expression of material class interests. I think ISIS' religious ideological ambitions leave little room for material interests. You hold a different view. When you elucidate the meaning of "material" you say: "to achieve anything, we first have to provide for our immediate and longer term material necessities", and "all the religious enthusiasm in the world will not maintain a war unless that war is materially provisioned". Are you saying that unless ISIS fighters can get enough provisions (material) to eat, they will soon cease to be fighters for ISIS? Or unless they get guns and ammunition (war materiel) they won’t be able to fight? Do you think that this is part of the materialist argument (eg as put by the SPGB) on war? If so, I think you are seriously mistaken. However, you also say that “Warfare is an expensive business and has to be funded. It is much more easily explained by following the money". When I read this I thought this is more like it, because it might reveal that behind ISIS are the material class interests of capitalists, who would stand to benefit from ISIS success. This would then go a long way to proving that the conflict between ISIS and its opponents is really a conflict between the material interests of different capitalists, to which religion is indeed the "smokescreen" or the ideological frame in which the conflict is fought out in the minds of the participants. But no such luck. When I read the RT article posted here by AJJ, I learnt that the source of funding for ISIS comes from (a) proceeds from captured resources in ISIS occupied territories (chiefly oil); (ii) kidnapping for ransom; (iii) theft and cash smuggling. No capitalist interests there. 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

[pgb]

Robbo says:  ….I'm a little surprised that the Moderator has taken such a strict line on what is, or is not, off topic. It is relevant to the topic because the whole point of the topic is to discuss what gives rise to war.Hear, Hear!   Perhaps the Moderator could tell us why?

[pgb]

YMS, your list of "material bases" of ISIS and other similar groups is no answer to the point I was trying to make. A conventional historical-materialist analysis of war in modern times asserts that the "real" cause of war is conflict between different capitalist classes, or between fractions of a capitalist class, over markets, trade routes, economic resources and the like – all of which comprise the "material" base of class society. It's a straightforward base-superstructure model.The examples of "material" bases you have given are not causes of the conflict. Some refer to the material conditions of life in parts of the world where ISIS and others have successfully recruited, some refer to the material (economic) resources that ISIS controls, like Iraqi oil wells, which it needs to run a theocratic, totalitarian state (the New Caliphate etc). But control of Iraqi oil wells is not the aim and purpose of the conflict. It's a means to effect that aim. Likewise, the fact that some Saudis and others are giving material support to ISIS doesn't make this support a cause of the conflict. I think Robbo's quote states the socialist (SPGB) position clearly and correctly: that the real causes of war are economic, and that religion and ideology constitute the "smokescreen"' which hides these real causes. Your "material bases" are not causes of the war involving ISIS et al,  they are not what the war is about, they are not what drives the militants to fight and kill. From what I can see it is religious faith. First warning: 1. The general topic of each forum is given by the posted forum description. Do not start a thread in a forum unless it matches the given topic, and do not derail existing threads with off-topic posts.

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