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Saturday, May 28, 2011

Liberalism: A Counter-History

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Gavin Bowd reviews Domenico Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History in the Scotsman, focusing on Losurdo's account of the early liberals who championed slavery:

From the outset, the liberal tradition had a dark side to rival that of the “totalitarian” ideologies of the 20th century: founding fathers such as Thomas Jefferson rebelled against the Crown to have the right to keep slaves and seize land from the redskins; John Locke, then Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill supported the enslavement and extermination of “savage beasts”, opposed racial miscegenation and celebrated the flexing of western liberal muscle in such bloody enterprises as the Opium Wars.

In his extensive review of the book in the Financial Times, Peter Clarke notes that liberalism is under attack across the world: in the United States the word liberal is seen as a 'dirty word', Britain's Liberal Democrats are being undermined by the Tories, and the Canadian Liberals were decimated in the recent elections.

Perhaps it is a good time, however, to publish a book that turns a sceptical eye upon the tradition's ideological heritage. Domenico Losurdo, a professor of philosophy at Urbino, must certainly be hoping so. His opportune volume, Liberalism: A Counter-History, first published in Italian five years ago, displays a consistent aversion to what he calls the hagiography of this tradition.It is a brilliant exercise in unmasking liberal pretensions, surveying over three centuries with magisterial command of the sources. Though the learning is worn lightly, few would challenge Losurdo's mastery of the classic texts.

Clarke argues that Losurdo's point isn't simply to denigrate the liberal tradition:

For his conclusion is not that we need less liberalism but that we need more. Specifically, we need to be more scrupulous in overcoming the various “exclusion clauses” that have disfigured the liberal tradition but are not intrinsic to its central values. Thus liberty, justice, emancipation and democracy must be made genuinely available to all, through conscious efforts that many liberals have evaded. As Losurdo puts it: “Liberalism's merits are too significant and too evident for it to be necessary to credit it with other, completely imaginary ones.”

Also, see a podcast interview with Losurdo by Tony Curzon Price on OpenDemocracy.

Bonfire of panaceas

Can Asia save the world?

The hopes of the bourgeois economists are based on the rapid rate of growth in places like China and Brazil. But in the first place, this growth does not compensate for the shrinkage of the US market, and secondly, there is no guarantee that this growth will continue in 2011. At first sight these hopes seem to be well grounded. From Shenzhen to São Paulo the economies have been soaring ahead. Spare capacity has been used up and foreign capital is pouring in. But this rapid growth is limited by consumption. And consumption in Europe and the USA is not growing but shrinking.

The younger and more robust capitalist economies of the “emerging” countries have a number of advantages: bigger and more youthful populations and a huge reserve of cheap labour in the countryside. They have had the advantage of higher productivity and (at least initially) a higher rate of profit, and consequently the additional benefit of a huge influx of foreign capital. The law of combined and uneven development has allowed them, on the basis of this huge investment boom, to construct factories utilising the most advanced machinery and technology imported from more advanced countries.

However, this progress must sooner or later come up against the inherent contradictions of capitalism. In every capitalist boom in history there is an inherent tendency to overshoot the market, to produce too much for the market to sustain. The immense productive power that is built up to extract more and more surplus value from the workers goes beyond the restricted power of consumption of society. The result is a crisis of overproduction.

The limits of the capitalist boom in the USA and Europe were reached in 2008 (in Japan a decade earlier). The moment will be reached when the same contradictions make themselves felt in China and the other “emerging” economies. Profitability in China, as one could expect, is falling back to more normal levels. A new generation of younger workers is no longer prepared to accept the Dickensian conditions of work that the first generation, straight from the villages, was prepared to swallow. There has been a marked increase in worker protests.

In order to offset the slump of 2009, governments have loosened monetary discipline. This policy can lift growth in the immediate term but in the longer term it is unsustainable because it leads to inflation. Worries about asset bubbles have been replaced by a fear of overheating. China is not the only example of this. Brazilian inflation has surged above 5% and imports in November were 44% higher than the previous year. In order to stop prices accelerating, the “emerging economies” will need to raise interest rates, as China is already doing.

To some extent countries like China can offset declining demand in export markets by increased domestic consumption. But the domestic market too has definite limits and sooner or later these must be reached. The serious economists are expressing concern about the “overheating” of the Chinese economy. On Christmas day, the People’s Bank of China raised key interest rates, the second such move in less than three months. The amount of money banks keep in reserve has also been restricted to try to reduce bank lending levels.

This was the latest in a series of actions taken by China’s central bank to try to combat rising prices. The problem is that this can cause growth to slow sharply. The latest data showed that China's economy grew at an annual pace of 9.6% in the three months to the end of September from 11.9% in the first quarter of this year. If they do not take measures now, there will be higher inflation, necessitating an even bigger tightening at a later date. Either way, the period of rapid growth will come to an end, causing shock waves throughout the world economy.

Will the contradictions lead to war?

It is increasingly clear that the world economy is fragmented into three segments: the big “emerging” markets (China, India, Brazil), the euro area and the USA. It is also increasingly clear that they are moving in different directions. This divergence is increasing the chances for friction and opening up new contradictions. What happens in one part of the global economy has immediate repercussions for the rest. The central contradiction is simply stated. Every country wants to export. But in order to export, somebody has to import! We are entering into a period of growing protectionism and tensions between the main capitalist nations.

The tendency towards protectionism is clear in the USA, where loud voices are raised in Congress demanding restrictions on Chinese imports. This is very dangerous ground. Protectionism would provoke retaliation from America’s rivals and threaten to unravel the fragile edifice of world trade. Globalization would be thrown into reverse, with catastrophic consequences for the world economy.

The divergence between the three major components of the world economy poses serious risks to the entire edifice of globalization. Europe and America are obsessed with internal problems and have adopted contradictory strategies for dealing with them. They are in fact moving in different directions. On the one hand, America is following a loose monetary policy, allowing the deficit to rise alarmingly. On the other side of the Atlantic, there are concerns about sovereign defaults in the euro zone.

The budget cutting austerity plans of Europe poses a grave danger to the future of the euro, which unsettles the markets. But then, America’s tactic of eat, drink and be merry, and to hell with the deficit is hardly sustainable, either. These worries are reflected in a steady flow of capital to the “emerging economies” like China, which are awash with cash in sharp contrast to the debt-ridden West. This is what makes their central banks reluctant to raise interest rates and dampen down inflation. The Economist warned: “A more divided world economy could make 2011 a year of damaging shocks.”

It is clear that the global crisis of capitalism will mean a sharpening of tensions between Europe and the USA, between the USA, China and Japan and between Russia and the USA. In the past such tensions would have led to a world war. In the 1930s it was not the Keynesian policies of Roosevelt’s New Deal that solved the crisis. It was the outbreak of the Second World War that eliminated the mass unemployment of the 1930s through massive arms spending and the wholesale destruction of the means of production during the war. This has raised the question in some people’s minds of a new world war. However, the situation now is entirely different to that of 1939.

The collapse of the USSR and the colossal power of US imperialism mean that a world war is ruled out. With an annual arms expenditure of more than $700 billion, no power on earth can stand against the USA. On the other hand, there can be no question of either the USA or any other country invading China to turn it into a colony, as happened before the Second World War.

A world war is therefore ruled out. But there will be constant “small” wars, like the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia. The conflict between Russia and the USA can lead to wars like the war in Georgia. In Africa the undeclared war in Somalia continues on its bloody path to further chaos, while Côte d’Ivoire teeters on the brink of a new civil war. The instability in Asia was underlined by the armed conflict between North and South Korea. US forces have participated in the South’s latest military exercises. A new war can break out in Yemen at any time. There is no lack of explosive material on a world scale.

The recent revelations of WikiLeaks have raised at least partially the thick curtain of lies that conceal the ugly reality of bourgeois diplomacy. Diplomacy is the continuation of war by other means. But the increase in diplomatic tensions is a reflection of the general instability, as is the uncontrollable spread of terrorism. They are a symptom of the underlying crisis. To bemoan these phenomena, as sentimental pacifists do, is as pointless as it would be for a doctor to take out a handkerchief and weep at the symptoms of a disease. What is required is not tears but a precise diagnosis and an effective prescription.

The symptoms we see on a world scale are merely an expression of the underlying cause, which is the contradiction between the colossal potential of the productive forces and the narrow limitations of private property and the nation state. The capitalists cannot find a way out of the crisis by taking the road of war as they did in 1914 and 1939. Therefore, all the contradictions will be expressed internally, through a growth of the intensification of the class struggle.

Center of gravity

Europe in crisis: Italy and Belgium next


The Euro zone is in a mess. After a year of huge financial bail outs intended to calm the markets, the latter are very unstable, with a marked downward tendency. Signs of slowing global growth, and the continuing euro zone debt crisis, have caused the markets to slump. The nervousness of the markets is an accurate reflection of the growing anxiety of the bourgeois about the economic prospects for Europe.

The Euro - a bomb waiting to explode. Illustration: Latuff & Dromos
Events in Greece have brought the euro area to a crossroads: the future character of European monetary union will be determined by the way in which this situation is handled.” (Jens Weidmann, Bundesbank president and European Central Bank governing council member, Hamburg, May 20)

The politicians are panicking once again. Their latest recipe to raise cash is to privatise on a massive scale. In a desperate attempt to raise cash, the Spanish government is selling off the family jewels. They are privatising the state lottery, as well as the state airports authority. The sale of the state lottery is expected to raise between €6.5bn and €7.5bn. If completed it would create Europe’s most valuable listed gaming group. That will make a lot of money for big business, but it will lose money for the Spanish state. The state lottery earned a net profit of just under €3bn in 2009, with €2.92bn going to the Spanish treasury. This is an excellent example of the plundering of the state: nationalizing the losses and privatizing the profits.

Already the big banks are queuing up to get their hands on this highly profitable business. Lazard is viewed by company insiders as a favourite to manage the process, with Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley among several others that are in the running for other roles, which count among the most prestigious investment banking outfits. Given their record in gambling (and losing) billions of their clients’ money, thus provoking a collapse of the world’s banking system three years ago, they seem well qualified for the running of the world's largest gambling company.

But the main concern is still Greece, which they are pressurizing to privatise more than the previously agreed €50bn. The only snag is that the EU doesn't trust the Greeks to do it themselves. Instead, they want an “independent commission” to do the dirty work.

“Make the Greeks pay!”

“Sell your islands, you bankrupt Greeks - and the Acropolis too!” The hysterical headline of Bild, Germany’s leading tabloid when the dire state of Greece’s finances was first made public sounded like the usual exaggerations of the yellow press. But one year later, the same far from elegant message is being delivered by Europe’s finance ministers. As we predicted, the rescue package to Portugal was not enough to stop the crisis spreading to Spain, Belgium and Italy. Now everybody is talking about contagion.

At a time when the attentions of the world’s press were fully occupied with the exciting adventures of the (former) President of the IMF and a certain chambermaid in a New York hotel, the heads of European finance were busy deciding the destinies of millions of people in Greece. Serious commentators expressed concern lest the absence of DSK (unavoidably detailed as a guest of the New York Police Department) might affect the efficacy of the proceedings. They need not have worried.

The trials and tribulations of Monsieur Strauss Khan did not prevent the recent meeting in Luxembourg, where ministers from the countries that use the euro delivered a harsh message to the people and government of Greece: push through more reforms and privatize everything, or you will not receive a single euro more from your European “partners”.

This indicates that Europe’s financial crisis is not over. On the contrary, it is entering a new and even more dangerous phase. All the rescue packages have failed to save the Greek economy, which continues to fall. The mood in Germany is hardening. This is not just a reflection of public unease, or the fears of Angela Merkel that she will not be reelected. It is a realization that the financial resources of the Bundesbank are finite after all, and cannot serve to prop up the whole of Europe.

The Germans are taking an increasingly harsh line. The Bundesbank, which controls the EU’s purse strings, has warned that if politicians take even a modest step towards a restructuring of the Greek debt, the ECB will cut Greek banks off from its liquidity supply, triggering a financial collapse that would push the country’s economy into the abyss. Today’s Financial Times described the Bundesbank’s threat as the “nuclear option”:

“How the ECB responds to the conflicting pressures created by the Greek crisis matters enormously. Shunned by financial markets, the country’s banks survive only because the Frankfurt-based central bank meets in full their demands for liquidity against collateral of rapidly declining quality. Early next month, the ECB has to decide whether to continue that euro zone-wide “unlimited liquidity” policy; so far it has said it will last only until early July. The bank also owns about €45bn of Greek government bonds, acquired during the past year as part of efforts to calm financial market tensions.”

The indignation of the assembled dignitaries against Athens knew no bounds. “Urgent measures are needed in Greece in order to reach its fiscal targets,” said Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg who presided the aforementioned meeting. Greece had to “increase the volume of privatisation” as well as adopt further belt-tightening measures to meet its deficit-reduction target this year he said.

Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, complained that the ungrateful Greeks had so far failed to act on their promise to raise €17 billion (raised earlier this year to €50 billion) from the sale of state assets. Why did Greece not behave like Portugal (whose bail-out was approved)? There both government and opposition parties have pledged to support the “reform” programme negotiated with the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund.

European leaders are pushing to work out measures that would ensure the Greek government lives up to its promise to deliver €50bn ($70bn) in privatisation proceeds. Privately EU officials believe that far bigger sums can be squeezed out of Greece from the sell-off of public assets – with estimates ranging from €250bn to €300bn. This massive sum would account for almost all of Greece’s outstanding debt.

The privatisation plan amounts to a systematic plunder of the country. These people are like bandits planning to skin their victim and sell his hide when he is still alive. They are planning to plunder Greece of its most treasured national assets to fill the bank accounts of the international money lenders. But there is a small difficulty. The leaders of Europe do not trust the Greeks to carry this out. They point to repeated failures by Athens to start such sell-offs and are questioning the way Papandreou is proceeding with the privatisations.

The practical Dutch advocated a more radical measure: the creation of an external agency run by the EU to take charge of selling the plundered assets. That is a blatant violation of national sovereignty that will provoke fierce resistance in Greece. The drive for an outside agency to run Greek privatisations is being spearheaded by Jan Kees de Jager the Dutch finance minister, whose comments sum up the mood of the European bourgeois:

"Right now we are beyond sensitivities. Our common predicament is too serious." One wonders what would the French say if a committee in Brussels ordered them to sell off the Eifel Tower and the Louvre to pay off the National Debt. But Greece is a small and weak country and nobody is concerned about hurting its feelings.

But Greece cannot pay…

When the crisis in Greece first became news, I wrote the following:

“There has been talk of a German-led rescue scheme. But this has its own problems. If it materializes, other European countries may be queuing up, cap in hand, for assistance. The problem is by no means confined to Greece, as the bond markets are well aware! The international moneylenders are increasingly worried about the credit-worthiness of Spain, Ireland and Portugal, and there is dark muttering about the state of Britain’s finances. It is one thing to bail out the Greek economy, which is relatively small. But what will happen if they have to rescue Spain, Portugal, Ireland and even Britain?

“In order to reassure the markets that these countries are able and willing to repay their debts, the international Shylocks are insisting that they must increase taxes and cut spending. But such a policy spells disaster for economies that still remain trapped in a recession with rising unemployment. “This is madness. If we cut state spending now, it will destroy the recovery!” But the plaintive laments of the Keynesians have no effect on the icy hearts of the international bankers, who are only interested in getting their money back – with a handsome return.” (Euro crisis confirms Marxist perspectives, 16 Feb. 2010)

This was written in February 2011. Over a year later, I have no reason to change a single word. Later I wrote:

“Papandreou’s chances of actually implementing his austerity policy are therefore close to zero. In the end, no matter how much pressure is applied on the people of Greece, they will never be able to pay their debts. The so-called “aid” can only postpone the Day of Judgment. And the merciless pressure from Brussels to slash living standards, and therefore reduce demand, will only succeed in pushing Greece further along the road to national bankruptcy and default.” (A new stage in the crisis of capitalism, June 2010)

This is exactly what has happened. The bourgeois strategists usually come to the same conclusions as the Marxists with a slight delay. Now a growing number of economists believe Greece’s debt, already at about 150% of GDP, cannot be repaid. But they cannot agree on what is to be done about it. Some advocate “hard” restructuring, which would mean imposing losses on creditors.

Since most of the creditors are German, Germany is naturally unenthusiastic about this remedy, preferring instead a “softer” rescheduling of the debt to delay repayments. That means “softer” for the German creditors, of course, not for the people of Greece. Like the merciless money lender in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice, the Shylocks in Brussels will demand their pound of flesh. The only discussion is about when and where to stick in the knife.

George Papaconstantinou, the Greek finance minister present at the meeting cut a pathetic figure, insisting that ministers had not been as harsh as may seem. After all, they acknowledged the unprecedented reduction of Greece's budget deficit, worth 7% of GDP. “At the same time they acknowledged that we need to do more. We concur.” This is like a lamb brought to a slaughterhouse praising the butcher for his welcoming smile as he approaches the chopping block.

Yes, these apparently hard men of money have a human heart after all. Asked whether the absence of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF’s boss sitting in jail in New York on charges of sexual assault, Mr Juncker said he had been “close to tears” at the sight of his friend in handcuffs. It is not recorded whether he shed any tears for the plight of millions of Greeks faced with bankruptcy, unemployment and poverty.

Whatever scenario one chooses, the consequences for Greece will be the same: a period of falling living standards, austerity and cuts, accompanied by extreme political instability and heightened class struggle.

Spotlight on Italy

After Greece, Ireland and Portugal and Spain, the markets are turning their unwelcome attentions to Italy, like hungry wolves seeking out the sickest and weakest members of a herd of reindeers. The EU is increasingly concerned. In March a meeting of the European Commission started talking about Greece and ended talking about Italy. Spain is far more important. But Italy is a key piece in the euro zone. A crisis in Italy would have the most serious effects on the euro. It would drag the rest of the euro zone down with it, including Germany and its pampered satellites, Austria, Belgium and Holland.

On the face of it, it seems strange that they should pick on Italy. From the capitalist point of view, its public finances have been improved – that is, slashed. This was particularly the case under Prodi, when the Centre-Left government imposed deep cuts, and was thrown out of office as a result. What was the result? In 2009 Italy’s debt stood at 128% GDP. It now amounts to 120% of GDP - the same as it was 20 years ago. This means that all the cuts carried out by the Centre-Left government have resolved nothing. Only the fact that Italy is not so dependent on foreign financing has so far saved it from a Greek-style crisis.

Investors with exposure to euro-denominated sovereign debt cannot ignore Italy, which has the third-largest bond market in the world (after American and Japanese government debt). Greece, Ireland and Portugal are peripheral economies. Italy's stock market fell sharply after the Standard and Poor credit agency changed its credit-rating outlook on Italy from stable to negative. The decision of Standard and Poor was a call on Italy's rulers to change course. And when the markets call on a country, it is not merely a friendly visit but a direct order.

Italian capitalism has a problem. To pay off its huge debt, Italy needs to grow. But for the last decade its economic growth was close to zero in per capita terms. The economy has lost more than half a million jobs in the recession. Data show more than 22 per cent of young people are not in a job, education or training. It is impossible to get out of this problem while it has to spend so much on debt servicing. The markets therefore conclude that Italy is in urgent need of what they call “reform”. That is to say, it requires a dose of the same bitter medicine that have already prescribed for Greece, Ireland and Portugal: cuts, cuts and still more cuts. The EU is demanding cuts in public spending to the value of 46bn Euros.

The message is not new. Some years ago The Economist pointed out that Italy was not competitive, and in order to retain its position in Europe, it would have to sack one third of its workforce, and the remainder would have to accept a wage cut of thirty percent. That is the real programme of the Italian bourgeoisie. But what the capitalists want and what they can get away with are two entirely different things. One government after another has attempted to carry out these “reforms”, but every time they have foundered on a solid rock, which is the Italian workers’ movement. Mass demonstrations, strikes and general strikes have defeated all efforts to make the workers pay for the bosses’ problems.

Berlusconi tried and failed. Then, for the first time in history, the Centre Left was elected. But Prodi carried out a programme of cuts that went far further than Berlusconi had ever done. This naturally caused deep demoralization in the working class and led to the defeat of the Centre Left, which was replaced with yet another unstable coalition under Berlusconi. Now the right wing coalition is in deep trouble.

Berlusconi took a drubbing in local elections on May 15th and 16th and the fissures in the coalition are deepening. This underlines the main problem of the Italian (and the Belgian) bourgeoisie: they lack a strong party able to form a solid ruling coalition. But this is what is needed in order to carry through the kind of austerity programme they are demanding. Instead of representing the interests of the bourgeoisie, Berlusconi is spending all his time fighting to stay out of prison. Now, the international markets, tired of the endless scandals associated with Berlusconi, are showing their teeth.

Silvio Berlusconi suffers from the same incurable illness as Dominique Strauss-Kahn – a chronic inability to keep his trousers on. This tells us a lot about the immaculate moral character of our most Christian rulers. However, the reason why the Italian bourgeoisie wants to get rid of il cavaliere has nothing to do with his weakness for Moroccan models of a tender age, but rather his weakness in dealing with the Italian working class. The ruling class requires a strong government to deliver strong and very unpleasant medicine. But Berlusconi is unable even to keep his shaky coalition together. Therefore the ruling class has decided he must go. The only problem is: who will replace him?

Faced with such a situation, the bourgeoisie will have no alternative but to pass the poisoned chalice of government to the Centre Left again, hoping that the reformists will do the dirty work for them, as in Spain. But as recent events in Spain have shown, this will only lead to further social explosions. Giulio Tremonti, finance minister, likes to say his deficit-cutting measures have not resulted in social unrest because of government interventions. But he speaks too soon.

Already there are signs that the patience of the workers is being exhausted. Italian shipyard workers protesting against planned job cuts have clashed with police following the latest announcement of austerity measures by Berlusconi’s government. On Tuesday riot police with teargas fought with protesters outside government offices in Sestri, a suburb of the north-west port of Genoa. Two workers were reported injured as the crowd demanded talks with the prime minister.

In the south, workers trapped local officials in their offices overnight at the historic Castellammare di Stabia shipyard near Naples. The protests were triggered by the announcement on Monday from Fincantieri, the state-owned shipbuilder, that 2,551 jobs – about a third of its workforce – would be affected under its new plan. Union leaders have warned that discontent at the government’s austerity measures is simmering dangerously.

The bourgeois breathed a sigh of relief when the Spanish protests were met with only a limited echo in Italy. But this satisfaction is premature. Movements on the same scale are implicit in the situation in Italy. It is only a question of time.

Belgium

Belgium seemed to be a safe haven for European capitalism. Like Austria and the Netherlands it appeared to be a cosy little corner, basking in the sun of its German Big Brother and immune to the storm and stress of Greece and other poorer relations within the euro zone. Some foolish people actually believed this fairy story. But like all fairy stories in the end it was an illusion.

Belgium has the third highest debt burden in Europe. Belgium's public sector debt totalled 96.6 percent of annual output last year, putting it behind only Greece and Italy in the euro zone and on a par with Ireland. Yet it has not pressed ahead with an austerity package. The international bourgeoisie is now breathing down the necks of the politicians in Brussels. Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency, has said that Belgium's credit rating could be downgraded if it cannot form a government in the coming months. Fitch became the second ratings agency to threaten Belgium with a credit downgrade, saying a lack of government undermined budget efforts in one of the euro zone's most indebted states.

Like Italy, Belgium lacks a strong government and is plagued by the eternal friction between Flemish and Walloons. The corrupt and degenerate Belgian bourgeois is split into rival Dutch- and French-speaking parties, arguing about the extent to which powers should be devolved like two dogs fighting over a bone. Each side wants to grab more power and money for itself. But both sides are agreed on making the working class pay for the crisis. The political imbroglio caused by the national question means that Belgium has not a permanent government since April when a fragile coalition between Dutch-speaking and French speaking parties collapsed. As a result the country has also been without a proper government for more than 11 months since a parliamentary election last June.

The debt and political crisis disturbed financial markets at the turn of the year, and there is no sign of an end to the political deadlock. The financial situation has become so worrying that King Albert II has intervened to order caretaker prime minister Yves Leterme to draw up a new budget for 2011 that makes deep cuts in public spending. The bourgeoisie demands that the full weight of the debt crisis be placed on the shoulders of the working class.

Fitch fears that Belgium’s exposure to peripheral euro zone and eastern European entities were "significant. Standard & Poor's put the core groups of Belgian banking group Dexia on CreditWatch negative because of exposure to Greece. "Political risk is higher in Belgium than in other euro area peers given the fractious disputes over the future shape of the country," Fitch said. "The negative outlook reflects Fitch's concerns over the pace of structural reform in the coming years and the ability to accelerate fiscal consolidation without a resolution to the constitutional crisis," Douglas Renwick, a director in Fitch's sovereign group said.

This warning means that, without effective action in Belgium, it is more likely than not to cut Belgium's credit rating within one to two years. The ratings agency said Belgium's high debt left the government with little capacity to deal with future shocks. Already borrowing costs in Belgium are rising as the markets demand a higher return for lending to the country. This is the economic equivalent of taking hold of a man by a delicate part of his anatomy and applying a gentle squeeze.

Following the well-trodden path of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, Belgium will be compelled to cut public spending, privatize and attack workers’ living standards. The united action of the working class is absolutely necessary to resist the attacks and cut across the vicious nationalism of both wings of the bourgeoisie that is the main way it seeks to divide and defeat the Belgian labour movement.

The domino effect

By declaring it would act as a safety net in bond markets, the ECB bought the euro zone a little time. A year later, however, the programme has clearly failed. The debt crisis has spread beyond Greece to Ireland and Portugal, both now subject to ECB-backed international bail-out plans and the accompanying brutal austerity policies. Greek bond yields have soared this week to record highs as investors shun the country’s debt, and the nervousness spreading to countries such as Spain, Italy and Belgium.

Although Greek, Irish and Portuguese banks together account for only about 5 per cent of euro zone gross domestic product, they now take up about €242bn of ECB liquidity – 55 per cent of that provided to the euro zone financial system. The whole financial system of the EU is being pushed to the limit. At some point in the future, unless something id done, it will face collapse.

By all the laws of economics, the ECB should have abandoned Greece long ago. According to the terms of the European Union treaty, national governments were meant to take responsibility for their own finances. Therefore, Greece should have been left to its fate. But the European bourgeois are trapped. If Greece goes down, the knock-on effect throughout the euro zone would be catastrophic. Therefore the EU was forced to break its own rules and launch a rescue plan for Greece. But by so doing they tied the destinies of Europe to its weakest link.

The EU finds itself in a dilemma. If they pull the plug on Athens, it will have calamitous consequences for the entire euro zone. But on the other hand, they cannot continue indefinitely pouring money down a black hole: “All of those options are potentially lethal for the euro zone,” says Thomas Mayer, chief economist at Deutsche Bank. Taxpayers elsewhere, particularly in northern Europe, may revolt at demands for fresh help. “But the ECB becoming a backstop for Greece would amount to ‘monetary financing’ [central bank funding of governments], which is forbidden by European Union treaty.”

The contagion is spreading inexorably. The British bourgeois contemplated the crisis of the euro with something between complacency and contempt. In their insular blindness they imagined that because they did not join the euro zone they could escape the storm that is gathering over the continent. But Britain cannot remain aloof from the general European crisis. It has already pledged £7bn towards the £72bn Irish bailout. This was not an act of charity or good neighbourliness but was dictated by the heavy exposure of British banks to Ireland.

The deepening of the debt crisis makes the risk of a spill-over to the UK and the British banking system ever more serious. Andrew Bailey, a senior Bank of England official warned: “I cannot say that the UK is insulated from the risks we observe in other parts of Europe.” The British bourgeoisie would do well to ponder on the celebrated lines of John Donne:

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee
.”

The attempts of the LibDem-Conservative coalition to slash public spending have already provoked a rebellion of the youth and the biggest demonstration called by the trade unions in history on 26 March. On Thursday 30 June the unions have called for co-ordinated national strike action involving teachers, lecturers and civil servants, which could involve nearly one million workers. Unite’s leaders have said that its members will take part in the pickets wherever they are established. With universities and schools closed in many areas, hundreds of thousands of students and school students will be out on that day. The action will constitute the biggest strike movement against this government and represent a further move forward following the mass demonstration on 26 March.

Europe in crisis

Lenin said that with the Russian Revolution capitalism had broken at its weakest link. That is entirely logical. It is not likely that the breakdown of capitalism will commence in its strongest link – the United States of America. The cracks first began to appear in Latin America – in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Now new and even deeper fissures have appeared in North Africa and the Middle East. But the movements in Europe are part of the same revolutionary ferment and stem from the same cause.

The same process that we see on a world scale is replicated in Europe. The crisis began in the weakest link, which was Greece. That was followed in quick succession by Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Some imagined that Germany and its satellites could isolate themselves from the general decline. But that is impossible.

After Spain come Italy and Belgium. And that spells a crisis of the euro so profound that Germany will not be able to come to their rescue and will be dragged down together with them. This is what they mean by “contagion”. Like a group of mountaineers tied together by the same rope, if one falls, they must all fall.

Lenin also pointed out that politics is concentrated economics. The economic slump, which the capitalists succeeded in delaying only at the cost of aggravating and deepening it, has set in motion social forces that they cannot easily control. Just as they have used up the mechanisms that they would normally use for getting out of a slump, so they are discrediting the reformist leaders that should serve them as a brake to stop the car from swerving out of control.

For a time the reformist political and trade union organizations can hold back the tide. But they do so only at the cost of discrediting the old leaders in the eyes of the masses. The workers will put these organizations to the test time and time again. But the policies of the reformists only prepare the victory of the right wing. We have seen this in Britain, France, Spain and Italy. Tomorrow we will see the same in Greece. The problem is that neither the reformists nor the bourgeois parties have any solution to the present crisis.

This is a highly volatile, unstable and explosive situation. A Greek default would have the most serious consequences for Greece and the whole of Europe. It would signify the collapse of the Greek economy and a crisis similar to that of the Weimar Republic in 1923. It would place revolutionary developments on the order of the day, not only in Greece but throughout Europe.

The serious representatives of Capital understand the seriousness of the situation in Europe. Hans Jörg Sinn, one of the main bourgeois economic analysts in Germany is warning of a civil war in Greece. In the long run such a perspective is possible, not only for Greece, but for other countries, especially in southern Europe. But the bourgeois would not be in a hurry to go down that road because they could not be sure they would win.

In the past a crisis of such dimensions would have led swiftly to a conclusion, either in a revolutionary or counterrevolutionary direction – either the victory of the working class, or the coming to power of a fascist or Bonapartist regime. But under present day conditions such a scenario is ruled out. The central problem of the European bourgeoisie is easily stated. For over half a century the social reserves of reaction have been whittled away.

In the past the peasantry formed a solid base for reaction in France, Germany, Italy and Greece. Now it has been reduced to a shadow of its former self. The students, who in the past provided the shock troops for the fascists, have swung to the left. The white collar workers (teachers, bank employees, civil servants) who were conservative are now unionized and among the most militant sections of the class.

The bourgeoisie cannot resort to fascism or Bonapartism in the immediate future, although it is constantly chipping away at democratic rights. On the other hand, the working class is held back by the absence of a revolutionary leadership. This produces an unstable equilibrium that can last for years, perhaps decades. On a capitalist basis no lasting solution is possible. Political instability is inherent in this situation. There will be violent swings to the left and right, as the masses seek a way out of the crisis. That is inevitable.

Limits of spontaneity

Many people thought that the Arab Revolution was something peculiar to the countries of North Africa and the Middle East. They failed to see that these movements of the masses were a product of the global crisis of capitalism. They arose out of the same social and economic conditions that exist in every capitalist country – including the most advanced ones.

If these movements had occurred in just one or two countries, they might be attributed to chance or accident. But the wide scope of the movement rules out such an explanation. We have no right to speak of chance. Globalization manifests itself as a global crisis of capitalism. The same process will unfold in one country after another, with greater or lesser intensity, and at a faster or slower pace. That is the meaning of the mass protests in Wisconsin and in Spain.

The recent movement in Spain, was a spontaneous movement, mainly of the youth. This had both the positive and negative features of spontaneity. The wide sweep of the mass movement was partly a reflection of its unorganized and spontaneous character. But as time passes the limited character of such movements will be revealed. Without adequate programme, perspectives and leadership, it will tend to decline. If all that is offered is to constantly go to the Puerta del Sol, nothing serious can be achieved.

One can point to the limited nature of their demands. The protesters are demanding more democracy, more accountability from governments. But how can one speak of these things in Ireland and Portugal, where the bureaucrats of the EU have already dictated draconic austerity plans as a condition for their “support”? Elections will soon be held in Portugal. But what is there left for the next government to decide?

The case of Greece is still more blatant. The EU will impose a special commission to carry through the programme of privatization, removing the matter from the elected government’s hands altogether. Similarly, the agenda in Spain is being decided, not by the Spanish people but by the unelected boards of directors of the big banks and companies and by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels. In order to solve these problems, more radical revolutionary measures will be necessary.

Some will say: “These movements are very confused. They lack a clear revolutionary programme!” Others will say: “We cannot recognize these movements as real revolutions because they are not led by a Marxist workers’ party!” Such objections are childish in the extreme. The socialist revolution does not unfold in a planned and orderly fashion. The masses are facing serious problems right now and cannot wait until we have created an ideal Bolshevik Party. Therefore, all kinds of “spontaneous” movements are bound to arise.

The idea that the masses must wait until we Marxists are ready, and that the revolution will be like a well-drilled orchestra following the conductor’s baton, has nothing to do with reality. This kind of empty formalism has nothing in common with Marxism. Lenin, who was a great Marxist theoretician, said that for the masses an ounce of practice was worth a ton of theory. The workers and youth can only learn through experience.

The masses in Tahrir Square learned more in a few days than in all their lives. The workers and youth of Greece, Spain, Britain – and tomorrow Belgium, Austria and Germany – will learn in the same way. They will learn from their experience, put leaders, parties and programmes to the test and draw conclusions. This can be a slow and painful process. But so far nobody has suggested any viable alternative.

If we are to play a role in these developments, the Marxists must take the living movement of the masses as it is, not as we would like it to be. We must not appear as preachers or teachers giving orders from without, but as comrades in the struggle, participating shoulder to shoulder with the most advanced workers and youth, helping them to draw the conclusions from every battle. Our slogan is that of Lenin: “patiently explain”. Only on that basis can we earn the right to lead in practice, as opposed to talking about leadership in theory.

London 26 May

Birth of our power

140th anniversary of the Paris Commune


The Paris Commune of 1871 was one of the greatest and most inspiring episodes in the history of the working class. In a tremendous revolutionary movement, the working people of Paris replaced the capitalist state with their own organs of government and held political power until their downfall in the last week of May. The Parisian workers strove, in extremely difficult circumstances, to put an end to exploitation and oppression, and to reorganise society on an entirely new foundation. The lessons of these events are of fundamental importance for socialists today. We publish this article ahead of the 140th anniversary of the Commune's suppression, tomorrow, 28 May.

18 March, 1871
Twenty years before the advent of the Commune, following the defeat of the workers uprising in June 1848, the military coup of 2nd December 1851 brought Emperor Napoleon III to power. Initially, the new bonapartist regime seemed unshakeable. The workers were defeated, their organisations outlawed. By the late 1860's, however, the revival of the labour movement combined with exhaustion of the economic upswing, had seriously weakened the regime. Napoleon drew the conclusion that only a new - and rapidly successful - war would allow him to maintain power. The war, he thought, would bring territorial gains, weaken France's rivals, and put an end to the crisis in finance and industry. In August 1870, the imperial army marched against Bismarck.

It often happens that war leads to revolution. This is not accidental. A war wrenches the working people out their daily routine. The actions of the state, of generals, of politicians, of the press, come under the scrutiny of the mass of the population to an infinitely higher degree than is normally the case in times of peace. This is particularly the case in the event of defeat, and, as events turned out, the attempted invasion of Germany came to a rapid and inglorious end. On 2nd September, near Sedan on France's eastern border, the Emperor was captured by Bismarck's army together with 100,000 troops. When the news of the defeat reached Paris, mass demonstrations poured through the streets of the city, demanding the overthrow of the Empire and a its replacement democratic republic.

The so-called republican opposition was terrified by this revolutionary movement, but was nonetheless forced to inaugurate the republic on the 4th September. A new "Government of National Defence" was installed, in which the key figure was general Trochu. Jules Favre, also in the government and a typical representative of capitalist republicanism, proclaimed that "not one inch of territory, nor one stone of our fortresses" would be ceded to the Prussians. Bismarck directed his armies towards Paris, and the city was rapidly encircled under siege.

Place de la Bastille
The people initially supported the new government in the name of "national unity" against the foreign enemy. But this unity would very soon break down. In spite of its public declarations, the Government of National Defence did not believe it was possible to defend Paris. Besides the regular army, the National Guard was ready to defend Paris. But the revolutionary mood of the workers within Paris were a far greater threat to class interests of the French capitalists than the foreign army at its gates. The government decided it would be best to capitulate to Bismarck as soon as possible, but it could not state this openly because of the opposition of masses. Trochu had to gain time. The people were hungry. The blockade meant that no food could be brought into the city. The poorest ate dogs and rats to survive. Trochu counted on the social and economic effects of the siege to dampen the resistance of the Parisian workers, and engaged in secret negotiations with Bismarck.

As the weeks went by, suspicion and hostility towards the government grew. Rumours about negotiations with Bismarck were rife. On 8th October, the fall of Metz sparked off a new mass demonstration. On the 31st, several contingents of National Guards from the Belleville area, under the command of Flourens, attacked and temporarily occupied the Hôtel de Ville. At this stage, however, the mass of the workers was not yet ready for decisive action against the government. The insurrection was isolated. Blanqui fled into hiding and Flourens was imprisoned.

In Paris the famine and poverty brought on by the siege was having disastrous consequences, and the need to break the siege was felt all the more acutely. The sortie aimed at taking the village of Buzenval on 19th January ended in yet another defeat. Trochu resigned. He was replaced by Vinoy, who, in his first proclamation, wrote that Parisians should be "under no illusions" as to the possibility of defeating the Prussians. It was now clear that the government intended to capitulate. The political clubs and the Vigilance Committees called on the National Guards to arm themselves and march on the Hôtel de Ville. Other detachments went to the prisons to free Flourens. Under growing pressure from below, the middle class democrats of the Alliance Républicaine demanded a "popular government" to organise effective resistance against the Prussians. But when the National Guards arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, Chaudry, representing the government, shouted furiously at the delegates from the Alliance. This was enough to make the republicans agree to disperse immediately. Breton guards on the side of the government shot down national Guards and demonstrators who tried to oppose this betrayal. The National Guards returned fire, but were eventually forced to retreat.

After this first armed clash with the government, the revolutionary movement temporarily subsided. But at the same time, it meant the collapse of any remaining illusions in the Alliance Républicaine. On the 27th January, the Government of National Defence finally went ahead with the capitulation it had planned since the beginning of the siege.

Rural France was in favour of peace, and the votes of the peasantry in the elections to the National Assembly in February gave a massive majority to the monarchist and conservative candidates. The Assembly nominated a hardened reactionary, Adolphe Thiers, as head of government. A clash between revolutionary Paris, and the reactionary "rural" majority in the Assembly was inevitable. Open counter-revolution had raised its head, and was now to act as a spur to the revolution. Prussian soldiers would soon enter the capital in triumph. The lull in the movement now gave way to a new and more powerful upsurge of protest. Armed demonstrations of the National Guard took place, massively supported by the workers and the poorer sections of the population. Thiers and the monarchists were denounced as traitors. The masses were for "a fight to the death" – la guerre à outrance – in defence of their liberty. The events of 31st October and of 22nd January were but mild foretastes of the new revolutionary upsurge that was now underway.

Announcement of election results, 28 March.
The National Assembly constantly provoked the Parisians, referring to them as cut-throats and criminals. It waged a campaign of propaganda to arouse the peasantry against Paris. It cancelled the already very low pay of the National Guards unless they could prove that they were "incapable of work". The siege had made many workers unemployed, and their allowance for service in the National Guard was all that stood between them and starvation. Arrears in rents and all debts were declared to be payable within 48 hours. This threatened small businessmen with immediate bankruptcy. Paris was deprived of its status as capital city of France, which was transferred to Versailles. These measures, and many others, hit the poorest sections of society particularly hard, but also led to a radicalisation of middle class Parisians, whose only real hope of salvation was now in the revolutionary overthrow of Thiers and the National Assembly. The Parisian working class was now building up towards a new insurrection against the threat of Prussian domination, and also against Thiers and the National Assembly.

The surrender to the Prussians and the threat of monarchist restoration led to a transformation in the National Guard. A "Central Committee of the Federation of National Guards" was elected, representing 215 battalions, equipped with 2000 canons and 450,000 firearms. New statutes were adopted, stipulating "the absolute right of the National Guards to elect their leaders and to revoke them as soon as they loose the confidence of their electors." Essentially, the Central Committee and the corresponding structures at battalion level were an historical anticipation of the soviets of workers and soldier's deputies which arose in the course of the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 in Russia.

The new leadership of the National Guard was to rapidly test its authority. When the Prussian army was to enter Paris, tens of thousands of armed Parisians gathered with the intention of attacking the invader. The Central Committee intervened to prevent an unequal struggle for which it was not yet prepared. The success of the Central Committee firmly established its authority as the recognised leadership of the mass of the people. Clément Thomas, the commander nominated by the government, had no alternative but to resign. The Prussian forces occupied part of the city for two days, and then withdrew.

Thiers had promised the Rurals in the Assembly to restore the monarchy. His immediate task was had to put an end to the situation of "dual power" in Paris. The canons under the command of the National Guard - and particularly those on the heights of Montmartre overlooking the city - symbolised the threat the capitalist "law and order". At 3 o' clock in the morning, on March 18th, several thousand regular soldiers were sent to seize these canons, under the command of general Lecomte. The canons were seized without difficulty. However, the expedition had set off without thinking of the need for harnesses to haul the canons away. At 7 o'clock, still no harnesses had arrived. The troops now found themselves surrounded by a thickening crowd of workers, including women and children. National Guards now arrived on the scene. The unarmed crowd, the National Guards and Lecomte's men were pressed against one another in the dense gathering. Some of the soldiers openly fraternised with the guards. Seeing that the situation was getting out of control, Lecomte ordered his men to fire on the crowd. Nobody fired. The soldiers and the National Guards threw up a cheer and embraced each other. Apart from a brief exchange of fire at Place Pigalle, the army collapsed without offering any resistance to the Guards. Lecomte and with Clément Thomas, the former commander of the National Guard who had fired on workers back in 1848, were arrested. Angry soldiers executed them shortly afterwards.

Thiers had not foreseen the mass defection of his troops. Panic-stricken, he fled from Paris. He ordered the army and the civil services to completely evacuate the city and the surrounding forts. Thiers wanted to save what he could of the army by taking them away from "contagion" by revolutionary Paris. The remnants of his forces, many of them openly insubordinate, chanting revolutionary songs and slogans, were marched off to Versailles.

With the old state apparatus out of the way, the National Guard took over all the strategic points in the city without meeting any significant resistance. The Central Committee had not played any role in the events of the day. And yet, on the evening of the 18th, it discovered that it was now at the head of a new revolutionary regime based on the armed power of the working people!

The first task that the Central Committee set itself was to relinquish the power that was in its hands. They had no "legal mandate" to govern! After much discussion, it was agreed to stay in the Hôtel de Ville for "a few days" during which municipal (communal) elections could be organised. With the cry of "Vive la Commune!", the members of the Central Committee were greatly relieved that they would not have to exercise power for any length of time! The problem immediately before them was that of Thiers and the army on its way to Versailles. Eudes and Duval proposed that the National Guard pursue them in order to shatter what remained of the forces in Thiers' hands. Their appeals fell on deaf ears. The Central Committee was composed for the most part of very moderate men, completely unprepared in temperament and in ideas for the tasks which history had placed upon them.

The Central Committee began negotiations with the former Mayors and with various "conciliators" over the date of the elections. This absorbed its attention until the election finally took place on 26th March. Thiers put this valuable time to great use, and, with the help of Bismarck, the numbers, the arms and the morale of the soldiers were strengthened in readiness for an attack against Paris.

On the eve of the election of the Commune, the Central Committee of the National Guard published a remarkable declaration which sums up the personal integrity and the healthy democratic and revolutionary attitude towards “politics” of the leadership:

“Our mission is complete. At the Hôtel de Ville, we will make way for your newly elected representatives. […] Do not lose sight of the fact that those who will serve you best are those that you will choose among yourselves, who live as you do, and suffer from the same ills. Beware of the ambitious and place-seekers […], beware of talkers who are incapable of action.”

Inside Hotel de Ville
The newly elected Commune replaced the leadership of the National Guard as the official government of revolutionary Paris. It was mainly composed of people associated with the revolutionary movement in one way or another. The majority might be described as "left republicans", steeped in idealised nostalgia for the Jacobin regime at the time of the French Revolution. Out of its 90 members, 25 were workers, and 13 were members of the Central Committee of the National Guard, and 15 or so were members of the International Workingmens' Association. Between them the Blanquists – energetic men always ready for dramatic and extreme measures but with only the vaguest political ideas – and the Internationalists made up about one quarter of the Commune. Blanqui himself was in a provincial prison. The few right-wing members who were elected resigned their positions on various pretexts. Others were arrested on the discovery of their names in police files identifying them as former spies for the imperial regime.

Under the Commune, all privileges for state functionaries were abolished. It was decreed that no representative of the people should be paid more that the average wage of the workers. The Commune was the only really honest government France has ever had. Moreau, one of the members of the Central Committee, declared that in his view, it was “immoral to expect any kind of payment in the service of the people. We have lived until now on thirty pence, and they will suffice from now on.” Rents were frozen, abandoned workshops were placed under the control of the workers, measures were taken to limit night-work, to guarantee subsistence to the poor and the sick. The Commune declared its aim as "ending the anarchic and ruinous competition between workers for the profit of the capitalists", and the "dissemination of socialist ideals".

The National Guard was open to all able-bodied men, and organised, as we have seen, along strictly democratic lines. Standing armies "separate and apart form the people" were declared illegal. The Church was separated from the state. Religion was declared "a private matter". Homes and public buildings were requisitioned for the homeless. Public education was opened to all, as were the theatres and places of culture and learning. Foreign workers were considered as brothers and sisters, as soldiers for the "universal republic of international labour". Meetings took place day and night, were thousands of ordinary men and women debated how various aspects of social life should be organised in the interests of the "common good".

The social and political character of the society that was gradually taking shape under the aegis of the National Guard and the Commune was unmistakably socialist. The lack of any historical precedent, the absence of a clear program, combined with the social and economic dislocation of a besieged city, necessarily meant that the workers were obliged to improvise in dealing with the concrete requirements of organising society in their own interests. A great deal has been written about the confusion, the half-measures, the wasted time and mistaken priorities of the Parisian people during their ten weeks of power within the walls of a beleaguered city. It must be said that the communards made many mistakes. Marx and Engels were particularly critical of their failure to take control of the Bank of France, which continued to pay millions of francs to Thiers with which he was preparing an army to march against Paris. However, all the most important initiatives taken by the workers pointed in the direction of complete social and economic emancipation of the wage-working population as a class. The tragedy of the Commune was that it lacked time. The process in the direction of socialism was cut short by the return of the Versailles army and the terrible bloodbath that ensued.

Map of troop movements. Illustration: Wikimedia/ Fourscore
The threat from Versailles was clearly underestimated by the Commune, which not only did not attempt to attack them, but did not even seriously prepare to defend itself. From March 27th onwards, occasional exchanges of fire between the forward positions of the Versailles army and the ramparts around Paris had occurred. On April 2nd, a communard detachment moving in the direction of Courbevoie, was attacked and pushed back. The prisoners taken by Thiers' forces were summarily shot. The following day, under pressure from the National Guard, the Commune finally launched a three-pronged offensive against Versailles. However, in spite of the enthusiasm of the communard battalions, the lack of serious political and military preparation (clearly it was thought that, as on March 18th, the Versailles army would come over to the Commune at the sight of the National Guard) condemned this belated sortie to failure. This defeat cost not only the dead and wounded, who included Flourens and Duval, both slaughtered upon their capture by the Versailles army, but also the fainter-hearted elements within Paris. The fatalistic optimism of the first weeks gave way to a sense of the imminent danger of defeat, accentuating the divisions and rivalry at all levels of the military command.

Finally, the Versailles army entered Paris on 21st May 1871. At the Hôtel de Ville, having failed to organise any serious military strategy, now, at the decisive hour, the Commune simply ceased to exist, abdicating all responsibility to a completely ineffective "Committee of Public Safety". The National Guards were left to fight "in their localities". The lack of centralised command prevented any serious concentration of communard forces to check the advance of the Versailles troops. The communards fought with tremendous courage, but were gradually pushed towards the east of the city and finally defeated on the 28th May. Thiers forces conducted a terrible slaughter of anything up to 30,000 men, women and children, with perhaps another 20,000 killed in the following weeks. Firing squads were at work well into the month of June, killing anyone suspected of having cooperated in any way with the Commune.

Marx and Engels followed the Commune closely and drew many lessons from this first attempt at the construction of a workers' state. Their conclusions are contained in the writings published under the title The Civil War in France, with a particularly remarkable introduction by Engels. They enthusiastically supported the struggle of the workers from the outset, although they were conscious of the extremely precarious situation in which they would find themselves if they took power. Before the 18th March, they had declared that, given the unfavourable circumstances, seizing power would be "a desperate folly". The events of March 18th placed the power in the hands of the workers, and Marx and Engels supported them in their struggle to maintain it and defeat the reaction.

The workers of Paris struggled not only for immediate aims. They fought under the red flag of internationalism. They struggled, as they termed it, for a "universal social republic", free of exploitation, of class divisions, of reactionary militarism and national antagonisms. Their cause is our cause. In modern France, as in all the industrialised countries in the world, the material conditions for the achievement of these great aims are incomparably more favourable now than they were in 1871. We must now establish on a firm foundation the society for which the men and women of the Commune fought and died.

This article was published in a previous version in 2001.

LBO on political economy of education


In and out of school

It’s remarkable how similar the U.S. educational system is to our health care system: by world standards, we spend gobs of money on both, and both yield underwhelming outcomes. With health, we’re in a class by ourselves, spending a two-thirds higher share of GDP than the OECD average (a share bigger than any country in the world, by a long shot) to produce some of the worst health indicators in the First World. We’re not so egregious on education. We spend just a third more than the OECD average, the second-highest of any country, to produce merely mediocre scores on internationally comparable tests. But there’s a pattern there, don’t you think?

We’ll take a close look at educational outcomes in the next issue of LBO. For this first pass, let’s examine the dimensions of spending, and the enrollment and attainment numbers.

Money and matriculation

In 2007, the U.S. spent 7.6% of GDP on education, 1.9 points above the OECD average, and exceeded only by Iceland. (See the box at the end of this article for data details.) But before this is turned into a right-wing, “See, you just can’t throw money at this problem,” homily, several factors lurking below this fat headline number must be discussed.

First, 41% of that spending is on tertiary education (college and beyond), 15 points above the average. Spending on primary and secondary education, is 4.0% of GDP, matched or exceeded by six countries, and just 0.5 point above the average. So we stint on mass education in favor of elite.

And despite all that spending, a surprisingly small share of our population is in school — at all levels. The OECD presents data on the number of years for which 90% or more of the population is enrolled. The average is 13 years; in most Western European countries, it’s 14 or more. But in the U.S., it’s just 11 years, tied with Mexico, behind Slovenia and just two years ahead of Brazil. Enrollment rates for those aged 5–19 are slightly below the OECD average — and somewhat further below the EU average. Enrollment rates drop the further up the age ladder you go: less than a quarter — 23% — of Americans in their 20s are enrolled in some sort of school, 2 points below the OECD average. (That despite spending a bundle on tertiary education.) And the U.S. isn’t lagging because college is delayed until later in life; we’re also below average for people over 30.

Underperformance is even more extreme at the other end of the age spectrum: just 47% of 3–4 year olds are in preschool, 24 points below the OECD average, and 3 points behind Brazil. In most Western European countries and Japan, preschool is nearly universal. Many studies have shown that kids who go to preschool do better in school, make more money, get along with other people better, and are less likely to end up in jail than those who don’t (though of course the Cato Institute doesn’t want to hear that).

All this underenrollment really adds up. This newsletter has previously quoted Robert Gordon’s observation that the U.S. is about the only country in the world where the educational attainment of the younger generation hasn’t surpassed that of the older. There are two reasons for this. One is that older Americans are more educated than their counterparts around the world; 89% of those aged 55–64 have high school diplomas as their highest degree — a legacy of the days when we led the world in mass education. That’s the largest share of the 35 countries covered — 31 points above the OECD average, and 30 above the EU average. (See graph above. Sadly, there’s no data for Japan.) It’s also a high bar for the young to surpass. But they’re not even matching it: of those aged 25–34, 88% of Americans had diplomas, 11th in the OECD universe — down a point, and just 8 points above the average, 6 points above the EU. The rest of the world caught up and sometimes surpassed a U.S. that could barely stay in place.

Spending priorities

Breaking down expenditures by category is no more flattering to the U.S. than the enrollment numbers. Almost 12% of U.S. spending on primary and secondary schools is devoted to capital expenditures, 4 points above the average and one of the highest shares in the world (or the subset for which the OECD reports data).

Current — as opposed to capital — spending in the U.S. shows an unusually large share devoted to administrative and support staff, and a small share devoted to teachers’ salaries. But what do our education reformers want to do? Spend more on computers and other gadgetry, and break teachers’ unions and cut their salaries.

(More on this in #133, but one reason for the high administrative costs in the U.S. is the fragmentation of school systems. Every little town has its own system — a huge duplication of effort.)

Putting all that together, as the graph above shows, the share of GDP devoted to teachers’ salaries is rather low in the U.S. Big spending on teachers doesn’t necessarily guarantee good results. But this is a strange place to be directing the budgetary axe.

Teachers aren’t all that highly paid in this country. Secondary teachers with fifteen years experience earn 35% less than the average college graduate, 22 points below the OECD average, and 38 points behind Finland (see graph below). The figures are worse for primary teachers — 40% below the average college grad.

This is not the way to attract talented people into the field. Nor is not giving people healthy raises as they gain experience (see graph below) — but “reformers” want more turnover, not less. The charter model is to hire fresh college grads and work them madly for a few years, until they run off to law school or something.

A skeptic might counter, yes, but U.S. overall incomes are higher than many foreign countries, so teachers are doing pretty well in absolute terms despite their poor standing relative to other occupations. But that skeptic would be wrong. An American primary school teacher is paid about $40 per hour of teaching time, $10 below the OECD average, and more than $16 below Finnish rates. Upper secondary teachers (see graph below) earn $45 per classroom hour in the U.S. $26 below the OECD average, and almost $37 below Finland.

Sometimes you hear earnest liberals say we need to increase the “prestige” of teaching. It’s a very high prestige occupation in Finland, quite competitive, so maybe if we raise its prestige here, we’ll get better outcomes. But it’s not clear how we could do that merely by chanting mantras. If we’re serious about improving our schools, then we should be raising pay, not scheming to cut it.

Higher ed

The U.S. was a world pioneer in mass education — basic education in the 19th century, higher ed in the 20th. We are now a leader in undoing that legacy, making war on our public schools, and making higher education more expensive and less accessible to all except the rich and precocious. Our elite universities are some of the finest in the world, and are likely to stay that way for some time, but less exalted public institutions are under constant budgetary assault. It’s what you’d expect of a society that rewards its top 1% so well. As noted above, less than a quarter of Americans in their 20s — 23% — are enrolled in some sort of school, putting us 17th in the OECD’s universe. Finland, the leader, is 20 points ahead; most other Western European countries are 5–10 points ahead. In 1995, 19% of Americans in their 20s were in school, a point above the OECD average, and just 11 points behind the then-leader, Denmark. Most other Western European countries were less than 5 points ahead of the U.S.

But we do reward people with degrees: the U.S. has one of the largest earnings premiums for people with at least a bachelor’s degree in the OECD’s world (see graph below ). Someone with a bachelor’s earns 77% more than someone with only a high school diploma (or their international equivalents), 24 points above the OECD average. The college premium looks to be broadly associated with the general level of inequality, with Brazil and the U.S. at the top and Sweden at the bottom.

People across the spectrum say that education is the key to reducing poverty and inequality, but the U.S. looks rather poor at providing it. And all anyone in power wants to do is make already low-paid teachers miserable and give more tests. You’d almost think that college enrollment rates are kept low to maximize the wage premium, but it seems unlikely that anyone has sat down and figured that out.

Of course, all this assumes that formal education is basically a good thing — that it makes people healthier, more productive, and better able to understand the world and to govern themselves. If you don’t buy that, then the sagging enrollment figures are nothing but good news.

LBO #133 will take a look at what all our spending on education yields, as reported by the OECD’s program of internationally comparable tests, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Not to spoil the suspense, but the U.S. doesn’t do so well.

Stats on this page come from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Education at a Glance 2010 and associated spreadsheets. (They have an idiosyncratic notion of a “glance”: the book is 474 pages, and the 27 Excel data files total 21 megabytes.) For most of these stats, the OECD reports data for 25–30 countries, most of them in the rich North, but not all. Poorer countries, which it calls “partners,” include Brazil and Russia. Graphs on this page show only “curated” subsets of the full run of data.

Countercurrent of Western Marxism





Ideology

Frankfurt Institute for Social Research

The concept of Ideology has gained universal acceptance in the language of science. "Only rarely today," Eduard Spranger wrote recently, "does one speak of political ideas and ideals, but very frequently of political ideologies." [1] Our knowledge incorporates intellectual formations into the social dynamics, by relating them to the underlying interconnections of motivation. The undeniable appearance of their independent existence [An‑sich‑Sein] as well as their presumptions to truth are made subject to critical insight. The independence of spiritual products and indeed even the conditions by which they gain this independence are conceived jointly with the real historical movement under the name of "ideology." Within it these products are produced and within it they exercise their function. Allegedly they serve particular interests, voluntarily or involuntarily. The separation itself and the constitution of its distinct sphere, the sphere of spirit, its transcendence, is at the same time defined as a social result of the division of labor. In its very form this transcendence is held to justify a fragmented society. To have a share in the eternal world of ideas is reserved for those who are privileged by exemption from physical labor. Themes of this kind, which resonate wherever there is talk of ideology, have set its concept and the sociology that deals with it in opposition to traditional philosophy. The latter still maintains, if not quite in the same words, that in contrast to the changing flux of appearances, it deals with permanent and unchanging essence. The statement of a German philosopher, who still exercises great authority, is well known: in the pre‑Fascist era he compared sociology to a cat‑burglar climbing the façade [of the philosophic edifice]. Such conceptions which have seeped into popular consciousness for a long time and have contributed essentially to the mistrust of sociology, require reflection, all the more so, because in them that which long since has become irreconcilable and at times crassly contradictory is intermixed. In rendering intellectual contents dynamic by means of the critique of ideology we have been led to forget that the doctrine of ideology itself belongs to the movement of history, and that even if the substance of the concept of ideology has not changed, its function has, and is subject to these dynamics. [2] What is called ideology, and what actually is ideology, can only be established if one does justice to the movement of the concept, which at the same time is the movement of the thing.

If one disregards those oppositional countercurrents in Greek philosophy which have fallen into disrepute due to the triumph of the Platonic‑Aristotelian tradition and which are being reconstructed with great difficulty only today, then, at least since the beginnings of modern bourgeois society at the turn of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the general conditions for false contents of consciousness began to be noted. Francis Bacon's antidogmatic manifesto for a liberation of reason proclaims the struggle against the "Idols," the collective prejudices which still oppressed mankind at the end of that age, just as they did in its beginnings. His formulations at times have the ring of an anticipation of the modern positivistic critique of language, of semantics. He characterizes one type of the idols, from which the human mind must free itself, as the Idols of the Market [idola fori], freely translated, the idols of mass society: “For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. . . . Words plainly force and override the understanding and throw all into confusion.” [13] Two aspects of this statement of the earliest modern Enlightenment deserve emphasis. First, the delusion is attributed to "men" thus, as it were, to invariant natural beings, and not to the conditions which make them what they are or to which they are subject, "the crowd." The doctrine of innate blindness, a part of secular theology, today still belongs to the arsenal of the vulgar doctrine of ideology: in attributing false consciousness to a fundamental property of human beings or to their sociation as such, not only are its concrete conditions ignored, but at the same time delusion is justified, as it were, as a law of nature, and the domination over the deluded is also justified by this, as indeed was done by Bacon's pupil Hobbes afterwards. Furthermore the delusion was attributed to "name-giving," to logical impurities, and thus to the subjects and their fallibility, rather than to the objective historical constellations, just as Theodor Geiger recently again explained ideologies purely as a matter of "mentality" and denounced their alleged relationship to the social structure as "pure mysticism." [4] Bacon's concept of ideology—if it is permissible to attribute this to him—is just as subjectivistic as the concept current today. While his doctrine of the idols sought to further the emancipation of bourgeois consciousness from the tutelage of the Church and, in this, is part of the progressive character of Baconian philosophy as a whole, the limitations of this bourgeois consciousness are already discernible in him: the intellectual perpetualization of conditions probably conceived according to the model of the states of Antiquity, which are to be emulated, and the abstract subjectivism, which has no intimation of the moment of falseness contained in the isolated category of the subject.

The politically progressive impulse of the critique of false consciousness which Bacon sketched out emerges much more definitely in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Thus the left‑wing encyclopedists Helvetius and Holbach proclaim that prejudices of the sort which Bacon attributed to man universally have their definite social function. They serve the maintenance of unjust conditions and stand in opposition to the realization of happiness and the establishment of a rational society. "The prejudices of the great," it is said in Helvetius, "are the laws of the little people." [5] ". . . Experience has shown us that almost all questions of morals and politics are decided by force and not by reason. If opinion rules the world, then, in the long run, it is the powerful who rule opinion." [6] That the modern enterprise of opinion research has forgotten this axiom and, till most recently, still believed that currently held subjective opinions represent the ultimate datum, beyond which one need not look. This fact offers an insight into the change of function which, with the changes of society, the main themes of the Enlightenment have undergone. What was once conceived critically, now serves only to determine what is "the case," and the findings themselves then become only tangential to this. To be sure, the Encyclopedist too did not as yet attain a comprehensive insight into the objective origin of ideologies and the objectivity of their social function. For the most part prejudices and false consciousness are traced back to the machinations of the mighty. In Holbach it is said: "Authority generally considers it in its interest to maintain received opinions: the prejudices and errors which it considers necessary for the secure maintenance of its power are perpetuated by this power, which never reasons." [7] At approximately the same time, however, Helvetius, perhaps the thinker among the Encyclopedists endowed with the greatest intellectual power, had already recognized the objective necessity that what was attributed by others to the ill will of camarillas: "Our ideas are the necessary consequence of the society in which we live." [8]

This motive of necessity then was central to the work of the French school which called itself that of the ideologues, the researchers of ideas. The word "ideology" was originated by one of their chief exponents, Destutt de Tracy. [9] His approach takes its departure from empirical philosophy, which dissects the human mind in order to lay bare the mechanism of knowledge and bases questions of truth and evidence on this. But his aim is neither epistemological nor formal. He does not wish to discover in the mind merely the conditions of the validity of judgments, but instead to observe the contents of consciousness themselves, the mental phenomena, to dissect and describe them in the manner of natural objects, of a mineral or a plant. Ideology, he says at one point in a provocative formulation, is a part of zoology. [10] Drawing on the concretely materialistic sensualism of Condillac, he would like to trace back all ideas to their origin in the senses. It is no longer sufficient for him simply to refute false consciousness and to denounce the uses to which it is put, but the laws governing all sorts of consciousness, whether false or correct, are to be established; from there, to be sure, it is only one step to the conception of the social necessity of all contents of consciousness as such. The ideologues share with the older tradition, as well as with the most recent positivism, a mathematical natural science orientation. And like them Destutt de Tracy also places the origins and the development of linguistic expression in the foregound; he too seeks to combine the verification in terms of primary data with a mathematized grammar and language, in which every idea is univocally assigned to a sign: this, as is well known, Leibniz and the earlier rationalism already had in mind. [11] All this is to serve a practical political aim. Destutt de Tracy still hoped to prevent false abstract principles from establishing themselves by confronting them with the sensual data, because they hindered not only the communication between human beings but also the proper construction of the state and of society. He hoped to be able to establish the same degree of certainty and evidence for his science of ideas as mathematics and physics have. The strict methodology of science was to make an end once and for all of the arbitrary and optional character of opinions, which had been censured by the great philosophical tradition since Plato; false consciousness, that which later is called ideology, is to dissolve when confronted by scientific method. At the same time, however, primacy is thereby conferred on mind and science. The school of the ideologues, nourished not only by materialist but also by idealist sources, in spite of all its empiricism, faithfully holds to the belief that consciousness determines being. As the supreme science, Destutt de Tracy conceived of a science of man which would furnish the foundation for all of political and social life. [12] Comte's conception of the scientifically and ultimately also the actually and socially dominant role of sociology is thus already virtually contained in the thought of the ideologues.

Their doctrine too initially had progressive aims. Reason was to rule, the world was to be organized for the benefit of man. In the liberal manner, a harmonious self‑adjustment of the social forces was assumed, insofar as each one acts according to his own, well‑understood interests, which are wholly comprehensible to each. And the concept of ideology also had this effect initially on the actual political struggles. Although his dictatorship was itself linked in so many respects to the bourgeois emancipation, Napoleon, in a passage which Pareto cites, already raised the accusation of subversion against the ideologues, even if he did so in a more subtle manner, an accusation which ever since has attached itself like a shadow to the social analysis of consciousness. In this reproach he emphasized the irrational moments—in a language with Rousseauean colorations—to which a continual appeal was made subsequently, against the so‑called intellectualism of the critique of ideology; yet in its later phase in Pareto the doctrine of ideology itself was in turn fused with an extreme irrationalism. Napoleon's denunciation charges:

It is to the doctrine of the ideologues—to this diffuse metaphysics, which in a contrived manner seeks to find the primary causes and on this foundation would erect the legislation of the peoples, instead of adapting the laws to a knowledge of the human heart of the lessons of history—to which one must attribute all the misfortunes which have befallen our beautiful France. Their errors had to—and indeed this was the case—bring about the regime of the men of terror. Indeed, who was it who proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who misled the people by elevating them to a sovereignty which they were incapable of exercising? Who has destroyed the sanctity of the laws and all respect for them, by no longer deriving them from the sacred principles of justice, the essence of things, and the civil order of rights but exclusively from the arbitrary volition of the people's representatives, composed of men without knowledge of the civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military law? If one is called upon to renew a state, then one must follow principles which are in constant opposition to each other [des principes constamment opposes]. History displays the image of the human heart; it is in history that one must seek to gain knowledge of the advantages and the evils of the various kinds of legislation. [13]

No matter how little lucidity these sentences may possess and how greatly the natural‑right doctrine of the French Revolution is intermingled with a later physiology of consciousness, this much is clear, that Napoleon sensed in any sort of analysis of consciousness a threat to positiveness, which to him appeared more safely secured within the heart. The later usage too, which employs the expression "unworldly ideologues" against allegedly abstract utopians in the name of "Realpolitik," is discernible in Napoleon's pronouncement. But he failed to realize that the ideologues' analysis of consciousness was by no means so irreconcilable with the interests of the rulers. Already then a technical manipulative moment was associated with it. The positivistic doctrine of society never divested itself of this, and its findings were always utilizable for opposite aims. For the ideologues too the knowledge of the origin and formation of ideas was a domain for experts, and what these experts do is to provide the legislator and the statesman with the ability to establish and preserve the order desired by him, which, to be sure, at this point is still equated with a rational order. But the conception that by a correct knowledge of the chemistry of ideas one can control men, still predominates; and in the face of this, the question of the truth and objective evidence of the ideas becomes secondary, in keeping with the skeptical turn of mind by which the school of the ideologues was inspired; and so does the question of the objective historical tendencies on which society depends, in its blind "natural lawlike" progress, as well as in its potential for a conscious rational ordering.

These moments became definitive for the classical doctrine of ideology. We will forego an attempt to treat this doctrine fully. In its general outline it is well known. On the other hand, the formulations on which it bases itself, especially the question of the relationship of the inner consistency and independence of the spirit to its role in society, would require a most detailed interpretation. And this would have to take up the central questions of dialectical philosophy. The simplistic truth that the ideologies in turn react back on the social reality is not sufficient. The contradiction between the objective truth of the spiritual and its manner of existence merely for others [Fuer‑anderes‑Sein] represents a contradiction with which traditional thought is not capable of dealing adequately; and it would have to be specified as a contradiction within the thing itself and not due merely to inadequacies of method. However, as we wish to deal here especially with the change in the structure and function of ideology and of the concept of ideology, we shall take up another aspect instead: that of the relationship of ideology to the bourgeois character. The conceptual motifs from the prehistory of the concept of ideology all belong to a world in which there was as yet no developed industrial society, and where the doubt had hardly yet been entertained, whether, with the establishment of formal equality for all citizens, freedom would also in fact be achieved. Insofar as the question of the material life process of society had not yet arisen, the preoccupation with ideology occupied a special rank in most Enlightenment doctrines: it was believed that it was sufficient to bring order into consciousness, for order to be brought into society. However, it is not only this belief which is bourgeois, but the nature of ideology itself. As a consciousness which is objectively necessary and yet at the same time false, as the intertwining of truth and falsehood, which is just as distinct from the whole truth as it is from the pure lie, ideology belongs, if not to a modern economy, then, in any case, to a developed urban market economy. For ideology is justification. It presupposes the experience of a societal condition which has already become problematic and therefore requires a defense just as much as does the idea of justice itself, which would not exist without such necessity for apologetics and which has as its model the exchange of things which are comparable. Where purely immediate relations of power predominate, there are really no ideologies. The thinkers of the restoration and those who praise feudal or absolutistic conditions are themselves already bourgeois, due to the form of discursive logic, of argumentation, which contains an egalitarian, anti-hierarchic element, and therefore they always undermine that which they would glorify. A rational theory of the monarchical system, which is supposed to justify the irrationality of that system, would have to sound like 1èse majesté, wherever the monarchic principle still has substance: the founding of positive power on reason virtually revokes the principle of the recognition of that which exists. Accordingly, the critique of ideology, as the confrontation of ideology with its own truth, is only possible insofar as the ideology contains a rational element with which the critique can deal. That applies to ideas such as those of liberalism, individualism, the identity of spirit and reality. But whoever would want to criticize, for instance, the so‑called ideology of National Socialism would find himself victim of an impotent naïveté. Not only is the intellectual level of the authors Hitler and Rosenberg beneath all criticism. The lack of any such level, the triumph over which must be counted among the most modest of pleasures, is the symptom of a state, to which the concept of ideology, of a necessarily false consciousness, is no longer directly relevant. No objective spirit is mirrored in such so‑called "thought," rather it is a manipulative contrivance, a mere instrument of power, which actually no one, not even those who used it themselves, ever believed or expected to be taken seriously. With a sly wink they point to their power: try using your reason against that, and you will see where you will end up; in many cases the absurdity of the theses seems specifically designed to test how much you can get people to swallow, as long as they sense the threat behind the phrases or the promise that some part of the booty will fall to them. Where ideologies are replaced by approved views decreed from above, the critique of ideology must be replaced by an analysis of cui bono—in whose interest? From this one can gather how little the critique of ideology has to do with that relativism with which one has sought to place in the same category. It is the negation defined in the Hegelian sense, the confrontation of the spiritual with its realization, and has as its presupposition the distinction of the truth or falsity of the judgment just as much as the requirement for truth in that which is criticized. It is not the critique of ideology which is relativistic, but rather the absolutism of the totalitarian type, the decrees of Hitler, Mussolini, and Zhdanov, and it is not for nothing that they themselves call their pronouncements ideology. The critique of totalitarian ideologies has not as its task to refute them, for they make no claim to autonomy or consistency at all, or only in the most transparent fashion. What is indicated in this case is rather to analyze on what human dispositions they are speculating, and what they wish to evoke from these—and that is hellishly far removed from such official declamations. Furthermore, there remains the question, why and in what manner modern society produces human beings who respond to such stimuli, who require such stimuli, and whose spokesmen to a large extent are the "Führers" and demagogues of all varieties. The development which leads to such changes in ideology has the character of necessity and not the content and coherence of the ideologies themselves. [14] The anthropological changes to which the totalitarian ideologies are tailored are due to the structural changes of society, but they are substantial only in that, and not in what they state. Ideology today is the condition of consciousness and unconsciousness of the masses, as objective spirit, not the miserable products which imitate and debase this spirit in order to reproduce it. For ideology in the proper sense, relationships of power are required which are not comprehensible to this power itself, which are mediated and therefore also less harsh. Today society, which has unjustly been blamed for its complexity, has become too transparent for this.

But just this is the last thing to be openly admitted. The less ideology there is and the cruder its heritage, the more research in ideology is pursued, research which promises to survey the multiplicity of phenomena at the expense of the theory of society. [15] While in the Soviet sphere the concept of ideology has been forged into a weapon with which to strike not only the rebellious thought, but also the person who dares to think it, here, in the traffic of the scientific marketplace, this concept has been softened and deprived of its critical content and thus of its relationship to truth. The first impulses in this direction can be found in Nietzsche, who, to be sure, had something quite different in mind, and who wanted to strike the proud face of limited bourgeois reason and its metaphysical dignity. Then, just as positivistic sociology did throughout, Max Weber denied the existence, or at least the knowability of any total structure of society as well as of its relationship to the spirit, and demanded that with the aid of ideal types, which were not subject to any principle, but solely of interest to research, one should, entirely without prejudice, pursue whatever was primary or secondary at the time. [16] In this his work coincides with Pareto's aim. Where Max Weber restricted the doctrine of ideology to the establishing of specific dependencies and in this way reduced it from a theory of the total society to a hypothesis about specific findings, if not to a "category of sociological insight" [Kategorie der verstehenden Soziologie] so, with the same effect, Pareto extended this concept of ideology so greatly, with his famous doctrine of the "derivatives," that it no longer contains any specific differentiations. [17] The social explanation of false consciousness is turned into the sabotage of consciousness, pure and simple. For Max Weber the concept of ideology is a prejudice which has to be tested in each case, for Pareto, all that is spiritual is ideology—in both cases the concept is neutralized. Pareto draws from this the full consequence of social relativism. Any character of truth is denied for the spiritual world, insofar as it is more than mechanistic natural science; it is dissolved into mere rationalization, produced by dispositions of interest, justification presented by all and any conceivable social group. The critique of ideology has become a spiritual law of the jungle: truth the mere function of power as it asserts itself. In this, in spite of all seeming radicalism, Pareto resembles the earlier doctrine of the Idols, in that he attributes the ideologies, the "derivatives," simply to man as such. Although he expressly raises the positivistic claim, that he is doing research into ideology in a logical experimental manner, according to the model of natural science and faithful to the facts—and in so doing shows himself to be completely impervious to the critical epistemological reflections of Max Weber, with whom he shares the pathos of freedom from value—still he uses expressions like "tout le monde" or even "les hommes." He is blind to the fact that what he calls human nature changes with the social conditions, and that this also affects the relation between the actual motor elements, the "residues," and their derivatives or ideologies. A characteristic passage from the Traité de sociologie générale reads:

Basically, the derivatives form means which everyone employs. . . . Down to the present the social sciences consisted frequently of theories which were composed from residues and derivatives. They had a practical purpose: they were to persuade men to act in a certain manner considered useful for the society. In contrast, the present work is an attempt to transfer these sciences exclusively to the logical experimental level, without any aim of direct practical utility, but solely with the intention of establishing the laws of social events. . . . On the contrary, whoever wishes to undertake exclusively logical experimental research must take great care to avoid applying derivatives: they are an object of investigation for him, never a means of argumentation. [18]

By relating to human beings as such instead of the concrete configuration of their sociation Pareto falls back to an older, one might almost say presociological, viewpoint of the doctrine of ideology, to the psychological viewpoint. He stops at the partial insight, that one must distinguish between that "which a man believes of himself and says and that which he really is and does," without meeting the complementary requirement, that one must "to a still greater extent distinguish, in the historical struggles, the phrases and illusions of the parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conceptions from their reality." The investigation of ideologies is to a certain extent directed back toward the private sphere. It has been noted quite correctly that Pareto's concept of derivatives is closely related to the psychoanalytic concept of rationalization, as it was introduced first by Ernest Jones and then accepted by Freud: "Man has a strong tendency to attach logical reasoning to illogical actions. . . ." [19] The fundamental subjectivism of Pareto, which points back to his subjective economics, does not actually derive the falsity of ideologies from social conditions or objectively indicated delusory complexes [Verblendungszusammenhaenge] but from the proposition that men seek to give a rational foundation and a justification for their true motives after the fact. That element of truth in ideologies, which cannot be comprehended psychologically, but only in its relation to the objective conditions, he does not even consider: the ideologies are exhausted, as it were, by their anthropological function. Hans Barth's formulation in Truth and Ideology hits the mark here: that insofar as it lays claim to being anything beyond the exploration of causal relations on the model of mechanics, for Pareto the spiritual world possesses neither its own autonomous lawfulness nor any value in terms of knowledge. [20] Endowing the doctrine of ideology with the appearance of a science in this way also entails the resignation of this science with respect to its subject matter. By blinding himself to the reason contained in ideologies, as this was included in the Hegelian concept of historical necessity, he at the same time surrenders any claim of reason as to its right to judge the ideologies. This doctrine of ideology is itself most eminently suited to the ideology of the totalitarian state that relies solely on power. As it subsumes all that is spiritual under the purposes of propaganda and of domination, it makes it possible for cynicism to enjoy a scientific good conscience. The relationship between Mussolini's statements and Pareto's tract is well known. Political liberalism in its late period with its concept of freedom of opinion, which in any case possesses a certain affinity to relativism, insofar as everyone is to be allowed to think what he wishes, because they are only thinking what is most favorable to their interest and self assertion, regardless of its truth—this liberalism was by no means secure against such perversions of the concept of ideology. And this proves once again that totalitarian rule was not imposed on mankind from without by a few desperados, that it was by no means a traffic accident on the superhighway of progress, but that there were the destructive forces in the midst of our culture which were growing to ripeness. [21]

By the separate emergence of the doctrine of ideology from philosophical theory a sort of apparent exactitude is produced, but the real capacity for insight of the concept is sacrificed. This can also be shown where this concept was absorbed by philosophy itself, as in Max Scheler. In contrast to Pareto's shapelessly leveling doctrine of derivatives, Scheler has sought to establish a kind of typology, if not ontology, of the ideologies. Today, after not quite thirty years, his much‑admired attempt strikes one as astonishingly naïve:

. . . Among such formal modes of thought, determined by class, I include, for example, the following . . . :

The contemplation of becoming—lower class; the contemplation of being—upper class . . . .

Realism (the world predominantly as “resistance”)—lower class; idealism—upper class (the world predominantly as the "realm of ideas") . . . .

Materialism—lower class; spiritualism—upper class . . . .

Optimistic view of the future and looking back pessimistically to the past—lower class; pessimistic view of the future and optimistic view of the past—upper class . . . .

A mode of thought that looks for contradictions or the "dialectical" mode of thought—lower class; the mode of thought that seeks identity—upper class . . . .

These are inclinations of an unconscious sort and determined by class, to conceive the world predominantly in one or the other form. They are not class prejudices, but more than prejudices: they are formal laws of the formation of judgments, and specifically, formal laws, which, as laws of the predominant inclinations to form certain prejudices, are rooted solely in class status quite apart from individuality . . . . If they were fully known and their necessary derivation from class status understood, they would constitute actually a new doctrine [Lehrstueck] of the sociology of knowledge, which, in analogy to Bacon's doctrine of the Idols . . . I would like to designate as the "sociological doctrine of the idols" of thinking, contemplation, and judgment. [22]

It is clear that this schema of lower and upper class, which even in Scheler's own view is much too crude and which shares the absence of any historical consciousness with its philosophically polar opposite in Pareto, is neither adequate to the concreteness of social differentiation nor to the formation of ideologies. The opposition of static ontological and dynamic nominalistic thought is not only crude and undifferentiated, but also false as far as the structure of the formation of ideologies is concerned. What is called in Scheler the "ideology of the upper class" today to a large extent has precisely such an extremely nominalistic character. Existing conditions are defended by the charge that to criticize them is to impose arbitrary conceptual constructions from above, is "metaphysics," and that research has to keep to unstructured data, "opaque facts": Pareto himself is an example of such ultranominalistic apologetics, and the positivism predominant in the social sciences today, which one can hardly attribute to the lower class of Scheler's schema, shows the same tendency. And on the other side, just the most important theories which Scheler would classify as the ideologies of the lower class, stand in opposition to nominalism. They took their departure from the objective total structure of society and an objective concept of unfolding truth, derived from Hegel. Scheler's phenomenological approach, as a passive adaptation of philosophy to allegedly perceivable essentialities that renounces constructions, fell prey also, in its late phase, to a positivism of the second order, a, to a certain degree, spiritual positivism.

In Scheler and Mannheim the doctrine of ideology became the academic branch of the sociology of knowledge. The name is indicative enough: all consciousness, not only false but also true consciousness, thus "knowledge," is to be subjected to the investigation of its social preconditions. Mannheim himself laid proud claim to the introduction of a "total concept of ideology"; [23] in his chief work, Ideology and Utopia, it is stated, for instance:

With the emergence of the general formulation of the total concept of ideology, out of the mere doctrine of ideology, the sociology of knowledge develops . . . . It is clear that in this context the concept of ideology acquires a new meaning. This entails two possibilities: the first consists in relinquishing all aims of an "unmasking" in the exploration of ideology from now on . . . and limiting oneself to working out the relationship between the socially existing conditions and the views [Sicht] at all points. The second possibility consists in afterwards combining this "value‑free" attitude with an epistemological attitude. This . . . can . . . lead either to relativism or relationism; the two must not be confused.

It is difficult to make a serious distinction between the two possibilities which Mannheim envisages for the application of the total concept of ideology. The second, that of an epistemological relativism, or, in a nobler word, relationism, which Mannheim confronts to the first possibility as an "epistemological" alternative, that of a value‑free study of the relation between "conditions of existence and views," thus of base structure and superstructure, does not really form an opposition to the former at all, but, at most, embraces the intention to give protective cover to the procedures of the positivistic sociology of knowledge by such methodological arguments. Mannheim felt quite clearly that the concept of ideology was justified solely as that of a false consciousness, but was no longer capable of dealing with such a concept in terms of content, and therefore postulates it solely in a formal manner, as an allegedly epistemological possibility. The specific negation is replaced by a general worldview, and then the details are filled in, the ascertainment of the empirical interrelationships between society and spirit, by following the model of Max Weber's sociology of religion. The doctrine of ideology splits apart into a highly abstract total design devoid of any conclusive articulation, on the one hand, and monographic studies on the other. The dialectical problem is lost in the vacuum between these two: that these ideologies are indeed false consciousness but not only false. The veil which necessarily intervenes between the society and its insight into its own nature, by virtue of this necessity at the same time expresses the nature itself. Ideologies in the proper sense become false only by their relationship to the existing reality. They can be true "in themselves," as the ideas of freedom, humanity, and justice are, but still they present themselves as though they were already realized. The labeling of such ideas as ideologies, which is made possible by the total concept of ideology, testifies much less to an irreconcilable opposition to false consciousness than to the rage against that which could indicate the possibility of something better, even when in terms of an ever so powerless intellectual reflection. With some justice it was once said that in many cases those who reject such allegedly ideological concepts have in mind not so much the misapplied concepts as that for which they stand.

The theoretical construction of ideology depends no less on what actually is effectively active as ideology than it presupposes, on the other hand, a theory to define and gain insight into ideology. Hardly anyone can escape the experiential awareness that in the specific gravity of the spirit something decisive has changed. If one may call to mind art as the most faithful historical seismograph, there seems to be no doubt that a weakening has taken place which stands in the greatest contrast to the heroic epoch of the modern around the year 1910. Here social thought cannot remain content with simply tracing back this debility, from which other spiritual domains, such as philosophy, have hardly been exempt, to a so-called recession of the creative forces or to the evil of technological civilization. Rather it will sense a sort of subterranean movement. Compared with the catastrophic processes in the underlying structures of society, the spirit itself has taken on something ephemeral, thin, impotent. In the face of contemporary reality it can hardly maintain unimpaired its pretension to being taken seriously, which was so self‑evident to the nineteenth century faith in culture. The subterranean shift—literally one between the superstructure and the base structure—extends into the most subtle immanent problems of consciousness and spiritual creativity, and it paralyzes the forces, rather than there being any lack of these. The spirit which does not reflect on this and goes about its business as if nothing had happened is condemned from the outset to helpless vanity. If from the very beginning the doctrine of ideologies has warned the spirit of its weaknesses, then its self‑consciousness must take a position toward this aspect today; one could almost say that today, consciousness, which Hegel already had defined essentially as the moment of negativity, can only survive at all insofar as it incorporates the critique of ideology within itself. One can speak of ideology in a meaningful way only to the extent that something spiritual emerges from the social process as something independent, substantial, and with its own proper claims. The untruth of ideology is always the price paid for this separation, for the denial of the social foundation. But its aspect of truth too adheres to this independence, to a consciousness that is more than the mere imprint of that which exists, and which seeks to penetrate into this existence. Today the characteristic of ideologies is much more the absence of this independence, rather than the delusion of their claims. With the crisis of bourgeois society, the traditional concept of ideology itself appears to lose its subject matter. Spirit is split into critical truth, divesting itself of illusion, but esoteric and alienated from the direct social connections of effective action, on the one hand, and the planned administrative control of that which once was ideology, on the other. If one defines the heritage of ideology in terms of the totality of those intellectual products, which to a large extent occupy the consciousness of human beings today, then by this should be understood, not so much the autonomous spirit, blind to its own social implications, as the totality of what is cooked up in order to ensnare the masses as consumers and, if possible, to mold and constrain their state of consciousness. The socially conditioned false consciousness of today is no longer objective spirit, not in that sense either, as crystallized blindly and anonymously out of the social process, but rather is tailored scientifically to fit the society. That is the case with the products of the culture industry, film, magazines, illustrated newspapers, radio, television, and the best‑seller literature of various types, among which biographical novels play a special role. That the elements in this ideology, uniform in itself, are not new, in contrast to the multiple techniques of its dissemination, but that many are actually calcified, is self‑understood. This is linked to the traditional distinction already marked in Antiquity, between the higher and lower spheres of culture, in which the lower are rationalized and integrated with debased residues of the higher spirit. Historically the schemata of the contemporary culture industry can be traced back especially to the early period of English vulgar literature around 1700. This already has at its disposal most of the stereotypes which grin at us today from the screen and the television tube. But the social examination of this qualitatively novel phenomenon must not allow itself to be duped by references to the venerable age of its components and the arguments, based on this, of the satisfaction of alleged primal and fundamental needs. For it is not these components which matter, nor that the primitive traits of contemporary mass culture have remained the same throughout all the ages of a mankind deprived of adult rights, but rather that today they all have been placed under a central direction and that a closed system has been fabricated out of the whole. Escape from it is hardly tolerated anymore, the human beings are encircled from all sides, and by means of the achievements of a perverted social psychology—or, as it has been so aptly called, an inverted psychoanalysis—the regressive tendencies, which the growing social pressures release in any case, are reinforced. Sociology has taken over this sphere under the title of communication research, [25] the study of the mass media, and has placed special emphasis on the reactions of the consumers and the structure of the interaction between them and the producers. That such investigations, which hardly seek to deny their parentage in market research, have a certain value as insights is not to be denied; however, it would appear to be of greater importance to treat the so‑called mass media in the sense of the critique of ideology, rather than to remain content with their mere existing nature. The tacit affirmation of the latter approach, in its purely descriptive analysis itself constitutes an element of the ideology. [26]

In the face of the indescribable power which these media exercise over human beings today—and here sport, which for a long time already has gone over into ideology in the broader sense, must also be included—the concrete determination of their ideological content is of immediate urgency. This content produces a synthetic identification of the masses with the norms and the conditions which either stand anonymously in the background of the culture industry, or else are consciously propagated by it. All that is not in agreement is censured, conformism down into the most subtle impulses of the psyche is inculcated. In this the culture industry can pretend to the role of objective spirit insofar as it is linked at the time to those anthropological tendencies which are active in the awareness of those whom it services. It seizes on these tendencies, reinforces and confirms them while all that is rebellious is either deleted or explicitly condemned. The rigidity, devoid of any experience, of the thinking that predominate in mass society, is hardened still further, if possible, while at the same time a sharpened pseudorealism which in all its externals furnishes the precise reproduction of empirical reality, prevents any insight into the character of the preformation, in accord with the social control, of that which is offered. The more alienated from human beings the fabricated cultural products are, the more these human beings are persuaded that they are being confronted by themselves and their own world. What one sees on the television tube is similar to what is only too familiar, while the contraband of slogans, such as that all foreigners are suspect or that success and career offer the highest satisfaction in life are smuggled in as though they were evident and eternal truths. If one were to compress within one sentence what the ideology of mass culture actually adds up to, one would have to represent this as a parody of the injunction: 'Become that which thou art": as the exaggerated duplication and justification of already existing conditions, and the deprivation of all transcendence and all critique. In this limiting of the socially effective spirit to once again presenting to the human beings only what in any case already constitutes the conditions of their existence, but at the same time proclaiming this present existence as its own norm, the people are confirmed in their faithless faith in pure existence.

Nothing remains then of ideology but that which exists itself, the models of a behavior which submits to the overwhelming power of the existing conditions. It is hardly an accident that the most influential philosophers today are those who attach themselves to the word "existence," as if the reduplication of mere present existence, by means of the highest abstract determinations which can be derived from this, were equivalent with its meaning. This corresponds to a great degree to the state within men's minds. They accept the ridiculous situation, which every day, in the face of the open possibility of happiness, threatens them with avoidable catastrophe; to be sure, they no longer accept it as the expression of an idea, in the way that they may still feel about the bourgeois system of national states, but make their peace in the name of realism, with that which is given. From the outset the individuals experience themselves as chess pieces, and yet become acquiescent to this. However, since new ideology hardly says more than that things are the way they are, its own falsity also shrinks away to the thin axiom that it could not be otherwise than it is. While human beings bow to this untruth, at the same time they still see through it secretly. The glorification of power and of the irresistible nature of present existence is at the same time the condition for divesting it of its magic. The ideology is no longer a veil, but the threatening face of the world. It is not only due to its involvement with propaganda, but due to its own character, that it goes over into terror. However, because ideology and reality are converging in this manner, because reality, due to the lack of any other convincing ideology, becomes its own ideology, it requires only a small effort of mind to throw off this all‑powerful and at the same time empty illusion; but to make this effort seems to be the most difficult thing of all.

Notes

1. Eduard Spranger, "Wesen und Wert politischer Ideologien," in Vierteljahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, vol. 2, 1954, p. 119.

2. See Theodor W. Adorno, Prismen. Frankfurt am Main, 1955, p. 24.

3. Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in The Works of Francis Bacon. London, 1857, vol. I, p. 164; [English translation: Bacon's Works, vol, 4, James Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, eds. London, 1883, pp. 54 f.] quoted in Hans Barth, Wahrheit und Ideologie. Zurich, 1945, p. 48. We are indebted to this work of Barth for a number of citations for the development of the concept of ideology.

4. See Theodor Geiger, "Kritische Bemerkungen zum Begriffe der Ideologie," in Gegenwartsprobleme der Soziologie. Gottfried Eisermann, ed. Potsdam, 1949, p. 144. Geiger's positivism bars any access to the problem of ideology: "The ideological deviation from the reality of knowledge consists in that the statement does not refer or limit itself at all to any reality of knowledge, but contains elements that are alien to reality. Due to its nature and its subject matter the ideological statement is not accessible to empirical verification or refutation. To be sure, an incorrect statement can be free from ideology. . . . But that it is ideological is shown by an analysis which ascertains: the statement concerns something about which for all eternity, i.e., in principle, no assertion can be made that can be either empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. This is the case either because the object of the statement lies outside the knowable reality (it transcends it) or because in it something is stated about an object of reality which does not belong to those properties which determine this object as real" (Geiger, Ideologie und Wahrheit. Stuttgart und Wien, 1953, p. 49 ff.).

5. Claude Adrien Helvetius, De l'Esprit, citation from Barth, op. cit., p. 65.

6. Helvetius, De I'Homme, quoted from Barth, op. cit., p. 66.

7. Paul Heinrich von Holbach, Systeme de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral, quoted from Barth, op. cit., p. 15 ff.

8. Helvetius, De I'Esprit, in Barth, op. cit., p. 62.

9. Destutt de Tracy, Elements d'Ideologie. Brussels, 1826; see Barth, op. cit., p. 15 ff.

10. Destutt de Tracy, Elements, op. cit., vol. I, p. xii.

11. See Barth, op. cit., p. 21.

12. See op. cit., p. 23.

13. Vilfredo Pareto, Traité de sociologie générale, Paris, 1933, vol. 2, #1793 p. 1127, fn.

14. See ch. 11, "Prejudice," above.

15. "When a statement is suspected of ideology, the place in the stream of its presuppositions is to be found where the troubled and obscuring brook of uncontrolled emotive conceptions has flowed into the clear water of theory. At times one does not have to search very long, but occasionally the source of the obscuration lies very far back . . . . It would be an attractive and presumably also rewarding task to investigate ideological statements or those suspected of ideology and seek out the ideological source and the mechanism of obscuration [Misweisungsmechanismus]. One could expect, as a result, the classification of ideologies. Till now such a systematically comprehensive investigation has not been undertaken, nor can this be offered here. It would require the collection and analysis of many hundreds, perhaps thousands of statements suspected of ideology. The theoretician of knowledge would probably be better equipped for this task than the sociologist" (Geiger, Ideologie und Wahrheit, op. cit., p. 92 ff.).

16. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tuebingen, 1922, p. 520 ff.

17. Pareto, op. cit., vol. I, #1413; see also Pareto, Allgemeine Soziologie. Carl Brinkemann, ed. Tuebingen, 1955, p. 161 ff.

18. Pareto, Traité de sociologie générale, op. cit., vol. II, #1403.

19. Op. cit., vol. I, #1403.

20. Barth, op. cit., p. 345.

21. See for this Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectik der Aufklaerung. Amsterdam, 1947, p. 7 ff., 22 ff., 40 ff., 45 ff.

22. Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft. Leipzig, 1926, p. 204 ff.

23. Karl Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 3rd ed., Frankfurt am Main, 1952, p. 53.

24. Op. cit., p. 70 ff. "We are confronted with a particular concept of ideology when the word is only to indicate that we do not wish to believe certain 'ideas' and 'conceptions' of an opponent. For one considers these to be more or less conscious obscurations of a factual state of affairs, the true knowledge of which is not in the interest of the opponent. The whole scale from conscious lies to half‑conscious instinctive obscuration, from the deception of others to the deception of oneself, can be involved here . . . . The particularity of this concept is clear at once when one confronts it to the radical, total concept of ideology. In this sense one can speak of the ideology of an age or of a specific historically or socially concrete group—for instance, a class—thus referring to the distinctive character and nature of the total structure of consciousness of this era or this group . . . . The particular concept of ideology only addresses itself to a part of the opponent's assertions—and even in these only with respect to their contents—characterizing them as ideological, while the total concept of ideology questions the entire worldview of the opponent (including the categorial apparatus) and seeks to understand these categories too in terms of the collective subject" (op. cit., p. 53 ff.).

25. See, for example, Bernard Berelson, Content Analysis in Communication Research. Glencoe, Ill., 1952; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice. New York, 1948.

26. See Kulturindustriel Aufklaerung als Massenbetrug, in Horkheimer and Adorno, op. cit., p. 144 ff.


SOURCE: Aspects of Sociology, by the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, with a preface by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, translated by John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972 (1956, German original), Chapter XII, Ideology, pp. 182-205.

Several scholars attribute this essay to Theodor W. Adorno alone.

From the preface (p. ix):

The essay on ideology is an expanded and greatly modified version of a paper read at the Deutscher Soziologentag [Meeting of German Sociologists] in Heidelberg in 1954, which was published in numbers 3 and 4 of vol. 7 (1953-1954) of the Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie.