Debating apocalypse

Chesterton [the founder of the National Front] combined his anti-Semitism, his anti-Communism, his anti-Americanism and his fervent patriotism and concluded that Jewish Wall Street capitalism was the same thing as Russian Communism. Jewish capital had funded the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he believed, and Jewish capital had funded the development and technological base of Soviet Russia. The Moscow-Wall Street axis had its major objective the ruin of the British Empire, the mongrelization of the British race, and eventual world government. The United Nations, NATO and Jewish people were all to be regarded with the deepest suspicion as agents of ‘the money power’. (Walker 1977: 29).

Conspiracies make life easy to explain and provide enemies, the bankers, the capitalists, the US, that are easy to attack.



Well if you have read all the entries, well done...first chapter read, hope it was not too obvious, things step up chapter by chapter.

This section looks at some big theoretical questions that run through book and briefly looks at neo-nazi anti-capitalism from the founder of the National Front, the nasty anti-semitic conspiracy stuff. Not all anti-capitalism is progressive.

Happy reading, friends.

Debating apocalypse
Even a brief survey of the main currents of anti-capitalism throws up a number of difficult debates that demand attention. First, is the issue of what can be crudely termed conspiracy or concept? Are economic concepts just window dressing to help legitimate the power of one group over another? While conventional market economists, the media and most politicians argue that there are enduring economic ground rules that provide a guide to constructing a prosperous future, many anti-capitalists suggest that economics is almost entirely irrelevant as an explanation for the workings of the system. The monetary reformers often argue that bankers control the politicians so as to maintain power over the monetary system. The autonomists believe that the economic system is manipulated to control the working class and exploit them. Many of those concerned with trade, whether localists who want more protection or fair traders who want less, believe that bodies like the WTO are motivated not by a concern with comparative advantage and other economic principles, but simply by a wish to benefit the rich and powerful.

Conspiracies make life easy to explain and provide enemies, the bankers, the capitalists, the US, that are easy to attack. There is little doubt that many of our problems result from those with power exploiting those without. Unfortunately conspiracy does not explain everything. The conspiracy view of economics seems to generate a cartoonish air of unreality. Autonomist Harry Cleaver, to give one example, argued in the 1970s that inflation had been deliberately created by capitalist states to weaken the power of trade unions by reducing the purchasing power of their wages (1979: 95). Yet most commentators agree that deflation where prices fall, rather than inflation where prices rise, is much more damaging to workers because it leads to unemployment. Right wing politicians like Mrs Thatcher have been obsessed with reducing inflation, an unlikely strategy if inflation really did harm the very poorest as opposed to bankers defending the value of their assets. While conspiracies exist activists should also be critical of concepts and should beware stereotyping that delivers an enemy who is satisfyingly easy to label, condemn and attack.

The blame game can shade into a form of pseudo or not so pseudo-racism where entire groups are scapegoated for economic ills (Chua 2003). In the United States politician Pat Buchanan has campaigned against the WTO, arguing along with other far right nationalists that a one world conspiracy exists to limit local diversity. Banking and capitalism are seen as creating a new world order that benefits only rootless cosmopolitans and wrecks nation states. The far right unites with the far left in its choice of conspiracy enemies (Rupert 2000). Martin Walker in his study of the far right British political party the National Front, described a racist anti-globalism:
Chesterton [the founder of the National Front] combined his anti-Semitism, his anti-Communism, his anti-Americanism and his fervent patriotism and concluded that Jewish Wall Street capitalism was the same thing as Russian Communism. Jewish capital had funded the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, he believed, and Jewish capital had funded the development and technological base of Soviet Russia. The Moscow-Wall Street axis had its major objective the ruin of the British Empire, the mongrelization of the British race, and eventual world government. The United Nations, NATO and Jewish people were all to be regarded with the deepest suspicion as agents of ‘the money power’. (Walker 1977: 29).

A second key issue is that of productivism versus primitivism. Many anti-capitalists would like to see the economy grow essentially forever. The west provides a development model for the rest of the globe. The problem is that the current workings of the IMF, WTO and other global institutions of economic governance is that they prevent real growth. Yet for other anti-capitalists, inspired by the green critique such as the ecosocialists, economic growth, however measured in a capitalist society, will destroy scarce resources, devastate global ecology and impoverish us in a whole range of ways subtle and not so subtle. The debate about growth throws up profound difficulties, it seems like madness to say that developing countries should not grow; yet capitalist growth for a minority already looks unsustainable given problems such as the greenhouse effect. What would the planet look like if car ownership was as high in mainland China as it is today in New Jersey? Perhaps ways can be found of enjoying life and meeting needs without producing more and more for ever and ever?

A third area concerns strategy. Can the global economic system be changed by gentle reform plans or are the problems identified so profound as to demand sudden and even violent change? Is it possible or desirable to describe a utopia, to paint a picture of a world without capitalism? How can a new kind of society be built that delivers prosperity without creating unsustainable environmental damage or crippling injustice? Changing apparently fixed tracks to the future is not going to be easy. Should anti-capitalists build alternatives or focus on blocking what exists and is cancerous?

These issues run through the entire book and must run beyond it. Suffice to say, we need to take history by the scruff of the neck and debate alternatives that genuinely benefit humanity and other species. The literary theorist Terry Eagleton has argued cogently that the most bizarre utopians are those who predict that capitalism can feed the world and continue into the distant future. The soothsayer ‘with his head buried most obdurately in the sand, is the hard-nosed pragmatist who imagines the future will be pretty much like the present only more so […] Our children are likely to live in interesting times’ (Red Pepper, February 2004). While Marx famously taught us to doubt everything, we can be certain that another world is both possible and necessary. Getting there remains the question.