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Analysis, World

Multipolarity in capitalism? A lie, but a very useful one!

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We’ll start by ditching the anachronistic “Victorian Marxists’” theory of development of human history (which tended to map the pattern of historical development of Europe onto the whole world) in favor of the modern Marxist World-System theory.

Therefore, the modern World-System is a capitalist World-System, the roots of which go back to the beginnings of the 16th century. Previous – pre-capitalist – systems were only regional. The more advanced among them are called “tributary” (Amin), which refers to the systems of 300 BC – 1500 CE. What they have in common is that they extracted the surplus through peasant activities through transparent mechanisms in connection with the organization of the power hierarchy, which was reproduced (and legitimized) strictly by the dominance of ideology (state religion). Therefore, there the government was the source of wealth, while in capitalism the opposite is the rule.

The general capitalist market provides a framework in which economic laws (competition) act as forces independent of subjective will. No pre-modern society was based on such principles. Those did contain elements of proto-capitalism, but they succumbed to the prevailing tributary logic. Within and among them exchanges of every kind were intense and served as a means of significant redistribution of surpluses. However, the eventual “centralization” of the surplus was essentially linked to the centralization of political power, and this never crossed local, state or regional borders (except in two shorter periods: the Macedonian and Roman expansions, neither of which gave rise to mechanisms of continuous reproduction).

On the other hand, they gradually crystallized the preliminary elements of the capitalist mode of production; affirmation of modern forms of private property, protection of these forms by law and significant expansion of wage labor (in agriculture and crafts).

So, as shown in the illustration, multipolarity was inherent to pre-capitalist relations of production. The disruption of multipolarity was conceived by the colonization of the Americas and the slave trade, which greatly accelerated the expansion of the proto-capitalist elements mentioned above. Mercantile society, with the accelerated development of production forces, over time imposed the “factory” as the main form of production, a system based on the minimization of production costs in order to maximize profits, giving priority to the endless accumulation of capital (Wallerstein) and non-interfering forms of government.

The vertical expropriation of the surplus (which transformed the aristocracy-peasant polarization into the bourgeoisie-proletariat) gradually lost its primacy over the horizontal one (which, by universalizing the law of value, established the center-periphery antinomy) due to the need to extend the reach of the system to ensure a reduction in costs, thereby peripheral regions historically developed as complementary to the central ones. Capital’s search for unpaid costs and the organized allocation of elements of the production process according to the cheapest labor force are the basic elements of the global transfer of value (Heinrichs), and without global transfers of surplus there can be no world capitalism (Frank).

Therefore, we can define the capitalist world-system as a hierarchy of the center-periphery complexes through which the surplus is drawn from the periphery to the center, which makes it not homogenizing but polarizing (Cleland). Accordingly, imperialism is not a phase of capitalism (nor its highest stage), but capitalism was imperialistic and inherently polarizing from its inception. So, can capitalism be multipolar? If we allude to a more permanent version of multipolarity, the answer is definitely negative. Multipolarity within capitalism is possible only temporarily, during the process of restructuring the world economy, until the new division of cards is completed (the First and Second World Wars are the most recent examples).

Imagine the situation where we had several capitalist centers that simultaneously extracted value from the periphery – they would need at least one more planet. In reality, in order to form a new – parallel – center (like the East-West bipolarity in the 20th century), it is absolutely necessary that the other pole exists outside the capitalist world-system, that is, in socialism. Precisely such conclusions are imposed on Russia today, which, due to the necessity of economic efficiency under sanctions and military pressure of imperialism, has no alternative to the application of at least some socialist policies and a more internationalist approach to international relations than it practiced in previous decades.

However, as our perspective is always the perspective of the most oppressed social strata, whether in a national (proletariat) or world framework (Global South), every struggle for restructuring the World-System is our chance for further revolutionary advances. The struggle for the establishment of new capitalist metropolises also requires political means to disrupt that complementarity, which meant submission to the hegemonic capitalist power (Aglietta). The Bolshevik revolution, national liberation and unification of the Southern Slavs, the rise of anti-colonial struggles, etc. are just some of the examples of using these contradictions, and there is no doubt that for now West Africa and the progressive countries of Latin America use the given advantage most effectively.

Missing a chance for an alliance with a block of countries challenging the global hierarchy would mean remaining stuck in the current – complementary – role in each of the combinations of the future world order.

 

Abdelraheem Kheirawi

 

Analysis

Westernization is not modernization!

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If on social media, you have often had the opportunity of seeing photos comparing fashion trends in various Islamic countries dating from the period of secularization, with today’s period of Islamization. This is usually accompanied by a comment, as: “Such and such country in 1966 versus the same country in 2016”, below which you find a merry woman in a miniskirt, opposite a woman with a hijab, sad or angry, perhaps chanting slogans amidst some sort of anti-Western protests. The idea, of course, is to lure the liberal minded folks into supporting military actions against these “barbarians” till the skirts are done justice.

Isolated from anti-imperialist practice, or more importantly, the suffering that imperialism causes, left liberals do not possess the mechanism of class analysis to explain the social dynamics at the periphery, outside the framework of “liberal mind”. Thus, according to them, it is about reactionary forms of exploitation of women, by no means about resistance to cultural imperialism, about restraining emancipation, by no means about abandoning passivity. The Third world is waking up and, what hurts the liberal left the most, it recognizes that the so-called superiority of Western civilization and its values is based on constructed lies and myths; and that the contradictory nature of European self-understanding is completely cut off from their practice. And yet, it is obvious they never bother to ask themselves how many people in the world see five centuries of European hegemony as continuous ordeal.

Simply put – no one desires to be a cut-haired Indian in a suit and tie anymore, to whom racial and class divisions will be sold as progress, and land, resources and culture taken away at will. Or as the great Frantz Fanon said: “The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. In the colonial context, the breakdown of the natives is complete only when they, clearly and loudly, recognize the superiority of Western values.”1

Under the influence of First-Worldist Marxism, for a long time there was a misconception among the Communists of the periphery that in the ideological sense only the Western right, and in the class sense only the Western bourgeoisie, promoted cultural racism; as if the Indians and other indigenous peoples were exterminated, displaced, stripped of their land and had their culture destroyed only by the bourgeoisie, and not by all classes of Western European settlers, and as if today the Western left does not lead the way in asserting cultural superiority as a means to “modernize” Islamic countries. Today, not only the communists but also many peoples of the world’s periphery get to see more and more clearly the origins of such ideas, but also the basis of cultural racism – that westernization is subsumed under modernization.

This subterfuge would remain largely misty had contemporary China and the DPRK not provided the indisputable proof that modernization and Westernization are not the same; that their combination inevitably leads to (neo)colonialism; that the transition from a traditional to a modern society not based on an endless accumulation of capital is possible; that it is equally effective while accepting the existence of different models of development, without the need to impose one’s own particularity as a supposedly universal value; that it can be carried out with the coexistence of man and nature, nurturing spiritual civilization, without huge class differences and destruction of the environment. It is, in fact, one of the basic engines of Western aggressiveness and hysteria when trying to discredit the Chinese model of development, since it is inconceivable to a person whose consciousness is deeply embedded with the idea of Western exceptionalism that he is actually not needed (nor desired) as a participant in that process.

A speech by the great Malcolm X comes to mind, where he says: “Until recently, all the power was concentrated in Europe. In London and Paris, Brussels and Washington, etc. Now the power bases are changing. As these power bases increase, in Europe they shrink. And that’s what causes trouble. The white man is worried. He knows he didn’t do right when all the power was in his hands, and if the power base changes, those who get it might know how to actually do the right.”2

Moreover, the westernization of traditional societies is directly in the service of integration into the global liberal economic structure and the global division of labor, and as such brings the peripheral peoples nothing but economic dependence, and only modernizes the West, providing it with an additional economic basis for the further development of its own technologies and economic dominance. Global polarization and the insurmountable gap between the First and Third World are the result of such a model of Westernization posing as “modernization”. It is harmful and “arrests”, even “paralyzes” the development of the productive forces of the colonized or economically dependent people.3

***

The photo below was taken in 1874 during the Government of Canada’s program of forcibly removing children from Native American parents, after which they would be placed in “residential schools” to, as they called it, “kill the Indian in them. “This program was implemented for more than a century and continued until the second half of the 20th century. It is estimated that at least 150,000 Metis and Inuit children went through this education system, which was compulsory for Native Americans and funded by the Department of Indian Affairs and Development of the North.

The aim of the program was to separate the children from the influence of their families, culture and language, and assimilate them through a very early European education. At least 6,000 children died after being forcibly separated from their parents, and many children were exposed to sexual abuse and forced sterilization during the early 20th century, due to the eugenics notion that members of inferior races should be prohibited from reproducing.

The context is the same, only the form is different. Today, the “liberal mind” is a tool for killing both the traditional “savages” in Serbians and among Islamic nations. True modernization lies elsewhere, and now we know where.

Photo: Library and Archives Canada

 

Abdelraheem Kheirawi

  1. https://princip.info/2017/01/26/franc-fanon-o-nasilju/  ↩

  2. https://princip.info/2017/09/05/malkolm-x-novi-odnos-snaga/  ↩

  3. https://princip.info/2017/08/28/amilkar-kabral-oruzje-teorije/  ↩

Analysis

Third-Worldist position on police violence

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Here we’ll talk about the attitude towards police violence. Since many of you are wandering in search of a position to adopt, we are here to help from a Marxist perspective, which treats the world economy as singular, with its sectors (center, semi-periphery, periphery) just performing different functions.

Accordingly, at the start, we reject the First-Worldist approach that tends to universalize every issue, and so ideas like those that “all cops are bastards” (ACAB) and sadists or, contrary to them, that the police are “working class”, have no political significance to us.

The police is a repressive apparatus of the state (which is an institutionalized form of class and identity relations), so it is clear that it cannot be viewed in isolation from it. It follows that the attitude towards a given state also determines the attitude towards its police.

Therefore, position of the state in the world-system also shapes the primary function of its police. The higher the state is positioned in the hierarchy of the world capitalist economy, the more it is able to invest in its own society and thereby ensure social peace, so police repression is less pronounced (in some of them the police are not even armed). Such an internal organization is more often defended from the outside, so the role of repression is taken over by the army (or military alliances), which, by engaging abroad, ensures an unhindered flow of profits to the states of the center (you’ve all heard of the name “world policemen”); and by the border police that seek to prevent labor mobility.

Those states of the center with a relatively high rate of immigration deviate from this pattern; and so do those built on settler colonialism (e.g. USA, Israel, Australia, South Africa, etc.) where the repressive apparatus was in the service of maintaining the colonial order, and where the internally colonized were subsequently integrated into society as the most oppressed class (with the exception of Canada, in which case the natives are reduced to a statistical error).

On the other hand, the lower the country is positioned in the world-system hierarchy, the more pronounced the police brutality. In the peripheral states, the comprador bourgeoisie perform management and supervisory functions in the process of exploitation of their own lands and the transfer of value to the states of the center. In addition to the police (in the fight against social unrest or high crime rates), they often rely on the army, which suppresses regional rebellions or simply establishes military dictatorships when the civil authorities prove to be insufficiently stable.

Before we address the capitalist semi-periphery (of which we ourselves are a part), let’s also mention the states of real-socialism, where state repression is mainly aimed at reactionary forces that advocate the restoration of capitalism, separatism, etc. The image of a Chinese policeman wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt (illustration) standing with his colleagues for the decolonization of Hong Kong and carrying out violence against pro-imperialist protesters is still remembered by many.

To address the attitude towards the police of semi-peripheral countries, one should note that those states could be progressive or reactionary, which primarily depends upon their attitude towards our principal contradiction – Imperialism. It does not take much wisdom to conclude that the police of Venezuela and Haiti do not play the same political role.

Finally, let’s also mention Serbia, which in post-socialism, due to its various specificities, has not yet been brought to a stable course, so it contains a lot of – some progressive, some reactionary – political expressions. In this case, when police violence is directed against communists, anarchists, labor strikes, forced evictions, etc. it is, of course, reactionary; yet when it is directed against fascists, the so-called “alt-right” and pro-Western liberals it is quite tolerable.

Here we could also follow up on the current issue of mandatory military service. Unlike liberals (who are anti) and conservatives (who are pro), we will by no means isolate that question from the question of imperialism. Therefore, as long as Serbia is militarily (but also politically) neutral, and is not formally part of the imperialist alliances (EU/NATO) that carry out structural and military violence against oppressed nations, we consider mandatory military service positive and useful. If at some point it joined those alliances, our position would change. Accordingly, we believe that comrades in Croatia or Macedonia should oppose such tendencies, while in Serbia they should support them.

Abdelraheem Kheirawi

Analysis

Two anti-totalitarianisms: imperial and anti-imperial!

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“The concept of totalitarianism is itself a false concept, invented in the contemporary era for the purpose of confining social analysis and critique within the horizon of so-called liberal, democratic, and insurmountable (the “end of history”) capitalism.” – Samir Amin

***

In the early 2000s, with the expansion of the European Union (EU) over the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, the narrative of “two totalitarianisms” spread throughout Europe. Jean-Pierre Faye’s book with his Horseshoe Theory seems to be most responsible for popularizing this narrative. According to this theory, the political spectrum is presented not as a linear continuum with the radical left or communism at one end and the extreme right or fascism at the other, but as a horseshoe where these two extremes, “two totalitarianisms” meet as two sides of the same totalitarian tendencies. Thus, a completely different conceptualization of the political sphere is realized, according to which on one side there is a (neo)liberal center with a certain, limited space for maneuver (left or right) and on the other side totalitarianism with its two faces – fascism and communism.

This way, totalitarianism as an antithesis to liberalism becomes the defining term of 20th century politics because the brutal demonization of so-called totalitarian systems indirectly generates unconditional support for neo-liberalism. We encounter symptoms of this tectonic shift in political thinking in every corner of public life. When support for Hillary Clinton, as the embodiment of American imperialism and right-wing neoliberal politics, is presented as a moral imperative in the fight against the fascist evil of Donald Trump, behind such a statement hides a view of politics based on the opposition between liberalism and totalitarianism. The same setup is used when it is necessary to justify American aggressions in the Third World. When a more aggressive policy towards left-wing governments in Venezuela, Cuba or North Korea is advocated, it is justified by the fight against totalitarianism, and leftists and right-wingers both in the West and in countries that are targeted by imperialism fall into this given matrix.

The anti-totalitarianism of Western liberals, leftists and conservatives is the basis of their anti-Russian and anti-Chinese hysteria. In other words, wherever Western-style liberalism isn’t established, the anti-totalitarian card is drawn, which then consolidates the entire political spectrum in the fight against what is labeled as totalitarian. The horseshoe theory is so deeply embedded in the matrix of political opinion in the West that it is enough to label the target of Western aggression and hysteria in the media as totalitarian, and the leftists and the rightists start competing in demonization of that totalitarian threat. Leftist media outlets in the West such as The Guardian or DemocracyNow are more likely to broadcast articles criticizing North Korea or China than many conservative media outlets. Thus, in the countries of the imperial core, the term “totalitarianism” and the associated Horseshoe Theory represent the key point and mobilization password that gathers all imperialist forces and directs them towards the external enemy. At the same time, totalitarianism functions as the main justification of the liberal order of the countries of the imperial core against which they are positioned as the “lesser evil”.

The power of anti-totalitarian ideology also lies in the fact that it gathers auto-colonial forces in peripheral or semi-periphery countries. Russia and China are probably the main targets of this ideology. The Russian opposition uses the epithet tyrant or totalitarian ruler to describe Vladimir Putin on a daily basis. Without going into whether such a description is adequate, what is crucial is that the term itself acts as a certain kind of moral blackmail that leaves the interlocutor without arguments. Any attempt to oppose such an appellation automatically leads to defeat because anyone who opposes this characterization is immediately described as a fascist or a totalitarian. The power of this rhetorical strategy is very well known to people in Serbia, where many politicians and intellectuals who opposed the Western policy towards Yugoslavia at the end of the 90s were automatically described as fascists, even if they self-declared as leftists. Being a leftist and opposing the Western imperial policy towards the FRY had them labeled as “National Socialist” or Nazi due to the supposed fusion of nationalism and socialism. Politically illiterate collaborators of imperialism who carried out their political activities on the ground to the greatest extent through cooperation with open and direct Nazis and fascists who were ready to confront the police, routinely labeled leftists who opposed imperialist aggression on the FRY and open interference in its political processes as the “Nazis”.

Currently, a very similar dynamic is developing in China, primarily on the topic of the so-called persecution of the Uyghurs or the Muslim population of central and southwestern China. The element of ethnic intolerance that is thus added to China, which has already been labeled totalitarian, completes the image of this society as proof that communism and Nazism are ultimately one and the same, and all of this gives justification to the Western power centers to implement as aggressive a policy as possible towards China.

For any even remotely objective witness of the history of geopolitical events from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day, it is quite clear that the anti-totalitarian narrative played unmistakably into the hands of Western politics throughout this period. From the overthrow of Milosevic and the aggression against Iraq, over the attack on a series of left-wing governments in Latin America, to the offensive against China, Russia, North Korea and Iran, the fight against totalitarianism was a war cry that rallied conservatives, liberals and pro-imperialist leftists behind NATO interventions. However, the mere fact that this narrative served the benefit of the US and NATO does not constitute direct evidence that it is an ideological subterfuge. “What if the US was really led through all these processes by a sincere struggle against total state power?” could be asked by those who advocate imperial policy. In order to prove that the US is really committed to the fight against totalitarianism, it is first necessary to demonstrate that it actually implements an anti-totalitarian and liberal policy on the internal and external level. However, the facts show that the internal policy of the US more often corresponds to the description of a totalitarian state than many regimes that it accuses of totalitarianism, as well as that the regimes installed in countries that undergo Western interventions fulfill the anti-totalitarian criteria of the West exclusively through the accommodation of their economic interests, so as such do not pose a threat to the hierarchical division of the world economy.

We would not have to go beyond the fact that the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel are European settler colonies that were initially established by totalitarian methods of enslavement, often genocide of the indigenous population. However, as this fact is lightly passed over, because through the perspective of Eurocentric history and the international legal order, each of the mentioned occupations is legalized, critics are expected to ignore the past and devote themselves exclusively to the present image of the mentioned societies, and even separately from the rest of material reality and current world conditions. Thus, it is often overlooked that liberal and anti-totalitarian policies in the countries of the core of the world system are made possible by both historical and contemporary political circumstances, which are the direct consequences of totalitarian, i.e. colonial and neo-colonial policies and the absence of economic hardships due to the hierarchical structure in the world economy.

American political philosopher Sheldon Wolin, who identifies as a consistent liberal democrat (so, not a communist or an anarchist), exposes the totalitarian nature of American corporate capitalism. Wolin coined the term “inverse totalitarianism” to characterize the US political regime. According to his diagnosis, that political system has all the practical and essential characteristics of totalitarianism, although it retains the formal framework of democracy. Unlike classical totalitarianism, which is reflected in the absolute power of an individual who rules thanks to his charisma and ability to manipulate the masses, inverse totalitarianism ensures the total power of corporate networks and the complete powerlessness of the individual to influence the decisions of the government, even though there is a formal possibility of political organizing. Wolin observes that the US does not meet any of the criteria of the liberal system on which it formally rests. The murders of African-Americans by the police are only the most recent manifestation of the police state, which in poor neighborhoods has long been acting as an occupying force and not as an organ of law and order. Related to this is the highest percentage of prisoners per capita in the world. The US has 5 times more prisoners per capita than China. Of course, the vast majority of prisoners belong to colonized populations, so there is definitely an ethnic and racial dimension in American totalitarianism.

The revelations of Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning show that this totalitarian government possesses such an apparatus of internal espionage that would pose an envy to widely denounced and demonized regimes such as the one in East Germany with its famous secret police. Furthermore, it has long been shown that the US Government does not adhere to its Constitution when it comes to the rights of prisoners and the right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. There are many political prisoners in Guantánamo prison who have been denied almost all human rights without ever being charged. There is also concrete and irrefutable evidence that the US authorities have carried out the murders of their own citizens, which is the grossest violation of the Constitution. Anwar al-Awlaki is perhaps the most famous example of an American citizen killed by a drone in the so-called War on terror. In the end, studies show that the policies of the American authorities do not have any correlation with the wishes and beliefs of almost two-thirds of the citizens of that country, while they are almost one hundred percent aligned with the wishes and political beliefs of the richest one percent. In other words, as Wolin explains, the US has all the elements of a totalitarian regime even though it retains a formally democratic framework.

Inverse totalitarianism is in a very certain way more dangerous than what they perceive as classical totalitarianism precisely because of the fact that in this form of government power is less concentrated. In the classic totalitarianism of the Nazi or fascist type, the leader holds all the power in his hands and his associates make only parts of the pyramid at the top of which he stands. In inverse totalitarianism, the president or head of state is essentially a puppet or chief manager of a corporation that has a slightly larger board of directors that includes the owners of major corporations from the military-industrial complex, the financial industry, the energy sector, the media, the pharmaceutical industry, etc. Because of this distribution of power, classical totalitarian systems often collapsed after the death of a dictator, or regimes fell after the leader was removed from office by a military coup, or sometimes even after defeat in an election. What makes totalitarian rule in the US particularly frightening for citizens who see its essence is the fact that it is impossible to imagine a scenario in which the corporate state could be reformed. On the other hand, Putin’s opposition in Russia, for example, has only one goal and that is to replace Putin, which makes its narrative much more powerful and dangerous.

Some apologists of imperialism may say that even such a form of government as the USA has is better than all other forms of government in the world. However, many of those regimes that the US and its allies call totalitarian have far fewer elements of totalitarianism than the US itself. Let’s just take the example of Bolivia, whose previous president, Evo Morales, was accused of being an autocrat and often a totalitarian leader, even though elections were regularly held during his entire reign, in which he convincingly won, and even though the media and financial power of the opposition was at least on par with his party, very likely even bigger. Morales himself was removed from the presidency with a huge effort by the US propaganda machine despite winning the election and replaced by a proven racist and Christian fundamentalist. Let’s also mention that the socialist regimes that the West considers totalitarian are organized on the principle of participatory democracy, which means that the share of working people in managing their own workplace or electing their local and central political representatives is far greater than is the case in parliamentary democracy, where  voters are only offered to choose once every five years which subgroup of the ruling class they will give free rein to arbitrarily lead state policy.

Finally, what the so-called critics of non-Western totalitarianisms are unable to do is broaden their horizons to a global perspective. In that case, it would become more than obvious that the very way of organizing the global economy – which is based on the transfer of value from impoverished to enriched countries, and which we call imperialism – was established and maintained by totalitarian methods (from monopoly on telecommunications and technology, through access to resources and global finance, to means of mass destruction). Such a perspective would very easily expose the totalitarian nature of precisely those countries that they represent as democratic, while even those that, at the expense of formal democracy, build a system potentially resistant to imperialist domination and exploitation, would be amnestied from the label of totalitarianism. Also, through such a perspective, the transfer of formal democracy of the Western model to oppressed, peripheral countries, and the restrictions it imposes in terms of pretensions to more independent development, would become an easily noticeable handicap.

We have seen so far how the anti-totalitarian narrative serves to justify imperialism around the world, regardless of the fact that the USA and other Western countries have far more characteristics of a totalitarian system than the numerous countries that they try to demonize with that label.

On the other hand, we have also seen that the very insistence on the notion of totalitarianism produces a very powerful line of criticism of the US policy. Since the West, as we have shown, has shaped its entire ideological narrative around the concept of totalitarianism, people who truly understand and consistently use this concept perceive the totalitarian essence of the West itself. So, if we return to the economy and class struggle and level the horseshoe again, we prove that one part of the spectrum (fascism) does not occupy the extreme position of this line, but the middle one – it is (economically speaking) not a digression but a necessary progression from liberalism, once liberalism becomes uncompetitive or is under pressure from other world (anti-imperialist) forces. Of course, it must not necessarily lead to a general consensus, so we can have, as we do in the US, a divided society into those who believe that the same economic goals of global domination can still be achieved with liberalism as with fascism, but at some point we could expect a two-party national strategy and the acceptance of fascism or liberalism as a national model, depending on world economic trends.

For our part, as Engels said (and we would have to apply it to the periphery and the internally colonized in settler colonies) the revolution (or, in this case, national/economic liberation) is the most authoritarian act there is, because it is about imposing the political will of the majority (in this case the world majority) over the minority. We, therefore, must not forget that development through stages is key to Marxist thought and, accordingly, we should not run away from authoritarianism, but accept it as one of the tools at our disposal, which (as history proves) give birth to more progressive social relations, more capable of giving birth to anti-authoritarian mechanisms. Also, it is important that we completely stop the practice of addressing imperialist and pro-imperialist critics, and start addressing our own peoples, status groups and classes with an interest in anti-systemic and anti-totalitarian action in the true sense of the meaning of the word.

Predrag Kovačević & Abdelraheem Kheirawi

Analysis

Marxism: Science and Conspiracy Theories

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During the pandemic of COVID-19, science has played an exceptionally important role in the public discourse. On the one hand, we have seen numerous policies and measures being imposed or carried out based on the idea that they had been approved by scientists and experts. Science and expertise became a way of avoiding all debate and portraying all opposition to the measures at hand as mistaken, harmful, irrational and backward. On the other hand, there has been a resurgence of various conspiracy theories offering “real” explanations for what was going on often linking the pandemic with the issues of vaccination, immigration, 5G technologies, digital surveillance, etc. Proponents of these conspiracy theories usually reject the official scientific rationale behind the policies and measures being undertaken looking for a “correct” conspiratorial account that explains the official one.  In that sense, a polarization of public discourse has been created whereby the word of Science and Expertise became the unquestioned truth and ultimate justification for any policy for one portion of the population while for another segment of the population, the scientific rationale behind a given measure became nothing but a façade for a pernicious underlying plan of the elite. It should be noted that it has become extremely difficult to steer some kind of middle course where one does not automatically accept the official line without immediately invoking elaborate, unproven conspiracy theories, which often fail the test of plausibility.

In such a situation, the question of what the Marxist attitude towards these matters should be becomes highly pertinent as Marxism embraced the scientific, fact-based worldview while being highly distrustful of the establishment and the elites of any kind due to the fact that elites belong to the opposing side of the class conflict defending the interests of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. The goal of this essay will be to provide an answer to this question and outline the political implications of this polarization on the issue of science. It will be argued that Marxism must not abandon its intellectual roots in science and rationality but the adherence to these principles does not entail the automatic adoption of all policies, measures, positions and explanations that have the aura of science and expertise around them. On the other hand, the Marxist stance towards conspiracy theories is not to rule out any kind of conspiratorial account a priori, but to insist on clear thinking and standards of intellectual clarity and argumentation, which most conspiracy theories that are present in the public discourse fail to meet. Moreover, in general, conspiracy theories usually involve moralistic accounts where a particular individual (e.g. Bill Gates, George Soros, etc.) is portrayed as villain who is out to harm ordinary people, who are portrayed as honest, decent and moral. These morality tales are also often inflected with various rightwing assumptions revolving around religion, race, ethnicity, etc. In contrast to such narrative account, Marxism privileges structural analysis, which means that policies, measures and proposals are evaluated from the standpoint of their socio-economic and political effects. As a result, Marxist analyses do not look for villains and heroes. Instead, they are focused on issues of profit, capital accumulation, ideological hegemony, etc.

Marxism also enables us to analyze the political and ideological effects of polarization created by the opposition between uncritical obedience to the professed view of experts and the automatic rejection of science in favor of conspiratorial thinking. Such a polarization works directly in the interests of the bourgeoisie because blind adherence to the views of experts enables the bourgeoisie to justify any policy by attaching a label of ‘expert opinion’ to it. Any opposition to the supposed view of experts is smeared as conspiracy theory and effectively dismissed in that way. The existence of conspiracy theories represents an impotent challenge to the bourgeois rule because these theories do not focus on the nature of the capitalist system as they are concerned primarily with individuals and ethnic, racial and religious groups but they almost never address the issue of class.

The idea that the opinions of scientists and experts should not be automatically accepted is probably the most contentious part of the argument presented here, which is why a large portion of this essay will be devoted to demonstrating that this is, in fact, a correct position to take both based on Marxist theory and based on the historical record.

Science and Conspiracy Theories

Marxism is, of course, a secular doctrine coming out of the modern Enlightenment tradition of political theorizing, and as such it upholds the scientific worldview. The Marxist view of science is positive because the development of science leads to the improvement in the technological capacities (the means of production) making them capable of producing more material wealth, which is a precondition for overcoming scarcity. Moreover, science and rationality are the only tools that lead to the demystification of ideological constructs that justify bourgeois rule. At the same time, this abstract property of science cannot be fully realized in a class society because the bourgeoisie control the material resources that are necessary for scientific and technological development. In this way, the bourgeoisie steers scientific development towards its own class interests and away from the interests of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie also recognizes the ideological power of science and attempts to use it as an ideological tool. These obstacles in the way of scientific development cannot be eliminated without the elimination of the capitalist mode of production. The remainder of the article will provide concrete illustrations and evidence for these theoretical claims.

Let us start with the theoretical or ideological side of the issue. The discipline known as sociology of science rests on the commonsense assumption that scientific knowledge is produced by actual people working inside scientific institutions that are embedded into state and corporate structures. As Bruno Latour points out, the scientific community, as any other community of people, operates according to its own internal logic where questions of power, status and prestige compete with other principles such as rational inquiry, production of knowledge, public interest and ordinary morality[1]. This nexus of factors ensures that the knowledge that comes out of scientific institutions is not always completely objective and value neutral.

It is important to notice the difference between the conspiratorial account, which treats science as a hostage of evil individuals, and the Marxian structuralist position, which treats scientific knowledge as a product of a particular set of social institutions (universities, labs, institutes, etc.). The conspiratorial logic holds that scientific knowledge is almost always false and distorted in the interests of whoever is the villain of the conspiracy theory at hand. On the other hand, the structuralist account holds that scientific knowledge is the best approximation to truth that is currently available but that it can also contain distortions, which stem from it being the product of social institutions embedded into state and corporate structures. The fact that state and corporate institutions impact the scientific institutions suggests that these distortions in scientific knowledge will occasionally appear will favor political and ideological interests of the bourgeoisie and disfavor the results, findings and theories that challenge the bourgeois rule.

Evolutionary theory is a good example of how ideological and political concerns tend to suppress the actual scientific theorizing in favor of a simplistic view that is in line with bourgeois ideology. Edward Wilson, an evolutionary biologist from Harvard, created the discipline of sociobiology as an approach to social science derived from Darwinian evolution. According to Wilson, socioeconomic inequalities that exist in the modern society and have existed in virtually all human societies are rooted in evolutionary biology. In biology, organisms that are best adapted to their environment are able to transfer the greatest number of copies of their genes to the next generation equipping their offspring with higher chances of survival. As a result, desirable traits accumulate in the population leading the gradual improvement of the species. In human societies, competitive behavior and the pursuit of self-interest, which are central to capitalism, are, thus, explained as natural occurrences stemming from the biology of the human species.

In response to Wilson’s book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, a group of prominent evolutionary biologists lead by Steven Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin wrote a scathing critique in the form of an open letter published in the New York Review of Books. In that letter, they accused Wilson of distorting the science behind evolution and rehashing the same myths about evolution that had been advanced in support of rightwing politics for decades by Herbert Spencer, a rightwing sociologist, and Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel Prize winning biologist and the member of the Nazi Party[2]. According to Gould, Lewontin and others, the view of natural selection embraced by Wilson is not in accordance with what the facts of evolution show, but it is in accordance with the capitalist ideology. Namely, evolution does not proceed in a gradual and linear fashion the way Wilson and others describe it. Such a view implies that evolution is always moving towards one, predetermined goal with those organisms that survive always being somehow more ‘worthy’ because they are closer to the predetermined evolutionary ideal.

What happens instead is that evolution proceeds not in a steady linear manner but in series of abrupt surges or saltations (from Latin ‘saltus’) with long periods of stasis or equilibrium in between them. The evidence for this view of evolution is overwhelming. Firstly, as Gould points out, the fossil record that exists on earth is far too restricted to support the gradualist view of evolution. According to him, a gradual transition between any two species would take millions of years and hundreds of millions of individual specimen meaning that the fossil record should show plenty of ‘links’ between species[3]. However, in reality, cases when paleontologists uncover a fossil that might represent a ‘missing link’ between two species are extremely rare and represent a cause celebre in the scientific community. If the gradualist view of evolution were true, the fossil record should contain just as many ‘missing links’ as there are fossils of known species. The fossil record itself should be a continuum.

Of course, a widely known account of the evolution of mammals makes it clear that the gradualist approach to evolution cannot work. Namely, biologists agree that the evolution of mammals from small creatures the size of rats or rabbits to humans or whales is the result of a gigantic contingency and by no means a predetermined outcome. The fact that an asteroid had hit the Earth (or some other factor that disturbed the climate pattern on the planet) was responsible for wiping out dinosaurs which had dominated the planet previously. The sudden disappearance of dinosaurs and a change of climate provided mammals with an evolutionary advantage which enabled them to become far more widespread and diverse. This means that traits that might have hindered the spread of mammals before this catastrophic event turned out to be an advantage in a completely new environment.

It is important to stress that the sketch of the theory of evolution that is taught in schools still echoes the main tenets of the classical Darwinian gradualist approach which has clear ideological baggage and does not stand up to serious scientific scrutiny. Those students who develop an interest in biology and choose to study it in greater detail later find out about newer theories, but the practical outcome is that the vast majority of students leave high school with a caricatural understanding of evolution with clear ideological implications.

The aura of science has often been used to develop and strengthen pure ideological constructions. In economics, for instance, views and theories that challenge the hypothesis of so-called efficient market hypothesis are routinely disregarded as non-scientific and ideologically biased despite the fact that the efficient market hypothesis is obviously biased in favor of the prevailing capitalist ideology. It is no wonder, then, that intellectual gurus of this ideological abuse of economics have resorted to other pseudo-scientific pursuits designed to legitimate the existing order. Ludwig von Mises, one the of the most prominent figures in the so-called Austrian School of economics alongside Friedrich Hayek, subscribed to the ‘science’ of racialism, according to which differences in the abilities of and behaviors among different races stem from biological facts. He wrote,

“It may be admitted that the races differ in talent and character and that there is no hope of ever seeing those differences resolved. Still, free trade theory shows that even the more capable races derive an advantage from associating with the less capable and that social co-operation brings them the advantage of higher productivity in the total labour process”[4]

What he is arguing in this passage is that there are more and less capable races, but that free trade might be beneficial for everyone especially the more capable ones. Therefore, in one passage written by this economic genius we find a fusion of racialism and free market economics brought to what reads like a reduction ad absurdum of both. This should not come as a surprise, however, because this is the author, who praised the European fascist movements in the late 1920s, which he saw as a necessary defense against socialism:

“It cannot be denied that Fascism and similar movements aiming at the establishment of dictatorships are full of the best intentions and that their intervention has, for the moment, saved European civilization. The merit that Fascism has thereby won for itself will live on eternally in history. But though its policy has brought salvation for the moment, it is not of the kind which could promise continued success. Fascism was an emergency makeshift. To view it as something more would be a fatal error”[5]

From the standpoint of mainstream economics, these ideological slippages are obviously not signals of some kind of ideological bias in Mises economic thought, and references to his work can be found in most economic textbooks and a prominent economic think-tank with branches in various parts of the world carries his name with pride.

The list of these obvious examples of ideological and political misuse and abuse of science is too long to summarize here, but I should mention at least some. The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in Negro Male was a protracted experiment that went on for almost four decades in the Macon County, Alabama, This study, which was conducted by the United States Public Health Service, included 600 African American men, around 400 of whom had contracted syphilis, and it consisted of withholding treatment from these 400 men and observing how the disease develops in them until they finally succumb to the terrible complications associated with these illness.[6] Another example of brutal politicization and abuse of science is the infamous MK Ultra Project run by the CIA. Around 80 educational and medical institutions throughout the United States participated in this project whose focus was to develop what is now known as ‘advanced interrogation techniques’ but actually translates as effective forms of torture and extraction of information. The experiments conducted as part of this project included hypnosis, electroshocks, sexual and verbal abuse, electroshocks and many other forms of torture[7][8].

These historical examples prove that science has, in fact, been misused and abused to forward the interests of the ruling classes in the past, which means that such things may happen in the future warranting a dose of skepticism about ‘expert’ opinion and policy advice.

When it comes to conspiracy theories, it is important to realize that all of them are not always wrong by definition but the way they operate also serves the interests of the bourgeoisie because they challenge skepticism and resistance towards the official narratives into politically impotent moralizing and the promotion of various rightwing positions. Therefore, the reminder of this article will be dedicated to showing that conspiracy theories can sometimes be true, but in the majority of cases, they actually deflect criticism from the capitalist system as a whole to specific individuals or groups, thus ultimately upholding the ruling ideology by guarding against more potent forms of criticism and promoting individualist, nationalist and racist worldviews.

Some conspiratorial accounts of certain historical events have actually been proven correct. One of the best-known examples of this is the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident. In August 1964, the US government reported that there had been two naval confrontations between the US military and North Vietnam. In one of these incidents, a US destroyer ship exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The US destroyer was only slightly damaged while all three of the Vietnamese boats were damaged and four Vietnamese sailors were killed. Two days after this incident, the US government stated that there was another similar confrontation. These incidents were later used as pretext for the escalation of the Vietnam War and a massive surge in American troops being deployed to Vietnam. However, the Pentagon Papers combined with the admission of the then-US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara revealed that the second incident never happened. Therefore, the escalation of the Vietnam War was based on false pretense. Similarly, in 2003, the US invaded Iraq based on the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but no evidence of these weapons has ever been acquired even after the US invaded Iraq, and no convincing evidence has been provided to support the idea that the US intelligence had any reason to believe that such weapons existed in Iraq prior to the invasion. Both of these events represent proven conspiracies to present false information to the public in order to carry out a secret agenda.

While there are many other examples of proven conspiracies, the vast majority of conspiracy theories that are being circulated cannot even be proven or disproven as it is hard to see what kind of evidence could be used to demonstrate the truth or falsity of these theories. Moreover, many of them are not plausible to begin with. However, such theories have very significant ideological functions. First, these theories suspend reason and evidence as the most important criteria in debate making it impossible to either prove or disprove other people’s arguments. Essentially, they license everyone to believe what they want resulting in the collapse of shared knowledge and meaning, which is essential for any kind of political action and organizing.

Secondly, these often incoherent ‘theories’ provide a facile smear that can be used to dismiss any critique of the establishment. At this point, conspiracy theories have replaced all coherent critiques of capitalism and bourgeois rule in the public discourse. While it is possible to see every conspiratorial hack even in the mainstream media, intellectuals, activists and politicians who express a genuine critique of the cultural, scientific, political and economic establishment are allowed no room in the public discourse. As a result, the critique of the establishment has become associated with buffoons and charlatans of various kinds making it easy for the defenders of the establishment to slap the label “conspiracy theorist” on everyone who dares to voice the criticism of the official positions on various crucial issues.

Thirdly, conspiracy theories are usually based on the intellectual tools of the bourgeoisie, and for that reason, most of them are perfectly compatible with the ruling ideology. For instance one conspiracy theory holds that Bill Gates orchestrated the response to the COVID-19 pandemic through World Health Organization in order to profit on the sales of vaccines, once they are discovered, and the migration of large parts of the economy into the digital world. The implication of this theory is that one individual is powerful enough to carry out such a massively complicated plan while keeping it a secret. The rest of the world population are portrayed as powerless pawns whose lives are completely in the hands of these all-powerful individuals. Such theories also offer simplistic solutions, which is that all the problems we are facing would disappear if we were to somehow get rid of these immoral and lawless individuals or groups. Finally, the evil motivations of the main villains of conspiracy theories are explained either as individual quirks or demonic inclinations as in the case of Bill Gates or they are attributed to the person’s ethnicity as in the case of conspiracy theories about George Soros, which usually make reference to his Jewish background.

A Marxist approach militates against the fetishization of science and conspiratorial thinking at the same time. While it is essential to realize that science does not operate in a vacuum free of the constraints of the surrounding capitalist society, the solution is not to abandon science and rationality and sink into conspiratorial moralizing. Instead, the shortcomings and failures of science (e.g. medications that do not work or have bad side-effects) should be explained as resulting from capitalist pressures on science such as the profits of pharmaceutical industry. At the same time, the critique of the elites cannot be left to conspiracy theorists nor should any critique of the establishment be labeled as a conspiracy theory. For example, the fact that pharmaceutical companies and tech companies will make tremendous profits as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic should not be neglected. It is uncontroversial that Eric Yuan, the owner of the company that has produced the Zoom platform, which is used for online meetings, classes and conferences, has seen his net worth increase by 100%, from around $4 billion to $8 billion in the last three months[9]. However, reference to such facts should not be accompanied by insinuations that he is somehow responsible for the pandemic nor should it focus on Yuan as an individual. Instead, this fact should be pointed out as an example of the irrationality and instability of the capitalist system, which enables companies (and individuals) to make enormous profits while millions of people are suffering from disease and poverty.

Predrag Kovačević

References

Horrock, Nicholas M. (4 Aug 1977). “80 Institutions Used in C.I.A. Mind Studies: Admiral Turner Tells Senators of Behavior Control Research Bars Drug Testing Now”. New York Times.

Otterman, Michael (2007). American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. Melbourne University Publishing.

 

[1][1] https://books.google.rs/books?id=sC4bk4DZXTQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Science+in+Action:+How+to+Follow+Scientists+and+Engineers+through+Society&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDgtr7u6XpAhUiBhAIHbg_BhgQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=Science%20in%20Action%3A%20How%20to%20Follow%20Scientists%20and%20Engineers%20through%20Society&f=false

[2] https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1975/11/13/against-sociobiology/

[3]https://books.google.rs/books?hl=en&lr=&id=3ULyAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA239&dq=Punctuated+equilibria:+an+alternative+to+phyletic+gradualism&ots=j_h7zYmCtg&sig=wHX4YxIrOVDzhfE3H6gu-7pQ7PE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Punctuated%20equilibria%3A%20an%20alternative%20to%20phyletic%20gradualism&f=false

[4] https://books.google.rs/books?id=K-mRDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT291&dq=It+may+be+admitted+that+the+races+differ+in+talent+and+character+and+that+there+is+no+hope+of+ever+seeing+those+differences+resolved.+Still,+free+trade+theory+shows+that+even+the+more+capable+races+derive+an+advantage+from+associating+with+the+less+capable+and+that+social+co-operation+brings+them+the+advantage+of+higher+productivity+in+the+total+labour+process&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3_-_tvaXpAhXMlosKHfvZB1IQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=It%20may%20be%20admitted%20that%20the%20races%20differ%20in%20talent%20and%20character%20and%20that%20there%20is%20no%20hope%20of%20ever%20seeing%20those%20differences%20resolved.%20Still%2C%20free%20trade%20theory%20shows%20that%20even%20the%20more%20capable%20races%20derive%20an%20advantage%20from%20associating%20with%20the%20less%20capable%20and%20that%20social%20co-operation%20brings%20them%20the%20advantage%20of%20higher%20productivity%20in%20the%20total%20labour%20process&f=false

[5] https://books.google.rs/books?id=TMkSpFYc_SEC&pg=PA51&dq=%E2%80%9CIt+cannot+be+denied+that+Fascism+and+similar+movements+aiming+at+the+establishment+of+dictatorships+are+full+of+the+best+intentions+and+that+their+intervention+has,+for+the+moment,+saved+European+civilization.+The+merit+that+Fascism+has+thereby+won+for+itself+will+live+on+eternally+in+history.+But+though+its+policy+has+brought+salvation+for+the+moment,+it+is+not+of+the+kind+which+could+promise+continued+success.+Fascism+was+an+emergency+makeshift.+To+view+it+as+something+more+would+be+a+fatal+error%E2%80%9D&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjZvO39vaXpAhUKx4sKHW3-DHcQ6AEIODAC#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CIt%20cannot%20be%20denied%20that%20Fascism%20and%20similar%20movements%20aiming%20at%20the%20establishment%20of%20dictatorships%20are%20full%20of%20the%20best%20intentions%20and%20that%20their%20intervention%20has%2C%20for%20the%20moment%2C%20saved%20European%20civilization.%20The%20merit%20that%20Fascism%20has%20thereby%20won%20for%20itself%20will%20live%20on%20eternally%20in%20history.%20But%20though%20its%20policy%20has%20brought%20salvation%20for%20the%20moment%2C%20it%20is%20not%20of%20the%20kind%20which%20could%20promise%20continued%20success.%20Fascism%20was%20an%20emergency%20makeshift.%20To%20view%20it%20as%20something%20more%20would%20be%20a%20fatal%20error%E2%80%9D&f=false

[6] https://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/12/us/families-emerge-as-silent-victims-of-tuskegee-syphilis-experiment.html?searchResultPosition=1

[7] https://books.google.rs/books?id=wiVqrgS68NoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=American+Torture:+From+the+Cold+War+to+Abu+Ghraib+and+Beyond&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi4ttfivqXpAhWOl4sKHXr9A1kQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

[8] https://www.nytimes.com/1977/08/04/archives/80-institutions-used-in-cia-mind-studies-admiral-turner-tells.html

[9] https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-zoom-billionaire-eric-yuan-career-net-worth-life