Occupations & Motivations

 

How do you relate to what you do?

By this I mean what do you consider your role to be?

There are, of course, many possible answers, but most of them are to a major extent, self-kid or even jingoism! For, what you do depends largely upon your social and economic position, and this is particularly true for the poor, for they have little or no choice. Without work, such people worldwide would not survive.

So, like it or not, the question posed does not have a wide variety of answers for the vast majority of the population. They must work!

And what they work at will be determined, in the main, by factors over which they have absolutely no control.

The well endowed financially, do, on the contrary, have a measure of choice, but only because they have others providing their resources and freedom-to-choose. That is the Freedom you hear so much about: but it certainly isn’t the freedom from Work for the poor: they know that they have no choice.

It is the freedom to do what you like, which is only conceivable among the privileged, though among the vast numbers of unemployed youth there is a growing myth that they like not having to work everyday for the benefit solely of their “betters”, and instead try to copy the “freedoms of the privileged” even without any disposable income, and fill their lives with what they consider worthwhile. BUT, the Prodigal Son is a feature of a privileged background.

They don’t get such people in the working classes, just as they don’t have fathers to welcome them home and put silks on their backs. Such are definitely a feature of the well endowed, where the expected recipient of inherited largesse, takes his “freedom” literally and indulges his preferences against the wishes of his funders.

But such handy fallback positions are not universally available for the vast majority, while, on the contrary, in a privileged family there would have to be an “eldest son”, whose job was to maintain that situation, and his siblings, who would have more freedom, but less support, could join the “family firm” or strike out on their own to success or failure.

The Working Class, on the other hand, don’t think in terms of Success or Failure. They must work to provide for themselves and their family.

How can you be a “successful” miner, factory worker or bus driver?

Such “options” were never available to the majority, whose main task was to get, and keep, a job, if they were not already earmarked and prepared for one by their betters.

Of course, these templates do not exhaust the full possibilities, but to, in any way, insist that there exists a wide range of possibilities is certainly a myth. The one possible route to escape the enforced possibilities for the poor is, and always has been, Education.

But, such a path is never automatically open to the majority of the poor, or if they do manage to get into it, are they guaranteed to make good their escape?

For though our form of Society needs ever more educated workers, it is intent on them also subscribing to the status quo, and never being allowed to get too big for their boots.

They are therefore selected for both intelligence and a necessary ambition to climb the social ladder, and if they pass these criteria, they are then groomed to serve the status quo, with, of course, a small but noticeable measure of financial gain, and the myth of “perhaps” ultimately joining the governing elite - or even joining in with the freedoms of privileged.

I was intended to take this route!

In Manchester, England, where I come from they even had different types of Grammar Schools to prepare intelligent children for their various roles in current Society. The Top School, Manchester Grammar, was for the wealthy, but also selected by examination a small number of lower class boys to be schooled to be “on the right side” when they went out into the World. While Manchester Central High School for Boys was basically a Grammar School for intelligent working class boys (and, perhaps surprisingly, also for Jewish boys), and prepared the working class incumbents in a very different way to Manchester Grammar.

 The touchstones (in MCHS) were Teaching and Engineering, as all those who went on to University tending to be almost exclusively in one or the other of these categories. Large numbers of technologists, technical experts and teachers were needed, and went off to University aged 18 to be trained in these main areas.

Now, it turned out that significantly better grants could be obtained for the whole duration of their degree courses, if the recipients undertook to work for their funders on graduation. I, and many of my fellow students, was taken down Coal Mines and into Car factories (Rolls Royce and others) to see what sort of jobs they could be guaranteed, if they decided to go for these grants. I didn’t apply, but many certainly did.

Somehow, I had got the idea that Education was a preparation for Life, and not a preparation for Work!

When I passed my Scholarship (the only passport to Grammar Schools for the Working Class), I was the only one in my age group at my particular Elementary School to pass.

To give you some idea, I had started in the Nursery section during the Second World War in 1942 aged 2 and a half, and almost everybody else remained there until they left, aged 15, and went to work in one of the many factories that were within yards of our houses. One wall of Armitage Street Elementary School playground was that of an Engineering factory and it was 60 feet high.

Now, my having passed to a Grammar School was so rare that my teachers insisted that I also sat the entrance exam for Manchester Grammar, but I wasn’t successful!

In retrospect, this was a surprise, because throughout my career at MCHS I was top of the class in the “A” stream, and evidently clever enough for Manchester Grammar, but somehow, and in some way, I evidently just didn’t come up to the required scratch.

At that time, there was another middle strand in education, which they called Central Schools. These were for possible future technicians and foremen, and though another boy from my area had passed years earlier to get into such a school, and did very well there, but he never got the job that he had gained full qualifications for there and in subsequent Further Education at “tech” – a management role in a Cotton Mill.

His name was Eli Vessa, and he was black.

Nevertheless, he was the cleverest boy I ever knew in West Gorton, and he took me under his wing and told me about Astronomy and Science long before I even got to Grammar School. I met him because his mother looked after me after school, while my mother (a sewing machinist) was working making clothes for the Co-op. My sister, though intelligent, had no such mentor, and did not pass her Scholarship, and went to the Third Tier type school – a Secondary Modern, where she did subjects like Domestic Science (Cooking and Cleaning), while Woodwork and Metalwork prepared the boys for factory and foundry work.

Now, clearly, these different institutions were conceived of by politicians to bring the Education System “up to scratch” to serve the needs of the incumbent economic system – Capitalism, and its major motive force – Profit!

Yet, during that system’s initial and inexorable rise, when these were the ONLY drivers, and the prior system of education had been uniformly dire for the Working Class. In spite of evident intelligence, my mother had zero education, my Grandmother could neither read nor write, and my Dad was an unskilled labourer. Clearly, the prior system was nowhere near appropriate for a constantly changing economic system, and was not delivering a suitably trained Working Class for the multiple new roles within businesses and production in the Capitalist System. But, though this was understood by the politicians, they did not necessarily address everything that was necessary for healthy and fully functioning society at all levels.

It was becoming evident (though very slowly) that apart from the production of Surplus Value, there were also unavoidable Social Services, that were necessary to look after the health and welfare of the people at large, and particularly the Working Class poor, who never had any spare finance to spend on Doctors or Sewerage. So, among the Liberal-Humanist wing of the capitalists, there arose a tendency that considered these services to be absolutely essential, both religiously and practically to deliver large sections of the population from penury and ill health... Another Principle emerged, which we call Service.

[Elsewhere, I have written a short Paper with the title Service or Success?, which outlined alternative motivations for what people did with their lives (if, of course, they had any choice) And it was clear that these alternatives did not sit well together in a capitalist system. Indeed, they were frequently in direct opposition to one another- as it was debateable especially in the short term, whether it contributed to increasing Profit]

A political tendency arose within the Middle Classes, which saw Service as a vital component of social life, and social purposes, and this was writ large in their political slogans and policies. And they turned out to be much safer than another rising force led by Marxist revolutionaries, who directly resolved to work towards the total overthrow of Capitalism, and for the hegemony of the Working Class in a subsequent service-defined, Socialist State.

So, this alternative, purely service-oriented, and clearly safe group were allowed to grow to hopefully win the poor to such an agenda, which would improve their lives without revolution. These “liberal” organisations grew out of the existing Whig Party, so it was, from the outset, pro-capitalist (but “increasingly, with a heart”), and they re-labelled themselves as the Liberal Party. But they never managed to satisfy an increasingly organised Working Class, and their ever-growing Trades Unions looked instead to set up a Labour Party of their own, which would be much more closely allied to the Working Classes.

So, now we are well into the 20th century, and the Liberals, in spite of their “good hearts”, were already well on the wane, and yet a clearly inadequate Labour Party was nevertheless gaining a fast growing support almost exclusively among the Working Class, though many Liberals changed horses on seeing the ever more evident demise of their own, usual political vehicle.

The Working Class in their millions were switching to a Party that they believed would serve their interests, and in spite of a major betrayal by Ramsey MacDonald in joining a coalition with the Tories (the Conservative Party), they in 1945, after a Second World War between capitalist states, voted in an immense landslide for Labour.

Things were certainly getting out of hand for the ruling capitalists, and their political representatives – The Conservatives, and there were sufficient numbers within the Labour Party to press for whole sections of society to be transformed directly into Entirely Service Institutions, with NO profit motives involved. Their remit would be to selflessly serve the community at large, but most of all to bring necessary services in as a natural right of the whole Working Class.

Now, the demands, and indeed clamour, for the takeover of the citadels of capitalist society, was rising at an alarming rate among the millions of working class soldiers recently returned from armed conflict in a shooting war, and the leaders of the new Labour Government, who had been members of Churchill’s Coalition Government throughout the war, remembered the Russian and German Revolutions at the end of the First World War, and were as scared as the Tories of the possibilities of this avalanche of support.

So they instead “nationalised” the most important failing industries, which “served” the country, and had been so organised as such for the last six years to “win the war”. They took over the Coal Industry, the whole Railway System nationwide, the production of Electricity and Gas, the Road Transport System (for Goods Traffic), and even the whole canal network as British Waterways, and perhaps most remarkable of all, the whole Nation Health Insurance system, including all doctors, nurses and Hospitals. And they intended to run them as The National Health Service (NHS). But they didn’t touch the Banks or the Stock Exchanges!

Now, this wasn’t a Socialist Revolution: indeed it was a major move from the top, to avert such a possibility, and it worked!

Though driven along by an unstoppable groundswell from below, and the remnants of true socialists within the Party. It was a political move that couldn’t really be avoided.

Yet the Working Class, both as those served, and those involved in doing the serving, had found a new way of being helped along the way, or making a worthwhile living serving the community, and that transformed many attitudes.

Of course, it was entirely from below and the officer positions in all these institutions were still entirely staffed by the old privileged classes, so from the outset, this new attitude was being undermined. So, it certainly wasn’t an ideal world by any means.

Nevertheless, very large numbers of people were involved in occupations that were dedicated to Service, and most of those involved acted accordingly.

In spite of the great austerity after the Second World War, the prevailing attitude within the Working Class was of optimism and mutual service. There was a community spirit and a work ethic of Service that raised the level generally.

But, such motives within that class were not ideal from the point of view of those in charge – the capitalist class. Indeed, taken to the limit, they could only lead to Socialism and the demise of their own lucrative support system. So, what could the economic elite do to defuse that threat?

First, they had to use every power at their disposal to undermine the Labour Government and its Nationalised Industries. They wanted them back!

So, though they were in no position to stop the establishment of these nationalised industries, they could most certainly play a role in sabotaging them, and thereby “proving” that only they were up to the job of owning and running such important pillars of the economic system and its supports.

So, from the doctors demanding profitable rights, without which they would NOT participate in the National Health Service – or by those demanding compensation for their lost enterprises, which they could they invest in even more lucrative enterprises – like Oil, for example. And all this is not to mention the fact that literally ALL newspapers were pro-capitalist, and kept up a daily assault on the endeavours of the Labour Government. Indeed, even the USA demanded pay back for their loans during the War, blackmailed their debtors worldwide into fixing the price of gold on dollars (The Bretton Woods Agreement), and thus severely compromised the possibilities open to this Labour Government, in spite of its vast popular support and parliamentary majority.

And such blackmail continued even with the Labour Governments of the 1960s and 1970s, and only finally subsided with the clear indication that Blair’s New Labour had finally vanquished any residual Socialism within his Party from 1997 onwards, to finally deliver a completely non-socialist and pro-capitalist “alternative” to the Tories.

And with the sell out by Liberal Democrat leader Clegg, in joining a coalition with the Tories in 2010, the biggest assault upon the Service mentality and remaining non-capitalist services accelerated apace, given cover by the World Economic Crisis from 2008, and continuing still in 2012.

Gradually, the Service Ethos in the National Health Service (and other services) has been reduced, so that in some of them, once banker areas have been almost completely extinguished.

Now, you would think that in a capitalist world beset by its own inevitable economic crisis and the domino effect of the Arab Spring Revolutions, that the Socialist Alternative would again arise to terminate this defunct and increasingly damaging system.

It hasn’t happened yet!

But there is absolutely NO other alternative!

Soapstone sculpture of Buddha

Soapstone Buddha by Jim Schofield

New Special Issue - Theory

Perhaps this edition is long overdue, for it addresses the crucial topic of Theory, both in the sciences and in other disciplines, where revealing explanations of phenomena is required as both the coherent and comprehensive accounts of all answers to the perennial question, “Why?”

It is not merely a cumulative pile-up of individual contributions, which together “make sense”, but rather a close look at how Theory can make discoveries and extracted equations into something more basically understandable and less abstract.

For no Theory is ever the very last word, and hence we cannot see the stages within it as merely new steps up the obvious and single ladder to Absolute Truth.

Indeed, all theories have their drawbacks as well as their apparent conquests, and the trajectory towards some conceived-of Absolute Truth is always indirect, including many detours, false paths and occaisional dead ends.

Yet, the march of Theory is certainly not arbitary: there can be progress of a very real kind. And perhaps the crucial area is when a well-established banker position is finally overturned and the possibilities of a new path become increasingly evident.

Certain crucial questions needed to be both clarified and then addressed, such as the differences between Description and Explanation, and the diametrically opposed conceptions of Natural Laws as the ‘drivers’ of reality, or conversely as the consequences of reality.

Perhaps the main area where robust criticism is required is in the approach we call Formalism,wherein Form, Shape, Pattern and Relation are seen as the causes of certain phenomena (by mathematicians), and the encapsulation of such patterns and relations into formal equations is frequently seen as the ultimate and even the ‘complete’ definition of why a phenomena is the way that it is.

Finally, there is a very strong emphasis upon the approach described as Emergence, wherein all Laws arise out of the resolution of a major system-wide crisis, always resulting in the wholly new - the most significant example of which being The Origin of Life on Earth.

And such a journey would not be complete without a diversion into the thorny, but sometimes unavoidable, subject of Speculation as a part of the process.

Read the issue here

 

New Archive

Browse by Category

We've updated the Shape Journal website so that you can now browse the archive by category as well as seeing all the issues in reverse-chronological order. We hope this helps you find your way around the now pretty sizeable body of papers in the journal. We welcome any suggestions on how this can be improved!

Don't forget you can also search the journal here

Website problems

We are currently experiencing some downtime on the Shape Journal due to an error in changing to a new server.

You can still access the entire website using this alternative domain

We hope to have the problem resolved as soon as possible.

http://www.petermothersole.com/

YOU are paying for THEIR mistakes

On listening to the Press Conference given today (08/08/2012) by the Governor of the Bank of England - though quite a bit could be extracted from his report and forecasts, as well as from his answers to the many questions of his audience - the overall impression of the occasion was that of an officer's conference on the Titanic, as it settled ever lower in the water, with the primary objective of apportioning blame. For no one had any real idea of how things were developing, including the Governor himself, and he admitted as much.

[It may also interest you to know that, at about the same time as this Press Conference, the Prime Minister was entertaining himself watching the Women’s Boxing from a ringside seat at the Olympic Games.]

It was clear that the whole basis for the Governor’s analysis and suggestions was an unswerving acceptance of the prevailing Capitalist Economic System. Absolutely NO alternative was possible! This is the way that it is, and all that could be done to pull us out of the recession had been done, and was still being done, carried out and swapped around, or merely repeated (in hope) when it quite evidently isn’t working!

One single question from the audience was significant both in it actually being asked, and in the answer that it received from the Governor.

He was asked if he could not stop giving money to the Banks, and put impetus into household spending by giving money directly to the people at large.

He almost had a fit!

His answer was unequivocal – You can’t do that!

But exactly why it couldn’t be done was not admitted.

Clearly, someone had to pay for the financial crisis, and this was how they were doing it – in fact there was NO OTHER WAY!

Yet in spite of the gloss that the Governor was insistent that he put on the Economic situation, the basic indicators, which he clearly revealed, could be addressed in a very different way from what was the agreed consensus in this gathering. And these crucial indicators are:

The Rate of Inflation - what we pay out compared with before

The Rate of Wage Increases - what we pay with compared with before

Now, there is one way of dealing with these things entirely from the point of view of the maintenance of the status quo, and another quite different one from the point of view of the relative poverty or wealth of the bulk of the population. The former is typified by how Inflation is both considered and explained.

It is always described as if the Rate of Inflation coming down was making things better for everybody. What utter nonsense that is!

We were told, in a serious straight-faced way, that we should take comfort in that the slippery slope to oblivion was becoming less steep. But of course it was still going DOWN!

Only a negative Rate of Inflation would do that, or a Rate of Wage rises above that of Inflation!

Let us be absolutely clear.

When the Rate of Inflation went up to 5%, it meant that things were costing 5% more than a year ago, and over the period that it remained at that level, the increase in costs was still going up by that rate.

If over a series of months, a year earlier it had being going up at:

3.2% 3.3% 3.6% 3,65%

it was now actually going up by:

5.2% 5.3% 5.6% 5.65%

Yet we were supposed to take comfort in any decline in this rate. But we must not ignore what was also being inflicted upon the Rate of Wage Rises, these were either stopped completely - so that they were 0%, or alternatively kept at a very low figure. We were getting lttle or nothing to match the increases in the costs of everything.

Every wage earner was getting poorer. For when the Rate of Inflation declined from 5% it was still positive, and the restrictions on Wages remained, so it continued, all the time, day-by-day, they were able to buy less and less with their earnings.

But to get back to what the differential from a year ago would be if the Rate of Inflation changed into a negative – cost would have to reduce across the board, and that was certainly not happening.

Now, you might expect (as Cameron insists) that everybody was getting significantly poorer over this interlude, but that was NOT the case. To redress their losses, the Banks started wholesale cheating of their customers with Payment Protection Insurance, the illegal fixing of the LIBOR Rate, and the mis-selling of systems to small businesses supposedly to protect them against interest rate changes. Almighty tricks were necessary to protect their profits and their shareholders dividends.

In fact the gap between the Rich and the Poor is getting ever wider and in many significant cases company Profits are still enormous.

In addition, large numbers of people were being made redundant, and with a continuing range of such sackings still in the pipeline. And these people are therefore MUCH worse off than those still in employment. And as they are not receiving wages, they will not figure in the published Rate of Wage increases, for if they did the result would most certainly be an average Negative Rate – wages over all the working class: it would be GOING DOWN!

The way we are given the so-called indices of the economic State of the Nation is a set of premeditated LIES.

So, what

It can only be that the solution to the crisis can only be to make the Working Class PAY! They will be forced into a poorer state continually – over a period of years. Certainly NOT a one-off loss (as is inferred) at all, but, on the contrary, a rate of getting poorer every day by around 3% over a year. And the unemployed will be poorer at an even greater rate!

So, as the Governor stated, it will take a long time to get enough from the Working Class to “foot the bill” produced by the Banks and the speculators.

And a true graph of purchase-ability by the Working Class will show a long period of getting less and less from the money they have earned.

Can you stomach this theft?

Review: A Certain Ambiguity

 

A Certain Ambiguity

A Mathematical Novel

by

Gaurav Suri & Hartosh Singh Bal

I am nearing the end of reading A Certain Ambiguity by these two Indian mathematicians, after I had been attracted to it by its advert, where it purported to be about Infinity. As my current researches are philosophical investigations in both Mathematics and Science, I immediately ordered the book.

But, on commencing to read it, I was surprised by the realisation that such a book could only have been written in the USA, and by someone who subscribes to the present day consensus there. Yet, by their names, these authors seemed to be from Sikh heritage, while the book delivers a debate between "American" Christianity and Atheism. Before any content is dealt with, this surprising situation seems to say quite a bit about the motives of the authors.

So, my excitement at finding a source to expand my own work, was immediately undermined by speculation about these motives. For, if they were dealing with the problems and capacities of Mathematics, the inclusion of a dogmatic christian judge (no less) seemed to betray "inclusion" motives... What do you think?

The actual content is contained within two discussions eighty years apart. 

The first details one between a christian judge and an Indian mathematician, after the latter had questioned and disagreed with some christian "speaker" in a public park. In spite of this being supposedly a "forum" for the populace to "air their views", the hostile reaction to Sahni's comments was immediately amplified into a major attack, and Sahni was arrested and charged with blasphemy, under some ancient and forgotten law. 

The second, much later debate, is set in the present day, and contains a long series of discussions between a mathematics lecturer and a small group of his students (one of whom is the grandson of the man Sahni).

The kernel in both these discussions, as the authors see it, is whether there is any certainty in this world, or, to be more accurate, in the vastly different sub-worlds defined by the judge's christianity and the Indian's view of mathematics. 

The judge sees everything as based on his belief in God, while the mathematician sees everything as based on his favoured axiomatic method, as used in mathematical proofs. Sahni keeps to the example of Euclid's Elements, which established this methodology in Alexandria 2000 years ago, where the subject was greek Geometry. Euclid managed to integrate ALL known geometrical ideas of his time into a self-consistent system based on a handful of axioms. Our mathematician considered that this was the most powerful method known to man, and could see that it could be extended in use to the world at large.

As a mathematician myself, I must say that I was somewhat surprised at the childishness of BOTH their positions. Did they really live in the 20th Century?

I had personally dumped religion at the age of 13, as it offered NO understanding of anything. Indeed, quite the reverse, it was clearly an alternative to any attempt to understand how the world works. And though I too fell in love with Euclid at about the same age, and could prove all the theorems without any trouble, I could not see how such an artificial system could ever be used generally to deal with everything in the world.

My respect for theorems soon matured into a respect for the 'included' logic. But even then it was clear what this method was all about. Logic was able to generate a whole panoply of consequences from a given set of assumptions and assertions. It could amplify a set of such things into an extensive penumbra of dependent, though not immediately evident extensions.

But, to reduce this general method to the axiomatic version contained in Euclid, was, even then, obviously juvenile, as logic was the basis of discussions about everything in the world. Axiomatic structures are only a special, limited, subset of this 'universality'. The idea of a complete, logical system of Absolute Truth was, to say the least, "a bit much". From the outset, it was clear that the assumptions on which Geometry was based were merely simplifications of what actually existed in reality. For in the real world there are no dimensionless points, no lines of zero thickness, and no infinite planes. These were clearly invented to serve as a basis for a model of the forms of reality. And, it must be emphasized that, by the time you reached the end of Elements, you did not know reality, you only knew the model, and, in addition, you perhaps grasped some idea of the power of Formal Logic. As a pupil in school, I soon moved my allegiance from Mathematics to Science, because the latter did at least attempt to tackle more of reality than Mathematics ever did or could!

I hoped for understanding via Science. 

But I was an able mathematician, and have used this remarkable tool all my life. My attitude to it was always pragmatic, rather than for revealing the truth of reality. I solved real world problems with it.

What A Certain Ambiguity never even mentioned were the uses of mathematics. All of its discussions were clearly limited to Pure Mathematics, Applied Mathematics didn't even deserve a mention, which when you think about it, is remarkable! But, I am clear that the reason it wasn't mentioned is that Applied Mathematics is not an isolated pure system. It is involved, everyday, in the attempted application of pure, abstract forms back into reality - and when you attempt to do this, all that purity and elegance vanishes. Multiple 'frigs', approximations, fittings and downright invented models are found to be essential. The abstractions, isolated, extracted and perfected by Pure Mathematics simply do not fit with real world situations as they stand. They have lost too much in that processing to have the necessary content for a perfect fit. Obviously, discussions about Essence and Eternal Truth do not gel very well with such things, and so Applied Mathematics is dumped for being ugly, as if it didn't exist at all!

Much later in life, I was able to categorize the situations of the role of Mathematics much more soundly, when I embarked upon a period of research into the Processes and Productions of Abstraction, which quickly grew into a major area of study. These studies have since extended into a much wider area, which at present occupies all of my time, so that it has now inflated to be accurately termed Philosophy.

 The Processes and Productions of Abstraction

A short film explaining these ideas

Mathematics, as it is discussed in this book, is quite clearly the study of Pure Form in isolation from Reality. Yet, its centre is its universality and generality - things that can only be established in Reality. These properties arise from the fact that its abstract equations can be used in many different areas. How else could it be termed "general" and "universal"? 

Now, all these questions are much too important to be tidily confined into limited areas in order to make the arguments easier. At the present time in modern sub-atomic physics, the majority of scientists would have us believe that the Essence of their subject is Mathematics. They have abandoned Science as it has been developed over many centuries to replace it by formulae alone. Now, to move to such a position does also abandon Reality as the supreme arbiter, and instead moves into a non-scientific position which is clearly a branch of Idealism. 

The book, surprisingly applauded by many world famous academics, is, as I hope that I have been able to demonstrate, decidedly infantile in its dealing with the important Big Questions, that are clearly untreatable by the limited disciplines employed. It is also surprisingly old-fashioned! The Religion/Science debate has been stone dead for many years. Why on earth is it now resuscitated in this book? It can only be because these old, answered questions have not yet been resolved in the States. Modern Christian Fundamentalism is clearly alive and well in that country, and even, we are told, in the Oval Office. The debate in this book reflects the bigger debate in American society at this point in history, but, as is usual in such things, it does not reflect the real issues or address the crucial questions. It is closer to what close advisers to the White House put into their president's mouth, when untenable things are proposed as the Truth.

Mathematics is neither the opposite of Religion, nor can they ever be reconciled. What utter nonsense. 

Indeed, my researches show that Mathematics is actually extremely Idealist, and the degeneration of Modern Physics is characterized by its abandonment of Science for the thin gruel of Mathematics as Essence. Such trends get more like Religion every day.

Why should such an easy target as Mathematics be chosen as the "enemy" in these discussions? I think the answer is transparently clear! It was chosen because it is an easy target. Mathematics is no general philosophical method. It is essentially Formal Logic, but in such a limited way that I have characterized its area of application as being only in Ideality - the world of pure form alone. It is easy meat.

I know because I have spent time doing a very different task - the criticism of Mathematics compared with Science - the weaknesses of description as compared to explanation - the whole trajectory of Mankind's methods in attempting to understand Reality. So, the easier target was purposely chosen in order to allow the "correct" general conclusions at the end of the book.

I had wondered whether I ought to write a full conspectus of this book, but not for long! It is simply not worth the effort. Dawkins might feel that he has a job combating American Fundamentalism, but not me! I have better things to do with my time.

I am sure that a such a book as this will become very popular in the Mid-West of the USA, and much discussion (as in this book) will ensue among privileged college students. But such a level of treatment only reveals inadequacies and scarcely requires a full treatment. 

After all, I dumped these ideas and questions before I was 14 years old, and when you become a man, you put away childish things...

Jim Schofield 

September 2007

Issue 27 of SHAPE

It is perhaps an unusual offering, for it concerns itself with how purely technological advances can reveal aspects of Reality that increasingly question our most basic assumptions, so that if we heed the hidden messages contained therein, they can lead to new philosophical insights of tremendous importance.

A particular example of this is how the very basic objectives of NASA, and its purely technological advances to simply supply us with ever more facts, have instead opened a veritable Pandora’s Box of the breathtakingly New, where we previously thought we would just confirm our previous assumptions and merely increase the known details.

But, extremely detailed still images and even movies delivered by spacecraft sent into close encounters with Jupiter and Saturn are perfect examples of such crucial revelations.

For these pictures present important questions, which if both addressed and, of course, answered, must transform the way we consider Change and Development wherever it occurs.

For though not dealt with in the papers presented here, recent relations have been revealed between Earth’s atmospheric Jet Streams and the North Atlantic Gulf Stream with atmospheric systems on both Jupiter and Saturn, which have been put down to so-called Rossby Waves, and also raised important questions of both Turbulence and Persistence in such systems.

We must take advantage of these surprising ‘mirrors’ on our own world to begin to address how Emergences actually occur in all developments, in whatever circumstances they arise. These three papers do not deliver full and comprehensive conclusions on these topics, but they do treat the revealed images as the beginnings of an alternative and relatively ‘alien’ source of relevant information that cannot be as easily tidied away as can most more local evidence.

Read it here.

The Spark of Life

 

 
With what small, flickering sliver did Life begin?

It was certainly not yet a cell, or even something well below that form, but endowed with RNA or even DNA. To place such things as these as the necessary starting point reveals from where we are currently standing, and looking, imbued with that position, to identify the first traces of Life. And from such a standpoint, we will not be addressing the actual Spark of Creation, but really yet another stage in the following Evolution.

We realise what Evolution is, and merely extrapolate backwards until that process “seamlessly transforms” into a very similar process in the preceding non-living substances.

We impose an incrementalist conception upon an Event that could never be such.

The Origin of Life on Earth was the most significant transforming Event in the history of the Universe (as far as we know), and such an approach laced through with the usual banker assumptions of more commonplace changes will never reveal what actually happened.

Not only was that event far earlier than such “life indicators” that we insist must be present, but even the significant steps in the following Evolution were always majorly redirected by very similar Events, which we term Emergences.

So, in concertinaing and truncating the earliest wonderful living miracle, we effectively emasculate the real, creative processes involved, and disable our chances of revealing what would be the most important understanding possible for Mankind.

Why is it that all those involved in the quest to reveal Life’s actual Origin, insist upon their mechanisms and processes, though admittedly writ very long and very large?

It is because that trajectory from non-living chemical processes to the very First Life actually involved the most unpredictable series of 'miracles', which changed the whole game, and the whole context too. For in finding any means of making sense out of Reality in general, we first had to make it intelligible. And to, therefore, start with such miracles was not a good idea at all. No one addressed the miracles! The dominant method, which has been developed to date, is the “pluralist analytic, scientific method", wherein various Wholes are identified, and “held still” in order to discern their hidden components (Parts). And if ever that proved inadequate, a complete locality would be isolated, and nailed down with many less-significant factors totally removed, while others would be increasingly held constant, until our hoped for and maybe only previously glimpsed “key relation” was revealed clearly and continually. Only then could it be measured and the results formulated into some sort of Formal Relation or Equation.

Such a methodology did, and still does, put into our hands the wherewithall to replicate those vital conditions, and USE the relations to some required end. But, it is crucially flawed, because it cannot deal with unfettered Reality, but only with a maximally modified and indeed “farmed” version of it, which we can set up and exploit!

It cannot deal with Life!

And that certainly not only includes its Origin, but in each and every significant, qualitative change in its subsequent development. For that particular standard process of investigation would kill it – stone dead!

Its applicability to the “Forms” evident from Living Things, and the chemistry and the physics occurring within Living Things is indeed possible, but never to Life itself.

For Plurality – the conceptual basis for that method divides things into their contributing Parts, as if they are entirely separable and caused by purely bottom-up factors in a strictly physical or chemical way.

Life was never that, so it became impossible to investigate the Origin of Life by such means.

Instead, we do small within-a-level causal sequences such as Oparin’s studies of Sols and Gels, and hope that sufficient other areas can be cracked to “come together” like a jigsaw puzzle - to reveal Life.

That is a forlorn hope, for Life is not such a collection of investigatable “Parts”: it is an integrated Whole, and the means to deliver the trajectory of its First Appearance is certainly not yet in our scientists’ hands. Nor, will it ever be while they restrict themselves to pluralist means. First Life was not created by cumulative, incremental processes at a pre-Life level, which at some point “passed” a vital threshold and – “Lo, behold Life!”

The transition to Life was a revolutionary trajectory, with diverse and contrasting Phases, which we term an Emergence. Those who, like Oparin, deliver necessary precursors such as appropriate chemical forms, or organic syntheses, say absolutely nothing about the transforming Event itself. The truth is the very opposite of their assumed cumulative aggregations, for the evidence is that such Emergences are always triggered off by a cataclysmic dismantling of the preceding stability, as the ONLY way that the totally new could possibly emerge, and thereafter an unavoidable battle between alternatives, and a integrating of defensive and constraining sub processes, which would finally establish a wholly new Level of Stability could be achieved, which we term Life!

Indeed, a crucially universal law is negated within such an Event.

It is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which perpetually pertains within Stability, but is replaced by its opposite during the creative heart of these transforming Events. And this can only be achieved when in the dismantling of a current stability, all its “policemen processes” are dissociated, so that a uniquely totally unfettered situation allows previously prohibited constructional processes to proceed and grow.

Notice also, that these Events do not all succeed. There is no inevitability about them. Many will not make it to a new Level of Stability and will fall back to something akin to the prior state. But even these failures will contribute to a following ascent. Every failure will leave behind scraps or detritus, which could be participants in the next revolution when it occurs. And, these Emergences have been happening throughout the whole history of the Universe, and every single stable success, has, in the end, come to its demise. No Stability is eternal!

How could our current pluralist, pedestrian and incrementalist conceptions ever crack this unique kind of problem? They have never been able to do it, and their methodology prohibits them ever doing it now or in the future.

SHAPE is 3 years old!

 

June 2012 marked the third anniversary of our online journal. It is a significant achievement, for from the outset it was intended to put out new Issues every three weeks containing around 3,000 words of original contributions, and in so doing building an accessible library of contributions on the subjects:

Science, Holism, Abstraction, Philosophy & Emergence

(hence S.H.A.P.E.)

So by this point in time some 150,000 words should have been delivered, and this goal has been exceeded and enlarged further by this blog and a small series of animations and films on the Shape Journal Youtube Channel These 'spin off's' have recorded 40,000 hits on their own, quite apart from the innumerable accesses to the main journal. 

Surprisingly this hefty output has not kept pace with my new writing, so that there is a great deal more to publish now than there was at the start of the enterprise. 

We sincerely hope that our readers have got something from this demanding and committed endeavour, and would dearly like our journal to be the chosen outlet for the creations of other philosophers in similar areas.

To mark this anniversary Michael Coldwell will be making another new video for us, to encapsulate the whole project so far, and hopefully to attract new minds to the Shape aegis.

Why Socialism IX: The Essential Development of Marxist Theory II

 

  Removing The Myths Of Progress

(Calamity is the Only Opportunity for Qualitative Change!)

 

 

When considering real developments in the World around us, we finally settle upon Emergences (Revolutionary transformations) as the crucial episodes. 

 

But it would be wrong to see such interludes as merely a sudden quickening of the pace of an already-operating, pedestrian process of qualitative change.
 

Indeed, in research undertaken into such Events, it has become clear that the first phase is always a major system-terminating crisis, and the crucial phase in the midst of such a self-generated Emergence, (as well as that following any externally-triggered general collapse - as in a meteorite impact) needs to be understood for it is when things are crucially transformed. And, that is only possible in terms of Stability and Development as alternative modes, rather than our usually assumed trajectory of incessant changes, but at variable rates. For we invariably (and incorrectly) see Stability as both desirable and constructive. And we contrast it favourably with the alternative of a totally destructive Chaos. For, with such a view, it appears inevitable that any real progress must be confined to only, and wholly, within Stability, and conversely that Chaos, if successful, will lead only downwards towards an ultimate and general dissolution.
 

But, this is a significantly mistaken assumption. Indeed, it is the opposite of what actually occurs. And, if this is the case, the question that must be answered is, “How does such a misconception become so widespread?”
 

Clearly, the error stems from those who define Stability, and what they not only see as progressive, but also have the wherewithall to impose it upon the majority of the population. And throughout history those have always been the people who are “in-charge” (or those closely and beneficially associated with them).
 

But, if our suggested, very different, alternative conceptions are true, and stability is totally opposed to progress, then we have to explain why this is so. And it is best revealed by contrasting Stability not with Chaos, but with its real opposite - Revolution. 

 

From this point of view, stability is essentially a balanced and conservative state, in which the status quo has to be actively maintained, and even strengthened whenever and wherever it is possible to do so. Any threats to the current Order are opposed immediately, either automatically in naturally achieved stabilities - via built-in inhibitors of system change, or within Societies via consciously set-up organisations such as the police, the armed forces and the Justice System.

NOTE: When politicians emphasize the Rule-of-Law as the essential ingredient in “democracy”, this is exactly what they have in mind.
 

Now this suggested alternative may be dismissed as merely a forlorn hope of those not in charge, and hence having no objectivity. But, if that were true, and the usual established view of stability was the case, then the motive forces for significant change would have to be ever and clearly evident within all such stable situations. So, the question that must be answered is, “Are these forces both active and clearly evident within Stability, and if so, what are they?”
 

And, to those who subscribe to the consensus view, the answer to such a question would inevitably be “Technology!” They would be clearly in difficulties to provide any other examples at all. And even this banker response does not, and indeed cannot, deliver significant qualitative change.
 

The definitions of both Science and Technology are clearly important in showing exactly what these activities do in fact achieve:

Science is the attempt to understand Reality and all new discoveries, while, Technology is merely the drive to use such things – profitably. And, this latter is then impossible to make into a system-transforming activity, for its context must be part of the process too. Indeed, an extremely good case can be made for establishing the exact opposite. 

 

For though we are told that it transforms Society that is certainly not by radically altering its stability. It actually presents an absolutely zero threat! Indeed, without the constant and accelerating March of Technology our current Social Order would be in dire trouble.

It enables a debt-based acceleration to disguise a real congenital decline, but to do so requires ever more resources and earnings to allow the most enormous borrowings to finance the essential research to deliver what is needed to keep the majorly holed boat afloat. Technology provides the pumps that keep it from sinking – hardly a progressively transforming contribution!
 

Now, I must admit that I am not attempting to win any arguments with the group who benefit most from the current system. That would be a total waste of time. But, I do address the majority, and those who should be their vanguard, the scientists, though the latter are currently in the most debilitating trough for extending our understanding of the World, and have been there for a very long time.

Sub Atomic Physics and Cosmology are deep in the mire of the wholly idealist Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory, and have completely abandoned Understanding and Explanation for pragmatism via Equations alone.
 

And, in spite of what leading scientists on innumerable TV Spectaculars and in magazine articles say about the promise of the latest experimental kit, the truth is that Science, as a means of understanding has completely lost its way. For they, in spite of the illustrious history of Science, also subscribe to the consensus view of Stability.

They dream of being able to pursue their studies without any essential regard to pay, facilities and funding.

They imagine that Stability will provide them with such a Paradise, and in it they will surge ahead to ever-greater understanding.

It is, of course, a well-loved, but wholly untrue Myth!

So, let us review this proffered alternative concept of Stability.

It has to be a state achieved in the end by restrictive and conservative processes, which deter all opposing systems, and keeps things as they are, conserved in a sort of perpetual balance. There are still both deleterious and alternative processes (non dominant) occurring, but they are generally kept well in check. Yet the ubiquitous Second Law of Thermodynamics is also no myth!

Incessantly, the combined processes of dismantling and decay, which together constitute this Law, persist, and every single Stability will at some point be totally undermined by these hidden forces, and will inevitably collapse, and seem to be heading for total and final Chaos.
 

But, surprisingly, something wholly unexpected occurs and NOT by chance. The overall direction changes dramatically through 180 degrees, and Dissolution becomes Creation. The Phoenix does indeed arise from the Flames of Destruction! Multiple, wholly-new proto-systems as sets of mutually conducive processes, begin to form and grow, and the crucial question must be “Why?”
 

There is a clear answer!

The so-called “policemen processes” of the prior stability have been swept away in the wholesale collapse, and all sorts of processes, prohibited or greatly restricted within that prior stability, now go ahead unhindered, and begin to form multiple conducive relationships with other processes, and the only opposition is via other equally new and competing alternative systems.
 

Out of what seemed to be a headlong dive into oblivion, we get instead developments on all sides, and in every single micro-stage one particular proto-system will rise to dominate, but will unavoidably and by its own success generate the renewed reappearance of the Second Law. The drive forwards will therefore be halted, and a return towards chaos will ensue. But, of course, that will only resuscitate the rise of yet new and different proto-systems and another upward surge will occur.
 

Ultimately, after a turmoil of such developments, and alliance of conducive, mutually supporting elements plus the required defensive 'policemen processes' will win out and a new and persisting stability will be established. 

 

 

The Trajectory of an Emergence

And when this has occurred, it will be, surprisingly to some, intensely conservative.

Its final success, though in process it will have introduced wholly new and better elements, will be due to its effective prohibitions via its defensive processes.
 

Stability is born out of such seemingly chaotic interludes, and these are so general across all developments at all possible Levels of Reality, that we have termed them Emergences (or in Social situations – Revolutions). And the resulting stability is never thereafter conducive to any alternative progressive change: it becomes entirely conservative of what has just been achieved, and has the prestige of that recent overturn to justify its now repressive nature.

NOTE: This phase was noticed by Marx, and the Stalinist reaction in Revolutionary Russia was termed a Thermidorian Reaction by Trotsky in reference to a similar phase in the French Revolution.
 

So, returning to the Emergence Event itself, we see that the only opportunity for real progress occurs as a result of what seems to be initially a final destructive collapse into Chaos. And, from an achieved Nadir of Dissolution, a crucial creative/destructive phase produces real progress – situations in which entirely novel developments occur and become stabilised. And though the very achievement of a New Order precipitates a resurgence of the Second Law dissociations, that does not take hold and dominate, but is again swept aside by each new, and different, pulse of new order.

This interlude of alternation between new developments and dissociation does not set into a permanent oscillation, nor does the Second Law win, and again take us to complete dissolution. Instead the individual oscillations get smaller, and the upward swings always outweigh the intervening declines, due to the increasing integration of defensive 'policemen processes' as part of each developing system, until a final threshold is surpassed, and the last system succeeds in becoming “finally” stabilised.
 

It is remarkable, yet true, that only in the turmoil of an Emergence does real progress appear and become established, while also this phase finally reaches a New and long persisting Level, but at the cost of an almost total inhibition of new qualitative changes. The revolution may seem to destroy the old repressive regime, but will, of necessity, become repressive itself, in order to survive.
 

NOTE: The ideas mentioned in this paper, and the included diagram, are from The Theory of Emergences by this author which appeared a couple of years ago as a Special Issue of the SHAPE Journal.
 

Now, It must be emphasized that this is no longer only a Theory about Social Revolution. Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that it pertains to all development at whatever Level.

It means that reductionist hopes at explaining all Wholes in terms of their contributory Parts will, of necessity fail at all crucial turning points. They work only within a given Level!

To address real qualitative developments of all kinds, we have to look for crisis and embrace it. Only when we do that can we really begin to grasp Emergence in process. And the most evident of such instances occur within our heads – in all imaginative and creative Thought. 

 

Hegel chose correctly!

Issue 26 of SHAPE

 

Form & Emergence

Once again, this issue is somewhat different to either the usual arbitrary collection of papers in what is best described as a Standard Issue, or the set of closely related contributions that demands their own dedicated Special Issue. There has also a development of our Standard form into what might be called a Magazine Issue, and yet here we are again with yet another different offering. For the papers included here are of a special type: they are corrections or amplifying updates of previously published papers, and rather than just referring to their antecedents , it is clear that such modifications will always be necessary. So the emphasis in this Issue is put upon this absolutely essential aspect of the real development of ideas, and departs from the usual incrementalist way of most such papers in the usual Professional Journals.

You may wonder what the differences involved may be, but it is in the Philosophy of such “improving” contributions, for they are not so much mere corrections as conceptual developments and hence are unified in the clear emergent aspect involved. In a sense we are hoping that the basic standpoint behind all the contributions to SHAPE, and their developments are emphasized as the necessary way forwards in today’s Science. We, as always, focus upon the actual transitional trjectories, which are involved in such developments. We do not believe in the cumulative, incrementalist repository of individual additive contributions, but the ever deeper revelation of the creative processes that are essential in real understanding. In a sense we do not emphasize the delivery of Forms, as do the deliverers of equations, but the study of the Forms of Form and their Emergences. Enjoy!

Read the new issue here

New Special Issue - The Jigsaw

Special Issue 11 - The Jigsaw: A Conspectus of Pete Mason's Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism.

This issue constitutes a conspectus/review of a paper by Pete Mason on the Socialist World website entitled: Quantum Mechanics and Dialectical Materialism (Marxism Materialism and Particle Physics), published on Boxing Day 2010.

It is advised that the reader should take time to study the original paper before reading this issue for a more complete understanding of what is being discussed.

Two approaches are taken to the task. The first paper entitled The Marxist Apologists for Copenhagen is a direct response to Mason’s paper from a contending Marxist position; namely that Marxism and the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory are diametrically opposed, philosophically.

The second paper, Notes on Marxism, Materialism and Particle Physics, goes in to more detail and is a point-by-point critique of Mason’s paper, undertaken to reveal the inherent weaknesses in the original argument. These are vitally important to elucidate as Marxism should, in fact, be the study of Qualitative Change, something modern physicists have long abandoned. To adopt their pragmatic and statistical approaches to understanding and to embrace the “discoveries” of quantum physics as gospel, is to abandon Dialectical Materialism entirely for Idealism.

Austerity: The Rape of the Poor

 The Dissolution of Fictitious Value

Are you wondering what is going on among the leaders of the Euro Zone of the European Union? Do you, along with British Prime Minister Cameron and his Tory colleagues, put the whole thing down to their stubborn refusal to act! Or do you decide that all such efforts to rationalise our World (including the lauded United Nations) are doomed to failure from the outset. Yet what is really happening is certainly none of these things! It is the final Dissolution of the Fictitious Value on which Capitalism rests. It is the regularly occurring and inevitable Crisis of Capitalism!

This isn’t just about Greece, or even the sorely threatened Euro Zone. It is about the failure of the capitalists final throw – to generate yet another fictitious bubble, this time out of the “Own Your Own Home Myth” for the very poorest layers in capitalist society. It not only didn’t work, it was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. Its failure put ALL value in question. And the answer that came back was that such “growing” value rested ONLY on an agreed and regularly inflated figure, so that in the end all apparent gains were shown to be an illusion. Value poured away in one avalanche after another and in the last few days it has become clear that the mightiest banks were fiddling the interest rates to give the appearance of their getting out of their own self-made mire.

Now, this is not, as some might think, just what we have been waiting for, so, that finally we will be rid of this cancerous growth upon society. For, the perpetrators do have alternatives. They have done it before, and they will do it again. They contract back into their own national bases and oppose all others. And in such circumstances the ultimate “solution” is always the same. It is war!

And all supra-national organisations, such as the old League of Nations and the present UN, are shown to be toothless and useless in any global responsibilities. They can never act against powers in ultimate crisis. They can’t even cope with tiny Syria! Why, for example, is Russia still the enemy? It has returned to the capitalist fold. Indeed, if you listen to the current crop of Tory backbenchers in the UK parliament, it is clear that all foreigners are a threat. “We must struggle for the best opportunities to win what advantages we can”, is their ever-clearer standpoint.

Now, you may with justice dismiss such a “final decline” analysis, by referring to the regular past crises and their apparent, just as regular, “resolutions”. And all that is accurate, but to reveal the nature of such past recessions and Slumps, and to compare the nature of the current crisis with all of those, you must attend to the Theory of Emergences (slowly developed concerning Stability & Change in all systems of whatever kind), wherein crises ultimately will occur to any Stability, and when they do almost nothing can stem an impending calamity. Indeed, in such circumstances something painfully calamitous is unavoidable.

There is, of course, a crucial period in which ever-developing swings downward are countered by often repressive and restorative built-in reactions opposing them. In a society approaching a Revolution, this always takes the form of ever more violent police and even military actions, which can, and often do, become Civil Wars (as in Syria currently). And these counter actions can win – if only for a time.

The suppression of the 1905 revolution in Russia was just such a “success” for the powers that be. Indeed, repression of nascent change of whatever kind is the natural, built-in reaction of any system in crisis, not as in a revolution, by intention, of course, but as part of its very stability-imposing nature.

For, to achieve stability in the first place against many contending alternatives, any successful protosystem had to include what I call “policemen processes” – destructive processes that could actually become part of such a proto-system to oppose all dissociators of, and competitors to, that system. There can never be any stability without such elements! Stability is not merely a new arrangement that is better than a prior one (a happy medium?), but one which can extensively and effectively suppress opposing processes whether dissolutory or as competing proto-systems. These winning elements exist in ever more strength until the mix of multiple conducive processes and defensive/aggressive policemen processes is unstoppable, and totally dominating. That is how new stabilities are always established.

So, in a crisis, the restorative weapons, for both defence and attack, are always available, and in a dissolutory swoop naturally grow in strength: they join the ever-present independent dissolutory processes (usually collectively termed The Second Law of Thermodynamics) in the melee, and, in so doing, ultimately remove everything that both the Second Law forces and themselves act upon. The situation appears to be careering down to total Chaos!

Now, in natural systems, such crises are unstoppable, but in revolutions that is NOT the case! For such involves thinking human beings, and the defenders will always find many and various policemen processes to stem the cataclysm. The fulfilment of a revolution is many times more difficult than a natural Emergence. Now, this reminder of The Theory of Emergences has been necessary because of the economic crisis of Capitalism made inevitable by the latest defensive measure, another of the kind that has succeeded in the past in hauling the system back from complete collapse. And that is the ever-new ways of “creating” fictitious value in all things! As always, the dominance of some towering component, in this case the United States of America, could maintain the fiction by threat of, and even actual use of, war (and even the threat of the nuclear demise of humanity). But, as always, these methods are not sufficient alone to maintain a system, which has used up literally all its potentials. In spite of the demise of the Stalinist Empire (with its appearance of the “dreaded” Socialism), things have not got better overall, but actually much worse.

So, what was the EU about, and why did it have to move towards monetary union? And, of course, why was it bound to fail? It seemed so obvious as a solution. Develop a counter to American dominance by a unified Europe to challenge its hegemony and compete on equal terms. It had succeeded in America via the union of a continent-wide set of separate states, but it was, like Australia, an expansion into a “relative void” by a more advanced and equipped people, who mercilessly removed the meagre sprinkling of indigenous hunter/gatherers. And all these “states” were very young and with odd and much weaker dominances. The task then was much easier. In Europe, in the 20th century, very old and well-established nation states, with strong internal dominances, and even diminishing global empires, were a much more difficult problem. The unification was first achieved in the fairly narrow area of Iron and Steel production, and only much later as a Common Market, but without political union. Each country maintained its own political set up and governance, and, of course, their dominances established in each due to its own history and institutions. They could NOT be unified! Indeed, nascent attempts like the so-called European Parliament were necessarily toothless and certainly did NOT govern. All nationally dominant parties continued to act as before, and hence in a crisis would do what they had always done only more so!

The current crisis in the Euro Zone is not due to the inadequacies of the European leaders, but to undiminished National Interests and their embodiment in national ruling elites. The Nation State is the natural Modus operandus of an established capitalist dominance. Within the overarching, though decidedly partial system that is the European Union (and within it the Euro Zone) the naturally dominant country is Germany, and the weaker states have tried to milk the wealth of that super state to finance their own growth using the usual capitalist mechanism of long term and fictitious credit. As long as everyone, and especially the rich investors in this enterprise were confident of large returns, the system seemed entirely stable. And without internal-national changes of any significant kind, states like Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and even Spain borrowed at a vast rate to “build a bigger economy” things would work out. But, where were all the enormous sums to come from to finance these remarkable developments?

The final US trick to fund all of this was in the seemingly never-ending increase in value of houses. They would lend to truly vast numbers of the very poorest in the US, with the plan of getting at least some repayments, and then on the inevitable defaults they would take re-possession at, as usual, an inflated value of the property. Continual cycling of this sort would retain ownership of properties with increasing value, while getting non-returnable repayments on every cycle. The poor could supply the resources needed, if the exercise was done on a sufficiently large scale. And that was attempted! But, the plan failed everywhere, because the repossessions, were NOT of properties of increasing value, but of wrecks, as the dispossessed took their revenge, and values swooped very quickly down. The plan failed in a very big way. Now, it didn’t only stretch to this particular sector, for the bottom fell out of the property market in general, and there was no way back!

In such a scenario, it has always been the same, someone has to pay, and if it is not to be everybody, then the fight begins – not only between rich and poor, but also between countries as the natural states of Capitalism. For the canny perpetrators of this gigantic scam didn’t carry it through. They instead sold-it-on worldwide as Triple A rated investments, and banks all over the world bought into it as a very profitable scheme. Indeed, many of the original perpetrators had “got out” of the scheme early with a profit, and it was the duped buyers of such “value” that were taken to the cleaners.

This was the origin of the now infamous 2008 crash. Does anyone even remember it now? The crisis hit the European Banks, who had bought in for a quick and easy profit, and instead had vast debts, which they couldn’t pay for as these assets were worthless. National political leaderships tried to stop a total collapse by using vast borrowings to cover the bankrupt banks, and in the UK several major banks were either partially or even majorly nationalised to transfer the losses to the nation. Now, you can’t invent value, so no matter what any country did, the crisis never went away, and individual countries made their own arrangements to try to redirect the damage elsewhere, to other countries. And the crisis just rumbled on and got worse. Now four years later it threatens not just the Euro Zone, or even the European Union, but worldwide Capitalism itself.

Now, the question is posed, “How can you get a cooperation of the different national bourgeoisie to aid the ones so weak as to find it impossible to cope?” To answer that question I can only repeat my favourite story of 2008, when Iceland’s financial sector bit the dust. The very same day the British businessman Green was filmed in Reykjavik “looking for businesses to buy for a song”. And even now in 2012 in the midst of the crisis, the rich buy at the bottom of a diurnal swing – convincing the uninitiated that an upswing is in the offing, only to almost immediately sell to take a profit, and thus causing the market to plunge again. Can you expect such sharks (or their advocates - politicians) to bother about those being fleeced to fill their own pockets? Of course not!

Let us be crystal clear. In what is usually a periodic slump, those who can make the rest pay, and actually buy while living off their accrued fat until a turn-around occurs. Do you want proof? Why is the remuneration of the rich accelerating, while the systems crumble (including publicly owned services)? Paying them bonuses for their “failure” is necessary, so that they at least will survive in the manner to which they have become accustomed. So, with their belief in Capitalism, they expect to cruise the South Seas in their yachts, until the turn round gets going again and they can return with pockets full of money, to once again milk their sacred cow. The question is, “Can they do this for ever? Or is their system running out of lies?” For, if this is the case, the disenfranchised will need to tool up for the coming revolution. The Arab Spring is only the precursor! 

The Major Crisis in World Capitalism

When watching the Stock Markets daily over the last extended period, you see a pronounced oscillation between steep dives in values followed by “not-so-quick” recoveries. And the Expert Commentators are always ready and willing to give “real, everyday” reasons for each and every reversal, which range from the Weather to bad, or even “good”, news. But, they only very rarely mention the contributions to this behaviour of the “profit-Takers”, where the money-men buy at the bottom of the market, followed by a hopeful rally by the less well informed, and then immediately sell to achieve yet another unearned and parasitic profit. Like the businessman Green, who on the very day of the economic calamity in Iceland was over there like a shot to buy when the market dived?

And the usual commentator-experts will never mention that in any systemic crisis there are always such dramatic oscillations – like the death-throes of a living organism, as the usual reliable Stability is undermined drastically. Nor do they reveal the purely temporary nature of the changes that are made to deliver apparent and reassuring recoveries.

Certainly, no one looks at the Crisis in Capitalism as caused by its necessary fictional values pumped up to unsustainable levels by speculative moves to wring the maximum profit out of every seemingly advantageous possibility that arises – the usual over inflated bubbles abound and are kept aloft long enough to enable profit-taking before the inevitable puncture and deflation occurs.

The foundations of the System are once again tumbling, as they have many times before, and though the oscillations can, and sometimes do, seem to be on the brink of a cataclysmic avalanche of dissociation, these situations can and usually are overcome. But how will they do it, and will it always be recoverable? Will they always get away with it, leaving either the Working Classes or the Third World countries, or BOTH, to pay the bill?

The crises in the past seem to have been overcome, but are they really, or is it just an increasingly enormous stacking up of an ever bigger precipice for a future and final calamity? The answers, of course, are available – in History! As economies such as that in the USA recovered at the expense of many others after the Major Slump between the World Wars, many countries such as Germany, and other badly affected areas, could see only one way out – WAR! Germany, Japan and Italy put down the strength of the UK to its conquered Empire, and that of the USA to its enormous internal market and its worldwide Neo Colonialism. So, the Answer was to acquire the same domination by force of arms.

We cannot let them try it again! What is being escalated in Syria? And what are the motives of the western Capitalist Powers? Why did they support the Libyan Revolution? They are certainly NOT socialists, are they? They couldn’t give a damn for the people of these countries, but CONTROL of Libyan Oil and influence in new capitalist regimes as a result of the Arab Spring MUST be their short-term objectives. Will the ordinary people of all these countries be helped by the success of these policies of the Capitalist Powers? Of course they won’t! And why am I confident of what I say is happening? It is the evidence from my current series on this blog entitled Why Socialism? Though the initial responses were small, they have recently increased considerably. In about 11 days hits from 50 counties have suddenly appeared, and it is interesting where they are coming from. The biggest response is from the ex-communist countries, with a rapidly increasing number from Latin America. The Big Crisis may happen where it is least expected...

Why Socialism VIII: The Essential Development of Marxist Theory 1

Now, the crucial flaw in “Democracy”, as is it usually argued for, and instituted within Capitalism, is that decisions are said to be made by the People and for the People. But the truth is that such is never the case!

What is available is that the populace can vote for any one of a number of available candidates for their local constituency, who at fairly rare public meetings explains what he or she stands for, and thereafter what will be voting for, but what actually happens in Parliament, if elected, is that the MP will vote as he thinks fit, or more accurately as the member’s Party directs all their MPs to vote. And these small interludes of public choice are extremely infrequent, and literally always made in ignorance of the real issues involved, not to mention the true unrevealed intentions of their candidate.

So, instead of merely constantly toting the Democracy-Demand, but within a future Socialist State, we have a much more difficult job to do. Otherwise, we effectively help to hide the dishonesty implicit in capitalist Democracy, as well as misguiding our supporters as to what we would institute in a Socialist State.

Now these questions are not merely a matter of choosing from a clearly evident and ready-made set of alternatives. All Forms within Socialism will be very different, and the organisations struggling for such a transformation MUST be duty-bound to make absolutely clear what Socialist Democracy would have to involve. It has to be a worked through and fully described alternative: and that makes it a job for our theorists. It is a job for Marxism!

So, let us attempt to delineate the main questions. How do we tackle the enforced ignorance of issues, and how do we bring decision-making closer to the people and much more frequent?

Read the rest of this post here...