Author: Ian Welsh Page 54 of 436

Marx was probably the most important intellectual of the 19th century, based on impact, but it’s generally believed he was wrong about his major predictions, and thus his theories are largely garbage. I have some sympathy for this view, but let’s look at the counter-argument.

Marx said that Communism would develop from industrial nations, with the proletariat, finally realizing they were producing all the value, taking control. What happened instead is that the two major “communist” revolutions happened in agrarian societies: Russia and China, and while China’s hard communist period (pre-Deng) advanced China significantly, they didn’t become a massive surplus society until market reform took place.

If you call a dog a duck, it’s still a dog.

The correct response is simply that they weren’t Communist nations: they called themselves that, and China still does, but that’s ridiculous. They couldn’t be, because the proletariat wasn’t in charge. (One might make an argument that it was, briefly, in Russia, but if so it didn’t last.) The proletariat couldn’t be in charge, in agrarian societies they hardly exist.

Central to Marx’s argument is that over time the global rate of profit under capitalism will fall. That argument has been dismissed, but there’s a good case that it is, it’s just taking quite a while. Michael Roberts makes the case, and I’ve included some of the key graphs below.

Global Rate of Profit:

US profit rate.

Now it’s fair to say that technical arguments can be made against these charts, but they support the general idea of lower profit over time. The crisis of capitalism is expected to occur when surplus produced by the system falls to catastrophic levels.

Again, I could argue against this, but the simplest argument is that Marx didn’t foresee climate change and ecological collapse and they’re going to hit first.

Arguing that communism hasn’t failed because those who claimed to be communist does smack a little of neoliberals and other ideologues screaming that their system has never really been implemented, so their ideas are still fine, but Marx was clear about the process of how Communism would occur and it didn’t include revolutions in agricultural states. By Marx’s dialectic, that wasn’t possible: you have to go through capitalism first.

I don’t, personally, expect real communism to happen any time soon. Even if Marx was right, the timer is running out. Perhaps in collapse, workers will, indeed, unite and take over. The problem is primarily what Marxists call “class consciousness”: the realization of shared interests and that the people running the system are both evil and stupid—they produce terrible results, over and over again. They are sociopath & psychopaths or people who might as well be, because the decisions they make are psychopathic.

They aren’t needed. Oh, the scientists and engineers are, certainly, but the capitalists? No. We just need another system of allocating capital which doesn’t make it accumulate in the hands of the worst people.

If that happens, we’ll have something better, whether or not it’s communism.

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The “China Cycle” Is Mostly A Thing Of the Past

By Ian Welsh

On September 9, 2024

41 Comments

So, this was true once:

The Chinese learned a lot from Western Joint Ventures, and I remember talking to a consultant back in the early 2000’s about tech transfer. He said it was very clear: you got into the Chinese market and/or used their lower cost production and what they got in exchange was tech transfer. This isn’t some evil conspiracy, back in the 80s when the US fell behind on cars they basically forced Japanese car companies to set up factories in the US, and yeah, there was transfer of knowledge to American companies.

Now, for the West, what Western companies and the West in general got in return for their tech was not worth the cost: it was stupid and short-sighted, but companies were lining up to do it and economists and business gurus and politicians in the West were for it: the only thing that mattered was making more short to mid-term profits and all sorts of nonsense about it not mattering where goods were produced was espoused by very important intellectuals and officials. There was no attention to the long term cost in terms of loss of technological lead and moving the industrial base to China. I know: I was one of the voices warning, publicly, to stop taking short term profits by selling China our future.

But at this point it’s no longer accurate. Chinese car companies are more advanced than Tesla: they have better batteries, better HUDS, better auto-pilots and they also have faster product cycles.

Again, in most fields the Chinese are now more advanced than the West: the remains are important but in a minority—things like lithography and aerospace, but they’ll catch up in both in time and for Aerospace I’d already buy a jet-liner from China before Boeing, and Boeing’s problems have nothing to do with China. Airbus is still clearly better, but it won’t be in twenty years, and possibly not even in ten.

The West was 100% complicit in the “China Cycle”, but that cycle is almost entirely over and China is now just straight up more advanced and out-competing us.

The West made this choice. We could have maintained our tech lead for another fifty years or so if we wanted to and followed the necessary policies. We didn’t, and to expect China to not use the same methods every other major country used to industrialize is insane. Every accusation made in the “China Cycle” is something the US did to Britain back in the 19th century.

Perhaps China could have industrialized without it being disastrous for the West, but not under any sort of laissez-faire or neoliberal international trade regime.

If you’re young, learn Mandarin. Maybe even if you’re not young.

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Open Thread

By Ian Welsh

On September 7, 2024

15 Comments

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Pharma Charges 80K to cure Hepatitis C. The Manufacturing Cost is $78

By Ian Welsh

On September 6, 2024

7 Comments

Yeah.

Unlike many other drugs that treat viruses, Sovaldi does not suppress hepatitis C, a virus that kills roughly 250,000 people around the world each year. It cures it.

“Normally you have a virus, and your body fights it off or your body fights it to a standstill and you just have it forever, basically, and hope it remains dormant more or less,” Laufer said. “The holy grail for every virologist is to find a way to drain the viral reservoir, and Sovaldi does this. You take one pill of Sovaldi a day for 12 weeks and then you don’t have hepatitis C anymore.”

The problem is that those pills are under patent, and they cost $1,000 per pill.

“Literally, if you have $84,000 then hepatitis C is not your problem anymore,” Laufer said. “But given that there are other methodologies for managing hepatitis C that are not curing it and that are cheaper, insurance typically will not cover [Sovaldi]. And so we’ve got this incredible technology and it’s sitting on the shelf except for people who are ridiculously wealthy.”

So Four Thieves Vinegar Collective set out to teach people how to make their own version of Sovaldi. Chemists at the collective thought the DIY version would cost about $300 for the entire course of medication, or about $3.57 per pill. But they were wrong.

“It’s actually just a little under $70 (83 cents per pill), which just kind of blew my mind when they finally showed me the results,” Laufer said. “I was like, can we do the math here again?”

So, the laws should be changed and every pharma exec, board members and so on who prices like this should be locked up for life.

Next, all laws need to be changed to end the doctrine that only profit maximization for shareholders matters.

Third, pharma needs to move a bounty system. According to WHO there are 58 million people with Hep C around the world. Put up a bounty of 1,000 times that: 58 billion, for a cure, minus the cost per cure. Research costs can also be added to the bounty, once the cure is certified, not before. A consortium of rich governments can create the bounty funds, with poorer countries allowed in for free. A UN org reporting only to the general assembly should probably administer it.

Fourth, end pharma patents. All of them. All information, including manufacturing information is shared.

Fifth: for all palliatives, profits must be capped at 5% max.

Sixth: move most research to government and non-profits. Real non-profits, none of the Chat-GPT nonsense.

Seventh: remove further monetary incentives to just research forever: everyone involved is capped at a salary of 2xmedian income in the G-20 or something similar. You want the big pay off? You have to actually cure the disease.

Eighth: Force scientists and technicians to be “in on the bounty.” Some sort of fairly even split between people who worked on the cure.

There are other actions which should be taken, but these are the basics. Right now we aren’t curing people we can, and companies prefer palliatives to cures because they can charge until the person dies. We need to emphasize cures and make sure no one gets rich selling palliatives.

In the meantime the right to make your own medicines needs to be 100% legal and supported.

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Why The Left Taking Over The Republican Party Is Even Harder Than Taking Over The Democratic Party

By Ian Welsh

On September 5, 2024

31 Comments

By Swamp Yankee

(Ian–this is another elevated comment. I thought (and think) it’s an excellent one, informed by life experience. In general the quality of comments lately has impressed me.)

For those advising an attempt to take over the Republican Party. I think candidly that that is even less likely than taking over the Democratic Party.

I live in, and am involved in local politics and environmental activism in, a region that, despite being in a very Blue State, is quite conservative, with some of the towns around here reliably voting for GOP candidates — in Massachusetts — at rates above 60 and 70% (other towns are more reliably Democratic, these differences are fascinating at a sociological level, and quite complicated).

I am in coalition with these conservatives on a critical important local issue where 90 percent of the populace agrees that a corporation is lawless and must be stopped. I grew up with some of them, and know them well, we are of the same small communities (this is also true of the liberals, the left, the non-engaged, the right-wing and left-wing online street fighters, many more — these are smaller towns for Massachusetts, with one exception).

Despite this coalition, or rather because of it, and dealing with them, I think it’s unlikely they are going to be a good candidate for entryism. For one thing, they are viscerally and often just off the wall in their hardcore anti-Communism and 1950s-era redbaiting.

The other thing is that they have as kind of their Ur-Principle the idea that Private Property Is Sacred (this is, as Ur-Principles so often are, is frequently and seemingly without dissonance contradicted by them in the actual practice of their lives). They do not distinguish between the person owning a small cottage and Elon Musk; for them, private property is private property.

A third factor is that fifty years of talk radio, cable news, and now Facebook and other social media have marinated them in a culture of querulous suspicion and anti-reason; they fall for just lunatic conspiracy stuff, and while some of them are just naturally intelligent enough that they fight through this and make real contributions to our local governments, it’s still their native idiom, if that makes sense (like, believing basically every election is stolen; despite the minimizing of certain interlocutors of Trump’s misdeeds, this is a real one, this baseless accusation of fraudulent or stolen elections — this is a corrosive rhetorical move, and one that makes the actual practical life of our bodies politic in the real world more difficult.
Nor is Russiagate apposite here; Russiagate was nonsense, but Hillary Clinton, of whom I am not a fan, did show up to Trump’s 2017 Inauguration; she did acknowledge the vote totals were correct, and that she legitimately lost in the electoral college; this is _categorically_ different than Trump’s conduct in 2020-21).

A fourth factor: they genuinely dislike Difference and a pluralistic and open society; many of them are openly bigoted towards LGBTQ people. We had a Klan presence here in southeastern Massachusetts into the 1950s, and that impulse didn’t just go away. Indeed, my own Town’s High School, from which I graduated 20+ years ago, had a significant problem with what can only be described as anti-Semitic and Nazi-sympathizing public behavior by the football team. We have the local evangelical holy rollers running for School Committee (in Plymouth, Mass.) talking about banning books, in just total disregard for the U.S. and Mass. Constitutions.

They are also obsessed with culture war nonsense. Just, like, obsessed.

The thing I should emphasize: the conservatives are often extremely intelligent, and will see any kind of entryist from a mile away. I should also note I actually quite like many of them at a personal level; I don’t think they are bad people (some are, but not most), just misguided and wrong on many issues (sometimes, they are right, and I take coalition with them where it presents itself; this is natural in the parliamentary environment of Town Meeting societies).

Finally, Republicans have their own Machine which is even worse than the Democratic Machine, which at least has to pretend to some notion of human well-being. The GOP Machine in my experience down here are connected to local business elites and are also canny, and just like, wildly amoral, and won’t give up the party without a fight.

So, taken together, and played out across the country, I think it will be extremely difficult to engage in any kind of Left entryist strategy in the Republican Party.

My own strategy is premised on local politics — I live in a directly democratic Town Meeting form of government, and if I want to write a statute for the Town, I can get myself and nine other inhabitants of the Town together and put it before the Annual Town Meeting. That’s a lot of power, so I exercise what power I am able to in order to advance the goals of the Commonwealth thought that guided the authors of the Massachusetts Constitution, and, at a larger level, the American Revolution.

Types Of Civilization Collapse

By Ian Welsh

On September 4, 2024

17 Comments

We’ve had a couple posts recently on collapse. One, by Nate Wilcox, on the possibility of civil war and a another by commenter Grim Jim on just how many people would die in a civilization collapse.

Let’s take a look at the dimensions of collapse.

First is slow vs. fast. John Michael Greer tends to push slow, though his position is more nuanced than that. In the slow collapse things just keep getting shittier, with, perhaps, some break points. (If there’s a civil war, there’s a big jump in crap.) In this model it’s hard to say exactly when the collapse happens. When did the Western Roman Empire fall? There are easily half a dozen possible dates one could argue for, and that’s a collapse complete with a barbarian invasion.

In general expect countries which can feed and fuel themselves to be in the slow collapse bucket, though there’ll be exceptions, especially if they can’t defend themselves. Canada is one of those, if it isn’t invaded by America, which it probably will be. Russia is also in it, if they don’t wind up in a nuclear war.

Remember that modern agriculture will be affected by collapse: heavy use of fertilizer, pesticides and oils makes it vulnerable. So if a country appears to have a massive surplus, well, it may not. When AMOC ends and Europe loses ten degrees celcius overnight, they may as well.

The same here is true of water: when glaciers finish melting and most snow pack is gone, there’s going to be a lot less of it. So look at where the surplus food and water is coming from.

Second is distribution by time and place. Everyone likes to quote Gibson, “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” Some countries have already collapsed. Sri Lanka, for example. Others are further along the path: in the first world, Britain’s a good example. Within countries some places collapse first: Northern England is notably a hole. Catholic Belfast has never not been poor, and so on.

In the US there are places where we can be sure of regional collapse—as Sean-Paul pointed out to me, the Texas triangle is just going to run out of water in a couple decades. The American Southwest is doomed for pretty much the same reason.

As for that, the homelessness epidemic shows that for many Americans, the collapse is already here.

Internationally Bangladesh will be one of the first high-population countries to collapse. Among major countries, India will be one of the first. The Europeans can go any time when the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Current (AMOC) ends: and that’s due sometime in the next 50 years, as a “when not if” proposition. I don’t know Africa well enough, but obviously multiple countries there are already close to collapse and the only thin which could put that off would be concerted efforts by China (financially and developmentally) and Russia (food and resource aid.)

China’s a hard one to predict: they have huge climate change vulnerabilities, especially to flooding in the North, heat in the North and water in general. On the other hand, if they play it smart they have the world’s industrial base and the best chance of adaptation and mitigation, especially due to their alliance with Russia, which will keep them in resources and food longer than otherwise. Since Russia mutually benefits, they’ll keep the Chinese topped up as a priority.

Which leads to the bigger point: when food starts getting scarce countries will stop exporting, and this is when food importing countries will start real collapse (and food riots, and civil war.)

As for water scarcity, that’s when you’ll get water wars.

And both will exacerbate any internal tensions. When there’s not enough to eat or drink, the “other” whoever that is, is likely to get it in the neck. Countries with significant internal rifts, like India between Hindus and Muslims/High and Low-Caste will see incredible violence and mass murder of minorities. Whether that also describes America is a question much debated, but at the least there will be a vast increase in discrimination and at the worst purges or even civil war.

In Europe there will be huge backlashes against visible minorities, especially Muslim ones and perhaps also Jews, as they are tarred with genocide and accusations of controlling governments.

I would suggest to expect a general pattern of slow decline punctuated by cliff-drops. Things will slowly get shittier, then suddenly get a lot shittier. To give a small example, in Ontario where I live, before Covid you could expect to be seen in an emergency department within a couple hours and to get an MRI or CT scan within a couple months, often a few weeks. Now it takes ten to twelve hours to be seen in an emergency (unless you’re obviously bleeding out or can’t breathe) and imaging tests can take six to nine months.

In collapse some foods (starting with imported ones) will go from widely available to just not on the shelf. Medicines which are imported will stop being available, again in slow decline then suddenly, almost impossible to find.

Slow, then precipitous, then slow, then precipitous.

The general prescription here, for small groups and individuals is to make yourself as independent of the grid as possible, to figure out how to grow climate controlled food, and to find a water source. Even in slow collapse models there will be large numbers of brownouts, water will be shitty if available (hello England) and so on. If you can’t handle at least a few hours or days off-grid, life will be miserable.

Collapse isn’t a disaster movie, though there are parts of it that are. (All the people made homeless by wildfires know this, and there will be coastal inundations). Rather it’s a series of long slide, punctuated by catastrophes

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Britain Is Arresting Prominent Pro-Palestinian Activists

By Ian Welsh

On September 2, 2024

24 Comments

For “supporting a proscribed organization”. Aka. Hamas. The arrests are by counter-terrorism police.

Sarah Wilkinson’s arrest:

The police came to her house just before 7.30am. 12 of them in total, some of them in plain clothes from the counter terrorism police. They said she was under arrest for “content that she has posted online.” Her house is being raided & they have seized all her electronic devices.

Others who have been arrested include Richard Barnard, Richard Medhurst and Craig Murray.

This is the law they are being charged under:

I have long opposed all “proscribed organization laws.” They destroy freedom of association and freedom of speech. In the US RICO is the primary culprit, justified by being used to go after the Mafia, but they’re all bad and they all wind up being misused. If someone commits an actual crime they should be charged, but freedom of association is fundamental and should not be abridged. RICO should be unconstitutional, but somehow isn’t. As for Britain, well, the laws on the books are draconian but were often not enforced.

Starmer, Britain’s PM, has always treated his job as crushing the left. This was clear when he was leader of the opposition and purged the party of the left, and now he’s done something even the Conservatives did not do, and done it to protect a genocide. When you look at the austerity politics his government is enforcing, it’s clear that he’s actually slightly worse than the Conservatives, which is quite the achievement. A monster in all regards.

In general the West, and especially Europe, is cracking down on freedom of speech. Strong, confident elites don’t need to do this. “Say what you want, it doesn’t matter” is how they think and feel, and they know it’s better to have people shooting off their mouths than acting.

But weak elites; scared elites; crack down.

A lot of this comes down “when times are good, people talk but rarely do.” In the best of times, most people fundamentally support the system. They want changes, yes, but they aren’t actually a threat to elites. But life in Britain has been getting worse for over forty years now and Corbyn scared the Labour establishment: he should never have been able to be elected leader and he should never have come within a hair of winning his first election.

So crush, crush away. Make examples of people.

The same is true of France’s arrest of the CEO of Telegram. This is all about instilling fear. Stay within the lines or we’ll crush you.

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