Future revolutions

Up to WW2 Marx's analysis of BB economies was confirmed repeatedly. All BB economies produced wealth for a few and constant crises of unemployment - "solved" by wars - for the masses. One crisis was "solved" by WW1. The worst crisis began with the collapse of the USA's share-market “bubble” in 1929. It was the worst world-wide economic crisis of BB. In 1933 - the low point of this crisis - 25% of Americans seeking work could not find a job. In Germany 33% of the workforce could not find work either. Many firms went bankrupt. US President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” policy built projects financed by his government. Some called it "Socialism". It revived hope but not the economy. Only arms production for WW2 reduced USA's - and Germany's - unemployment below 10%, reviving their economies.

Rivalry between British and the German BBs was the main cause of WW1. In 1900 Germany, the world's second industrial power, began to build a war navy to acquire colonies overseas as a source for cheap raw materials and as a protected market for its industrial goods. British BB - world's leading industrial and colonial power - opposed this. Rivalry between British BB and German BB - not assassination of an Austrian Prince - caused WW1. Germany was defeated but Britain was weakened and lost its leadership of world BB economy to the USA which became the world's richest BB regime by selling goods to Europe during WW1, (joining the war 32 months after it began and 18 before it ended). After WW1 the US Dollar replaced the British Pound as currency of international trade and US BB became leader of world BB.
Another outcome of WW1 was Lenin's revolution in Russia (October 1917). This war and revolution confirmed Marx's prediction that BB economies must lead to crises, wars and revolutions. This convinced many that only a State-owned, planned, economy can free humanity from economic chaos, and wars.
Marx saw society’s ownership of the economy as an inevitable phase in the evolution of humanity. Socialized economies would replace BB economies just as the city merchants' economy replaced the feudal landlords' economy 300 years earlier. Marx did not think that the BB State could control the chaos caused by BB. The first to propose this was British economist J.M. Keynes. In 1936 he suggested to start state-paid economic projects, and state-regulated Bank interest, to soften crises cause by BB greed. State created jobs and incomes boost demand, sales, business, and save BB economies from excessive unemployment and from Socialist revolutions .During the worst crisis of the US economy (1929-1942) US President Roosevelt introduced his “New Deal” policy (1933-1937) by state-paid projects providing work for the unemployed. The writer H.G. Wells said: “The ‘New Deal’ is plainly an attempt to achieve a working socialism and avert a social collapse in America. It is extraordinarily parallel to the successive 'policies' and 'Plans' of the Russian experiment.  Americans shirk the word 'socialism', but what else can one call it?” Wells exaggerated. The "New Deal" did not aim to turn the US BB economy into a state-owned, planned, economy, let alone one based on economic equality.

It created government-paid jobs, and incomes, to help the BB economy to recover.

The "New Deal" did not end the 1930s "depression" but reduced misery of some unemployed by creating jobs in government-paid projects. This revived not the economy but the hope that the economy will recover. Paying unemployment benefits kept many unemployed from starvation - and revolution. After WW2 many BB economies accepted Keynes's ideas and introduced social-security schemes and control of competition and interest rates. After rebuilding Europe from destruction caused by WW2, BB economies invented consumerism: consumption to satisfy invented needs rather than natural needs. New, artificial, needs are constantly created by a vast advertising industry to keep the economy going. In 1940 few knew about TV but by the 1970s B/W TV sets could be picked up in garbage dumps as people craved Colour TV. This now happens to clothing, cars, computers, entertainment, food, medicines, and telephones. BB economy nowadays constantly invents new needs and its advertisers seduce the public to buy more and more. We live in the era of Invented Needs. We suddenly "need" things we never knew about a decade ago. Invented needs are satisfied by using goods with built-in obsolescence. This wasteful practice prolongs life of a chaotic economy created by BB to maximize private profits and power, even if this damages most people's health, future generations' health, and pollutes the planet. Fighting wars to sell opium (see p. 153) and opposing the electric car (EV1) produced by GM in 1996 - and scrapped in 2005 - are typical examples..

Marx's prediction that a BB economy must cause economic chaos and crisis is confirmed daily but his belief that this must lead to a collapse of BB economy and hence to war and revolution, is dated. This scenario is possible but not inevitable. State intervention in the economy can prevent collapse of BB economies. It can create employment by state-paid projects. It can control finance.

Marx recommended socialized and planned economies, creating economic equality, benefiting all in society according to the principle: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Marxists set up states with State-run economies providing guaranteed employment, state-paid housing, healthcare, education, and decent pensions to all. But they had flaws. It was difficult to foresee them but the Russian Anarchist Bakunin had already warned in 1872: " In the People's State of Marx there will be, we are told, no privileged class at all. All will be equal, not only from the judicial and political point of view but from the economic point of view. At least, that is what is promised. . . There will therefore be no longer any privileged class, but there will be a government and, note this well, an extremely complex government, which will not content itself with governing and administering the masses politically, as all governments do today, but which will also administer them economically, concentrating in its own hands the production and the just division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organization and direction of commerce, finally the application of capital to production by the only banker, the State. All this will demand an immense knowledge and many "heads overflowing with brains" in this government. It will be the reign of the scientific experts, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars, and society will be divided into a minority ruling in the name of knowledge, and an immense, ignorant, majority. And then, woe betide the mass of the ignorant ones. Such a regime will not fail to arouse very considerable discontent in this mass and in order to keep it in check the enlightened and liberating government of Marx will have need of a not less considerable armed force. For the government must be strong says Engels, to maintain order among these millions of illiterates whose brutal uprising would be capable of destroying and overthrowing everything, even a government directed by heads overflowing with brains…behind all the democratic and socialistic phrases and promises of Marx's programme, there is to be found in his State all that constitutes the true despotic and brutal nature of all States, whatever may be the form of their government ". (See the Anarchist Archive on the Internet) Bakunin's prediction was confirmed in all BG states created by Marxists in different places and circumstances. All BG economies were run by Party-appointed officials. Most citizens could not participate in shaping BG societies. Policies could not be criticized. Critics were seen as class-enemies. Rule by officials and oppression by BG state was not a deviation from Marx’s program but a structural feature. All BG states were run by Party appointed officials, all banned criticism. and all were backed by a secret police that was above the law.

Marx's view that the economy must be run by society to benefit all remains valid, but how should this be done? His valid diagnosis prescribed a cure with side-effects worse than the disease. All societies created by Marxists were divided into three strata: 1) A few Party leaders who decide all policies. 2) Party-appointed officials running the State, the economy, and society. 3) 99.99% of all citizens with no right to decide - or criticize - any policy yet forced to obey all. All officials were appointed by the Party. It was a "Party-Officials state". Most BG states collapsed between 1989 and 1991. In all of them only one party ruled. Its leaders ran the state, the economy, and society. All criticism - even within the ruling party - was banned. In China the Party split into two groups fighting each other (1966-1976). Called "Cultural revolution" it was a campaign of dogmatists against pragmatists. In BG - Politics dominate economics. In BB - economics dominate politics. Both BB and BG dominate society. In BG Party leaders also decide what books, plays, films, paintings, and music citizens are allowed to see or hear. All BG leaders and officials - are state employees. They do not own a factory, land, houses, shops, shares, or a bank account. They can - and often are - dismissed. They are employees appointed by the Party. BG society was an owner-less society with conflicts about roles. This blinded Marxists since Marx defined “class” by what people own. His view that “politics are struggles between classes” was based on ownership, not on roles. He gave no hint how to resolve conflicts about roles in the family - or in the state. Instead of helping the masses oppressed by BG to fight oppression Marxists justified BG oppression as “class-struggle against class enemies”. This was valid before victory in civil war (1921) but not after. “Lenin, Trotsky and Bukharin, the three chief thinkers of the regime - when it was still allowed to think - could not agree as to its definition. Lenin preferred: “State Capitalism” the others -“State Socialism” (Souvarine, “Stalin” N.Y.1939, p. 673). Most Marxists defined BG as “Socialism”, a few - as "Degenerated Workers' State" or "Bureaucratic Collectivism". This reveals the Marxists’ inability to grasp the nature of BG societies. Their economy was run by a plan and not by a market so it was not Capitalism. BG inner conflicts were about power, not about profits, Calling BG a "Degenerated worker's State" ignores the fact that it never had a pre-degenerate phase. It was born “Degenerate” when Lenin wrested power from the Workers and Soldiers Councils in October 1917 (see p. 56-57) and banned all other revolutionary parties (and factions in his own party). He killed the Kronstadt sailors who protested and banned the "Workers opposition" (1921) (see p. 63-65). Trotskyites adored Lenin and blamed only Stalin for "degeneration". They too insisted on rule by Party officials, not by employees’ councils. They proposed to overcome “Degeneration” by replacing Stalinist leaders by Trotskyite ones. They rejected rule by employees’ councils, free unions and employees' management of industry. Lenin forbade criticism of his party’s policies and politicians. He insisted all managers be appointed by his Party. This caused workers’ apathy - and regime's coercion. After 1990 most BG states became BB states yet workers rejoiced. BG states like China, Cuba, Vietnam, and North-Korea, face a similar fate. Most former citizens of BG states refuse to resurrect them despite all economic benefits they conferred on them. Marxists see politics as motivated by economics. They were surprised by the General strike in France (1968), by "Women's Liberation" in the 1970s, by Iran’s Islamic revolution (1979) and by the collapse of the USSR (1991) which were not preceded by economic crises. Marx's view that technology revolutions produce political revolutions is valid but Marxists do not see that it applies to today’s electronic communications’ revolution. Industrialisation revolutionized manual work. It made public control of the economy plausible and economic equality possible. Lenin tried to implement it. He created a "Party Officials State" posing as a "Workers State" where all were employees. No one owned a business. Marxists thought this will abolish exploitation and oppression. It didn’t. Officials oppressed critics by labelling them “class-enemies”. In 1939 Trotsky wrote: "If the world proletariat should actually prove incapable of fulfilling the mission placed upon it by the course of history, nothing else would remain except openly to recognize that the socialist program based on the internal contradictions of capitalist society, ended as a Utopia. It is self evident that a new “minimum” program would be required for defending the interests of the slaves of the totalitarian bureaucratic society". [see Trotsky Archive on the Internet]. BG bred oppression and corruption. In Europe it collapsed in 1991 causing many to believe there is no alternative to BB states. After BG’s failure as an alternative to BB many see no new alternative. Yet Electronic communications make rule by all citizens possible. Millions can vote and be counted in minutes. Mobile phones and the Internet simplify administration, make information available to all, unmask the mystique of management and de-legitimize division of society into managers and managed. They render rule by representatives obsolete and provide means to set up a post-parliamentary direct-democracy. Today’s "new minimum program" is the post-parliamentary direct-democracy where all citizens can propose, debate - and vote - on all issues of society. Only political equality can provide economic security, reduce social strife and introduce more freedom than did any other regime in history.

7. WW1 and Lenin's revolution

Anyone travelling through Britain or France will notice in the central square of every small town a monument commemorating the sons of this community killed in WW1 and WW2. Their names are listed. The list of WW1 is much longer than that of WW2. Some 20 million soldiers died in WW1, this makes an average of 13,000 dead during every day of that war (from August 1914 to November 1918).

Britain and France lost many more soldiers in WW1 than in WW2.

In the battle of the Somme (July 1916) the British alone had 57,470 casualties on the first day, of which 19,240 died. The battle lasted 5 months and ended in a draw.

No side won. The final count of British casualties in this battle amounted to 400,000.

This exceeds the total number of British casualties in WW2.

In the battle of Chemin-Des-Dammes in April 1917, despite British and French artillery shelling German trenches non-stop a whole week before the attack, British casualties in the first day were 60,000. One third died. The battle ended in a draw..
In the battle of Verdun (1916) half a million French soldiers - and half a million Germans - died. All battles ended in a draw. The machine gun confounded all conservative generals - and tactics. Generals ordered thousands of soldiers to advance in open fields towards enemy machine-guns. Most soldiers were killed before they reached the enemy. The cavalry was annihilated. The war became static - in trenches.
Most history books describe WW1, the worst war in history till 1914, as caused by the assassination of the Austrian Crown Prince in Sarajevo. This triggered off the war, but it was not what caused it. War is like a volcanic eruption. Any accidental factor can initiate it but without the accumulation of lava no accident will cause an eruption. The 'lava' that caused WW1 was the rivalry between British and German BBs over war navies. Britain, the world's first industrial power, built the world's largest Navy with steam-driven, steel-body, “Dread-nought” battleships. This enabled it to "Rule the waves", dominate world trade - and colonize a quarter of the planet. Germany, the second largest industrial power, had no colonies so it began to build its own “Dread-noughts”. Kaiser Wilhelm II declared in 1892 “Our future lies on the water. The trident must be in our hands”. This challenged Britain's supremacy. Bismarck, the Chancellor who united Germany feared war with Britain and desisted from building a modern Navy but in 1890 Kaiser Wilhelm sacked him. In 1898 Bismarck visited the new German battleships in the port of Kiel and said: "This will cause a war with Britain. In 20 years time all I built will lie in ruins". In 1918 he was proved right.
In the 19^th century Britain was the world's first - and leading - industrial Power. At that time - before airplanes were invented - battleships ruled the oceans - and world trade. Britain had the only steam driven, steel bodied, modern, navy, and ruled the seas and colonies consisting of one quarter of the globe but "Germany was a rapidly growing industrial nation and her politicians began to talk the same way. If prosperity came from colonies and a Navy why shouldn't Germany have them too? What about Germany's place in the sun? The Kaiser had grandiose ideas of his own importance in the world as the head of a Great Power. Germany had defeated France in the 1870 war and the German military caste had immense power and prestige. In Germany there had been a good deal of sympathy with the Boers [defeated by the British in the 1899-1902 Boer war in South Africa .A.O.] The Kaiser was proud of his navy. A bigger navy was popular with shipbuilders and arms manufacturers and more ships for the German navy meant more profits for Krupps and the arms manufacturers. ("Winston Churchill in War and Peace" by Emrys Hughes, Unity publishing, Glasgow 1950. p. 57)

The man who pushed Germany's naval arms race was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz.

". . . Tirpitz was bent on creating a Dreadnought battle fleet in the shortest time. With three battleships and one battle cruiser to be laid down each year from 1908 to 1911, and four Dreadnought battleships already started - two in July, two in August, that year [1907.A.O.] he would have thirteen Dreadnought battleships by 1913 - or earlier if construction was pushed through fast. As British programs provided for only twelve Dreadnoughts by late 1912, the threat was clear. What also became clear was that whereas Tirpitz's 1900 Navy Law had provided for a total of thirty-eight battleships and twenty large armoured cruisers, the Novelle translated this into fifty-eight Dreadnought, for the new battle cruisers were regarded as capital ships. . . . 'The dominant idea' the "Daily Mail" wrote (in 25.11.1907) 'is to build a fleet which shall fulfil the hopes and desires of the Pan-Germans and be mightier than the mightiest Navy in the world'. The Paris paper "Aurore" commented: "The announcement of the formidable increase of the fleet undertaken by the German Bundesrat is a curious commentary on the visit just paid by the Kaiser to his uncle King Edward VII . . . the expose of the new naval programme of the Empire shows that the strength of the German Navy will be doubled between 1907 and 1914. There can be no doubt that this formidable fleet, the construction of which is being pursued with a tenacity that one cannot help admiring, is directed mainly against England." ('The Times' 22.11.1907) (quoted in "The Great Naval race" [Anglo-German Naval Rivalry between 1900-1914] by Peter Radfield, Birlinn, Edinburgh 2005 p. 173) What was Britain's response? Admiral Sir John Fisher, who modernized the British Navy, declared in 1907:”The only thing in the world Britain has to fear is Germany”.
"With Germany increasing her naval shipbuilding the (British) Admiralty was able to point this out as justification for more big ships. The Admirals wanted more Dreadnoughts so did the naval vested interests, the naval shipbuilders and the big armament firms. The tension between the two countries was reflected in the DAILY MAIL campaign on "The German Menace". In the cabinet McKenna pleaded for a big naval building campaign and more Dreadnoughts. Supporting him was the Liberal imperialist group. At the Foreign Office Sir Edward Grey was negotiating treaties and understandings with France and Tsarist Russia. Europe was being divided into two armed camps." ("Winston Churchill in War and Peace" by Emrys Hughes, Unity publishing, Glasgow 1950. p. 57) Grey signed military treaties with Russia and France in 1907. Their purpose was to threaten Germany with war on TWO fronts - against Russia in the east, and against France in the west - if she waged war against Britain. This did not deter Germany from building a huge navy. It accelerated the process leading to war.

In his biography of Winston Churchill the historian Rene Kraus wrote: "late in October (1911) the Prime Minister invited his Home Secretary to a secret rendezvous "somewhere in Scotland". Asquith disclosed that war with Germany was inevitable. It was probable that the Kaiser would strike at England first, since the island had no strong army. "We have only the Navy" the Prime Minister concluded. "It is our only hope". "Then, after a short pause, he asked the best man in his cabinet "Would you like to go to the Admiralty?" "Indeed I would" Churchill replied quietly" ("Winston Churchill in the mirror" by René Kraus, Dutton NY. 1944 p.72)

After 1911 Asquith's Liberal government embarked upon a process of rearming the Royal Navy, a task necessitated by Germany's big investment in its naval forces. In order to finance this rearmament, Asquith - and his Chancellor, David Lloyd George - enacted a radical Budget that increased land taxes.

In August 13, 1911, Churchill sent the Cabinet a memorandum outlining his ideas on British strategy in a European war: Its opening sentence said: "The following notes have been written on the assumption … that a decision has been arrived at to employ a British military force on the continent of Europe. It does not prejudge that decision in any way. It is assumed that an alliance exists between Great Britain, France, and Russia, and that these powers are attacked by Germany and Austria." ("Winston Churchill in war and Peace" by Emrys Hughes, Unity Press, Glasgow 1950. p.64)

The milestones of the process generating WW1 are: