What Do We Want? Concrete Fairness! When Do We Want It? Now!
On 13th July, 1985, the rock extravaganza Live Aid took place simultaneously at London's Wembley Arena and Philadelphia's JFK Stadium. The two key organisers of the event, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure were motivated by the famine at the time in Ethiopia. The event according to news reports the following day raised between £35 and £50 million. While undoubtedly saving thousands of lives in the immediate term, Live Aid ultimately failed to make any fundamental, long-term difference to the lives of millions of Ethiopians, despite many passionate appeals by Mr. Geldof himself to people's ideas of justice, fairness, human rights and such like. Writing in 2005 on the 20th anniversary of the event, Tracy McVeigh puts it plain enough. "The 1984 famine that spawned Live Aid saw five million Ethiopians needing emergency food aid. This year the estimate is 8.9 million. In the last drought, in 2003, aid agencies fed 13 million" (Mcveigh, 2005, online). Perhaps some of the Ethiopian NGO's at the time of Live Aid got more than they bargained for thanks to the influential control of the 'Derg military junta.' On 2nd July 2005, Live 8 it was this time, that took place in even more countries across the developed world. The arranged concerts, with the exception of one in South Africa, were exclusively in G 8 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and USA) hence the title. Once again, a plethora of musicians, past and present gave their services 'free' to this undoubtedly noble cause. The purpose this time, as the main organiser (once again) Bob Geldof tirelessly reminded millions of people in the buildup to the day itself, was broader than in 1984, namely to raise both money and awareness of global poverty and general human suffering, so evident across much of the contemporary African continent in recent decades. In so doing, it was hoped that such suffering might then be practically addressed and in a massive, co-ordinated way. The date of the multi-venue event was timed to place the maximum political pressure on world leaders attending the G 8 summit in Scotland. Live 8 too however, arguably failed in its stated intentions. "The first full-scale audit of how Britain and its G 8 partners have performed on their promises to the world's poor since last year's Gleneagles summit has revealed that rich countries are failing to meet almost all the targets they set themselves. A year after billions watched last summer's Live 8 concerts, the report, published by Data (Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa) - the organisation set up by Bob Geldof and the U2 singer Bono - said the industrialised countries had delivered on only one of their three priorities, debt relief...They were 'completely off track' on trade and were doing less than half of what was needed on aid. On current trends, more than 1.5 million people would be deprived of treatment for HIV/Aids by 2010" (Guardian, 2006, online). Nothing it would seem is easier, than to commit oneself to an idea. Nigerian musician Femi Kuti for me, sums up the entire Live 8 phenomenon. "I didn't want to do Live 8. I mean, how many concerts are they going to do? ... The issue is raised and then it disappears down the drain. They (the organisers) feel good about themselves and feel somehow they've contributed" (Socialist Worker, 2007, online). Why did Live Aid and Live 8 so spectacularly fail? The answer, I believe, is located in the very nature of the arguments put forward by those associated with the said events. The arguments in question, were in essence distributional, demanding as they did a more equal, just division of globally produced wealth. Yet despite raising significant sums of money and no doubt saving lives in the process, little seems to change in a fundamental sense. I believe this is because such appeals are essentially, metaphysical by which I mean reasoning which thinks of things in abstraction from their concrete, material conditions and / or their change and development. The unstated assumption underpinning all arguments put forward by those involved in Live Aid and Live 8 is the belief that ideas ultimately determine the way we live. This is to overlook both the objective source of ideas, as well as the objective likelihood as to whether or not ideas are realistically attainable and applicable in practice. Thus, if some are currently demanding greater economic parity while others resist to varying degrees, this does not merely reflect a contradiction of concepts. Rather, it reflects an expression of the fact that contradictions exist in society, outside and independent of anyone's mind. Similarly, the fact that many people keep struggling for greater economic parity yet meet with little or no success, reflects the fact that the ideas they seek to realise are, in reality, unattainable at this present time. This approach implies that all those who strive for greater fairness and justice in society, (of which I am one) must pay the utmost attention not simply to their own ideas and those of their opponents, important though these may be. No, above all, we must pay attention to the material conditions functioning both to sustain such ideological contradiction and to prevent the realisation of more human(e) ideas in practice. More specifically, this means paying the utmost attention to the dominant mode of production. "The first historical act is...the production of material life...The first necessity therefore in any [social] theory...is to observe this fundamental fact...and to accord it its due importance" (Marx and Engels, 1940, p.16). Production, distribution, exchange and consumption of course, always assume definite, historically conditioned forms. "A definite production...determines a definite consumption, distribution and exchange as well as definite relations between these different moments" (Marx, 1978, p.236). Production is the starting point, consumption the end point. Distribution and exchange mediate the two. And while it is true that production itself, is influenced by the spheres of distribution, exchange and consumption, it is ultimately production which always assumes the predominant role. In short, without production there is nothing to distribute, exchange or consume. Given then, that capitalism is now the dominant mode of production encompassing much of the globe, it is necessary here to briefly sketch out its essence. Capitalism is defined by Teschke (2004, p.40) as being an historically conditioned mode of production which is..."based on a set of social property relations in which property-less direct producers are compelled to sell their labour-power (mental / physical capacities) to the owners of the means of production (capitalists) in return for wages...Both producers and capitalists are subjected to market competition." By virtue of their legal ownership of the various means of production, (machinery, land, buildings, raw materials, patented knowledge etc..) capitalists are able to appropriate all surplus value realised during the production process. Property-less working people, having nothing to sell other than their labour-power to the capitalists, continuously produce much more than is necessary to meet their own material and cultural needs and in the process of doing so, are paid less in wages / salaries than the social values they surrender. "Profits depend first and foremost on the ability of capitalists to extract surplus value from the production process: whatever the level of wages, the capitalists need to coerce labour to work over and beyond the labour time required to produce those wages" (Fine and Saad-Filho, 2004, p.68). Capitalist production is therefore not intended for direct use. To meet the growing material and cultural needs of all in society is not its aim. Instead, it is based on the production of commodities (use values) for profitable exchange, the money / market criteria ruling supreme. It is an interminable process, beginning with money and logically ending, all capitalists hope, with more money once their respective commodities have been sold at a profit. A topsy-turvy production process then, in which humans assume the role of means (things to be bought and used) while the appropriation of objects is the end good to which we must devote our lives. Logic dictates therefore, that in order to concretely transform the obvious wealth disparities associated with capitalist distribution, exchange and consumption, it is necessary above all, to set about theoretically criticising and subsequently physically transforming capitalist production relationships themselves. There is plenty of quantitative and qualitative evidence to support a theoretical critique of capitalism in the spirit here intended. For example, and as one might expect with an interminable economic process, capitalist competition embodies an internal dynamic for the ongoing concentration (productive capitals getting larger and larger) and centralisation (productive capitals becoming fewer and fewer) of wealth. Competing capitals are compelled under threat of ruin, to endlessly strive to cut their input costs (chiefly labour) and increase output costs in their anarchic struggle to outdo their competitors. This concentration and centralisation process, itself an excellent example of the principle that unequal and uneven wealth distribution in the form of accumulated profits is a product of specific production relations, has cut an historical path through myriad crises to reach a point today, in which a small number of giant monopolies now exercise fundamental control over the lives of millions upon millions of people. "Successive waves of bankruptcies, takeovers, mergers and nationalisations have reduced the number of major firms and increased the proportion of capital under their control" (Harman, 1999, p.33). One source for example, suggests that today, just "500 companies control 45% of the world's economy" (International Marxist Tendency, 2008, online). Similarly, it is estimated that the oil giant BP currently accounts for "11.5% of dividend payments to shareholders in the FTSE All-Share Index. When its oil rival Shell is included, the figure is more than 20%" (Guardian, 2009, p.22). Meanwhile, UK government figures for 2003 show that the "wealthiest 1 per cent owned approximately a fifth of the UK's marketable wealth" (Office for National Statistics, 2006, online). The uneven and unequal distribution of wealth is an intrinsic characteristic of capitalist production relations whether we consider profits or wages / salaries. To rid ourselves of this obvious and intensifying distributional disparity, it is pointless demanding a fairer and more just distribution of wealth while leaving untouched, the concrete circumstances that make such inequality and injustice inevitable. The only realistic, practical answer is to supplant capitalism. Western international aid and trade tells another kind of skewed story. If we consider aid first of all, Samuel Wangwe (2004) among others, clearly exposes the negative impact of Western sources of aid, specifically in relation to Tanzania over the past two decades. Bilateral aid is usually given by one or other rich capitalist state to the designated poor state, independently of other wealthy states. In this context, aid is generally offered in accordance with the priorities of the specific donor state involved. Moreover, the more a poor state's aid budget is made up of myriad individual donors, the greater the scope to guide its own domestic policy agenda. Up to the 1980's, Tanzania was drawing on more than 50 bilateral sources of overseas aid. However, from the 1980's onward, Wangwe suggests that rich donor states, and with the aid of capitalist institutions such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, gradually transformed bilateral aid donations into multilateral aid donations. This latter form might still be made up of many donors, but the aid itself is collectively delivered through a centralised institutional source such as the World Bank or IMF. Almost invariably under such circumstances, institutional conditions are attached before any aid or loan is forthcoming. Some of the conditions attached to multilateral aid offered to Tanzania through the IMF in the mid 1980s included policies "aimed at liberalising internal and external trade, unifying the exchange rate, reviving exports, stimulating domestic savings and restoring fiscal stability" (Wangwe, 2004, p.400). On February 1st, 2009, a meeting took place to discuss the issue of North - South debt. It reached a number of conclusions including the following: "[t]he South is still bleeding, with annual transfers amounting to nearly 400 billion dollars just in capital." "Parallel to this bleeding, a rapid increase in domestic public debts has been registered [in Southern countries]." "The rapid reduction in the price of strategic raw materials in the global market and the aggravation of conditions to refinance the external debt of Southern countries, together with new loans pressed upon Southern countries, ... announce a new debt crisis that threatens many Southern countries in the short-term." "The shocking abundance of liquidity released by the system's ruling countries differs from the insignificant 100 billion dollars applied in the past decade to attempt to solve the still pending debt crisis"... (The Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt, 2009, online) It is reasonable to conclude then, that Western institutions involved in the allocation of foreign aid donations to poorer nations, are constituted to benefit the interests of leading capitalist countries. Multilateral aid in particular, has served to draw progressively more and more subordinate countries (especially those on the African continent), into a shared Western social space of uneven and unequal international trade. Aid donations in this sense, are but one means of prizing open new exploitative, profit-seeking opportunities in politically subordinate countries. It is an act of giving, as one means of appropriating more wealth than the original amount advanced. Again here, to address this disparity of distribution and exchange, we need to challenge capitalist property relations themselves, rather than merely engage in a debate about abstract ideas of fairness and justice. Trade relations for their part are also necessarily weighted to meet the requirements of minority capitalist interests. One central capitalist theory associated with international trade between rich and poor nations is that of comparative advantage. This theory basically argues that a given country should specialise in what it does best in terms of production for export. So for example, if a poor country is 'naturally blessed' with myriad coffee plantations, then it should maximise its production of coffee while reducing production in less profitable areas. In short, poorer trading nations are effectively obliged to place all their 'tradable eggs' in one basket. As Mackintosh (2004) points out, large parts of the African continent are now dependent on the production and exportation of primary goods such as cocoa, coffee, tea and cotton. However, when a country becomes largely dependent on the exporting of highly specialised primary produce obvious problems arise. For should the terms of trade (ie. the ratio of export to import prices) unfavourably alter, then impoverishment is often the result. To varying degrees, this is what happened in some coffee-specialised African countries, when the market price of coffee beans subsequently tumbled. Between 1995 and 2000, export coffee prices in Tanzania fell by around 11 per cent, in Uganda by 31 per cent, in Malawi by 55 per cent and in Madagascar, by a whopping 77 per cent (Mackintosh, 2004, p. 55). Meanwhile, it has recently been argued that "[i]nternational trade ... can ... overwhelm ... [poorer] ... economies with unfair competition, unwanted corporate exploitation and damage to the environment ... Current negotiations on trade rules are power games that force poor countries into accepting policies that are good only for a handful of bigger countries and the commercial interests based there" (Make Poverty History, 2009, online). As with matters of aid donations then, rich world / poor world trade relations are intrinsically unequal, and largely benefit the wealthy. Failure to realise the necessity for reorganising the dominant pattern of socio-economic relationships, inevitably leads those who are rightly troubled by images of starving and suffering humans, nonetheless to place absolute political emphasis on economic reform - a fairer distribution of the world's wealth - which has no possibility of ever being realised to any meaningful extent, and little or else no political emphasis at all, on fundamental qualitative, economic transformation - the active, practical reorganisation of socio-economic property relations along lines of common, as opposed to private ownership. Qualitatively different production relations that actually could function to meet the material and cultural needs of the majority. Given there is no case in history in which a minority ruling class has willingly relinquished its grip on power, it is reasonable to conclude that this will also be the case with regards the ruling capitalist class. Indeed, because Bob Geldof poses no obvious ideological or practical threat to the established order, not only does the capitalist class permit his views to be freely aired in all media circles, they also saw fit to knight him! This is an obvious reflection of the fact that the ruling powers feel no threat whatsoever from the person or persons honoured. Of course, capitalists must someday come to realise that a common and planned social aim has far greater benefits for humanity as a whole than does a society governed by the natural laws of capitalistic, economic anarchy. But they will almost certainly be the last to admit this. It is first and foremost therefore, to the exploited masses that we must make our scientific case for change. Those people who are made to suffer daily by degrees, so that a minority can live like parasites on their backs. Of course, contradictions and irrationalities are daily piling up before working people's very eyes, causing them to naturally and spontaneously question the very order of things. For example here in Britain, the fact that bankers are paid millions of pounds in bonuses for destroying the economic fortunes of myriad countries, while millions of working people are evicted from their homes, (despite the bank now being state owned) having found themselves through no fault of their own, unable to repay the mortgage. Similarly, energy giants awarding huge bonuses and share dividends to a tiny clique of executives while simultaneously raising domestic gas and electricity bills and regardless of an increase in winter deaths. Or what of the fact that Britain is one of the richest countries on planet earth per capita head, and yet each year as a nation, we have to engage in what amounts to a charity whip-round, also known as 'Children in Need', as the only means of helping these desperate UK children. However, lacking a profound understanding as to the material causes of these kinds of anomalies, with no scientific philosophy to guide them in their evaluation of the social structure in realistic terms, the only things that the people in question will be aware of, are the puzzling and irrational effects which daily flow from their particular mode of social existence. For as long as this is the case, people are likely to remain under the influence of ruling class ideology, for the "class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that ... generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it" (Marx and Engels, 1940, p.39). In such circumstances, the people in question may easily be persuaded by politicians, leading intellectuals, academics and the like to embrace 'quick fix' theories which seek to explain myriad social ills, for example by blaming immigrants, or Muslims, or black people, or teenagers, or abstract ideas about a perceived lack of community cohesion etc....In short, they will continue to think, feel and act in broad accordance with the reality to-hand. A reality that naturally continues to foster ideas of individualism, animalistic greed, anarchic competitiveness and all the rest of it. Take for example the idea of 'social capital' as one measure of this suggested association between people's 'natural' consciousness and the capitalist economy. Social capital refers to people's perceptions both of the local communities in which they live, and of those who live in them. Here in Britain, the Office for National Statistics uses three broad categories - help each other, mixture, go their own way - as means of measuring UK social capital. "In 1984 the proportion...who perceived their neighbourhood was one in which 'people go their own way' or one where people 'help each other out' were broadly similar, roughly 40 per cent each. However, in 1992 there was a sharp increase in the proportion who perceived that people 'mostly go their own way', to 49 per cent (this probably reflected the ideological fallout of 1980's Thatcherism). At the same time there was a corresponding fall in the proportion who thought that most people 'help each other' to 31 per cent. This illustrates a possible decline in community cohesion. Since 1996 the proportion who perceive that people in their neighbourhood 'help each other' has risen slowly again to 36 per cent, while those where people are perceived to 'go their own way' remained stable" (Office for National Statistics, 2003, online) This kind of obvious, ongoing desire in the minds of many people here in Britain to think, feel and subsequently act in an utterly selfish, impersonal and individualist manner, is not ingrained in some kind of abstract, human nature. Neither has it anything to do with genetic determinism. It is simply an ideological consequence of a collectively uncritical (ie. non-scientific) mindset. The role of scientific social theory is to free up this paralysed thinking. To mobilise and organise more and more people to engage with the new tasks now facing society. To sum up then, production, distribution, exchange and consumption are thoroughly interconnected with production assuming the dominant, conditioning role. As we have seen, such processes under conditions of capitalism are unavoidably unequal and uneven. To address this inequality and unevenness, it is not sufficient to simply criticise ideas of distributional inequality in the abstract. Yes, empirical and theoretical criticism is important. But what is required above all, is nothing short of a material transformation of society. A transformation from relationships based on the private ownership of means of production, to relations based on the common ownership of means of production. A transformation from an exploitative, capitalistic society in which we are obliged to engage in an anarchic mutual exchange of commodities, to a society free from exploitation, in which we simply engage in a planned, mutual exchange of activities to meet one another's needs. Given that no exploiting class has ever willingly relinquished its minority rule, the exploited masses must be to the fore in this political struggle for practical change and for this task, they must be equipped with a revolutionary, scientific theory. A theory not simply intended to explain things as they are, but one intended as a guide to action. And the same applies to all those involved in Live 8. Phenomena like Live Aid and Live 8 are best regarded as spontaneous reactions to among other things, the now obvious inequalities of distribution which are endlessly produced on an ever greater scale under conditions of global, capitalist property relations. The noble intention of the majority of those involved, above all their collective concern for human suffering is beyond doubt. However, to truly inspire, organise and mobilise the millions who support such events, the organisers themselves must be educated. They must possess a conscious, scientific understanding of capitalist society. They must possess a scientific theory capable of guiding their own, and other people's practical efforts to build a more human society for all. Should this enlightened theoretical stage ever be achieved on a sufficient scale, (and capitalist social space is now ripe for such ideological and practical struggle), then the actual and widespread practical task of transforming capitalist property relations may well begin in earnest. REFERENCES: Fine, B. and Saad-Filho, A. (2004) Marx's Capital, London, Pluto Press. Guardian (2006) A year after Live 8, rich countries have failed to keep their promise, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2006/jun/30/internationalaidanddevelopment.g8 Guardian (2009) BP dividend cash pledge cheers British pension funds, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/feb/03/bp-russia-tnk-oil International Marxist Tendency (2008) The working class must not be left to pay for Wall Street mess, [Accessed online, January, 2009] Available at: http://www.marxist.com/working-class-not-to-pay-wall-street-mess.htm Mackintosh, M. (2004) Chapter 3 Gaining from trade? in Bromley, S. ,Mackintosh, M. ,Brown, W. ,and Wuyts, M. (eds) (2004) Making the International. Economic Interdependence and Political Order, Milton Keynes, The Open University. pp.33-73 Make Poverty History (2009) Trade Justice, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.makepovertyhistory.ca/en/the-issues/trade-justice Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1940) The German Ideology Parts I and III London, Lawrence and Wishart. Marx, K. (1978) The Grundrisse, in Tucker, R. (1978) The Marx - Engels Reader, New York - London, Norton & Company, pp.221-93. McVeigh, T. (2005) How We Failed to Lift Ethiopia's Curse, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-11-2005-71459.asp Office for National Statistics (2003) Social Capital, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at:http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=286 Office for National Statistics (2006) Share Of The Wealth, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=2 Socialist Worker (2007) Femi Kuti interview: We are not independent if Africa is still begging, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=10868 Teschke, B. (2004) Chapter 2 The origins and evolution of the European states-system, in Brown, W. , Bromley, S. and Athreye, S. (eds) (2004) Ordering the International. History, Change and Transformation, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp.21-65. The Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt (2009) Declaration of the Assembly of Movements fighting to overcome debt domination, [Accessed online, February, 2009] Available at: http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?article246 Wangwe, S. (2004) Chapter 12 The Politics of Autonomy and Sovereignty: Tanzania's Aid Relationship, in Bromley, S. ,Mackintosh, M. ,Brown, W. ,and Wuyts, M. (eds) (2004) Making the International. Economic Interdependence and Political Order, Milton Keynes, The Open University, pp. 379-410 Colin Baker BSc (Hons) February 2009
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