Our Stupid Species

by Alton C. Thompson / February 14th, 2025

In short:  Our species was not “born” stupid, but started to become so late in our   history.  It then started on a downward course, and will “soon” go extinct.[1]

We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis.[2]

Preface

January, 2025, was a busy month for me![3]  First, on January 6, I celebrated my 85th birthday—on what has come to be called Insurrection Day (because of the events of 2021 in support of Donald J. Trump).  Given that Trump supporters were trying to overthrow our government, I prefer to call it Treason Day!

Second, during my appointment with my nephrologist, on January 15, we jointly decided that it was time for me to begin dialysis, and the plan was to start on Monday, January 27.  Third, on Sunday, January 26, I started to have some intestinal problems, and they became serious enough for my wife to call an ambulance on Tuesday, January 28, and I was taken to St. Luke’s hospital in Milwaukee; after a wait of about 10 hours (!) I was admitted, assigned a room, then another room.  Fourth, while in the hospital, my intestinal problem was treated, and I received three treatments of dialysis, the last one on Wednesday, February 5, after which I was discharged.  My wonderful wife (of almost 59 years!) has been caring for me since, and I had my first dialysis treatment at a clinic that Friday, February 7, my wife driving me there.  While in the hospital, I started creating this paper “in my head,” and when I arrived home on the 7th started writing a little bit each day since, when able to do so,.  I completed a first draft on February 10.

*****

Our species—Homo sapiens—appeared on the scene about 270,000 years ago, and for most of our existence since then we have been foragers:[4]

The forager way of life is of major interest to anthropologists because dependence on wild food resources was the way humans acquired food for the vast stretch of human history.  Cross-cultural researchers focus on studying patterns across societies and try to answer questions such as:  What are recent hunter-gatherers generally like?  How do they differ from food producers?  How do hunter-gatherer societies vary and what may explain their variability?

As our ancestors spread across the globe, they encountered environmental differences, and they adapted to those differences in what they ate (e. g., whether or not they ate aquatic life), whether or not they wore clothes or created shelters for themselves, etc.  But they retained certain similarities as well.  For example, the late anthropologist Colin Turnbull [1924 – 1994] wrote this in 1983:

If we measure a culture’s worth by the longevity of its population, the sophistication of its technology, the material comforts it offers, then many primitive cultures have little to offer us, that is true.  But our study of the life cycle will show that in terms of a, conscious dedication to human relationships that are both affective and effective, the primitive is ahead of us all the way.  He is working at it at every stage of his life, from infancy to death, while playing just as much as while praying; whether at work or at home his life is governed by his conscious quest for social order.  Each individual learns this social consciousness as he grows up, and the lesson is constantly reinforced until the day he dies, and because of that social consciousness each individual is a person of worth and value and importance to society, also from the day of birth to the day of death.

In other words, each individual was “born to be good,”  was “good natured,” born to live by the principle “love thy neighbor” (!)

There’s also this interesting statement by the late anthropologist William E. H. Stanner [1905 – 1981][5] (p. 31) regarding the Aborigines in Australia:

The Aborigines have no gods, just or unjust, to adjudicate the world.  Not even by straining can one see in such culture-heroes as Baiame and Darumulum the true hint of a Yahveh, jealous, omniscient, and omnipotent.  The ethical insights are dim and somewhat coarse in texture.  One can find in them little trace, say, of the inverted pride, the self-scrutiny, and the consciousness of favour and destiny which characterised the early Jews.  A glimpse, but no truly poignant sense, of moral dualism; no notion of grace or redemption; no whisper of inner peace and reconcilement; no problems of worldly life to be solved only by a consummation of history; no heaven of reward or hell of punishment.  The blackfellow’s after-life is but a shadowy replica of worldly-life, so none flee to inner sanctuary to escape the world.  There are no prophets, saints, or illuminati.  There is a concept of goodness, but it lacks true scruple.  Men can become ritually unclean, but may be cleansed by a simple mechanism.  There is a moral law but, as in the beginning, men are both good and bad, and no one is racked by the knowledge.

Those of us USans[6] who were raised in Christianity may find it difficult to recognize that the concept of deity is not a universal one.  A fact that suggests that where that concept exists, it may have been invented there—or borrowed, with modifications, from a neighboring society.  With the concept functioning to explain why things exist and why they “behave” as they do.  We have been taught that things exist because a Being “out there” created them; it’s possible, however, is that we created god(s) rather than the other way around!

Or, it may be that God exists, but is a monster!  How else explain the fact that this omniscient/omni-present Being was aware that the Nazis were killing millions of Jews, but failed to use His omnipotence to stop the slaughter?!

*****

We humans have been foragers for over 99% of our existence; it should not, therefore be surprising to learn that we became “designed”[7] for that way of life; so that it’s the way of life that’s natural for us.

And of particular importance is the fact that we became designed for small-group living:[8]

Many of our problems seem traceable to Homo sapiens being a small-group animal, most comfortable in collections of under 150 people or so, the so-called Dunbar’s number.[[9]]  It was proposed by anthropologist Robin Dunbar based on studies of primate brain size and group size. That’s roughly the maximum size of most hunter-gatherer groups, as it is today of typical groups of colleagues, lengths of Christmas card lists, and so on.

From an empirical standpoint:

The fact that small-group living has become uncommon helps explain many of our problems today—including the likelihood that we are now headed for extinction!

A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.

And what adds to that certainty is the recent election of the clueless Donald J. (“drill baby drill”) Trump as our President!!  (More on the threat of our extinction later.)

*****

Let me pause for a moment here to say that I wish that I could say that “I can see clearly now ….”  But when we are born into a society, we learn to see through the “lens” provided to us by that society; what I am trying to do here is see through that lens—which is very difficult to achieve!  I must continue with that effort here, though!

*****

Agriculture began to replace foraging in some groups about 12,000 years ago, and that was most certainly our “worst mistake” as humans!!   For the new sedentary way of living associated with a dependence on agriculture fostered a growth in a group’s population size, and that development created a situation in which individuals with a tendency to dominate others were now able to do so.

While a group was still dependent on foraging it had developed means to control such behavior.

On the basis of … observations, Christopher Boehm:

proposed the theory that hunter-gatherers maintained equality through a practice that he labeled reverse dominance.  In a standard dominance hierarchy—as can be seen in all of our ape relatives (yes, even in bonobos)—-a few individuals dominate the many.  In a system of reverse dominance, however, the many act in unison to deflate the ego of anyone who tries, even in an incipient way, to dominate them.

According to Boehm, hunter-gatherers are continuously vigilant to transgressions against the egalitarian ethos.  Someone who boasts, or fails to share, or in any way seems to think that he (or she, but usually it’s a he) is better than others is put in his place through teasing, which stops once the person stops the offensive behavior.  If teasing doesn’t work, the next step is shunning. The band acts as if the offending person doesn’t exist.  That almost always works.  Imagine what it is like to be completely ignored by the very people on whom your life depends.  No human being can live for long alone.  The person either comes around, or he moves away and joins another band, where he’d better shape up or the same thing will happen again.  In his 1999 book, Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm presents very compelling evidence for his reverse dominance theory.

As some in a group began to dominate/exploit the others, the eventual result was the formation of a social class system.  So that one became born into a social class.[10]

It was within early Hebrew society that there seemingly first arose individuals who objected to what was occurring (that is, the creation of social class systems with their exploitation).  And a Tradition arose within early Hebrew society which began with Law creation, saw the rise of prophets (like Amos), and, finally,[11] the “ministry” of Jesus.[12]

The basis of those objections seems to have been a remembrance-of-sorts of an earlier way of life, one for which we had become “designed” (or a subsequent one, such as nomadism).  As Warren Johnson has written:[13]

The Biblical legend of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden seems clearly to describe the invention of agriculture.

The reference to a Garden of Eden being spedifically to an earlier foraging way of life.  Our ancestors were not, however, expulsed from the Garden; their development of agriculture led “naturally” to their leaving it.[14]

Although it was likely the abandonment of foraging for agriculture that somehow led to the early Hebrews objecting to the creation of social class systems during the Neolithic Revolution, the Tradition that developed as a result of that abandonment was misguided![15]  As Barrie Wilson notes,[16] the Torah—the Holy Book of the ancient Hebrews—“presupposes the view that people are decision makers and can choose their path in life.”

What that assumption failed to recognize is that it was the societal system changes that occurred during the Neolithic Revolution that were responsible for the problems that began to arise during that Revolution.  So that—and given that we are designed for a way of life based on foraging—the solution to those problems (if there is one now!) is societal system change in a reversionary direction.[17]

In a sense, the utopians over the centuries,[18] in recognizing a need for societal system change, sensed this.  But their writings are not notable for recognizing that we humans are a small-group animal.

*****

The societal system changes that have occurred since the Neolithic Revolution—described well by Eugene Linden in his Affuence and Discontent (1979)—have been in a downward direction; we have been headed for (p. 178) “apocalypse,” for extinction!  I next, then, present a case for such a conclusion.

*****

If “love of neighbor” should be the primary principle that guides our behaviors today—after all, that’s how we are “designed”!—then the Neolithic Revolution made following that principle difficult![19]  For the development of social class systems fostered the development of invidious thinking[20] (of both a qualitative and quantitative nature) which, first, served to perpetuate class systems.

Second, invidious thinking is incompatible with the “love of neighbor” principle:  If one thinks of another as “below” one, it will be difficult to demonstrate any degree of love for that person.  It will, then, not be surprising if a high degree of inequality arises in one’s society.  With the wealthy establishing residential enclaves for themselves to enable “out of sight, out of mind” so far as the society’s “unfortunates” are concerned.

Doing so is not only unfortunate—it’s STUPID!!  For there’s this:

If you’re fortunate to be in reasonably good health, how should you live your life?  I believe there should be a quest behind the question, which is, you should do all you can to maintain your health to live a purposeful life and serve those less fortunate.  Instead of taking your health for granted, it can be an invaluable resource to support a loved one, a friend, a neighbor or your community.  Your efforts to maintain your health and willingness to help those in need become a model of compassion to serve a greater good in society, rather than for self-serving motives. Plus, helping others can improve your own well-being and sense of self-worth.

Given that we humans are “born to be good,” we go against our nature when we fail to engage in helping behaviors.

And this:

Consider the positive feelings you experienced the last time when you did something good for someone else.  Perhaps it was the satisfaction of running an errand for your neighbor, or the sense of fulfillment from volunteering at a local organization, or the gratification from donating to a good cause.  Or perhaps it was the simple joy of having helped out a friend.  This “warm glow” of pro-sociality is thought to be one of the drivers of generous behavior in humans.  One reason behind the positive feelings associated with helping others is that being pro-social reinforces our sense of relatedness to others, thus helping us meet our most basic psychological needs.

Research has found many examples of how doing good, in ways big or small, not only feels  good, but also does us good.  For instance, the well-being-boosting and depression-lowering benefits of volunteering have been repeatedly documented.  As has the sense of meaning and purpose that often accompanies altruistic behavior.  Even when it comes to money, spending it on others predicts increases in happiness compared to spending it on ourselves.  Moreover, there is now neural evidence from fMRI studies suggesting a link between generosity and happiness in the brain.  For example, donating money to charitable organizations activates the same (mesolimbic) regions of the brain that respond to monetary rewards or sex.  In fact, the mere intent and commitment to generosity can stimulate neural change and make people happier.

Those facts, reported above, may make one ask:

Why, then, isn’t loving behavior the norm in societies such as ours.

My answer to that question is that when one is born and raised in a society—such as ours—in which competition[21] plays such an important role—for example, the Super Bowl today (February 9, 2025—one is virtually forced to “join the crowd” of those who engage in some competition for their very survival.

 *****

A reason why it’s UTTERLY STUPID to engage in invidious thinking is that it fosters consumption behaviors—“conspicuous consumption,” in fact.  This was enabled especially since the Industrial Revolution, when technological developments enabled an expansion of production efforts.  The use of fossil fuels—coal first, then petroleum—for that production had the unintended effect of affecting the “operation” of Earth System—in the direction of making Earth increasingly unlivable for humans (along with other species[22]).

Our burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming; and global warming, in turn, is having various consequences—all of them negative:

Climate change [[23]] affects all regions around the world.  Polar ice shields are melting and the sea is rising.  In some regions, extreme weather events and rainfall are becoming more common while others are experiencing more extreme heat waves and droughts.  We need climate action now, or these impacts will only intensify.

Climate change is a very serious threat, and its consequences impact many different aspects of our lives.  Below, you can find a list of climate change’s main consequences.  Click on the + signs for more information.

A current consequence of extreme importance is the thawing of permafrost caused by the warming that we humans have caused:

A thawing permafrost layer can lead to severe impacts on people and the environment.  For instance, as ice-filled permafrost thaws, it can turn into a muddy slurry that cannot support the weight of the soil and vegetation above it.  Infrastructure such as roads, buildings, and pipes could be damaged as permafrost thaws.4 Infrastructure damage and erosion, due in part to permafrost thaw, has already caused some communities in western and southern Alaska to have to relocate. Additionally, organic matter (like the remains of plants) currently frozen in the permafrost will start to decompose when the ground thaws, resulting in the emission of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  This contributes to further global climate change.1

That latter fact—the decomposition of organic matter—is of particular importance for it causes further warming and global warming then “feeding on itself” and, then, being impossible to halt (“runaway”).  If that is now occurring, warming will continue until most of Earth’s permafrost thaws—and we will go extinct!!  The graph below shows global temperature change over the past 2,000 years:

Note that since about 1850 the trend has been steeply upward!  There’s no reason to believe that that trend won’t continue—with our extinction “soon” being highly likely!  There are articles “out there” with titles such as these:

“Humans may be extinct in 2026” (during the “reign”of Trump—which would be fitting!)

“Will the human race go extinct by 2030?”

“MIT Forecasts Civilization Will Fall By 2040” (but not necessarily go extinct).

“Human civilization faces “existential risk” by 2050 according to new Australian climate change report”

Etc.

In 1984 (!) I published a strategy for bringing about societal system change, thereby possibly “saving” our species from extinction:  “Ecotopia:  A ‘Gerendipitous’ Scenario.” I lacked the financial means to act on that proposal; and although I have brought it to the attention of literally dozens of individuals and organizations, I’ve yet to receive a response from any of them!!  It’s as if most humans have a death wish (or drive)!!

A more likely reason, however, is media failure to inform/educate the public about the threat posed by global warming.   That failure is at the height of STUPIDITY!   While also being understandable, though:  The commercial media are dependent on advertising for their existence, and advertisers want people to continue to consume—thereby causing continued production and, as a consequence, continued global warming!

As one with three wonderful children and five fantastic grandchildren, my hope is that they all will have a future.  I find it virtually impossible, however, to have any degree of optimism regarding the human future!!

Endnotes:

[1]     Available upon request (from moc.liamg@5743nevs) are these two related papers of mine:  “Ten Reasons Why We are Doomed” and “A More Relevant Gaia Hypothesis.”

[2]     “The 2024 state of the climate report:  Perilous times on planet Earth,” by William J. Ripple et al. [13 co-authors], 2020.  The authors of this report are more cautious than I would be.  I’m retired, so I cannot be terminated!   I should add that little of my life has been spent in academia, my most recent employer being an avionics company (27 years), from which I retired in 2014.

[3]     Ph.D. in Urban Economic Geography, University of Cincinnati, 1970.

[4]     The term “hunter-gatherer” is also used, but I avoid that term because it’s a male chauvinist term:  It suggests that hunting—typically done by males—was more important as a source of food than gathering—done typically by females.  Not true!

[5]     Author of White Man Got No Dreaming (1979); also see this.

[6]     A resident of the United States—whether or not a “citizen”!

 [7]     The late anthropologist Alan Barnard [1949 – 2022], Hunters and Gatherers:  What Can We Learn from Them (2020), p. 56.

[8]     Also of relevance here is this article by the Ehrlichs; in it they state:  “Today’s view of normality is possible because everyday thinking about human history largely ignores its first 300,000 years and does not recognize how extremely abnormal the last few centuries have been, roughly just one-thousandth of the history of physically modern Homo sapiens.  Knowing how genetic and cultural evolution over millennia shaped us helps explain today’s human predicament, how hard that predicament is to deal with, and underlines how abnormal human life is in the twenty-first century.”

[9]     See this on Dunbar’s number.

[10]    At a later point in time (during the Commercial Revolution, which began in the 11^th century?) one’s position in a society—although still influenced by one’s birth—became based on the wealth one was able to acquire.  Which helps explain Trump’s choice of Elon Musk as an advisor.  (Or did Gaia have a hand in this?!  See the second paper listed in note 1 above.)

[11]    Christianity did not continue the ministry of Jesus!  And per the normative definition of “religion” given in James 1:27, doesn’t even qualify as a “religion”!  Because its focus (except for Quakerism, as one example) is on orthodoxy and rituals, rather than orthopraxy.

[12]    See my What Are Churches For? (2011).

[13]    Muddling Toward Frugality (2010), p. 43.  Here’s a discussion of Hebrew origins.

[14]    Deuteronomy 26:5 says this about Hebrew origins:  “‘Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous.’”  And Morris S. Seale (The Desert Bible, 1974) notes the many desert references in the Bible—which suggests that the early Hebrews were nomads—and only earlier foragers.  Here’s an article on Hebrew history.

[15]    This is not to say, though, that the ethics of Jesus are not as relevant today as they were 2,000 years ago!

[16] How Jesus Became Christian (2008), p. 28.  I am puzzled by Wilson’s lack of reference to L. Michael White’s slightly earlier (2004), closely related, From Jesus to Christianity.

[17]    The current Ecovillage Movement can be thought of this way.  Unfortunately, it has been too “weak” to accomplish much!

[18]    There have AA many!  I used to own a copy of Henry Olerich’s [1851 – 1927] A Cityless and Countryless World (1893); on the inside of the end cover is a list of utopian literature, and it is a long one!

[19]    But not impossible—as the life of the recently-deceased President Jimmy Carter [1924 – 2024] demonstrates!

[20]    This sort of thinking played an important role in the writings of Wisconsin-born intellectual Thorstein Veblen [1857 – 1929].  In his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), for example, “invidious” occurs 104 times!

[21]    Rather than the cooperation advocated in this book.

[22] “One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns.”

[23]    I dislike the use of that term for reasons that I give in my “The Los Angeles Fires ‘Climate Change’ the Cause?”  Available upon request; see note 1 above.

Al Thompson retired over seven years ago from an engineering (avionics) firm in Milwaukee. His e-mail address is: sven3475@gmail.com. Read other articles by Alton.

 

Good German

by Fred Nagel / February 14th, 2025

How does our great nation send billions in weaponry to a country that is committing the worst genocide of the 21st century? The slaughter of civilians is beyond any description. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been bombed, burned, and starved to death. Tens of thousands more have been crushed beyond recognition under mountains of twisted concrete and ash. The children who have survived are almost unrecognizable in their rags and wasted bodies. They carry empty pots, looking for food and water amid the massive rubble. Amid the charnel house that is now Gaza.

Should I mention our two party, one genocide political system that pays for these horrors? Or the tens of millions that our weapons makers use to bribe our elected representatives? Or the even greater amounts that the Israel Lobby stuffs in each Congressional pocket? Or the Zionist media that helps us look the other way?

Or should I focus on you who have read this far? Yes, we have a system that only serves the rich, be they political leaders, weapons manufacturers, or billion dollar religious fanatics. Most people like you want to end the Israel/American genocide. Most can’t believe our national leaders are acting like members of another murderous regime that killed six million in their ovens. Is our political class criminally insane?

And am I absolved by writing this short letter? Or am I still that “good German” who knew something was happening, but did nothing to end the continuous slaughter of the innocents?

Fred Nagel is a Vietnam Era veteran and political activist whose articles have appeared in many venues. He also hosts a show on Vassar College Radio, WVKR (classwars.org). Read other articles by Fred.

War Is Making Us Poor

The Book

by John Rachel / February 13th, 2025

After World War 2, the US set its sights on becoming the dominant superpower. As a benevolent dictator — an enlightened hegemon — it would spread peace and prosperity across the globe. Its first objective was to defeat what it perceived as the #1 threat to the economic and political system it represented, which was capitalism and democracy, that being communism.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the US decided to leverage its new positioning as the world’s most militarily and economically powerful nation into becoming a full-blown empire. This was the beginning of a period of unprecedented military expansion, i.e. endless wars and defense budget increases which have now all but bankrupted the country. There are a lot of narratives out there about why things are as they are, why the economy is poised on the verge of collapse, but the one offered by War Is Making Us Poor makes the most sense. At least it explains why the excesses of DOD funding is the main reason for many of our current crises.

This short, powerful book, War Is Making Us Poor, packs more punch and understanding than volumes ten times its size. It presents unmistakeable proof of the mess our country is in, and it points the finger at rampant, accelerating militarism. The sub-title is “Militarism Is Destroying the U.S.”

Why aren’t people talking about this? Why is this never discussed or debated in the mainstream media?

The “War Is Making Us Poor” campaign is the beginning of this necessary, vital conversation.

Why did I write this book at this time?

It’s simple.

America is at the end of its ropes. It’s in a tailspin. It’s accelerating its own decline and demise. If we as a nation are not consumed by a nuclear war, then we will be cannibalized by horrible policies which will eventually lead to our destruction as a functioning nation.

Our fortunes are declining on every front. Our international standing is plummeting. Our power is shrinking. Our economic viability is fatally compromised. As a society, we are unraveling, increasingly more divided, constantly bickering and at each other’s throats. Desperation is the new normal. We are losing our sense of what it is to be “an American”.

While not the sole cause, it is our military and foreign policy which is largely responsible. We have lost our perspective and are now incapable of cooperation with and respect for other countries. We see the main thrust of this in our militarization both overseas and at home, and our exclusive exercise of military power when dealing with the rest of the world. It’s our way or bombs away. Now with our provoking Russia and China, we are crossing existential red lines. It’s Russian Roulette with bullets in every chamber.

Domestically, the U.S. — despite the propaganda and spin — is a mess. A crash — a HUGE crash — is coming. The U.S. as a country is becoming insolvent. Individually, we are in debt up to our eyebrows. And both are only getting worse. The U.S. now pays $1 trillion annually just to service the national debt. That debt is increasing by $1 trillion every three to four months. As individual citizens, with inflation so severe, people are so overwhelmed, they’re charging food on their credit cards. There’s no end in sight to any of this, other than a complete implosion.

In order to slow, and hopefully prevent, our complete bankruptcy, I say we have to target the DOD. As I explain in the book:

Can we blame all of America’s crises and deficiencies on the military? Perhaps not directly. But we certainly can blame our chronic inability to find the money to fix things on the endless wars and exorbitant DOD budgets.

The DOD consumes the biggest portion of our national budget. That makes it the “Achilles heel” for the entire edifice of catastrophic priorities.

Folks, it’s time to get real. We’re at an existential moment in our history as a nation and society. If we don’t begin to act decisively and immediately, then it’s all over.

Understand, our current national leaders will not solve the problem. They continue to exacerbate the problem. They are the problem. At the end of this very short volume, I’m offering a controversial but realistic proposal. It’s a modest beginning but at least it’s a beginning. I see nothing else out there other than whining and pleading to the very people who are responsible for the disaster, an exercise in futility.

We can still save America from collapse. But hesitation, no matter how conveniently rationalized, will guarantee failure.Email

John Rachel has a B.A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, neo-Marxist, and a bipolar humanist. He has written eight novels and three political non-fiction books. His most recent polemic is The Peace Dividend: The Most Controversial Proposal in the History of the World. His political articles have appeared at many alternative media outlets. He is now somewhat rooted in a small traditional farming village in Japan near Osaka, where he proudly tends his small but promising vegetable garden. Scribo ergo sum. Read other articles by John, or visit John's website.

Lethal Trumpery in Africa

Friday 14 February 2025, by Paul Martial


In a matter of seconds, the time it takes to sign, Trump and Musk put the lives of millions of people in danger, confirming the precariousness of aid from rich countries.


“Radical madmen” is what Trump thinks of the leaders of USAID (the United States Agency for International Development), whose activities he has just frozen for 90 days. His sidekick Elon Musk compares the structure set up by Kennedy in 1961 with a “criminal organization”. The development agency’s staff have been laid off, those working abroad must return to Washington by the end of the month and most of the local staff have been dismissed.
Millions of potential victims

The future of USAID is uncertain, with most observers betting on its integration into the State Department (the equivalent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs), thus putting an end to the broad autonomy enjoyed by the organization.

With a fund of more than 40 billion dollars, the main beneficiary is not Africa, which comes only in second place, but Europe, with aid to Ukraine amounting to 17 billion dollars for projects to support the economy and institutions.

In 2023, Africa received more than 15 billion dollars for two important areas, emergency aid and health. The sudden and unannounced cut endangers the lives of millions of people by depriving them of their medicines, particularly antivirals for the treatment of HIV.

This freeze also weakens health prevention structures, both the early warning systems against epidemics and the logistics for the distribution of vaccines. This weakening is all the more worrying as it coincides with the withdrawal of the United States from the WHO (World Health Organisation).
An unjust order

Many people in the United States consider this measure to be harmful, especially for American politics, which risks suffering negative effects, whether in terms of the reliability of the country’s commitments or the weakening of its soft power and its power to exert pressure. This is certainly true. But this measure illustrates above all and tragically that if the rich countries’ development aid policies exist, it is because these same rich countries impose structural adjustment policies that persist under other names, taking advantage of the international division of labour to plunder the resources of so-called poor countries with the complicity of local potentates.

The desire to dismantle USAID, coupled with the reduction in European countries’ development aid policies - remember that the Netherlands is going to reduce itsallocation by 9 billion dollars over the next four years, and the 2025 budgets of France and Germany are decreasing by 2 billion and 1.7 billion dollars respectively - demonstrate that the solution does not lie in dependence on aid but in a struggle for a fundamental change in the world order. A struggle truly of... “radical madmen”.

Translated by International Viewpoint from l’Anticapitaliste. 13 February 2025


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Paul Martial
Paul Martial is a correspondent for International Viewpoint. He is editor of Afriques en Lutte and a member of the Fourth International in France.


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Race, Power, and the Politics of Distraction

As economic crises deepen, right-wing fearmongering and racial scapegoating thrive—masking the real struggle for economic justice.

By Andile Zulu

February 14, 2025

Source: Africa Is a Country


A farm in South Africa. Photo by Hannes Richter on Unsplash.



In the absence of effective solutions to South Africa’s escalating economic and social crises, dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies are flourishing. Having returned to executive power, US President Donald Trump recently provided renewed vitality to the paranoia of right-wing populists while validating the perverse anxieties of white nationalists. On February 3, Trump threatened to freeze funding to South Africa, claiming that its government is “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.”

Sadly but unsurprisingly, Trump was, of course, referring to white South Africans, specifically the white Afrikaans community. The tweet was soon followed by the signing and issuing of an executive order by the White House on February 7. Now the US government aims to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

President Trump’s assertions and executive order came after the (needlessly) controversial reaction to the adoption by the South African government of the Expropriation Act. Far from a radical reformation of land policy or a threat to the livelihoods of white property owners, the Act is a procedural piece of legislation that lays out the context and criteria through which the government may take private property, either in the public interest or for public purpose. Considering the factors outlined for calculating “just and equitable compensation,” legal commentators have argued that “whilst it may be possible to arrive at nil compensation, it would only be in extremely rare circumstances that would enable nil compensation.”

But the mundane reality of the amendments to the Expropriation Act is irrelevant to political opportunists. Trump’s statement reverberated as a rallying cry, summoning right-wing pundits, alt-right influencers, and white nationalist organizations to echo myths of systematic white persecution by a black majority government. Predictably, the debunked conspiracy of white genocide has been given new life, once again tainting mainstream discourse. In response to a statement by South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, which aimed to clarify the function of the Expropriation Act, tech-billionaire and Iron Man wannabe Elon Musk tweeted, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”

Donald Trump’s executive order, Elon Musk’s championing of white nationalism, the jubilee of the global right win,g and the hysterical domestic debates unfolding in South Africa around land reform all point to the potent power and insidious function of race as an ideological construction under capitalism.

In South Africa and around the world, neoliberal capitalism is in a state of calamity and crisis. Like their counterparts in the US Democratic Party, the African National Congress lacks the political will, ideological orientation, and material interest to depart from a neoliberal framework. It is in this vacuum that racial and ethnic chauvinism, often combined with nationalist populism, can thrive.




The Afrikaner nationalism of organizations such as AfriForum and the right-wing populism of Trump or Musk work in cohesion to cloak the unsustainable and exploitative property relations that have made all of our lives worse. In order to retain the fruits of colonial plunder, defend the tyranny of private property, protect the power of our capitalist overlords, and undermine the possibility of reform or revolt, the white right-wing must invent myths that fuel fear, nourish resentment, deepen divisions, and incite conflict.

Bewildering as it may seem to those living in South Africa, the narrative that claims white people are helpless victims of oppressive racial discrimination by a black government craving revenge is not entirely marginal. In high school, university, and as an adult, I have occasionally encountered white people who sincerely suspect they are being primed for or will eventually be victims of violent, state-sanctioned discrimination.

One need not waste too much time debunking the myth of white persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. The empirical evidence is abundant and clear. Relative to the vast majority of the black population, most white citizens have better educational opportunities and outcomes, are more likely to find employment and earn higher wages, are less likely to endure poverty or food insecurity, and generally live in neighborhoods that enjoy better service delivery and safety from crime. This does not mean that the lives of white citizens are untouched by suffering and struggle; whether it be the rising cost of living, financial precarity, dysfunctional local governments, or violent crime. But these obstacles are not thrown upon white South Africans specifically because they are classified as white; they are symptoms of an increasingly incapacitated state run by kleptocrats who manage a debilitating capitalist economy.

So if most of the white population experiences a significantly higher standard of socioeconomic well-being (relative to the black majority, including Coloureds and Indians), why are some minds and hearts so firmly gripped by the myth of their persecution? Here, we can gain insight from French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, who defined ideology as “representing the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.” With this definition of ideology, one is then compelled to ask, “What are the imaginary relationships, and what are the real conditions of existence?”

Strange as it may seem, in a time where the idea of race appears as real and all-enveloping as the air we breathe, we must remember that white South Africans were not always white. They were once Dutch sailors, German merchants, Swedish priests, unskilled French laborers, and British soldiers. But in the destructive process of primitive accumulation (dispossession of land and livestock or the coercive herding of Africans into exploitative wage or slave labor), both by the imperial powers of Europe and the titans of mercantile capitalism (e.g., the Dutch East India Company), European settlers would have to become white to justify the dispossession, hyper-exploitation, and political domination of the native African population.

Racism, as the action of discrimination based on perceived social difference, preceded the ideological construction of race in South Africa. Race then arises and mutates as an ideology functioning to legitimate and rationalize the emerging property relations of capitalism. As historian Barbara Fields reminds us, and one sees this reflected in the Afrikaner nationalism of the apartheid regime, the ideology of race functions to explain away and resolve the contradiction between the liberty of some and the subjugation of others. If Africans are indeed mentally inferior, morally immature, and culturally backward, then their economic exploitation and exclusion from political decision-making is not only justified but necessary.

Systemic racism, and discrimination enacted through policy and legislation, preceded the apartheid regime by many decades. An infamous example would be the 1913 Natives Land Act, which severely restricted black land ownership, reserving 93% of land for the white minority of the population. Reeling from the debilitating shockwaves of industrialization, urbanization, world war, and global economic crisis, a class alliance was gradually formed in the 1930s as an attempt to “save the volk” by forging a monopoly capitalism that would uplift the Afrikaner into a new age of prosperity. Apartheid, and the Afrikaner nationalism, which was the engine of its moral and political justification, was an answer to the evolving character of capitalism in South Africa and abroad.

Shackling millions of Africans into brutal exploitation and political marginality proved to be unsustainable. Economic developments and political forces, domestic and international, collided to bring about the end of state-enforced racial segregation and political oppression. Yet, in the crucible of apartheid’s death, South Africa’s own version of neoliberalism was forged, and capitalism endured.

As noted by author Dan O’Meara in his book Volkskapitalisme:


If ideologies arise out of everyday experience and mirror and guide such experience in both a partially adequate yet misrepresented way, they do not adequately represent the conditions of existence of such everyday experience. Here is the source of the illusory character of ideology.

Race, and the right-wing populism that cultivates the myth of white persecution, draw vitality from a shallow or at times totally absent perception and understanding of the underlying conditions that constitute everyday experience in post-apartheid South Africa, in both our past and present.

An important factor in determining a person’s chances of enjoying socio-economic well-being under capitalism is the resources they inherit, such as property, wealth, and networks. A salient feature of South Africa’s democratic government has been its unwavering commitment to the class project of neoliberalism. British-American academic David Harvey defined this project as aiming to “restore the conditions of capital accumulation and re-establish the power of economic elites.” For the post-apartheid government, neoliberalism is enforced through maintaining austerity measures, financial deregulation, trade liberalization, regressive taxation, commercialization of public services, export-led growth, and most recently, the creeping privatization of public utilities.

In the wake of neoliberalism’s crusade, the economic advantages most white South Africans had accrued over decades were compounded by a government that avoided wealth redistribution, land or urban housing reform, extensive welfare, progressive taxation of the rich, or public investment in industrial economic development. Terrorized by a neoliberal state and sacrificed to the ravenous process of capital accumulation, the black working class (and even the emergent, precarious black middle class) has been deeply betrayed. And their righteous indignation has become increasingly difficult to contain or pacify.

Calls for radical land reform, nationalization or wealth redistribution, and the embrace of populist parties who indulge in irresponsible racist and chauvinist rhetoric, express not only a deep dissatisfaction with the post-apartheid order but a yearning for an alternative to destitution and powerlessness. Criticisms of “whiteness” or whiteed (by state and economy) as second-class citizens.

Organizations such as AfriForum, the Institute for Race Relations, and political parties such as the Democratic Alliance or Freedom Front Plus, indulge in political mess privilege (as politically and analytically messy as they sometimes can be) are a testament to the widespread sense that the majority of black people are still treataging that frames the despair of black people or their demands for transformative change, as either an attack on white livelihoods or an assortment of destabilizing, utopian demands that will scare off private investment and upset the free market. Or there is a complete refusal to acknowledge the imprint of history in the present and the structures blocking the possibility of economic transformation. These white lobbying groups and political parties fail to see that there can be no bootstraps to pull up if one has no shoes. And it is no coincidence that they advance economically conservative policies.

For decades the majority of white South Africans were indoctrinated to believe in their immutable difference and inherent superiority. Whether preached in the pulpit, disseminated through state-controlled media, or infused into school curriculums, the ideology of race was as pervasive as it was potent.

But beyond state indoctrination, the ideology of race reflected the material conditions, political configuration, and social relations of apartheid. In the daily experience of apartheid, white South Africans were most likely to only encounter and interact with black people as instruments to sustain their material comforts or domestic luxuries. In every sphere of daily life, white South Africans bore witness to the dehumanization of black people, framed as normal and necessary. Most of what was understood about the experience of being black under apartheid was conveyed and digested through racist viewpoints provided by family, friends, teachers, employers, or the state.

Precisely because South Africa’s government has done little to unravel the exploitative property relations and processes of capital accumulation that trap most black people into either poverty, unemployment, or labor precarity, the ideological outlook of white citizens faces little challenge. Accentuating this malaise is the notion that the eradication of poverty, unemployment, and inequality is a zero-sum game. This illusion has some of its roots in the doctrine of Swart Gevaar (Afrikaans for “black danger”). It was a propaganda term with a long history, designed and deployed by Afrikaner nationalists as an election strategy to convince white South Africans that the political inclusion of black people into decision-making would spell the end of white civilization.

Intoxicated by the ideology of race and some unable to cope with no longer existing in an elevated social, political, and economic status, many white South Africans, both reactionary and liberal, struggle to accept that building a country that is safe, socially cohesive and prosperous for all who live in it, will require a profound change to the structure of the economy. This process will partly entail the loss of their economic advantages but also the privileges and status of the growing black elite.

In an interview recorded by the BBC before his detention, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko spoke of what he envisioned South Africa beyond white supremacist rule would look like, proposing that “In our country there shall be no minority, there shall be no majority, there shall just be people…it will be a completely non-racial egalitarian society.” This is not the liberal moralist non-racialism that seeks to evade the issue of discrimination by pointing to race as a social construction, but a non-racialism founded in recognizing the intimate, functional relationship between racism, the ideology of race, and economic exploitation.

Elaborating on whether the future of South Africa is socialist, Biko prophetically remarked:

In South Africa there is such an ill-distribution of wealth that any form of political freedom which does not touch on the proper distribution of wealth will be meaningless…if we have a mere change of face in those in governing positions, what is likely to happen is that black people will continue to be poor and you will get a few blacks filtering into the so-called bourgeoisie, and our society will be run almost as of yesterday.

Making South Africa a prosperous, peaceful, and safe country for all those within it is not about seeking retribution against white people. Capitalists, black or white, will relentlessly pursue profits and accumulation at the expense of people, regardless of their racial classification.

To free ourselves from the archaic and divisive ideology of race, and to combat racism, the underlying material conditions which breathe life into these mystifications must be transformed. Practically speaking, a program must be built, backed by a mass of millions, to challenge the power of capital and the political elites who orchestrate its domination. If South Africa remains entangled in a neoliberal project, then what awaits us are the dangerous delusions and destructive fantasies of reactionaries that are swarming the world.

Andile Zulu  is a political writer residing in Durban.

We Need a United Front Against the Alliance Between Afri(KANER)Forum and Trump

By Abahlali baseMjondolo

February 12, 2025

Source: Abahlali baseMjondolo


Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa. 


Our movement condemns the reckless and racist actions of AfriForum in inciting the white right in the United States to act against South Africa. These actions have now resulted in a potentially highly damaging Executive Order against South Africa by Donald Trump.

The rise of the far right across Europe, as well as countries like Argentina, India, Turkey, and the Philippines, is deeply concerning for all people of good conscience. Here in Africa we have Western-backed right-wing governments in countries like Kenya, as well as the dictatorship in Rwanda. The return of Trump as the US president is a major threat to the whole world.

Trump is an extreme racist who uses fascist language about migrants from countries like Mexico and Haiti and now wants to welcome white migrants from South Africa as ‘refugees’. Trump is close to a number of far right-wing white South Africans living in the United States. Two closely related right-wing organisations here in South Africa, AfriForum and Solidarity, have been lobbying the American right for years to try and misrepresent white people as victims in South Africa.

Now we face a very serious situation in which Trump has moved against South Africa. US support for health care services for people living with HIV and AIDS may be withdrawn, South Africa may be expelled from AGOA, and there could even be sanctions. This could be devastating for our health care system and worsen the existing crisis of unemployment. Sanctions would have a disastrous impact on our society.

We condemn the actions of AfriForum and Solidarity in the strongest terms and support the call for a broad front across political lines to isolate these two organisations. These two racist organisations are built on white supremacy and have intentionally misled the American right about the land question in South Africa, and falsely claimed that the general crisis of violence in our country, a crisis that affects the poor most of all, is a political attack on white farmers.

The members of AfriForum did not face the brutality of apartheid and colonialism. They were not robbed of their land. The leaders of AfriForum are not jailed and assassinated when they oppose the ANC. Some of their members are poor, but very few white people live without access to water and sanitation, very few white people live in shacks, and white people have the lowest level of unemployment among all races in South Africa. AfriForum and Solidarity have never expressed concern about the impoverishment and landlessness of most black people. These are organisations that exist to protect white privilege and to keep the status quo.

We welcome the actions by white South Africans of good conscience to clearly oppose the lies told by AfriForum and its attempt to build an alliance with the right in the US. It is important for white people to say that AfriForum does not speak in their name.

We do not agree with the ANC’s policies on land reform and we have no confidence that new legislation will bring about real urban and rural land reform, let alone land reform in the interests of the poor and centred around the political agency of the poor. We have always made it clear that if the government is serious about land reform, they must start by first giving ownership of the land that has already been occupied by the poor in urban and rural areas, by supporting ongoing land reform from below. As we write this statement, the ANC continues to collaborate with militarised private security companies to defend the interests of the rich, and to try and use the courts to evict us from land occupations.

The new legislation is nothing but another piece of paper that will not be implemented. When land reform does happen, it is far more likely to benefit the politicians and other politically connected elites than the poor. The ANC is not and never has been on the side of the poor.

White people are not oppressed by the ANC. We have been genuinely oppressed by the ANC. Our poverty is criminalised and we are subject to unlawful evictions and all kinds of state violence. Striking miners were massacred in 2012 and miners have now been deliberately starved to death by the state in Stilfontein. Many of our leaders have been assassinated, and some of our leaders continue to live under death threats and at serious risk of violence.

We have worked, for almost twenty years now, to build solidarity with progressive organisations in other countries, such as social movements, tenant unions, and trade unions. We have also worked with some human rights organisations because we are often not believed when we say that we have been repressed until a human rights organisation does research and then confirms that what we are saying is true. We have built connections all over the world and have addressed the European Union and United Nations committees.

However, we have never called for sanctions against our country, or for any actions that would damage our society and make things worse for ordinary people. All we have called for is solidarity to end political repression. We offer that same solidarity to comrades facing political repression elsewhere in the world, such as Brazil, Kenya, and other countries.

AfriForum is trying to build a white international, a white international that is willing to do serious damage to our society, to damage our health care system and worsen unemployment so that they can continue to feel special because they are white and to be treated differently because they are white. It is reckless and unpatriotic for anyone to go to powerful right-wing forces outside the country, to lie to them and encourage them to attack our country. It is unacceptable for any South African to collaborate with racists in the US to undermine our country and put its people at risk.

Trump and the right in the US have been looking for an excuse to attack South Africa ever since we took Israel to the International Court of Justice. They want South Africa to become a client state of the West, like Kenya or Rwanda. Many white liberals in South Africa make the same demand. AfriForum’s lies about white people being oppressed in South Africa have given Trump the excuse he was looking for to attack South Africa to punish South Africa for standing up for justice for the Palestinian people.

We do not forget that the United States government supported apartheid for many years. Ronald Reagan was a strong supporter of apartheid and supported the violence against our people in the 1980s.

In this situation, broad united fronts around shared minimum commitments will be necessary. It is necessary for progressive governments, especially in the Global South, to unite around matters of shared principle, such as support for the people of Palestine. This can reduce the risk of individual countries being isolated and punished.

It is also important for popular progressive movements and trade unions to unite across borders on questions of principle, and against the rise of the right in many countries. There must be support for any country that is isolated and punished for its support for Palestine.

Here in South Africa it is necessary for the progressive forces to unite and make it clear that we oppose the general oppression of the poor and the repression of the organised poor under the ANC-led government. We all need to make it clear that we oppose the abandonment of the working class, the corruption of the ANC government, the xenophobia of the government, and the way that it has carried out land reform. At the same time, we must all make it clear that we support the principle of land reform, rural and urban, that we support the principle of the human value of land being placed before its commercial value, and that despite our very serious disagreements with the ANC, we all fully support its decision to take Israel to the ICJ.

Despite facing very brutal repression from the ANC-led government, our movement will use its connections abroad to oppose the propaganda peddled by racist organisations such as AfriForum, and the racist South Africans living in the US.

We will be engaging with progressive trade union federations to try and develop a combined position and strategy for a way forward for diplomacy by the poor and the working class. We need to tell the true story of South Africa.


Abahlali baseMjondoloWebsite

Abahlali baseMjondolo (The Residents of the Shacks) is a movement of the poor in South Africa. Abahlali is an autonomous, democratic, membership-based social movement comprising more than 150,000 members, operating in 93 branches in 4 provinces. Their politics are rooted in a universal commitment to affirming and defending human dignity as they struggle for land and housing, to foster communities of care, self-nourishment, and solidarity.

Why 2025 Could Be A Turning Point In Africa’s Debt Emergency

A clear plan that would move power over debt from colonial institutions to a more representative body is on the table.

By Arthur Larok

February 15, 2025

Source: African Arguments


Rich countries’ climate debt dwarfs the foreign debt held by countries in Africa. Credit: AMISOM Photo / Tobin Jones.

The African Union (AU) has declared 2025 to be the Year of Reparations. The Pope has announced 2025 as a Jubilee Year, a year in which debts should be forgiven. And the United Nations has decided that the fourth Financing for Development conference in Seville in June-July 2025 will look to reform the international financing architecture.

Just two decades on from the celebrated Jubilee campaigns, we are back in debt crisis and the key lesson is that debt cancellation is not enough. We need to change the global economic system that creates debt, a system dominated by archaic institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), created in the colonial era.

There is a clear alternative that is now on the table – taking the power over debt away from colonial institutions like the IMF to a more representative and inclusive UN body by agreeing to a UN framework convention on sovereign debt. This could agree to both a fair and transparent system to resolve debt crises and establish principles of responsible lending and borrowing, to reduce the risk of future crises.

As African leaders gather in Addis Ababa for the AU Summit on 15-16 February, a renewed push for slavery and colonial reparations is gaining momentum. This year’s summit, coinciding with the AU’s declaration of 2025 as the Year of Reparations, takes on added significance as new data reveals the staggering scale of the financial injustices faced by the continent.

A new report, Who Owes Who? External debts, climate debts and reparations in the Jubilee year, exposes the crippling burden of foreign debt on African nations, highlighting how it dwarfs the aid they receive and underscores the urgent need for debt cancellation.

The report paints a stark picture of the debt trap ensnaring Africa. Over three-quarters of lower-income countries on the continent spend more on servicing foreign debt than on vital healthcare systems. More than half allocate more funds to debt repayment than to education. This grim reality forces nations to make impossible choices, sacrificing the wellbeing of their citizens and hindering sustainable development. The report reveals that in 2024 alone, lower-income African countries paid a staggering $60 billion in debt repayments, a sum that could have been invested in health, education, and climate resilience.

But when we take a step back and look at the big picture of Who Owes Who, we find a very different reality.

A “climate debt” is owed by rich countries for polluting the atmosphere. The estimated sum has been calculated in the most systematic detail by Fanning and Hickel. Even by their lowest estimates, rich polluting countries owe lower-income African countries $36 trillion – fifty times more than the total foreign debt owed by lower-income African nations. By these calculations, Africa should be receiving $1.4 trillion annually in climate finance. This report turns the debt conversation on its head by revealing so much more is owed to developing countries than they owe developed countries.

It is a travesty that African nations are being crushed under the weight of foreign debt, at a huge cost to national development, while the world’s richest countries continue to look the other way, evading their responsibility to pay for the climate crisis, let alone making reparations related to the slave trade and unfair economic practices.

A key injustice relates to the role of global credit rating agencies. Investing in Africa is said to be high risk – even though the IMF has immense power to ensure all African debts are paid. This reality of enforcement is ignored, and so extortionate interest rates are charged on loans, averaging 9.8% in Africa, compared to the 0.8% average for wealthy nations like Germany. This is one of the root causes of the debt crisis.

At this weekend’s summit, the call for debt cancellation and reparations must be louder than ever. The AU’s declaration of 2025 as the Year of Reparations provides a crucial platform to address these historical and ongoing injustices. A fundamental overhaul of the global financial architecture, shifting power away from institutions like the IMF and towards a more representative UN body is a must. African leaders must use their collective voice in global spaces like the forthcoming Financing for Development conference to push for the establishment of a new UN Framework Convention on Debt to replace the current unfair, colonial system.

The AU Summit presents a pivotal opportunity for African leaders to unite and collectively demand debt cancellation as a partial payment of the climate debt and other reparations owed by rich nations. But debt cancellation alone will not be enough if we do not also transform the colonial architecture that is still in force.

This is an opportunity to use the Jubilee Year and the Year of Reparations to free Africa from debt and prevent future debt crises. The time for empty promises is over. The time for action is now.

 

A Return to Basics: Rasmus, the “Neoliberal” Turn, and Exploitation

by Greg Godels / February 14th, 2025

Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: ‘Abolition of the wage system!’ 

Karl Marx, Value, Price, and Profit

Today, the point that Marx made in his 1865 address to the First International Working Men’s Association is largely lost on the trade unions and even with many self-styled Marxists. The distinction between the goal of “a fair day’s wage” and the goal of eliminating exploitation– the wage system embedded in capitalism– is lost before a common, but unfocused revulsion to the exploding growth of inequality. It is one thing to deplore the growth of inequality, it is quite another to establish what would replace the logic of unfettered accumulation.

Marx offered no guidelines for a “fair wage”. Indeed, his analysis of capitalism made no significant use of the concept of fairness. Instead, he made the concept of exploitation central to his political economy. He used the concept in two ways: First, he employed “exploitation” in the popular sense of “taking advantage of” — the sense that the capitalist takes advantage of the worker. “Exploitation of man by man” was a nascent concept, arriving in discourse with the expansion of mass industrial employment and borrowed from an earlier, morally-neutral usage regarding the exploitation of non-humans. Its etymology, in that sense, arises in the late eighteenth century.

Marx also uses the word in a more rigorous sense: as a description of the interaction of the worker and the capitalist in the process of commodity production. Even more rigorously, it appears in political economic tracts like Capital as a ratio between the axiomatic concepts of surplus value and variable capital.

As a worker-friendly concept, exploitation is most readily grasped by workers in the basic industries, especially in extractive and raw-material industries. Historically, an early twentieth century coal miner– bringing the tools of extraction with him, responsible for his own safety while risking a more likely death than a war-time soldier, and accepting the “privilege” of going into a cold, damp hole to dig coal for someone else’s profit– intuitively understood exploitation. A reflective miner would recoil from the fact that ownership of a property could somehow– apart from any other consideration– confer to someone the right to profit from a commodity that someone else had faced mortal danger to extract from the earth. What is a “fair day’s wage” in such a circumstance?

Organically, from its intuitive understanding by workers, and theoretically, from class-partisan intellectuals like Marx and Engels, as well as their rivals like Bakunin, exploitation became the central idea behind anti-capitalism and socialism.

Today, most workers’ connection to the exploitation relation appears far removed from the direct relation of a coal miner to the coal face and to the owner of the coal mine. The immediacy of labor and labor’s product in extraction is often of many removes in service-sector or white-collar jobs. Moreover, the division of labor blurs the contribution of the individual’s efforts to the final product.

Well into the twentieth century, “labor exploitation” fell out of the lexicon of the left, especially in the more advanced capitalist countries, where Marx thought that it would be of most use. Left thinkers, as well as Marxists, rightly attended to the colonial question, focusing on the struggle for independence and sovereignty; they were discouraged by the tendency for class-collaboration in many leading working-class organizations; Communist Parties correctly felt a primary duty to defend the gains of the socialist and socialist-oriented countries; and the fight for peace was always a paramount concern.

Exploitation was attacked from the academy. The Humanist “Marxist” school trivialized the exploitation nexus to a species of the broad, amorphous concept of alienation. The Analytical “Marxist” school congratulated itself by proving that given an inequality of assets, a community of exchange-oriented actors would produce and reproduce inequality of assets, a proof altogether irrelevant to the concept of exploitation, which the school promised to clarify. Both schools influenced a retreat from Marxism in the university, followed by a stampede after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Liberal and social-democratic theory revisits the “fair day’s wage” with the explosion of income inequality and wealth inequality of the last decades of the twentieth century that was too impossible to ignore. But what is a “fair wage”? What level of income or wealth distribution is just, fair, socially responsible, or socially beneficial? The questions are largely unanswerable, if not incoherent.

Thanks to the empirical, long-term study of inequality shared in Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century, we learn that capitalism’s historical tendency has been to always produce and reproduce income and wealth inequality, a conclusion sobering to those who hope to refashion capitalism into an egalitarian system and making a “fair wage” even more elusive. Piketty’s work offers no clue to what could constitute a “fair wage.”

Others point to the productivity-pay gap that emerged in the 1970s, where wage growth and productivity took entirely different courses at the expense of wage gains. Researchers who perceptively point to this gap as contributing to the growth of inequality often harken back to the immediate postwar era, when productivity growth and wage growth were somewhat in step, when the gains of productivity were “shared” between capital and labor. But what is magical about sharing? Why shouldn’t labor get 75% or 85% of the gain? Or all of the gain? Is maintaining existing inequalities the optimal social goal for the working class?

Where the concept of a “fair wage” offers more questions than answers, Marx’s concept of exploitation suggests a uniquely coherent and direct answer to the persistent and intensifying growth of income and wealth: eliminate labor exploitation! Abolish the wage system!

Thus, the return to the discussion of exploitation is urgent. And that is why a serious and clarifying account of exploitation today is so welcome.

*****

Jack Rasmus takes a step toward that end in a carefully argued, important paper, “Labor Exploitation in the Era of the Neoliberal Policy Regime.” I have followed Rasmus’s work for many years, especially admiring his respect for the tool of historical inquiry and his scrupulous research, interpretation, and careful use of “official” data. On the other hand, I thought that his work failed to fully consider the Marxist tradition, unduly drawn to engaging with the pettifoggery of academic “Marxists.”

However, his new work proves that assessment to be mistaken. Indeed, his latest work reflects an admirable reading of Marx’s political economy and offers an important tool in the struggle to end the wage system.

Rasmus understands that we are in a distinct era of capitalism, forced by the failure of the prior “policy regime” and typified by several features: intensified global penetration of capital and trade expansion (“globalization”), a massively growing role for financial innovation and notional profits (“financialization”), and most significantly, the restoration and expansion of the rate of profit (“the intensification of labor exploitation in both Absolute and Relative value terms that has occurred from the 1980s to the present”).

It should be noted that Rasmus does not discuss why a new “policy regime” became necessary in the 1970s. Both the stagflation that proved intractable to the reigning Keynesian paradigm and the attack on the US profit rate by foreign competition (see Robert Brenner, The Economics of Global Turbulence, NLR, 229) necessitated a sea change in the direction of capitalism.

I might add that while so-called globalization was an important feature of “the neoliberal policy regime,” the 2007-2009 economic crisis has diminished the growth of global trade. Indeed, its decline has fostered the rise of economic nationalism, the latest wrinkle on the “neoliberal policy regime.”

Rasmus carefully and methodically documents and explicates the intensification of labor exploitation in commodity production (what he calls “primary exploitation”) over the last fifty years. He recognizes the important and growing role of the state in enabling this intensification. This is, of course, the process that Lenin foresaw with the fusing of the state and monopoly capitalism– a process associated in Marxist-Leninist theory with the rise of state-monopoly capitalism. Today’s advanced capitalist states fully embrace the goal of defending and advancing the profitability (‘health’) of monopoly corporations (‘a rising tide lifts all boats’), including intensifying labor exploitation.

Just how that intensification is accomplished is the subject of Rasmus’s paper.

*****

Rasmus is aware that Marx expressed the exploitation nexus in terms of labor value. He avoids the scholasticism that side-tracks academically trained economists who obsess over the price/value relationship — the so-called transformation problem. Value– specifically a labor theory of value —  is central to Marx because it explains how commodities can command different, non-arbitrary exchange values and how the different proportionalities between the exchange values of commodities are determined. That is the problem Marx sets forth in the first pages of Capital, and value — as embodied labor — is the answer that he gives.

Using labor value as his theoretical primitive enables Rasmus to discuss exploitation in Marx’s framework of absolute and relative surplus value– exploitation by extending the working day or intensifying the production process. While Rasmus offers a persuasive argument that his use of “official” data couched in prices can legitimately be translated into values, it is unnecessary for his thesis. The relations are preserved because the proportionalities are, in general, preserved. It is a reasonable and adequate assumption that prices and values run in parallel, though a weaker claim than that prices can be derived from values.

Methodological considerations aside, Rasmus sets out to show — and succeeds in showing — that exploitation has accelerated in the “neoliberal” era in terms of both relative and absolute surplus value:

Capitalism’s Neoliberal era has witnessed a significant intensification and expansion of total exploitation compared to the pre-Neoliberal era. Under Neoliberal Capitalism both the workday (Absolute Surplus Value extraction) has been extended while, at the same time, the productivity of labor has greatly increased (Relative Surplus Value extraction) in terms of both the intensity and the mass of relative surplus value extracted.

Regarding Absolute Surplus Value, he demonstrates:

[I]t is true the work day was reduced during the first two thirds of the 20th century—by strong unions, union contract terms, and to some extent from government disincentives to extend the work day as a result of the passage of wages and hours legislation. But that trend and scenario toward a shorter work day was halted and rolled back starting in the late 1970s and the neoliberal era. The length of the Work Day has risen—not continued to decline—for full time workers under the Neoliberal Economic Regime.

Through a careful combing and analysis of government data, as well as original arguments, Rasmus shows how capital has succeeded in extending the workday. His discussion of changes in mandatory overtime, in temporary employment, in involuntary part-time employment, in paid leave, in changing work culture, in job classifications, in work from home, internships, and other practices form a persuasive argument for the existence of a trend of the lengthening of the average workday.

Similarly, Relative Labor Exploitation has accelerated in the “Neoliberal” era, according to Rasmus:

Rising productivity is a key marker for growing exploitation of Labor. If real wages have not risen since the late 1970s but productivity has—and has risen at an even faster rate in recent decades—then the value reflected in business revenues and profits of the increased output from that productivity has accrued almost totally to Capital.

In this regard, the numbers are widely recognized and non-controversial. Labor productivity has grown significantly, while wages have essentially stagnated. Rasmus tells us that it is even worse than it looks:

So, wages have risen only about one-sixth of the productivity increase.  But perhaps only half of that total 13% real hourly wage increase went to the top 5% of the production & nonsupervisory worker group, according to EPI 10 (Economic Policy Institute, February 2020). That means for the median wage production worker, the share of productivity gain was likely 10% or less. The median wage and below production worker consequently received a very small share in wages from productivity over the forty years since 1979. It virtually all accrued to Capital…

According to the US Labor Department, there were 106 million production & nonsupervisory workers at year end 2019—out of the approximately 150 million total nonfarm labor force at that time. Had they entered the labor force around 1982-84, they would have experienced no real wage increase over the four decades.

Rasmus notes that the US maintained the same share of global manufacturing production through the first two decades of the twenty-first century, but doing it with six million fewer workers. This, of course, meant a rising rate of exploitation and a greater share of surplus value for the capitalists. Though the job losses struck especially hard at an important section of the manufacturing working class relegated to unemployment, the remaining workers lost further from concessionary bargaining promoted by a business-union leadership. Thus, they were unable to secure any of the gains accrued by rising productivity. They experienced a higher rate of exploitation.

*****

Demonstrating that labor exploitation has increased in the last 45-50 years in terms of absolute and relative surplus value does not, according to Rasmus, close the book on labor exploitation. Drawing on a suggestive quote in Volume III of Capital, he develops an original theory of “secondary exploitation.” Marx writes:

That the working-class is also swindled in this form [usury, commerce], and to an enormous extent, is self-evident… This is secondary exploitation, which runs parallel to the primary exploitation taking place in the production process itself. Capital, Volume III, p. 609

Rasmus explains secondary exploitation this way: “Secondary Exploitation (SE) is not a question of value being created in exchange relations. It’s about capitalists reclaiming part of what they paid initially in wages. It’s about how capitalists maximize Total Exploitation by manipulating exchange relations as well as production relations.”

To be clear, Marx is not using the technical sense of “exploitation” here, but the popular sense. However, the fact that the worker has “earned” a measure of value and that capitalists can wrest some of it away in various ways is exploitation and important and worthy of study.

Here, however, Rasmus digresses, reverting back to the price form in his explanation of secondary exploitation. He seems to assume, without elaboration, that systemic “taking advantage of workers” outside of the production process must be explained in terms of prices and not values. He also seems to believe that all means of secondary exploitation must be within the exchange nexus. And he seems to believe that all secondary exploitation must be systemic. It is not clear why these assumptions should be made.

These methodological questions, however, bear little relevance to his fresh and original insights on secondary exploitation. Rasmus presents five mechanisms for capital to “claw back” from the working people the variable capital captured by the class in the value-producing process: credit, monopolistic price gouging, wage theft, deferred or social wages, and taxes. Importantly, Rasmus connects much of this exploitation to the active intervention of the state on behalf of capital.

Credit: Allowing workers to acquire commodities through deferred payment is not a sympathetic act by the capitalist, but a method of furthering accumulation in an environment where demand is restricted by the inequalities of income and wealth. The capitalist extracts additional value from the worker through interest charges. Additional value is “swindled” from the worker through the credit mechanism. Rasmus points out that interest-bearing loans to working people have expanded from $10 trillion-plus in 2013 to $17 trillion-plus in 2024, with dramatically higher interest rates in the last few years.

Monopolistic price gouging: Rasmus is fully aware that when prices go up, they are the result of decisions by capitalists to secure more revenue– that action is not to benefit society, not to help the workers, but to secure more for investors. Insofar as they succeed, their gains are at the expense of workers– a form of secondary exploitation.

Our current run of inflation is the result of a cycle of price increases to capture more of the consumers’ (in the end, the workers’) value and to catch up with competitors. But the impression must not be left unchallenged that this price gouging is painlessly left to the capitalist at his or her whim or that it is without risk. The impression must not be left, as it was in the 1960s with Sweezy/Baran, Gillman, and others, that monopoly concentration meant a sharp decline in the power of competition to retard and even thwart monopoly power to do as it liked. That lesson was sharply brought home in the 1970s with humbling of the US big three automakers and the US electronics industry. Monopoly and competition play a dialectical role in disciplining price behavior around labor values.

Wage theft: While theft is not exploitation, when it is common, frequent, and rarely sanctioned, it resembles exploitation more than theft! Rasmus provides an impressible list of common ruses:

The methods [of wage theft] have included capitalists not paying the required minimum wage; not paying overtime wage rates as provided in Federal and state laws; not paying workers for the actual hours they work; paying them by the day or job instead of by the hour; forcing workers to pay their managers for a job; supervisors stealing workers’ cash tips; making illegal deductions from workers’ paychecks; deducting their pay for breaks they didn’t take or for damages to company goods; supervisors arranging pay ‘kickbacks’ for themselves from workers’ pay; firing workers and not paying them for their last day worked; failing to give proper 60-day notice of a plant closing and then not paying workers as required by law; denying workers access to guaranteed benefits like workers’ compensation when injured; refusing to make contributions to pension and health plans on behalf of workers and then pocketing the savings; and, not least, general payroll fraud.

Deferred or Social wages: Rasmus shows how the government mechanisms that are meant to socially meet needs are skewed to draw more from workers proportionally while benefiting them less proportionally. He has in mind retirement, health care, and welfare programs that politicians persistently demand more sacrifices from working people to fund, while restricting their ability to draw the benefits through various tests of eligibility.

Taxes: Rasmus reminds us that the dominant political forces espousing the “Neoliberal policy regime” have dramatically increased the tax burden on workers:

Since the advent of Neoliberalism, the total tax burden has shifted from capitalists, their corporations, businesses, and investors to working class families.

In the post-World War II era the payroll tax has more than doubled as a share of total federal tax revenues, to around 45% by 2020. During the same period, the share of taxes paid by corporations has fallen from more than 20% to less than 10%. The federal individual income tax as a percent of total federal government revenues has remained around 40-45%. However, within that 40-45%, another shift in the burden has been occurring—from capital incomes to earned wage incomes…

Not just Trump, but every president since 2001 the US capitalist State has been engaged in a massive tax cutting program mostly benefiting capital incomes. The total tax cuts have amounted to at least $17 trillion since 2001: Starting with George W. Bush’s 2001-03 tax cuts which cut taxes $3.8 trillion (80% of which accrued to Capital incomes), through Obama’s 2009 tax cuts and his extension of Bush’s cuts in 2008 for another two years and again for another 10 years in 2013 (all of which cost another $6 trillion), through Trump’s massive 2017 tax cuts that cost $4.5 trillion, and Biden’s 2021-22 tax legislation that added another $2 trillion at minimum—the US Capitalist state has reduced taxes by at least $17 trillion!

Reducing capital’s taxes, as a proportion of tax revenue, increases future national obligations– national debt– that will ultimately be paid by working-class taxes. Or, if that proves unfeasible, it will be met by a reduction of social spending, which reduces social benefits for workers. Either way, the working class faces secondary exploitation through ruling-class tax policy.

Interestingly, Rasmus acknowledges that the state plays a big role in what he deems “secondary exploitation.” Yet, he also suggests that the proper province of secondary exploitation is in the bounds of exchange relations. This seeming anomaly can be avoided if we understand the increasing role of the state in engaging, broadly speaking, in the arena of exchange, as well as regulation. It is precisely this profound and broad engagement that many twentieth-century Marxists explained as state-monopoly capitalism.

*****

Jack Rasmus’s contribution is most welcome because it argues that returning to the fundamentals– the concept of exploitation– can be a fruitful way of looking at contemporary capitalism. It establishes a firm material base for an anti-capitalist politics that addresses the interests of working people as a class, the broadest of classes.

Further, the theory of exploitation unites people as workers, but allows for the various ways and degrees of their exploitation. And it links the material interests of the protagonists in the class struggle to the many forms of social oppression and their contradictory interests in promoting or ending those oppressions: the capitalist sows oppressive divisions to gain exploitative advantage; the worker disavows oppressive divisions to achieve the unity necessary to defeat exploitation. That is, exploitation motivates the capitalist to divide people around nationality, race, sex, culture, social practices, and language. Ending exploitation motivates the worker to refuse these divisions.

In an age where capitalism owns a decided, powerful advantage because of the splintering of the left into numerous causes and where capitalism elevates individual identity to a place superseding class, the common goal of eliminating exploitation is a powerful unifying force.

Today’s left has too often interpreted anti-imperialism as simply the struggle for national sovereignty, rather than through the lens of exploitation. Consequently, the dynamics of class struggle within national borders is often missed.

Of course, for Lenin and his followers, an advanced tage of capitalism — monopoly capitalism — was the life form of imperialism. And its beating heart was exploitation.

The vital tool that Marx, Engels, and Lenin brought to the struggle for workers’ emancipation was the theory of exploitation.Email

Greg Godels writes on current events, political economy, and the Communist movement from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. Read other articles by Greg, or visit Greg's website.