It’s over five years since I started
publishing InI (and not coincidentally, since the illegal and
disastrous invasion of Iraq) and it’s been a struggle to keep it going
not only because of the cost of maintaining it but because I’ve kept it
going single-handed throughout this entire period. Not that I’m
complaining but it does wear one down especially as the situation goes
from plain bloody awful (March 2003) to absolutely disastrous and
income from readers is virtually nil.
And without blowing my
trumpet too much, InI has grown into a vast source of information for
anyone interested in what’s going on in the world, so much so, that
even on a ‘bad’ week, InI still gets around 120,000 visits.
Keeping
up an optimistic view of things gets more and more difficult for me to
maintain in the face of a capitalist system determined to carry on
regardless of the consequences.
But it would appear that events have finally come to a head,
- “It
is been proposed by a group of British geologists that the Holocene Age
is over and that the new era should be named the Anthropocene Age to
reflect the clear commencement of human induced geological change.” —
‘The Anthropocene Age’ [1]
According to the research, the
average temperature of the Earth during the Holocene Period (about
10,000 years to the present) fluctuated by only one degree centigrade
and tellingly it’s during this period of relative climate stability
that we witnessed the rise of modern humanity. Good sense dictates that
the two are not unconnected.
Whilst we survived on a bounteous
Nature but without upsetting the four billion years in the making,
homeostasis, things looked generally positive. And then about five
hundred years ago, in Europe, along came capitalism and everything
changed.
Looking back on the age when Marx wrote his magnum
opus, Capital, it’s not difficult to see why he felt so positive about
the direction that humanity almost seemed impelled to take. Science and
technology, when under democratic control by an informed citizenry, is
a progressive force — when working in harmony with both man and Nature,
able for the first time in human history to satisfy all our basic needs
and thus free us to pursue our own, personal development.
But if
anything, Marx underestimated the power of Capital to keep on
reinventing itself after every catastrophe it created and it’s because
it has to keep reinventing itself by revolutionizing production in ever
more ‘efficient’ forms (efficient here means using less and less labour
power thus greater profits) and in the process, consuming ever greater
quantities of pretty much everything in the insane drive for profit.
I
can only assume that Marx himself assumed that before capitalism chowed
the entire planet in its inexorable drive to keep recreating itself,
humanity would have taken charge of its own destiny, tossed the money
lenders out and got on with the business of living rather merely
consuming.
Am I wrong in assuming this? The 20th century saw
immense changes, many for the better in spite of the global wars of
destruction unleashed by capitalism and for the first time, the
possibility of a real alternative to capitalism came along.
Alas,
it didn’t survive but clearly the idea is not only alive but at least
in some parts of the world, actually flourishing, but not in mine and
indeed as the contradictions of capital become ever more extreme, so
does the struggle to maintain a system that is obviously dangerous to
both man and beast and possibly the existence of our species.
It
presents us with a dilemma for without overthrowing capitalism, the
countries determined to make a clean break with the past are forever on
the defensive, fighting for every inch in the face of overwhelming
odds.
Ultimately, it comes down to us in the so-called
developed world to do something about it, yet we seem in the thrall of
capital even as it screws us down into the ground as the latest crisis
to befall capitalism reveals.
- “Stop wasting food” — Gordon Brown
And
let’s not beat around the bush, the crises, which get worse with each
iteration, are wholy the fault of capitalism. And the ruling elites
answer to the latest crisis reveals just how bankrupt (and desperate)
they are,
- “Britons must stop wasting food in an effort to help
combat rising living costs, Gordon Brown has said en route to the G8
summit in Japan.
- “Mr Brown said “unnecessary” purchases were
contributing to price hikes, and urged people to plan meals in advance
and store food properly.”” — ‘Stop wasting food’, urges Brown’
Unnecessary
purchases? But the entire point of capitalist production is rooted in
“unnecessary” purchases of just about everything, it’s what keeps the
entire system staggering along.
For example, the UK Cabinet
report criticises the tactic of supermarkets offering ‘buy 2, get one
free’ alleging that it contributes to the waste, yet increasing
consumption is the holy grail of capitalism, it’s called ‘growth’.
By
questioning the sales tactics of supermarkets, the government
inadvertantly exposes the sheer lunacy of capitalist production based
as it is on nothing other than consumption for the sake of profit. Are
Brown and his crony advisors really claiming that throwing away less
food will reduce the cost of it? Is he completely insane?
Yet
the BBC along with the rest of the corporate media take this kind of
drivel seriously. The BBC story from which the above quote is taken
reveals the complicity between the media and the state in hiding the
true state of affairs from its citizens.
Buried away in one of a
number of stories on the BBC Website which allegedly ‘explain’ the
cause we find the following fact under the heading ‘Long era of cheap
food is over’,
- “But the increased interest in agriculture also
has a downside, as “non-commercial traders” - speculators in normal
language - have come into the agricultural commodity market.
- “Apart
from drought, speculation was the other factor named in the report as
being responsible for the record highs and the recent volatility in
markets.
No
mention of course of the role of futures trading speculators in energy,
the root cause of the current “turbulence” as the BBC describes it
elsewhere.
Yes, consumption will fall because people won’t be
able to afford to buy the basics needed as indeed they already are
(check the financial pages for the numbers on the high street, eg
‘
Service sector adds to UK gloom’).
The question is, for how
much longer will we allow our ruling elites to get away with what is
finally the mass murder of literally millions of poor people around the
planet because of capitalist policies?
Perhaps when our poor start
dying of starvation and hypothermia in numbers that are too large to
hide away behind all the double-speak?
Writings 
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