“As capitalist, he is only capital personified. His soul is the soul of capital. But capital has one single life impulse, the tendency to create value and surplus-value [i.e. profit]…” (Karl Marx, “The Working Day”, Capital: Volume One)
“Marx does not advance a moral ‘right’ to an unscathed existence or something similar against the impositions of capitalism. Instead, he hopes that with the growing insight into the destructive nature of the capitalist system (which can be established without recourse to morality), the working class will take up the struggle against this system – not on the basis of morality, but rather on the basis of its own interest.” (Michael Heinrich, An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital)
Reacting to news that Lance Armstrong will be participating in Geoff Thomas’s Le Tour: One Day Ahead 2015 – a fundraising event for Cure Leukaemia – the president of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) stated: “I’m sure that Geoff Thomas means well, but frankly I think that’s completely inappropriate and disrespectful to the Tour, disrespectful to the current riders, and disrespectful to the UCI and the anti-doping community”. It’s incredible that the UCI, the organisation that “colluded” with Lance Armstrong “to bypass doping accusations” from 1999 to 2009, is actually able to distance itself from the doping culture of professional cycling; or is it incredible? Actually, it’s hardly surprising at all.
The endless pursuit of profit-making, at the expense of workers and nature, is not the result, as Marx depicts in Capital, of greedy, individual Moneybags; although, greedy, individual Moneybags does exist. A capitalist, regardless of their intent, good or bad, in order to survive as a capitalist, must boundlessly chase profit, or perish. The political economy of capitalism is the relentless motion of M-C-M’ (the general formula for capital): money (M) to buy commodities (C) to make more money (M’), for money to buy commodities to make more money, and on and on; the use-value of the commodity of labour-power is the most fortuitous commodity of all for any Moneybags, because its use-value is, distinctively, a source of value and surplus-value.
“…it is only in so far as the appropriation of ever more and more wealth in the abstract becomes the sole motive of his operations, that he functions as a capitalist, that is, as capital personified and endowed with consciousness and a will. … The restless never-ending process of profit-making alone is what he aims at.” (Karl Marx, “The General Formula for Capital”, Capital: Volume One)
The world of professional cycling is inseparable from this wheel-turning motion of capital accumulation. Does the capital that drives professional cycling care for the long-term lives of its wage-labourers, or is its focus to extract the utmost from the labour-power it employs to make a profit? The history of doping in professional cycling isn’t a history of good capitalists and bad capitalists, good teams and bad teams, good riders and bad riders, it is a history of a world in which competition compels capital personified to continuously seek advantage in gaining more and more surplus-value from its wage-labourers, thus generating and fuelling a systemic culture of doping. Opt out and one expires.
I am not interested in a dissection of Lance Armstrong’s personality from a moral standpoint. I’ve read my share of books about doping in the cycling profession, including about ‘the Lance factor’. The problem with such books is their focus on bad riders and good riders, bad teams and good teams. Doping existed in professional cycling before, during, and (in probability) post the Lance Armstrong era.
The boss of Team Sky, Dave Brailsford, has said, on Lance Armstrong riding One Day Ahead 2015: “Lance has done enough damage to the Tour already. He’s done enough damage to the sport.” One might say that the rampant commercialisation of cycling has damaged the sport. One might say that the commercial dominance of Team Sky – rich in monies from the Murdoch empire – strangled the Tour de France in 2012 and 2013 of any meaningful sporting drama. It’s odd how the history of doping in professional cycling can be laid solely, individually, and moralistically at the door of Lance Armstrong. His crime was to be exceptionally good at playing the system, and embedding himself within the system – call it ‘Planet Lance’, a story of how one professional cyclist turned from a wage-labourer to an especially shrewd capitalist and philanthropist. But Lance Armstrong was not the system itself, he was one planet in its universe. Who is the real enemy of professional cycling? And, what’s its real dope? Capital, silly.
Lance Armstrong, with my socialist feminist friend and comrade Helen Russell, in training for Le Tour: One Day Ahead 2015.
“We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. […] Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it.” (Oscar Wilde, 1891)
In a world of suffering, a basic human instinct to give to charity reflects a desire to do something and to connect. When charity workers appeal in supermarkets for donations to food banks, I feel that instinct and give readily. The statistics below from The Trussell Trust plainly illustrate just how critical such charity-giving has become to contemporary British society.
And yet there is a painful ambivalence to charity, which shouldn’t be ignored. We live in a world of suffering, and we live in a world of tremendous wealth. Charity alleviates the suffering of a limited some, for some limited time, and to some limited degree, while charity is captive to capitalism. Charity cannot eliminate the root causes of why people need charity, namely, inequality, poverty, and political power, which lies in the hands of a few, for the benefit of a few. Recognising this doesn’t mean shrugging one’s shoulders the next time someone asks for a donation to a food bank; ‘Alas, the problem is capitalism!’ Recognising this does mean that if one desires to live in a humane, equal, and fully democratic society, then one needs to engage in political struggles to change our existing world, whose political economy fuels (on the one hand) a limitless thirst for capital accumulation and causes (on the other hand) unequal, exploitative, and inhumane conditions of existence – all the while, charity soothes, a little.
There is a darker side to charity too. Take Cameron’s heralding of a Big Society in 2010 – “from state power to people power” – whose vision of charities running public services is a guise to the neoliberal dismantlement of the welfare state and the public sector in favour of market forces. Take as well the world’s most famous philanthropist, Bill Gates (who has a net worth of $80 billion). On the Gates Foundation’s approach to global health problems, the New Internationalist quotes, from 2008, the World Health Organisation’s Head of Malaria Research, Aarata Kochi, who calls the Gates Foundation a “cartel”, which suppresses the diversity of scientific opinion, and is “accountable to no-one other than itself”. The New Internationalist continues:
“Setting out his approach at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos, [Bill Gates] said: ‘There are two great forces: self-interest and caring for others.’ To reconcile the two, the Foundation pursues partnerships in which, guided by NGOs, academics and assorted ‘stakeholders’, donor funds are used to overcome the ‘market failures’ which deny the poor access to medicine, by paying pharmaceutical companies to sell their products cheaper and pursue research projects they would otherwise ignore. […] The arrangements have, however, created concerns. As Tido von Schoen Angerer, Executive Director of the Access Campaign at Médecins Sans Frontières, explains, ‘The Foundation wants the private sector to do more on global health, and sets up partnerships with the private sector involved in governance. As these institutions are clearly also trying to influence policymaking, there are huge conflicts of interests… the companies should not play a role in setting the rules of the game.’ […] A study in the Lancet in 2009 showed only 1.4 per cent of the Foundation’s grants between 1998 and 2007 went to public-sector organizations, while of the 659 NGOs receiving grants, only 37 were headquartered in low- or middle-income countries. […] Research by Devi Sridhar at Oxford University warns that philanthropic interventions are ‘radically skewing public health programmes towards issues of the greatest concern to wealthy donors’. ‘Issues,’ she writes, ‘which are not necessarily top priority for people in the recipient country.’ […] [Dr David McCoy, a public health doctor and researcher at University College London] insists […] that it is important to mount a challenge: ‘Appealing to the megarich to be more charitable is not a solution to global health problems. We need a system that does not create so many billionaires and, until we do that, this kind of philanthropy is either a distraction or potentially harmful to the need for systemic change to the political economy.’”
To anyone dazzled by the idea of a marriage of capitalist self-interest and caring for others, the words of Friedrich Engels, from a piece called “To the House of Rothschild” in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung in 1847, are worth recollecting. Here Engels deconstructs Karl Beck’s poem “To the House of Rothschild” to construct a searing critique of philanthrophy. (The Rothschild dynasty established their banking business in the 1760s, and by the nineteenth century had accumulated the greatest private wealth in the world.)
(Wikimedia Commons)
Engels remarks of Beck’s poem:
“It is not the destruction of Rothschild’s real power, of the social conditions on which it is based, which the poet threatens; he merely desires it to be humanely applied. He laments that bankers are not socialist philanthropists, not enthusiasts for an ideal, not benefactors of mankind [sic], but just – bankers. Beck sings of the cowardly petty-bourgeois wretchedness, of the “poor man”, the pauvre honteux with his poor, pious and contradictory wishes of the “little man” in all his manifestations, and not of the proud, threatening, and revolutionary proletarian. The threats and reproaches which Beck showers on the house of Rothschild, sound, for all his good intentions, even more farcical to the reader than a Capuchin’s sermon. They are founded on the most infantile illusion about the power of the Rothschilds, on total ignorance of the connection between this power and existing conditions, and on a complete misapprehension about the means which the Rothschilds had to use to acquire power and to retain power.”
Engels continues, citing extracts from Beck’s poem:
“The rule of gold obeys your whims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Oh, would your works could be as splendid And your heart as great as is your power! (p. 4).
It is a pity that Rothschild has the power and our poet the heart.
[…]
You occupied in eloquence the teacher’s chair, Attentively the rich sat as your pupils; Your task: to lead them out into the world, Your role: to he their conscience. They have gone wild – and you looked on, They are corrupted – and yours is the blame (p. 27).
So Lord Rothschild could have prevented the development of trade and industry, competition, the concentration of property, the national debt and agiotage, in short, the whole development of modern bourgeois society, if only he had had somewhat more conscience. It really requires toute la désolante naïveté de la poésie allemande [all the utterly depressing naivety of German poetry] for one to dare to publish such nursery tales. Rothschild is turned into a regular Aladdin.”
The writings of Marxists who have long past should neither be confined to their era of origination nor be reworked to the extent that eliminates from analysis of such work the context provoking them. Gramsci himself understood that ideas about the past may transcend the original context and communicate to us in the present, but only through rigorous empirical examination:
“How the present is a criticism of the past, besides [and because of] ‘surpassing’ it. But should the past be discarded for this reason? What should be discarded is that which the present has ‘intrinsically’ criticised and that part of ourselves which corresponds to it. What does this mean? That we must have an exact consciousness of this real criticism and express it not only theoretically, but politically. In other words, we must stick closer to the present, which we ourselves have helped create, while conscious of the past and its continuation (and revival).”
Below is an extract written by Gramsci on the State, civil society, and hegemony, at a time of crisis in European politics after the First World War and the Russian Revolution, from which both Italy and Germany saw the rise of fascism. His words have an eerie resonance about them as I blog in the immediate aftermath of Britain’s 2015 General Election.
State and Civil Society: Observations on Certain Aspects of the Structure of Political Parties in Periods of Organic Crisis
“At a certain point in their historical lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In other words, the traditional parties in that particular organisational form, with the particular men [sic] who constitute, represent, and lead them, are no longer recognised by their class (or fraction of a class) as its expression. When such crises occur, the immediate situation becomes delicate and dangerous, because the field is open for violent solutions, for the activities of unknown forces, represented by charismatic ‘men of destiny’.
These situations of conflict between ‘represented and representatives’ reverberate out from the terrain of the parties […] throughout the State organism, reinforcing the relative power of the bureaucracy […], of high finance […]. A ‘crisis of authority’ is spoken of: this is precisely the crisis of hegemony, or general crisis of the State.
The crisis creates situations which are dangerous in the short run, since the various strata of the population are not all capable of orienting themselves equally swiftly, or of reorganising with the same rhythm. The traditional ruling class, which has numerous trained cadres, changes men [sic] and programmes and, with greater speed than is achieved by the subordinate classes, reabsorbs the control that was slipping from its grasp. […]
Parties come into existence, and constitute themselves as organisations, in order to influence the situation at moments which are historically vital for their class; but they are not always capable of adapting themselves to new tasks and to new epochs, nor of evolving pari passu with the overall relations of force (and hence the relative position of their class) in the country in question, or in the international field. In analysing the development of parties, it is necessary to distinguish: their social group; their mass membership; their bureaucracy and General Staff. The bureaucracy is the most dangerously hidebound and conservative force; if it ends up by constituting a compact body, which stands on its own and feels itself independent of the mass of members, the party ends up by becoming anachronist and at moments of acute crisis it is voided of its social content and left as though suspended in mid-air.”
“Nature does not produce on the one side owners of money or commodities, and on the other [humans] possessing nothing but their own labour-power.” (Karl Marx, Capital: Volume One)
Vaddhaka Linn’s “The Buddha on Wall Street” is an enjoyable read. It’s clear and accessible, and references some interesting sources to scrutinise the way in which contemporary capitalist society operates. Ironically however, given the author’s ethical stance, the book’s cover is guilty of false advertising. The strap-line to the book is: “what’s wrong with capitalism and what we can do about it”; one would think then that in some way the central narrative would be anti-capitalist and/or post-capitalist, it is not. Linn’s basic argument is that a particular form of capitalism is bad – namely, neoliberal capitalism – and what we need to harness instead is “thoughtful self-interest and the creative energy and dynamism in capitalism with the values of generosity and altruism” (page 7). As such, the strap-line could have more honestly read: “what’s wrong with neoliberal capitalism and the case for a kinder capitalism”. Am I being pedantic? No. I am interested in an interlocution between Marxism and Buddhism (see my post Marxism and Spirituality), which motivated me to buy the book, so on reading it, it fell short of my expectation. Avanti, my review.
Slavoj Žižek
A prompt to Linn beginning this project is his disagreement with Žižek’s comments on Buddhism. On Žižek, he states: “what he calls ‘Western Buddhism’ is the ‘perfect ideological supplement’ to capitalism. He believes that the emphasis in ‘Western Buddhism’ on meditation encourages Buddhists to create an inner distance from the ‘mad dance’ of modern capitalism, to give up any attempt to control what’s going on, and to take comfort in the view that all the social and economic upheaval in the world today is ‘just a non-substantial proliferation of semblances that do not really concern the innermost kernel of our being’. Zizek’s claim implies that when faced with injustice, pain, and suffering in the world today, Western Buddhists take cover in their meditation practice in order to avoid the full impact of this reality. When I heard Zizek’s statement, I have to admit that I reacted strongly against it. […] I decided to examine the modern capitalist world from the perspective of economics and Buddhism, and this book is the result” (pages 3-5).
Here’s the thing about Žižek, he’s a brilliant polemicist. And from reading Linn’s book cover to cover, I’m confused as to why he didn’t concede that Žižek, in part, has some points worthy of engagement. Linn later problematises the use of mindfulness by business: “notwithstanding the sincerity of mindfulness teachers, the evidence of an ethical shift in business behaviour owing to the embracing of mindfulness is, as far as I can see, not encouraging. To the contrary, the evidence suggests a ‘disconnect’ between the practice of mindfulness and reality on the ground” (pages 133-134). Quoting a Factory Inspector Report in Capital: Volume One, Marx notes: “‘Moments are the elements of profit.'” I am fascinated by capitalism’s appropriation of mindfulness. To me, this is about capital extracting more and more profit from the exploitation of the workforce in a given period of time. If the working-day is legally fixed, then mindfulness becomes a tool to increase the efficiency and productivity of workers in a set period, for the end of greater profits to the bosses. Later, when discussing one of his spiritual heroes, Bhikkhu Bodhi, Linn states: “He was troubled by what he saw as complacent and self-absorbed attitudes among many American Buddhists, attitudes that were disconnected from the deepening economic, social, and ecological crises in the world. […] He was critical of the way that Buddhist practice was narrowly understood in terms of one’s personal meditation, which appeared to serve a largely therapeutic function […] rather than as a means of tackling the deepest roots of suffering both for oneself and for others” (page 195). Again, there’s a worthwhile debate here, and one in which Linn’s work is a modest contribution, and surely too Žižek’s?
Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and the question of capitalism
“Capitalism has led us to a situation in the world today in which it is possible to conceive of a fulfilling life for all, but further progress is being suffocated by a neoliberal form of capitalism that threatens the environment and perpetuates suffering in the world.” (Linn, page 7)
The influence of Adam Smith to Linn’s understanding of capitalism is apparent right from the start: capitalism is able to increase productivity through the division of labour, but at a cost to the worker in minute, mind-numbing labour. He wishes to rescue Smith from the free marketeers and neoliberal capitalists, by recognising this classical political economist as a theorist of self-interest and empathy. Linn identifies the role of, let’s say, the masses in pressing for change away from neoliberal capitalism, and towards a kinder and more sustainable capitalism: “To break the faith in unlimited economic growth requires people to reconsider their relationship to material goods and their idea of what makes them happy”; alongside collective campaigning, since, “if left to their own devices, modern economists and business are not going to do much to help deal with the problem of global warming and environmental damage” (page 79). Inequality is seen by Linn as a particular problem of the last 30 years, of rampant neoliberal capitalism, in which greed and selfishness have distorted Smith’s fine balance between self-interest and empathy. Linn recounts a time gone past when he had a personal connection with his local bank manager, and contrasts this with a runaway banking and finance system that caused the 2007-2008 crash. He proposes two specific ideas for Buddhist campaigning: to press companies to annually release figures of the ratio of total compensation of their CEO to median compensation of their employees (and perhaps to go further in establishing agreed pay ratios), and a progressive taxation system to provide welfare to those in need.
I’ve had the pleasure of partaking in a Capital Study Group alongside reading “The Buddha on Wall Street”, and what Linn misses about capitalism is that it is (on the side of capital) an innately and incessantly exploitative and unequal political economy of social relations. Thus distinguishing between neoliberal capitalism and post-WWII capitalism is an interesting academic exercise but bypasses what all capitalism – then and now, and here and there – has in common in its internal drive (its greed, even) to make profit, and to subsequently deplete us as human beings and as planet Earth. In Capital: Volume One, Marx presents the labour theory of value. Starting with commodities and money, he defetishises their mysterious nature to then reveal the relation of capital to labour as the source of value and surplus-value (i.e. profit):
“Value […] does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic.” The “money-form of the world of commodities […] actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers.” (Marx, Capital: Volume One)
The majority of us in the world today have no choice, if we want to exist with shelter, food, and recreation, then to sell our labour-power. Marx spells out the uniqueness of this commodity to capitalism:
“In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power.” (Marx, Capital: Volume One)
A politically organised labour movement is essential for both the worker’s and the Earth’s survival, because Moneybags does not like limits to the creation of surplus-value:
“in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. […] Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.” (Marx, Capital: Volume One)
Because Linn doesn’t recognise the labour theory of value, he has some odd trains of thought. For example, he rightly questions a possible, market-based solution to refugees – specifically, a quota system linked to national wealth, in which nation-states could trade in such quotas – and a commercialised blood donation system as exists in the United States; concluding: “Human beings and human qualities become commodities, things to be traded just like other commodities” (page 28). He questions Walmart taking out life insurance policies on a number of its employees, and concludes: “In this manner employees become less an essential part of a working community and more a source of potential profit, even in death” (page 28). However, capitalism, right from its birth, commodified human beings, specifically, human labour-power, and the owners of capital intrinsically see workers’ ‘value’ in terms of generating surplus-value. This makes the role of a rank-and-file organised, labour movement absolutely critical. As a former trade unionist, Linn – while not negating this – very much under-stresses the centrality of the labour movement to achieving change in society.
Conclusion
At best, Linn looks to nuclei within capitalism – new societies in miniature – as role models for alternative ways of living. Perhaps he’s proposing what my mate Jane once called the Aero bar theory of revolution (well, in this case, capitalist reform). If enough bubbles develop in the chocolate bar, it becomes something else, a different form altogether. He mentions the Windhorse Evolution chain as an example of Buddhist right livelihood, which put into practice a caring and nurturing work environment. From my knowledge of Evolution, it provided just that, but it was also an employer of zero-hours contracts for some of its employees, and ended up closing because it couldn’t continue to make a profit. Equally so, cooperatives have to exist within wider capitalist social relations, and face continual pressure to function more and more like ordinary capitalist businesses or fold. This is the contradiction cooperatives face. Cooperatives, however progressive, should not be seen as a substitute to organising in trade unions.
What’s the elephant in the room? Linn, in “The Buddha on Wall Street: what’s wrong with capitalism and what we can do about it” rejects state totalitarianism. Good. I do too. More to the point, he rejects what he calls communism, and “its oppressive, anti-democratic nature and its stifling of dynamism and creativity” (page 205). The measure of any society proclaiming itself to be socialist and/or communist is democracy: the fullest democracy imaginable. Doctors per head in Cuba doesn’t cut it for me if working-class Cubans cannot form independent trade unions and politically challenge the state. The bourgeois democracy of Britain is preferable to the one-party, Maoist state of China, since I can blog here without fear of being ‘made to disappear’. If one reads Marx, one would know he doesn’t fetishise the state, and why would he? There would be no need for permanent state bureaucracies in an international society of socialism. The Soviet Union of the Cold War was a betrayal of the soviets – workers’ councils – of 1917 that led to a workers’ revolution. It’s frustrating how Linn so easily dismisses socialist politics. The violent Buddhist fundamentalisms of Burma and Sri Lanka do not reflect the Buddhism of Linn’s book, so to write-off Linn’s book as Buddhist fundamentalism would be empirically inaccurate and stupid. Let’s have a proper debate!
I attended a talk by Vaddhaka Linn at the Sheffield Buddhist Centre on the 12th May 2015, in which he focused on “The gift relationship” chapter of his book. At the end, he said it was only fair, having presented a right-wing critique of altruism, to offer the left-wing one. Linn went on to describe a left-wing critique of charity. But altruism, an unselfish concern for the welfare of others, is not the same as charity, organisations who raise (in the main) money to help those in need. One can be a highly altruistic person, and with that altruism, be motivated and active in one’s local trade union branch, and campaigns to save the NHS and the local library. Socialism and altruism go together, so too do socialism, altruism and a politically healthy critique of charity and philanthropy. Linn said that he finds the left-wing critique of charity “shocking”. If he read my post – ‘To the House of Rothschild!’ Socialism, charity, and Aladdin – he may be shocked to find a friend in Bill Gates, who too promotes the Smithian notion of capitalist self-interest and caring for others.
Anaemic On A Bike 