Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • Indo-European velars before *o

    In an ever-expanding series of recent blog posts I have argued, based on data compiled by Lars Steensland in his 1973 PhD thesis, that Proto-Indo-European – henceforth PIE – had two rather than three types of velar consonant: plain velars and labiovelars. I have also set out the phonological rules by which the plain velars remained intact in the satem languages, and by which labiovelars were delabialized in the centum languages. Although these rules account for a large proportion of the observed reflexes, they do not account for all of them. For a complete two-velar theory, I think we need to invoke another phonological rule: namely, that plain velars were remained intact before *o in the satem languages. In this blog post I will set out the supporting evidence.

    Steensland provides 31 examples of words with palatovelars occurring in word-initial position before *o, when not preceded by *s; 20 examples of words with plain velars in this position; and 12 examples of words with labiovelars in this position. He then shows that of the 12 examples of words with labiovelars, the labiovelar in all but 1 could have been introduced analogically from a related where the labiovelar occurred before *e, and concludes that there is no clear evidence of labiovelars occurring before *o in PIE. However, of the 31 examples of words with palatovelars, the palatovelar in all but 9 could also have been introduced analogically in a similar way. Moreover, none of the 9 remaining words stands up to scrutiny.

    The first word is *k’oinos ‘hay’, which supposedly yields reflexes in Balto-Slavic and Greek. However, the Greek word may simply be an inflected form of another Greek word derived from a different root. The second word is *k’olH₂mos ‘straw’ which yields reflexes in Balto-Slavic, Italic, Germanic, and Greek. The original paradigm may be reconstructed as *k’elH₂m ~ *k’lH₂mos, in which case the palatovelar could have been introduced analogically from the *e-grade. The ‘gutturalwechsel’ (velar interchange) in the Baltic-Slavic reflexes provides further evidence that this root originally contained a plain velar. The third word is *k’onghos ‘shell’, which supposedly yields reflexes in Indo-Iranian and Greek, but the correspondence is irregular so these are probably false cognates.

    The fourth and fifth words are *k’ormnos ‘acid’, which yields reflexes in Balto-Slavic and Germanic; and *k’ormos ‘pain’, which yields reflexes in Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian, and Germanic. Both of these words can be traced back to a root *k’er(H)- ‘hurt’, which is attested in the *e-grade in Greek. The sixth word is *g’houHos ‘call’, which yields reflexes in Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic; this word can be traced back to a root *g’heuH- ‘call’, which is attested in the *e-grade in Indo-Iranian. The seventh and eighth words are *k’okH₂eH₂ ‘branch’ and *k’onkos, both of which yield reflexes in Indo-Iranian, Balto-Slavic, and Germanic. These words can be traced back to a root *k’ek- ‘sway’ with a nasal infix variant *k’enk-, which are attested in the *e-grade in Albanian and Indo-Iranian respectively.

    Hence, the palatovelar could have been introduced analogically in words four to eight. The final word is *k’opH₂elos ‘carp’. This word only has reflexes in the satem languages, and as these were contiguous, can therefore only be traced back as far as ‘proto-satem’ rather than to PIE. We can conclude from the above that Steensland’s data is consistent with the hypothesis that the split between palatovelars and plain velars before *o occurred separately in the satem languages, and therefore that there is no need to reconstruct a separate palatovelar series of consonants before *o in PIE. This hypothesis also has the advantage of explaining numerous instances of ‘gutturalwechsel’: alternations between palatovelars and plain velars across different satem languages.

    For example, the word *g’hordos ‘enclosure’ yields both palatovelar and plain velar reflexes in Balto-Slavic, along with a plain velar reflex in Albanian. The underlying root *g’her- is attested in the *e-grade in Indo-Iranian. The gutturalwechsel in *g’hordos ‘enclosure’ can therefore be explained by positing that the word originally contained a plain velar that was blocked from palatalizing before the *o, with the palatovelar reflexes later being introduced analogically from the *e-grade. Similarly, the word *k’oimos ‘home’ yields both palatovelar and plain velar reflexes in Balto-Slavic, and the underlying root *k’ei- is attested in the *e-grade in Indo-Iranian and Balto-Slavic, so the gutturalwechsel can be explained in the same way.

    Another example is the word *bherg’hos ‘fortification’, which yields palatovelar reflexes in Indo-Iranian and Armenian, and plain velar reflexes in Balto-Slavic. The velar in the underlying root *bherg’h- would have occurred before *e in several Indo-Iranian and Armenian reflexes, so again the gutturalwechsel can  be explained by positing that the word originally contained a plain velar that was blocked from palatalizing before the *o. These explanations have the advantage of uniting what are usually reconstructed as separate roots with the same meaning: *g’her-/*gher- ‘enclose’, *k’ei-/*kei- ‘settle’, and *bherg’h-/*bhergh- ‘protect’. It seems much more plausible that these each represent a single PIE root with the divergent velar reflexes being the result of secondary developments.

  • A brief history of US imperialism

    If 2026 has had a theme so far, it has been US imperialism. The year has already seen US interventions in Venezuela and Iran, and threats of future interventions elsewhere, such as in Colombia and Greenland. Many seem to be surprised by these events, but they really shouldn’t be. The US has a long history of meddling in other countries’ affairs, often with disastrous consequences for the people living in those countries. Anyone who thought Trump’s ‘America first’ policy meant discontinuing this practice was deluding themselves. Indeed, the reason the US does this is precisely because it is putting its own interests first, above the interests of other countries. Or more accurately, the ruling class in the US is putting its interests first, above the interests of everyone else.

    The US has intervened militarily in dozens of countries throughout its history, with estimates varying from around 70 nations to over 100, depending on your definition of military intervention. This policy has its roots in the so-called Monroe Doctrine, first articulated by President James Monroe in 1823. The Monroe Doctrine is a US policy position that opposes any foreign interference in the Western Hemisphere, and effectively established the Americas as a the US’s sphere of influence by asserting that any new European attempts to colonize or intervene in there would be seen as hostile acts against the US itself. It was later interpreted to justify US military intervention in Latin America as the nation gained power.

    The first such intervention was the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848, which the US started by invading Mexico. Although ostensibly a border dispute, the US’s real aim was to fulfil it’s ‘manifest destiny’: the 19th-century belief that the US was divinely ordained to expand across the North American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. This war marked the beginning of US military imperialism. However, although the US won the war easily, it had its fingers badly burnt as the conflict subsequently led to the American Civil War (see my previous blog post on this for more details). As a result, the US did not attempt any serious military interventions again until 1898. This time, it invaded and occupied Spanish-controlled Cuba, leading to the Spanish-American war.

    Again, the US won this war easily. However, unlike the Mexican-American war half a century prior, this time the US profited significantly from its victory. The peace treaty saw Spain cede control over its colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the US, and to Cuba effectively becoming a US puppet. This emboldened the US, and between 1898 and 1935 it launched several interventions in Latin America, resulting in significant US military presence in Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. By the time WWII broke out, the US was effectively in control of most of Central America and the Caribbean. At this stage, though, the US had largely limited itself to intervening militarily in its own back yard.

    That all changed after WWII. The US formed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949 to resist socialist expansion, and over the next 40 years supported resistance movements and dissidents in dozens of socialist countries around the world. Although this period became known as the ‘cold war’, during this time the US took part in two ‘hot wars’, in Korea (1950-1953) and Vietnam (1955-1975). It is often said that the latter war was a disaster from the US’s point of view. But both wars achieved the primary aim of the American ruling class, which was to stop the spread of socialism. Largely as a result of these and other interventions, we now live in a world where the idea of socialism taking hold globally seems like an impossibility to most people.

    Anyone who thought that the end of the cold war and global decline in socialism would result in a corresponding decrease in US imperialism would have been sorely mistaken. US imperialism has continued unabated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the attention shifting away from preventing the spread of socialism and towards protecting American oil interests. This has resulted in many military interventions in oil-rich nations, particularly Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, and Libya. The recent interventions in Venezuela and Iran are a continuation of this policy of oil imperialism that has now been going on for over 30 years. An invasion Greenland would also represent a continuation of this policy.

    However, a US invasion of Greenland would also mark a qualitative shift from previous interventions. Greenland is owned by Denmark,  a NATO member, so an attack by the US on Greenland would represent an attack by one NATO member on another, which would be unprecedented. In theory, other NATO members would be obliged to defend Greenland against such an attack, which would entail them going to war with the US. In practice, no national government in its right mind would even consider doing such a thing, as war with the US would mean almost certain annihilation. However, a US invasion of Greenland might mean the end of NATO and a significant weakening of relations between the US and Europe. That would only be a good thing in my view.

  • What’s going on in Iran?

    Anti-government protests have been going on in Iran for the past two weeks. The protests were sparked by rampant inflation and the collapse of the Iranian currency, but have since spread across the country and morphed into more general protests against the Iranian regime, with people in more than 100 cities participating in the demonstrations. Although largely leaderless, many demonstrators have been demanding the return of the exiled Reza Pahlavi, Crown Prince of Iran, who has called for a peaceful transition and a referendum to decide Iran’s future political system. Indeed, the protests escalated following calls from Pahlavi to intensify them. The demonstrations have drawn international attention with solidarity demonstrations being held in major cities around the world.

    Iran is widely considered a theocracy because its government and legal system are directed by a powerful, clerically-appointed Supreme Leader and various religious bodies. I am personally against theocracy and would like to see reform in Iran, as I’m sure many others on the left would. However, there is good reason for us not to give our support to the current demonstrations. In particular, we must understand that Pahlavi, the figurehead of these protests, is strongly pro-Zionist and views Israel as a crucial strategic partner for Iran’s future. He has advocated for renewed ties between the two countries and expressed admiration for Israel’s strength. Pahlavi even visited Israel in 2023, meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu and praying at the Western Wall.

    And it goes deeper. Investigations by several news sources (though none in the West of course) have exposed coordinated Israeli-backed digital operation in Iran. It appears that hundreds of fake Iranian digital accounts have been created pushing AI content, deep fakes, and staged content, all to create the impression that Iranians want to elevate Pahlavi as Iran’s next leader. Of course this isn’t to suggest that Iranians are not frustrated with the existing regime; clearly many of them are, and I’m sure with good reason. But it seems equally clear that this anger is being hijacked by Israel, a hostile foreign power, so that they can install a puppet pro-Zionist leader. What we have here is a case of synchronized information warfare.

    The Israel and the US are clearly trying to bring about regime change in Iran, ostensibly in the name of freedom and democracy, but in reality to install a puppet monarchy run by the son of a dictator known for brutal political repression. They are doing this because Iran represents the main bulwark against complete US-Israeli domination of the region. The US has imposed grotesque economic terrorism on Iran for decades, the aim of which has been to break the collective will of the Iranian people to the point that either the regime is forced to acquiesce to the US’s demands, or there is an internal uprising. The regime has not done the former, so now it is facing the latter. People in Iran are angry, poor and hungry; but who was it that created these conditions?

    What isn’t being reported in the West is that along with anti-government protests, massive pro-government protests are also going on across the country right now. It seems that Ayatollah Ali Khomeini and his government aren’t as unpopular as the Western media would have us believe. Maybe the people of Iran don’t want a pro-Zionist puppet as their leader after all. Meanwhile, we in the West are being told that the Iranian government is on the brink of collapse! The only explanation for this is a coordinated psychological operation aimed at the Western public to make us think that regime change in Iran is an inevitability, rather than something that is being deliberately instigated by the US and Israel to further their own interests.

    Western governments have all been falling in line to support the ant-government protests in Iran, apparently because they care so much about freedom and democracy. Yet these same governments are more than happy to support similarly authoritarian regimes in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, the UAE, Qatar, and so on. It must be remembered that the US and UK overthrew democracy in Iran in order to protect their oil interests in the country (sound familiar?). Under the Shah, who was installed as leader by the US, Americans were free to do anything they wanted in the country and the Iranian government had no right to prosecute them for any crimes committed. This is the level of imperialism that Ruhollah Khomeini, the first Ayatollah, was fighting against.

    Ultimately the future of Iran must be decided by the Iranian people, not by the US, Israel, or any other foreign power. The same goes for Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Greenland, Sudan, and any other country or region the US and its allies are either meddling or threatening to meddle in. We must stand up against imperialist intervention in all its forms as a matter of principle, regardless of the nature of the regimes that are being intervened with. And in doing so, we must be clear that we are not supporting these regimes per se but the broader principle of self-determination. This principle is central to modern international law and is enshrined in the UN Charter, but the US and Israel are making a mockery of it with their actions in Iran and elsewhere around the world.

  • Is the UK occupied?

    There can be no doubt now that the Zionist lobby has a huge influence on UK politics. Some go so far as to argue that the UK government is effectively occupied by Israel. In the past I have rubbished this claim – mainly because it sounds ridiculous, but also because it seems to come dangerously close to the ‘Jews control the world’ trope: the idea that a small, secretive Jewish cabal manipulates national governments for malevolent purposes. Recently, though, I have been starting to wonder whether there might be some truth to the idea that the UK government is effectively being controlled by Israel, to the extent that labeling it an ‘occupation’ might not be so ridiculous after all. In this blog post I will go through some of the evidence behind this claim.

    Before getting into the evidence, though, I need to head off the charge that just by considering this as a possibility I am giving tacit support to the ‘Jews control the world’ conspiracy theory. A theory is only a conspiracy theory if it is not backed up by evidence. As soon as a theory is backed up by sufficient evidence it stops being a conspiracy theory and becomes a fact. We also need to be clear that we are talking specifically about Israel and the Zionist lobby here, not Jews in general. However, we do need to take into account the maxim popularized by the American physicist Carl Sagan: ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’. The claim that the UK government is occupied by Israel is certainly extraordinary; the question is whether the evidence is sufficiently extraordinary to support it.

    Let’s start with the treatment of the Palestine Action activists. Six political prisoners associated with Palestine Action currently being held in British jails are on hunger strike. They are demanding to be released on bail and the right to a fair trial. Most have already been held on remand far longer than the normal six-month maximum which the law allows before trial, and their condition is deteriorating rapidly. All have been accused of being involved in Palestine Action campaigns carried out before the ban on the protest group was implemented earlier this year. Recall that Palestine Action was infamously banned as a ‘terrorist’ group by the British government last summer, following a relentless lobbying campaign from Israel and its representatives in the UK.

    The idea that Palestine Action is a terrorist group is obviously nonsense. Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The crime committed by the Palestine Action activists involved throwing red paint on some military planes. These activists didn’t just avoid targeting any non-combatants – they avoided targeting people altogether. Who exactly was being ‘terrorized’ here? This is about as far from terrorism as it is possible to get! The real reason Palestine Action was proscribed as a terrorist organization becomes clear when you find out the Yvette Cooper, who was Home Secretary at the time, received a concurrent £215,000 bribe from the Zionist lobby.

    It gets fishier though. Palestine Action’s co-founder, Palestinian-Iraqi activist Huda Ammori, was at the High Court this week challenging the ban. Last month the judge on this high-profile case was replaced at the last minute by a three-judge panel led by Victoria Sharp, a former principal adviser to Robert Maxwell, an Israeli spy. That’s the same Robert Maxwell who was the father of Ghislane Maxwell, who in 2021 was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It is becoming clear that Epstein was in personal contact with political leaders from around the world, including the UK. Influential former Labour politician Peter Mandelson, for example, maintained a close friendship with Epstein.

    Many prominent British politicians have links with Israel. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has family in Israel, has strong connections to pro-Israel groups, and has promoted UK-Israel ties. He has also gone on record as saying he supports Zionism “without qualification”, has repeatedly refused to condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and has received donations from the Labour Friends of Israel lobbying group. Starmer and Cooper are not the only British MP to have received bribes from the Zionist lobby: the entire Labour cabinet is apparently on the Israeli payroll. And it’s not just Labour either. According to Declassified UK, some 180 of Britain’s 650 MPs in the last parliament have accepted funding from pro-Israel lobby groups or individuals.

    Then there’s the obvious bias in the British media. Many journalists working at Britain’s most prestigious newspapers and TV channels have expressed concern at pro-Israel bias inside their organisations – although few have expressed these concerns in public, for fear of losing their jobs. The pro-Israel bias should be clear to anyone who has witnessed the mainstream media’s coverage of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. This is perhaps most acute at the supposedly impartial BBC. According to the Centre for Media Monitoring, the BBC treats Palestinian deaths as less newsworthy, systematically uses language bias favouring Israelis, suppresses genocide allegations, and interviews significantly fewer Palestinians than Israelis (and the figures all back up these claims).

    Taking all of the above into account, the idea that the UK is occupied by Israel starts to seem a lot more plausible. And this is hardly the full extent of the evidence; we have barely scratched the surface. It seems the more you look into this, the more you find the Zionist lobby pulling the strings. If we really want to understand where power lies we have to follow the evidence – and the evidence points unequivocally to Israel.

  • What next after Venezuela

    Two days ago, president Nicolas Maduro was kidnapped by US forces during a military strike on Venezuela, in a major international development. In a previous blog post I said that the US is clearly is aiming at regime change in Venezuela, and this has been now been proven correct. Not that I am claiming any particular prescience or insight; it has been obvious for some time now that the US was aiming for regime change. The timing is interesting though, as just the day before the attack Maduro had said that he was ready to make a deal with Trump. You’d think that Trump, with his love for making deals, would have jumped at the opportunity! It’s almost as though the US wanted to act before the international community realized that a deal was on the cards.

    In kidnapping Maduro the US has once again exposed itself as an imperialist power that just does whatever it wants, whenever it wants. So much for the rules-based international order! The question now is what happens next. The US probably plans to install the neoliberal Zionist Maria Corina Machado as president – assuming they have planned that far ahead. Recent experience of similar US aggression suggests they haven’t thought beyond the initial attack. It seems unlikely that the US will stop at removing Maduro though. Trump has already said that Colombia will be next in the firing line; like many people I had assumed that was an idle threat, but now I’m not so sure. Or perhaps Cuba will be next, as the US has wanted regime change there for even longer than they’ve wanted it in Venezuela.

    As expected, all the usual imperialist fascism apologists have been wheeled out by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets to give their support to the US’s actions. Elsewhere, many liberals have been expressing their amazement at these events, as if nothing like this has ever happened before. Some people really do have short memories! On the left, meanwhile, there has been widespread condemnation of this aggression, demonstrating once again that we are the only people with our heads screwed on when it comes to these matters. However, there is a difference of opinion on the left when it comes to Maduro and his regime. My view is that Maduro should be condemned as a corrupt dictator, but I have seen a lot of leftists defending him over the past couple of days.

    The argument being made in favour of Maduro seems to be that a socialist leader in a country like Venezuela needs to be authoritarian to effectively stand up to US imperialism. Of course, that hasn’t really worked for Maduro in the long run as he has now been ousted, but he did manage to stave off the threat of US invasion for 13 years. Moreover, there is historical evidence that can be adduced in favour of this argument. The Bolsheviks, who led arguably the most successful socialist revolution ever, were famously authoritarian. On the other hand, the reason Salvador Allende’s socialist revolution failed in Chile was that he and his administration didn’t take a hard enough line on reactionary tendencies, particularly in the military, which allowed the US to sponsor a successful right-wing coup.

    In the end, though, the question of whether Maduro and his regime should be praised or criticized is beside the point. Extraordinary rendition bypasses due process and treats sovereign nations as ‘lesser-than’. This is true regardless of whether or not the abductee is considered a dictator. If it is treated as acceptable then we could see similar coups happening elsewhere; in fact this seems quite likely, as noted above. In any case, the idea that the US was motivated to remove Maduro because he is a dictator is laughable. As if Trump and his cronies care about the well-being of the Venezuelan people! This raises the question of why the US has done this, to which the obvious answer is: oil. As I noted in my previous blog post, Venezuela has more oil reserves than any other country in the world.

    However, there are reasons to think that this is not just about oil. First, it will take a lot of investment just to get Venezuelan oil production back to pre-sanction levels. Second, Venezuelan oil is dense and viscous and requires specialized processing. Third, the US is already present in the Venezuelan supply chain via Chevron. And fourth, Venezuelan oil will not plug any immediate demand and is unlikely to significantly reduce prices. You could even go so far as to argue that oil is being used as a smokescreen, to make it seem as though this invasion was done for the benefit of the US people. So if it’s not just about oil, what else is it about? I think it is a dry run for a new type of low-cost, low-risk, and lighter footprint regime change mission that could potentially be rolled out elsewhere.

    It is meant as a message to the rest of the world: stand up to us and you will be removed. The message is for the leaders of Colombia, Cuba, and other country that has attempted to break free from the yoke of US imperialism. It is also meant as a message to the US’s adversaries, particularly China and Russia: this is our back yard, so don’t try to meddle in it. Whether or not they heed this message, only time will tell. One thing is clear though – there are turbulent times ahead.

  • Use value, exchange value, and labour value

    The labour theory of value, henceforth LTV, posits that the exchange value of a commodity is proportional to the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. In a 1993 article, the Australian economist Steve Keen launched an attack on the LTV. In this blog post I will summarize his argument. Keen begins by rightly pointing out that, although Marx was the greatest champion of the LTV, many (although not all) Marxists have since abandoned it. He also points out that Marx did not immediately adopt the LTV, but developed an acceptance of it over a period of time, in parallel to developing an understanding of the concept of use value. The concept of use value did not play a role in Marx’s early writings.

    It was only later that Marx came to understand that use value and exchange value are inseparable dialectical aspects of the commodity, which itself is central to the analysis of capitalism. He then applied this dialectic to provide an explanation of the origin of surplus value. Marx argued that the exchange-value of commodities themselves cannot be the source of surplus value, as exchange involves transfer of equivalents. It follows that the dialectical opposite of value, use value, is the only possible source of surplus value, so the source of surplus value must lie in the quantitative difference between the use value and exchange value of labor-power. However, Keen points out that this is just one source of surplus value, not necessarily the only source.

    Keen argues that Marx reached the conclusion that labour power is the only source of surplus value by contradicting basic premise; namely, that the use value and exchange value of a commodity are unrelated. Specifically, Keen argues that Marx attempted to forge an equality between the use value and exchange value of the means of production, by equating the depreciation of a machine to its productive capacity. This is equivalent to asserting that in the case of machinery and raw materials, what is consumed by the purchaser is not their use value, as with all other commodities, but their exchange value. This suggests that Marx reached the result that the means of production cannot generate surplus value by confusing depreciation with value creation.

    In practice, there is no reason why the value lost by a machine – i.e. depreciation – should be equivalent to the value added by it. Depreciation can be equated to exchange value, while a machine’s contribution to production is its use value. The use value of a machine will differ from its exchange value; and, as with labor, its use value may be significantly greater than its exchange value. Keen goes on to argue that In his algebraic explorations of value creation, Marx compounded his previous logical errors by using the same magnitude for the exchange value and the use value of the means of production, whilst using different magnitudes for the exchange value and use value of labor power. Let us go through this algebra in a bit more detail.

    The gross output of the production process is given by C+V+S, where C is ‘constant capital’ – the exchange-value of the means of production – V is ‘variable capital’ – the exchange-value of labor power –  and S is surplus value. Keen argues that Marx identifies the use value of labour power as V+S, and the use value of the means of production as C. The latter identification clearly contradicts Marx’s fundamental and oft-repeated proposition that use value and exchange value are unrelated. Keen concludes that Marx’s claim that labour power is the only possible surplus is based on this false identification of use value and exchange value. Moreover, Keen claims to have reached this conclusion by applying Marx’s own logic.

    To make this a bit more rigorous, consider an economy which produces m commodities using n types of labour. For such an economy we can define a commodity vector as a vector with positive elements of length m, and a labour vector as a vector with positive elements of length n. The economy is defined by an activity set, with the interpretation that an element (x,u,x’) of this set represents a possible configuration of commodity inputs x, labour inputs u, and commodity outputs x’. We may also define a  price vector as a vector with positive elements of length m; a depreciation matrix as an mxm diagonal matrix with values between 0 and 1 on the diagonal, and zeroes elsewhere; and a wage vector as a vector with positive elements of length n.

    The surplus value associated with activity (x,u,x’), price vector p, depreciation rate matrix D, and wage vector w, is given by: S = p(x’-x)-pDx-wu. The quantity p(x’-x) corresponds to gross output, and the quantities pDx and wu correspond to constant capital C and variable capital V (see above). The associated profit rate is given by: r = S/(C+V); rearranging gives: p(x’-x) = (pDx+wu)(1+r). The production price vector associated with the activity (x,u,x’), wage vector w, depreciation matrix D, and profit rate r, is the price vector p satisfying this equation. If n = 1, so there is only one type of labour, the associated labour values may be defined as the vector v satisfying: v(x’-x) = (vDx+u)(1+r). We then have wv(x’-x) = (wvDx+wu)(1+r), so p = wv and production prices are proportional to values.

    Production prices can be thought of exchange values expressed in monetary terms. Thus, in the case were there is only one type of labour, we have effectively defined labour values in such a way that exchange values are proportional to them, with the constant of proportionality equal to the average wage. Under this definition, therefore, the labour theory of value holds. However, a critic might argue that this definition of labour values is contrived and chosen specifically to produce the result we want. I will return to this point in a future blog post.

  • Waking up

    A spiritual awakening is a profound shift in consciousness, moving beyond the ego to a deeper sense of self, reality, and connection. It is often triggered by life events or contemplation, leading to transformation, new perspectives, heightened awareness, compassion, and a search for deeper meaning, sometimes feeling disorienting but ultimately bringing clarity and purpose. A political awakening, on the other hand, is the process by which an individual or a group of people develops a heightened awareness of political issues, power structures, and their own place within society, leading to increased political consciousness, engagement, and activism. In this blog post, I will put forward the view that spiritual and political awakening are two sides of the same coin.

    I will start with a confession: I used to be a centrist. If you’d asked me 20 years ago what my political position was, I probably would have told you that I was centre-left. I was once firmly of the view that although all political parties are far from perfect, there is still sufficient difference between them to make it worthwhile going out and voting for the least-worst option. I had swallowed the narrative that the only way change can realistically occur is gradually, through evolution rather than revolution. In fairness to my younger self, I was a product of my upbringing (as we all are). I am of the generation that grew up during the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, which gave a lot a credibility to the idea that capitalism is the only viable system.

    I am also of the generation that grew up during the ‘great moderation’: the period roughly from the mid-1980s to 2008 characterized by remarkably stable macroeconomic condition, featuring lower volatility in output and inflation, longer economic expansions, and generally improved living standards. Up until 2008, you could make a case that capitalism, although far from perfect, creates stability and prosperity overall. That all changed with the global financial crisis, which exposed the supposed stability of capitalism as a sham and marked the beginning of my political awakening. Like many people, I was appalled when the UK government responded by introducing its austerity program, punishing ordinary people whilst simultaneously rewarding those who had caused the crisis.

    A couple of years later, I came down with a mystery illness. The symptoms were acute and included extreme fatigue, loss of sense of smell, loss of balance, shortness of breath, and partial loss of sight. Despite the acuteness of these symptoms, nobody could work out what was wrong with me. Eventually, after a year or so and many visits to my local hospital, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition called sarcoidosis. An autoimmune disease occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own healthy cells, tissues, and organs, causing inflammation and damage. Nobody really knows what causes such illnesses to occur, but one theory is that they are caused by chronic stress. That certainly seemed to fit with my situation as at that point I had been living under chronic stress for many years.

    When I reflected on it, I realized that this stress was caused primarily by being forced to participate in capitalism. It was then that I really started to understand what a rotten system capitalism is. Being forced to work for forty plus hours per week against your will is just about bearable when you are in good health; but try doing it with as chronic illness. It was around this time that I started meditating as a way to cope with my health issues. This further increased my spiritual awakening and helped me see what was really going on around me. And what I saw was that capitalism is a perverse, unjust system based on a web of lies and illusions, which forces people to give up the best years of their lives doing activities that are at best pointless and at worse actively harmful.

    The point I want to get across here is that my political and spiritual awakenings were one and the same thing. My spiritual awakening was what enabled me to see the world clearly, which reinforced my political awakening. Conversely, my political awakening led to me wanting to understand the world on a deeper level, which reinforced my spiritual awakening. These were not two separate processes but a single process acting as a kind of iterative feedback loop. Having gone through this, I now look back on my younger self almost as a different person. I realize that I was going through life in a kind of dream (or perhaps nightmare would be more appropriate), completely oblivious to the true nature of the world around me.

    The problem with going through this awakening process is that it makes it painfully obvious when others haven’t. This can create difficulty with interpersonal relationships, which can start to seem quite superficial. You can feel yourself gradually outgrowing old friendships and patterns of socializing. Note that I am not claiming any superiority here; on the contrary, I feel I was lucky to have gone through such an awakening. As difficult as having a chronic illness was, I now realize it was an essential part of my spiritual development. But I believe that everyone is capable of spiritual and political awakening given the right circumstances. The question is what the right circumstances are. This is a question we socialists need to answer if we want to bring about a successful revolution.

  • The fragility of civilization

    A ‘magnetosphere’ is a region of space surrounding an astronomical object, such as a planet, in which charged particles are affected by that object’s magnetic field. A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere driven by interactions between it and magnetic field structures that originate from the Sun. In September 1859, the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history occurred. This was associated with a very bright solar flare on 1st September 1859, observed and recorded independently by British astronomers Richard Carrington and Richard Hodgson. This solar flare and the resulting geomagnetic storm became known as the Carrington Event (presumably to Hodgson’s chagrin).

    The event caused extremely bright auroras in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Because of the induced current from the electromagnetic field, telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving their operators electric shocks. However, the impact of the event was relatively limited due to low prevalence of electrical technology at that time. If a similar event were to happen today, it would trigger catastrophic, widespread failures: massive power grid blackouts lasting years, GPS and satellite collapse, internet shutdown, and severe disruption to banking, transport, and healthcare. As scary as that sounds, the Carrington event pales into insignificance compared with what are known as Miyake events.

    Miyake events are named after the Japanese physicist Fusa Miyake who, as a doctoral student, was the first one to identify them and published the results with co-authors in 2012 in the journal Nature. A Miyake event is an observed sharp enhancement of the production of isotopes by cosmic rays. This occurs when a high-energy cosmic ray interacts with the nucleus of an atom, causing nucleons  – protons and neutrons – to be expelled. Miyake events are caused by solar particles and are estimated to be potentially 5 to 20 times more powerful than the 1859 Carrington event. The impact on civilization if one occurred today is difficult to imagine. And they are not as rare as you might think: Miyake events are estimated to occur roughly once every 400-2,400 years.

    What’s particularly worrying about this is that the last Miyake event occurred in 993 AD. So if we assume they occur on average every 1,000 years, we are due another one right about now. And it’s not only extreme solar events we need to worry about. In 1908, a large explosion of between 3 and 50 megatons TNT equivalent occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. The explosion was caused by the atmospheric breakup of a stony asteroid about 50–60 metres wide. The Tunguska event, as it has become known, is the largest meteoric impact event recorded history. The effects were limited due it occurring over a sparsely populated area; had it occurred just a few hours later, it would have destroyed the city of St. Petersburg.

    Admittedly, a single city being destroyed would not mean the end of human civilization. But much larger meteoric impacts are known to have occurred in the distant past – such as the Chicxulub impact in Mexico that ended the Cretaceous period and wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs. It is quite feasible that a similar impact could happen again in the not-too-distant future. Moreover, we really have no way of predicting when and where such an impact will occur next. Most people imagine that we would be able stave off a large-scale impact by breaking up a meteor with a nuclear weapon before it hit the Earth. But the truth is that we would probably only become aware that such an impact it was going to happen when it was too late to do anything about it.

    All of which goes to show that human civilization is a lot more fragile than we usually think. Our civilization might seem stable and destined to last forever, but this is an illusion. It could literally end tomorrow. In fact there is evidence that the human race has almost been wiped out in the past. A recent  (2023) paper in the journal Science suggests that sometime between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, the population of our ancestors fell from around 100,000 to around 1,000 individuals. The bottleneck lasted for about 100,000 years and brought our ancestors close to extinction. This is congruent with a substantial chronological gap in the fossil record and accords with the lack of genetic diversity in human beings in comparison to our great ape cousins.

    Is there anything positive we can take from this? If there is a silver lining, I think it lies in the realization that our existing capitalist system won’t last forever. Of course we all know that to be true on some level, but understanding just how fragile our civilization is brings this into sharper focus. A cataclysmic astronomical event will occur at some point – and probably sooner than we think. When it does, we can only hope that something better emerges from the ashes.

  • Formalizing dialectics

    Happy new year first of all, to anyone who happens to be reading this. One of my new years’ resolutions is to make an effort to finally understand some concepts that I’ve always struggled to get my head around. I am going to start with the concept of ‘dialectics’. The term ‘dialectic’ comes from the Ancient Greek word dialektikḗ, and referred originally to a dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. The word was given a more technical meaning by the German philosopher Georg Hegel in the early 1800s. In Hegel’s philosophy, the term takes on the specialized meaning of development by way of overcoming internal contradictions.

    In the later 1800s, Marx and Engels adapted the Hegelian dialectic method into a materialist philosophy which became known as ‘dialectical materialism’. This theory forms the basis of ‘historical materialism’, their materialist view of history. Although clearly based on Hegel’s approach, Marx claimed his own dialectic method to be the “direct opposite” of Hegel’s, which he considered too abstract and insufficiently rooted in material conditions. The class struggle between capital and labour is the primary contradiction considered as part of Marx’s dialectics because of its central role in the social and political lives of a society. Another key contradiction is that between the use value and exchange value of commodities, on which more below.

    In a recent (2023) paper, the British philosopher Graham Priest provided a formal definition of the dialectic method. Priest begins by pointing out that dialectics, in the sense of both Hegel and Marx, involves the study of dynamic processes in which contradictions arise and are ‘aufgehoben’ – an impossible word to translate into English as it means both removed and preserved. (This highlights a perennial problem that arises when translating philosophical texts from the language in which they were originally written.) The closest word we have in the English language is ‘sublation’. Priest aims to answer two questions with his approach: (1) how, exactly, do these contradictions arise? and (2) what exactly is meant by sublation?

    The dynamic processes Priest refers to are known as ‘dialectic progressions’. These be thought of as a sequence of stages, which we may label as stage 1, stage 2, stage 3, and so on. All of these stages concern a predicate: a function P() from a set X to the set {0,1}, with the interpretation that P(x) = 1 means that x has the property specified by P(), and P(x) = 1 means that it doesn’t. We start by fixing some element x in the set X. In stage 1, P(x) = 1, in stage 2, P(x) = 0, and in stage 3, P(x) = 1 and P(x) = 0; thus, stage 3 involves a contradiction. Stage 4 involves introducing a new predicate, P’(), with the property that for any x’ in the set X, P’(x’) = 1 if and only if P(x’) = 1 and P(x’) = 0. Thus, in particular, we have P’(x) = 1 and P’(x) ≠ 0.

    The predicate P’() has in a sense removed the contradiction we had in stage 3, as P’(x) no longer entails a contradiction; but it has also retained this contradiction, as it was baked into its very definition! Thus, the predicate P’() formalizes the concept of sublation (or aufgeheben). We can continue this process by fixing some element x’ in the set X (which may be equal to x). In stage 4, P’(x’) = 1, in stage 5, P’(x’) = 0, and in stage 6, P’(x’) = 1 and P’(x’) = 0; thus, stage 6 also involves a contradiction. This contradiction can be sublated again by defining a new predicate P’’(), with the property that for any x’’ in the set X, P’’(x’’) = 1 if and only if P’(x’’) = 1 and P’(x’’) = 0. The process can then be repeated again indefinitely, neatly capturing the logical relations involved a dialectic progression.

    The process is best illustrated with some examples. The first example involves the development of money. Let us take X to be the set of all commodities, and define the predicate P() by P(x) = ‘x is a use value’. Then at stage 1, P(gold) = 1, as gold is something that is used (as jewellery, etc.). At stage 2, P(gold) = 0, as gold becomes an exchange value (as people trade it). At stage 3, P(gold) = 1 and P(gold) = 0, as gold becomes both a use value and an exchange value. Now define the predicate P’() by P’(x) = ‘x is commodity money’. Then P’(gold) = 1, and at stage 4, P’(currency) = 1, as the value of currency is linked to the value of gold. At stage 5, P’(currency) = 0, as we move away from the gold standard; this is the stage we are currently at.

    The second example involves the development of capitalism. Let us take X to be the set of all labourers, and define the predicate P() by P(x) = ‘x is bound’. Fix some generic labourer x. Then at stage 1, P(x) = 1, as the labourer is bound by their feudal chains. At stage 2, P(x) = 0, as the labourer is feed from their bonds. At stage three, P(x) = 1 and P(x) = 0, as the freed labourer is forced to sell their labour-power. Now define the predicate P’() by P’(x) = ‘x is a wage labourer’. Then P’(x) = 1, which completes the first round of the progression. There is of course much more to be said about the development of capitalism, just as there is much more to be said about the example above. In particular, this model says nothing about why these progressions occur. However, I think it nicely summarizes the logical structure involved.

  • PIE velars in Albanian and Anatolian

    In a series of recent blog posts I have argued that Proto-Indo-European (PIE) had just two types of velar consonant: plain velars and labiovelars. It has been claimed that there is evidence for three distinct types of velar being preserved in Albanian and in the Luvian branch of Anatolian. The theory that three types of velar remained distinct in Albanian was first put forward by Holger Pedersen in 1900, according to whom labiovelars were palatalized before (PIE) front vowels, whereas plain velars were not. Specifically, Pedersen argued that before front vowels, there is a threefold reflex in Albanian of palatovelars, plain velars, and labiovelars, as follows: *k’ > Albanian th, *k > Albanian k/q, *kʷ > s; and *g’,*g’h > Albanian dh, *g,*gh > Albanian g/gj, *gʷ,gʷh > Albanian z.

    Pedersen’s most convincing examples of the labiovelar developments are: *penkʷe ‘five’ > pesë, *kʷiH₁ ‘how’ > si, *H₃okʷiH₁ ‘eyes’ > sy, *gʷherm- ‘heat’ > zjarm, and *kʷel- ‘turn’ > sjell. The main examples of words supposedly containing plain velars that were not palatalized by a following front vowel are: *ghedh- ‘find’ > gjej, *suerghe- ‘be ill’ > dergj, *Horghi ‘nit’ > ergjëz, *suolke- ‘pull’ > heq, *keH₁s- ‘time’ > kohë, *kel- ‘drive’ > qell, and *keid- ‘cut’ > qeth. The problem with Pedersen’s theory is that, as Lars Steensland demonstrated in 1973, plain velars do not occur before front vowels in PIE. Or, more accurately, plain velars were subsequently palatalized before front vowels in the satem languages. This suggests the unpalatalized velar must have been introduced analogically in at least some of these words.

    The unpalatalized velar in gjej ‘find’ may have been taken from the nasal variant *ghnedh- ~ *ghndh-, as palatalization was blocked before resonants in Albanian. Similarly, the unpalatalized velar in qell ‘drive’ may have been taken from the zero grade form *kl-. The unpalatalized velars in dergj ‘be ill’, heq ‘pull’ and kohë ‘time’ can be explained by noting that these words are derived from a root which originally contained an *s; as I noted in a previous blog post, there is evidence that palatalization was blocked in words containing  *s in Albanian. The supposed reflexes of *Horghi ‘nit’ cannot be regularly derived from it, so this root probably did not exist in PIE. Finally, the word qeth ‘cut’ is not probative as the underlying root is actually *kH₂eid-, so the velar never stood before a front vowel.

    The theory that the three PIE velar series remained distinct in Luvian was first put forward by Craig Melchert in 1987, who originally claimed that *k’ > Luvian z, *k > Luvian k, and *kʷ > Luvian ku. Melchert (2013) subsequently revised his claim with the assertion that *k’ > Luvian z only before front vowels, non-syllabic *u, and syllabic resonants, with *k’ > Luvian k elsewhere. To demonstrate that the three PIE velar series remained distinct in Luvian, it must therefore be shown that *k > Luvian k before front vowels, non-syllabic *u, and syllabic resonants. The main examples adduced by Melchert to support this claim are: *kes- ‘scrape’ > kišanda, *krs- ‘cut’ > karš-, and *tuke- ‘statue’ > tukedre. None of these examples holds water.

    The unpalatalized velar in kišanda ‘scrape’ may have been taken from the zero grade form of the root *ks- (contra Melchert). The unpalatalized velar in karš- ‘cut’ can be explained by noting that the underlying root was *(s)ker- with a mobile *s and positing that palatalization was blocked by the preceding *s, as it was in the satem languages. Alternatively we can note that Melchert only provides one example of *k’ > z before syllabic resonants, namely *k’rH₂- ‘horn’ > zurnid, where  the palatalization could easily have spread from the well-attested *e-grade form *k’erH₂-. Thus, the change *k’ > z before syllabic resonants is not well-established. The velar in the third word, tukedre ‘statue’, could represent an original labiovelar which was delabialized by the preceding *u.

    In conclusion, the claims that three distinct types of velar were preserved in Albanian and in the Luvian branch of Anatolian do not stand up to scrutiny. There is no evidence from these languages which disproves the hypothesis that PIE only had two types of velar constant: plain velars and labiovelars.