Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • Old English orthography

    Old English is the earliest attested form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from a set of dialects originally spoken by Germanic tribes traditionally known as the Angles, Saxons and Jutes. Old English is one of the West Germanic languages, with its closest relatives being Old Frisian and Old Saxon. It was first written in runes; but From around the 8th century, the runic system came to be supplanted by the Latin alphabet. At that time the Latin alphabet lacked distinct letters j, v, and w, and native Old English spellings did not use k, q or z. The remaining 20 Latin letters were supplemented by 4 more: æ and ð, which were modified Latin letters; and þ and ƿ, which were modified runes.

    In contrast with modern English orthography, Old English spelling was reasonably regular, with a mostly predictable correspondence between letters and phonemes. Modern editions of Old English manuscripts generally introduce some additional conventions. Accent marks are used to indicate long vowels, where usually no distinction was made between long and short vowels and diphthongs originally. Under this convention, long a is spelled as á or ā, long e as é or ē, and so on. This applies to long diphthongs too, with long ea spelled as éa or ēa, and so on. The letters æ and þ are normally retained, but the letter ƿ is usually replaced with w and the letter ð by þ, as ð and þ were both used to represent the same sound.

    Short a, æ, and ea were in largely in complementary distribution, with short a occurring in open syllables when there was a low vowel in the following syllable, short ea before l, r, h plus consonant, and short æ elsewhere. Any exceptions can be explained by analogy; for example, Old English faren ‘gone’ may have been spelled with an a rather than an æ by analogy with the infinitive faran ‘to go’. Similarly, short e and eo were largely in complementary distribution, as were short i and ie, with short eo and ie occurring before l, r, h plus consonant, and short e and i elsewhere. In theory a, æ, and ea could be spelled using a single letter, short e and eo with a single letter, and short i and ie with a single letter; but they are usually spelled out explicitly.

    Before a consonant c is always velar, whereas word-finally after i it is always palatal; otherwise it is usually palatal before front vowels except y and velar elsewhere. Similarly, word-initially before a consonant g is always velar, whereas word-finally after i it is always palatal;  otherwise it is usually palatal before and after front vowels except y and velar elsewhere. Thus palatal and velar c were largely in complementary distribution, as were palatal and velar g. That means palatal and velar c can be spelled using a single letter with little ambiguity, as can palatal and velar g – and this is precisely what was done in Old English texts. Modern editions often distinguish between velar and palatal c and g by placing dots above the palatal variants.

    The correspondences between Old English and modern English spelling are remarkably regular. The default stressed vowel correspondences are: a, æ, ea, ā+CC, ǣ+CC, ēa+CC (where C is any consonant) > a; e, eo, ē+CC, ēo+CC > e; e+ld > ie; i, y, ī+CC, ȳ+CC > i; o, ō+CC, a+ld,mb > o; u, ū+CC > u; ā > oa, o_e, o#; ǣ, ēa > ea; ē, ēo > ee, e_e; ī, ȳ > i_e; ō > oo; ū, u+nd > ou. The default stressed diphthong correspondences are: æġ, ǣġ, eġ, ēġ# (where # is the end of a word) > aiC, ay; ēġV (where V is any vowel), iġ, īġ, yġ, ȳġ  > i_e, ie#, y#,ye#; æw, aw, agV > aw; ǣw, ēaw, ew, eow, ēw, ēow > ew; iw, īw, yw, ȳw > ue; āw, āgV, ow, ōw, ogV, ōgV, ugV, ūgV > ow; æh, ah, ag# > augh; ēh, ih, īh, yh, ȳh > igh; āh, āg#, oh, og#, āhC, ōh, ōg#, uh, ug#, ūh, ūg# > ough.

    The correspondences between Old English and modern English consonant spellings are even more regular. The default correspondences for single Old English consonants are: b > b; c > c, k; ċ > ch; d > d; f > f, v; g > g; ġ > y; h > h; l > l; m > m; n >n; p > p; r > r; s > s, z; t > t; þ > th; w > w; x > x. The default correspondences for combinations of Old English consonants are: ċċ > tch; ċġ, ġġ > dge; sċ > sh. The regularity of correspondences between Old English and modern English spelling is no surprise because modern English spelling to a large extent represents Middle English pronunciation, which was generally closer to Old English pronunciation than to that of modern English. This is the main reason why modern English spelling appears so irregular and illogical to us modern English speakers.

  • The collapse of Cuba

    Cuba is currently facing a severe oil shortage and a deep economic crisis. The United States began blocking oil tankers heading to Cuba in February this year, targeting companies such as the Mexican state-owned Pemex and threatening countries with tariffs should they attempt to break the blockade. In March, Miguel Díaz-Canel, the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, publicly confirmed for the first time that his government was engaged in diplomatic talks with the United States aimed at addressing the severe US imposed oil and energy blockade that has left Cuba facing crippling fuel shortages and widespread power outages. Nonetheless in May, Minister of Energy and Mines Vincent De La O’levy announced that Cuba had run out of oil and diesel.

    Although it is generally accepted that the crisis is being caused primarily by the US fuel blockade, many analysts and human rights observers also place blame on the Cuban government. According to these observers, decades of centralized economic policies, a lack of investment and maintenance in domestic energy infrastructure, and the collapse of key agricultural sectors like sugar have made the economy deeply vulnerable. The military-led conglomerate GAESA reportedly controls up to 70% of Cuba’s economy and is claimed to hold an estimated $18 billion in assets. Critics argue that GAESA’s absolute control over the most lucrative sectors of the Cuban economy—including tourism, retail, ports, and banking—has systematically hollowed out the state’s resources.

    These critics allege that instead of investing in public infrastructure, healthcare, or electrical grids, the conglomerate hoards immense profits offshore or funnels them into elite interests. For example, in the wake of the Obama-era normalization of relations between the US and Cuba, GAESA went on a massive hotel-building spree, adding thousands of rooms. When US restrictions tightened again, these hotels sat empty, resulting in wasted capital that could have been used to stabilize the country’s broader energy and food needs. Furthermore, analyses by geopolitical research institutes such as the Journal of Democracy indicate that funds from state enterprises have been diverted to tax havens or the military, leaving the general public to suffer extreme shortages of food, medicine, and power.

    The existence of GAESA demonstrates that Cuba is not a socialist country. The Cuban government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the population. This is state capitalism, not socialism – which raises the question of why the US is so keen to bring about regime change. The usual explanation that the US wants to prevent the spread of socialism does not hold water in light of the state capitalist nature of the Cuban regime. The same question arises when considering the US’s desperation to bring down the Soviet Union and its satellites. It should be noted that the Soviet Union is often argued to have been a ‘deformed workers state’ rather than state capitalist; but either way, it wasn’t socialist.

    In aiming to bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US was motivated to bring down a rival geopolitical hegemon. That explanation does not apply to Cuba. Rather, I think that the US is motivated by wanting to take for itself the surplus value currently being extracted by GAESA. Regardless of the explanation, it is clear that the US blockage of Cuba is not being done for the benefit of the Cuban people. How can it be, when many have died as a result? A 2026 report by the Centre for Economic Policy and Research found that tightening of US sanctions contributed heavily to an increase in Cuba’s infant mortality rate between 2018 and 2025. If infant mortality rate had remained stable, roughly 1,800 fewer infants would have died.

    In assessing who is responsible for the Cuban crisis we must take into consideration the aims and motivations of the parties involved. Many of the mistakes made by the Cuban government – for example, building too many luxury hotels – can be attributed to a combination of incompetence and bad timing rather than malfeasance. The Cuban government may be corrupt, authoritarian, and indifferent to the suffering of the Cuban people; but it is not deliberately trying to bring about economic collapse. The US government, on the other hand, is trying to do exactly that. No modern nation would survive for long without a steady supply of oil, regardless of how advanced its infrastructure is. Cuba would probably still be a poor country without the US blockade; but it would not be on the brink of disaster.

  • Why do governments issue bonds?

    In the world of finance, a ‘bond’ is a legal contract whereby one party – the ‘issuer’ of the bond – is obliged to provide a cash flow to another party – the ‘holder’ of the bond. The holder will typically pay cash up front to the issuer in order to enter into this arrangement. A government bond is a bond issued by a government to an individual or organization in the sector. Governments issue bonds all the time. The usual explanation is that they do this in order to obtain money from the private sector: a government will agree to make interest payments to the holder of the bond in return for the holder providing cash up front to the government. However that explanation makes no sense for sovereign currency-issuing governments that can create money by fiat, such as the UK government.

    There was a time when the UK government did have to borrow money, because there was an artificial constraint placed upon the amount of money in the economy. That artificial constraint was imposed through the convertibility of money into gold. At that time, if the government wanted money and could not get its hands on any gold, it had no choice but to borrow the money from the private sector. It did that by issuing ‘gilts’ – that is, government bonds. These gilts essentially acted as a savings account for the holder. Somebody could buy a government bond and sometime in the future get their money back; in the meantime, they would get a steady stream of interest payments. These days, however, there is no such constraint and the UK can simply create money at will.

    In theory, the UK government could have stopped issuing bonds the moment the UK abandoned the gold standard in 1931. However, the City of London had become quite fond of having access to what were essentially risk-free savings accounts. Gilt issuance had become essential to the functioning of many financial institutions – and still is to this day. That is the real reason the UK government continues to issue bonds: to enable financial markets to function. These markets are completely dependent upon the government providing a risk-free saving mechanism. This demonstrates that power lies with the government, not with the markets. It is time that we recognise that and stop the nonsense that we are dependent upon these markets for money – because we aren’t.

    Why, then, does this myth persist? It is because the erroneous idea that the government is dependent on the financial markets to provide it with money is extraordinarily convenient for the people who run those markets – namely, the ruling class. There is an obvious incentive for the ruling class to keep up this pretence, and that’s precisely what it does, in a couple of different ways. One way is by imposing a rule that whenever there is a budget deficit – that is, a discrepancy between the level of government spending and the tax revenue collected – the government must issue bonds equal in value to the size of this deficit. This makes it looks like the government is forced to borrow money from the private sector in order to ‘fund’ the deficit, whereas in reality it doesn’t need to do this at all.

    If you don’t believe me, ask yourself the following question: Why would a currency-issuing government need to borrow money that it, and only it, can create at will? It doesn’t make any sense! So why don’t pundits in the media ever point this out? This brings us to the second way in which the ruling class maintains the illusion that the government is dependent on the private sector for money: through control of the narrative. The role of the media is not to dispassionately report on news and current affairs. Rather, it is a tool of propaganda for the ruling class. I am not suggesting that media pundits knowingly mislead their audiences; but any pundit who dared to question the prevailing narrative would probably find themselves out of a job pretty quickly.

    Whenever a government runs a budget deficit, the media will inevitably start bleating on about increased borrowing costs. As we have seen, however, these costs are entirely self-imposed. Not only that, they are a form of corporate welfare. This explains why interest rates on gilts go up during periods of price inflation. It is usually said that the Bank of England raises interest rates during times of inflation in order to try to bring inflation down; but this is a smokescreen. Nobody has ever provided evidence that increasing interest rates decreases inflation – at least, not that I am aware of. It certainly doesn’t make any sense to increase rates during times of inflation caused by supply shocks, as interest rates have nothing whatsoever to do with these.

    The real reason interest rates go up during times of inflation is that inflation erodes the real value of assets such as bonds, so rates are raised in order to compensate the owners of these assets – i.e. rich people – by providing them with higher interest payments. Although the Bank of England does not directly control the interest rate on government bonds, it does control the so-called ‘base rate’, the baseline for short-term borrowing, which heavily influences the yields demanded by the broader bond market. This arrangement is clearly very beneficial for the ruling class; but it is just an arrangement. There is no law of nature which says that governments must pay more money to rich people during times of inflation, or at any other time for that matter.

  • Reflections on the elections

    Last week saw local elections take place across the UK against a backdrop of a stagnating economy with youth unemployment at 900,000, soaring food prices, rising homelessness, and crumbling infrastructure. Little wonder then that the incumbent Labour party got an absolute kicking, losing 1,498 councillors in total. The Tories also tanked disastrously, losing 563 councillors. The main beneficiary of the collapse of what were until recently the two main parties in British politics was the far-right Reform party, who gained 1,451 councillors, almost as many as Labour lost. The left-of-centre Green party did quite well out of it too, gaining 441 councillors; and the Liberal Democrats also gained 155 councillors. It seems the era of two-party politics is well and truly over.

    Voters clearly used the elections to express anger at establishment politicians. The collapse of Labour and the Tories has created a political vacuum which has been filled on the right by Reform and on the left by the Greens, as well as by Plaid Cymru in Wales and the Scottish National Party in Scotland. 2026 will be remembered as the year that the old political order fell apart. The dramatic switch away from Labour can be partly explained by alienation in industrial areas that were once Labour strongholds.  Most people who live in these areas would never vote Tory, the party of the ruling class, and have instead been driven to Reform and its racist rhetoric, largely through despair. Labour was destroyed in Wales – its traditional heartland – and has been left with just 9 seats in a 96-member parliament.

    Farage and his coterie have cynically harnessed reactionary ideas, particularly around the vilification of immigrants, that have been whipped up by successive governments – not least Starmer’s Labour. In response, Labour attempted to shore up its vote by claiming that they are the only party who can stop Reform. This is literally the only argument they have left now. Unfortunately, many trade union leaders also use the threat of Reform to justify their continued affiliation with Labour. Why the unions continue to support Labour is a complete mystery to me. It’s not as if the money they give to Labour actually provides them with any power or influence over the party’s direction. Perhaps the union leaders are just slow learners.

    That said, there are reasons to believe that some unions might soon cut ties with Labour. Last month’s Unite Executive election saw a left-wing slate win a clear victory; and in the immediate aftermath of the elections, the Communication Workers’ Union discussed disaffiliation. It should also pointed out that for all Reform’s gains, the combined centre and left vote (Labour + Green + Lib Dem) was still higher than the combined right-wing vote (Reform + Tory). Many younger people who would have called themselves Corbynites a few years ago have shifted their allegiance to the Greens. This highlights once again how Your Party, Corbyn’s new political project, criminally missed an open goal by not putting up candidates in these elections (only 20 Your Party candidates stood in total).

    Labour is now going through a leadership crises similar to that which befell the Tories when then they were in power. The question now is when, not if, Keir Starmer will be replaced. The only person who doesn’t seem to realize this is Starmer himself, who appears to be hell-bent on clinging on to power at all costs. This should not surprise us as the only thing Starmer has any conviction about at all is the idea that he should be Prime Minister. One thing we can be sure of is that whoever replaces Starmer, they will not be a socialist, or even a social democrat, as there is no such candidate in contention for leadership. The new leader will just be another stooge of a capitalist class. In the short term, therefore, the problems facing our country will only continue to get worse.

  • The general strike of 1926

    A general strike occurs when workers from different unions and sectors of society take industrial action together, for a purpose, with a political motive. The only general strike in British history occurred a hundred years ago, in 1926. The conditions for a general strike had been building for years before it finally erupted. In 1912, a national miners strike comprising around a million workers secured a minimum wage after 37 days of action. In 1919, the miners went on strike again, putting state ownership at the top of their list of demands, which also called for a 6 hour working day and 30% pay rise. However in 1921 miners faced pay cuts of up to 50% as a result of rising unemployment, which had surged to around 25% (for reference, the current unemployment rate in the UK is around 5%).

    As a result of this rising unemployment, conditions for the working class in the early 1920s were dire. In response, the unions started coordinating strike activity. They achieved a success in 1925 when the government capitulated and offered an improved pay deal for miners after the unions triggered a national embargo on coal movements. The Labour party had been constantly trying to distance itself from communism and the far left, and the Labour party leader, Ramsay McDonald, accused Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minster, of “siding with the wildest of Bolsheviks.” Nonetheless, this success emboldened the unions and the following year they triggered a general strike, which effectively brought the country to a halt. Some 1.7 million workers joined the strike in total.

    Although there was some violence with the police, the strike itself was largely peaceful, and morale amongst the striking workers was strong. The leaders of the unions viewed things differently however. They thought the longer the strike went on, the more their leadership would be undermined, and the whole trade union movement in Britain along with it. The High Court had declared the strike illegal, and union leaders were worried about sanctions and the threat of arrest. Workers rejected options to end the strike, but the union leaders went behind their backs and gave in to the government, betraying everyone who had gone out on the picket line. As a result of this capitulation the strike only lasted for 9 days in total.

    The general strike demonstrated how workers across all unions and sectors of society can work together in solidarity, and that we can disable the country if we do. Could something similar happen today? Although we’ve only ever had one general strike in Britain, there are lots of other countries that have had them more often. One reason we haven’t had a general strike in this country since 1926 is that we have laws in place which limit the ways in which unions can organize strikes. Specifically, when organizing industrial action, a formal ballot must be conducted by post (not online), 50% of the membership balloted must vote, and the action must be limited to specific disputes. These rules effectively make organizing a general strike impossible without going outside the law.

    However, that is not to say we should operate within the law. It must be remembered that laws do not fall from the sky: they are put in place by the ruling class, usually to protect the ruling class. This means that some laws are meant to be broken. As the saying goes, you can’t make an omelette with out breaking a few eggs. The main impediment to organizing another a general strike in Britain is not the fact that such action would be illegal; it’s the fact that union leaders don’t want to do it. Most union leaders in this country are small-c conservative and view themselves as a mediator between workers and bosses rather than as an agent of revolution. They are generally quite happy to work within confines of the existing system and have no intention of trying to change it.

    This raises a question that I have grappling with recently, namely: whose side are the trade unions really on?! As the general strike demonstrated, when push comes to shove union leaders always seem to side with the ruling class over workers. We have seen this playing out again recently with unions refusing to disaffiliate from the Labour party, against the wishes of their members. But that doesn’t mean workers should abandon the trade union movement, which is the only mass workers’ movement we have. Rather, the working class needs to take control of the unions and ensure that they actually stand up for their members. That is the only realistic route to organizing another general strike and genuinely challenging the ruling class.

  • What is antisemitism?

    A brutal daylight knife attack on two Jewish men in north London last month has raised fears amongst British Jews. The attacker is reported to have a history of violence and also stabbed a Muslim man earlier that day. In response to these attacks – specifically the two on the Jewish men – the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has raised the terrorism threat level to ‘severe’. (Really?!) It goes without saying that we must oppose all violence against innocent civilians; but it is important to also consider the broader context within which these attacks occurred. Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza has so far claimed the lives of over 75,000 innocent civilians. Against this backdrop an attack on three civilians, none whom died as a result of their injuries, seems somewhat pale in comparison.

    Nonetheless, capitalist politicians have been cynically attempting to use these attacks to undermine the anti-war movement. There has been a concerted attempt to lay the blame for these attacks on mass demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza, with many commentators from the capitalist establishment laughably labelling them as ‘hate marches’. The government’s ‘independent’ reviewer of terrorism legislation called this week for a moratorium on pro-Palestine marches, claiming that it was “impossible for them not to incubate antisemitism.” This has raised an angry response from the thousands, perhaps millions, of people who have been involved in these peaceful protests across the country since Israel unleashed its offensive in October 2023.

    The root of racist division in society is not anti-war demonstrations but the capitalist system those calling for an end to the demonstrations all defend. Capitalism involves exploitation of the majority by a tiny minority, and such an arrangement requires division of the majority by the minority in order to function effectively. This explains why capitalist politicians attempt to scapegoat migrants for the problems that exist in society. Even so, despite the constant propaganda, recent polling shows that only 36% of British people think that ‘being British’ means being born in Britain, down from 74% in 2013. This suggests that racist division is actually decreasing in this country. We can reduce this division even further by organizing effectively.

    On 16 May there will be a pro-Palestine march in London to commemorate the Nakba (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’): the violent displacement of Palestinians that occurred when the state of Israel was formed in 1948. A well-attended march will be a show of strength against the capitalist establishment both in Britain and internationally (particularly in Israel). Of course, marching alone is not enough; we also need a program for peace in the Middle East which protects the rights of Palestinians. Such a program will never exist under a system which seems to prioritize defending Israel above anything else. The lengths to which the British establishment goes to vilify and persecute those who criticize Israel seems to me to be indicative of state capture.

    A subtle way in which Israel is defended that doesn’t often go remarked upon is through the use of the word ‘antisemitism’ to refer to bigotry against Jews. We already have a perfectly good word for such bigotry, namely: ‘judaeophobia’. So why doesn’t that more accurate term get used instead? The reason, I think, is that referring to bigotry against Jews as ‘antisemitism’ is a way of subtly equating Jews with Semites. In reality, however, a Semite is anyone who speaks a language which belongs to the Semitic language family. That includes Hebrew, which is spoken by many Jews in Israel; but it also includes Arabic, spoken by Muslims and Christians in Palestine and across the Arab world, as well as other languages such as Amharic, spoken in Ethiopia.

    I think that the widespread use of the word ‘antisemitism’ to refer to bigotry against Jews is an attempt – conscious or otherwise – to establish Jews as the true Semites and in so doing effectively erase Palestinian and broader Arab identity. This obviously plays right into Israel’s hands. Nobody in the mainstream media ever refers to attacks against Arabic-speaking Muslims as antisemitism, when technically they should. In fact the mainstream media barely mentions attacks on Muslims at all. It is notable that in all the furore about the attacks on the two Jewish men in North London, the attack on Muslim man by the same attacker earlier the same day barely received a mention. Does this not also count as terrorism?

    The fact that those who accuse others of antisemitism often seem indifferent to the suffering of Muslims, particularly Arabic-speaking Muslims, makes me wonder whether there might also be something more to this. In accusing those who defend Palestinians of being antisemites, perhaps they are telling us that it is they themselves who are the real antisemites, as they do not care about the suffering of Semitic people such as Palestinians. It seems there may be some projection going on here. As the saying goes, every accusation is a confession. In my view, when referring to bigotry against Jews, it is high time we replaced the misleading, propaganda- and projection-laden term ‘antisemitism’ with the more accurate and neutral term ‘judaeophobia’.

  • A discrete uncertainty principle

    Consider a particle moving in discrete time in one dimension. Let X(t) denote the position of the particle at (discrete) time t; let dt denote the increment between time steps; let U(t) = [X(t+dt)-X(t)]/dt denote the discrete velocity of the particle at time t; and let [X,U](t) = E[X(t+dt)U(t)-X(t)U(t)] denote the discrete commutator between position and velocity at time t, where E is the expectation operator. Then it is straightforward to show that [X,U] = U2dt. Now suppose that at each time step the particle moves a distance dx or -dx each with probability 1/2. Then it is clear that [X,U] = dx2dt. In what follows we will set dx = ħ/mc, the particle’s ‘Compton wavelength’, where m is the mass of the particle; and dt = -iħ/mc2, the particle’s ‘Compton time’ multiplied by a factor of -i, where i is the imaginary constant.

    The particle’s Compton wavelength, ħ/mc, is the wavelength of a photon whose energy is the same as the rest energy of that particle; and the particle’s Compton time, ħ/mc2, is the time for the particle to travel the Compton wavelength when moving at the velocity of light. Given these definitions it is straightforward to show that [X,U] = iħ/m, or [X,P] = iħ where P = mU, which is a discrete version of the canonical commutation relation between position and momentum. Now let us denote by f(x,t) the probability that the particle will be in position x at time t, and define the partial derivatives of f() by ft(x,t) = [f(x,t+dt)-f(x,t)]/dt, fx(x,t) = [f(x+dx,t)-f(x,t)]/dx, and fxx(x,t) = [fx(x,t)-fx(x-dx,t)]/dx. Then it is straightforward to show that ift = -ħfxx/2m, which is a discrete version of the Schrödinger equation.

    The Compton wavelength and Compton time are considered to be fundamental quantum mechanical properties of a particle. Our choice of these units was therefore not arbitrary. What about the fact that we multiplied the Compton time by -i? This was not arbitrary either and relates to a concept in physics known as ‘imaginary time’, whereby time is represented using imaginary numbers. Mathematically, imaginary time is real time which has undergone a so-called Wick rotation so that its coordinates are multiplied by the imaginary unit i. The fact that we used -i and not +i in our definition need not concern us as +i and -i are algebraically indistinguishable, because both defined as roots of the same polynomial equation, x2+1 = 0.

    A standard mathematical result known as the Cauchy-Schwartz inequality says that for any complex-valued random variables Y and Z, E(|Y|2)E(|Z|2) ≥|E(YZ*)|2, where Z* denotes the complex conjugate of Z. If we set Y = X(t)-E[X(t)] and Z = P(t)-E[P(t)] we get S[X(t)]2S[P(t)]2 ≥|E[X(t)P(t)*]|2, where S[X(t)] and S[P(t)] are the standard deviations of X(t) and P(t) respectively. Taking the positive square root of both sides gives S[X(t)]S[P(t)]≥|E[X(t)P(t)*]|, and a similar argument gives S[X(t+1)]S[P(t)]≥|E[X(t+1)P(t)*]|. Another standard mathematical result known as the triangle inequality says that for any complex numbers y and z, |y|+|z| ≥  |y+z|. If we set y = E[X(t+1)P(t)*] and z = -E[X(t)P(t)*] we get |E[X(t+1)P(t)*]|+|E[X(t)P(t)*]| ≥ |E[X(t+1)P(t)*]-E[X(t)P(t)*]|.

    Combining the above inequalities and using the definition of the commutator [X,P*] (see above) gives S[X(t)]S[P(t)]+S[X(t+1)]S[P(t)] ≥ |[X,P*]|. Let us now set s[X](t) = S[X(t)]+S[X(t+1)] and s[P](t) = 2S[P(t)], so that s[X] and s[P] represent the sum of the standard deviations of X and P taken over the time points t and t+1. Then we have 2s[X]s[P] ≥ |[X,P*]|. By definition, P = -mc2[X(t+dt)-X(t)]/iħ, and as 1/i = -i, we have P = imc2[X(t+dt)-X(t)]/ħ, and therefore P* = -P. It follows from this and the definition of the commutator above that [X,P*] = -[X,P], and therefore |[X,P*]| = |[X,P]|. Combining this with the inequality above, we get 2s[X]s[P] ≥ |[X,P]|. This is a discrete version of the well-known Heisenberg uncertainty principle, named after the German physicist Werner Heisenberg.

    Thus, we have shown that in a discrete framework it is possible to derive an analogues of the three most well-known equations of quantum mechanics: the canonical commutation relation between position and momentum; the Schrödinger equation; and the  Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Moreover, we have done this without having to use the heavy-duty Hilbert space machinery that must be employed in the continuous case. However, we have only done this for the special case of a 1-dimensional particle undergoing a simple random walk. Whether our approach can be generalized to other cases is an interesting question that I will leave for a future blog post.

  • Lessons from the Paris Commune

    In the mid-1800s Paris was industrializing at a fantastic rate. However, over half the population of the city lived in poverty bordering on destitution. Meanwhile, French bosses had never had it so good. Profits at the Anzin collieries to the north of Paris had increased by 300% between 1852 and 1870, whilst the miners’ wages went up by a mere 30% during the same period. The rotten regime of Emperor Louis Napoleon, with his absurd pretensions of imperial grandeur, was exposed in the war with Prussia in 1870. When French troops suffered a major defeat at the battle of Sedan, the anger of the people of France boiled over. The next day the National Guard, a conscript defence force, marched on the French assembly, elected a new government of Paris, and forced Napoleon into exile.

    Leon Trotsky would later write that with a revolutionary leadership that had prepared itself for just such a crisis in society, and that had a clear grasp of the steps needed to seize victory, the French workers could have taken power in 1870. Instead, the new government immediately stepped up the war effort. In September that year, 150,000 Prussian laid siege to Paris. Living conditions became even worse than they had been under Napoleon: food supplies dried up and Parisians were forced to cats and dogs to survive. The government, fearing defeat, kept up the war effort for fear of the masses turning against them if they surrendered, and spread false rumours of imminent Prussian collapse. As each rumour proved untrue, workers became more and more disillusioned with their new government.

    The bosses and landlords wanted a swift end to the war. But to the workers, Paris was the city of revolution that had to be defended to the last drop of blood. After many futile attempts to break the siege, the National Guard and the workers realized it could not go on. In January 1871 they marched to the Hotel de Ville and instigated the Paris Commune, a revolutionary government. In response, Prussian occupying forces colluded with French capitalists and declared a ceasefire to try to isolate the revolution. A treaty was signed handing over the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the German emperor as a sign of good will, and the Prussian army marched triumphantly through Paris, further alienating the city’s population.

    In February the National Guard organised a march of 300,000 against government plans to disband and disarm them. They broke into artillery depots, taking 200 cannons which they felt were public property to be protected from Prussian hands. In response, the government ordered regular soldiers to retrieve them and around 18,000 troops arrived in the dead of night. The next morning immense crowds of National Guards and workers arrived to defend their cannons. Many regular soldiers mutinied and joined the revolt. The National Guards seized the Hotel de Ville and revolutionaries crowded in, forcing the government to desert the city. For the first time the revolutionaries were the undisputed masters of Paris.

    The task facing the revolutionaries now was to consolidate their rule in the capital, transform economic relations, and rouse the rest of the country. The revolutionary government demanded an elected municipal council, genuine municipal liberties, suppression of the police, the right of the National Guard to appoint its own leaders, and the postponement of all rent arrears. However by attempting to legalise the new workers’ government by holding elections, valuable time was lost and a call for a mass march to seize the retreating government was pushed to the background. This turned out to be a fatal mistake as a counter-revolution was brewing. The old government regrouped in Versailles and clearly stated that “after this atrocity, there can be no negotiations with Paris.”

    In March Paris went to the polls and the revolutionaries won by a landslide. They purged the state and schools of religion, abolished capital punishment, cancelled nine months’ rent arrears, set the salaries of all public representatives at the level of the workers, and started the nationalisation, under workers’ control, of all abandoned factories and mills. Paris was alive and jubilant. But the revolutionaries still did not launch the expected attack on the old government in Versailles, which was not about to let things continue like this. In April the old government launched an attack on Paris and the city once again found itself under siege. However this time the defending forces were proud, brave, willing revolutionaries with a belief that what they were doing was right.

    Throughout the siege the revolutionary government continued to make sweeping changes, such as banning gambling and prostitution and abolishing all fines on workers. These changed culminated with a bulletin, posted all over the city, which declared: “The communal revolution, begun by the popular initiative of 18 March, inaugurates a new political era, experimental, positive, scientific. It is the end of the old government and clerical world, of militarism, of monopolism, of privileges to which the proletariat owes its servitude, the nation, its servitude and disasters.” However in May the Versailles troops entered Paris and a bloody battle ensued. By the end of the fighting the Hotel de Ville was in flames and most of the revolutionaries were either dead or arrested.

    The Paris Commune is an object lesson in how, if only for a few weeks and only in one city, the working class can take control and exercise its power. It demonstrates that the working class cannot simply take  hold of the existing state machine and use it to transform society, but must instead destroy the capitalist state and build its own democratic structures. Unfortunately indecision, vacillation, and unclear direction led to the demise of the Commune and the deaths of thousands of revolutionary workers. Today we still have capitalism and rampant imperialism to defeat in the struggle for world socialism. But if we learn the lessons of history, ultimately we will be victorious and avenge the deaths of the heroic communards.

  • The problem(s) with lesser-evilism

    The lesser of two evils principle, also referred to as the lesser evil principle and lesser-evilism, is the ethical principle that, when faced with selecting from two immoral options, the less immoral one should be chosen. The maxim goes back centuries and existed already in Platonic philosophy. These days, the principle is most often invoked in reference to lesser evil voting, a binary political choice under systems that make it impossible to express a sincere preference for one’s favourite. The concept of lesser evil voting can be seen as a form of the minimax strategy – ‘minimize the maximum loss’ – where voters, when faced with two or more candidates, choose the one they perceive as the most likely to do harm and vote for the one most likely to defeat them, or the ‘lesser evil’.

    There are several problems with this strategy however. By settling for the lesser evil option, voters consistently reward a system that moves steadily to the right, which means the lesser evil of today may be as bad as, or even worse than, the greater evil of yesterday. It creates a Hobson’s choice which masks a lack of real alternatives, discouraging the development of radical movements that might represent public interests better. The strategy allows politicians to win without adopting progressive or popular platforms, relying on fear of the opponent rather than the merit of their own policies. It promotes a form of moral blackmail whereby citizens are pressurized to violate their own principles, which can lead to voter apathy and the erosion of political integrity.

    Furthermore, the supposed lesser evils (e.g. Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the UK) often work hand in glove with the greater evils (e.g. the Conservatives and Reform) to protect the same power structures and economic elites, serving as a good cop, bad cop act that keeps the public in the dark about what is really going on behind the scenes. Ultimately, the lesser of two evils is still an evil, and continuing to vote for it means actively enabling harmful outcomes. Instead, we should work for independent political action and creating genuinely representative alternatives, rather than constantly settling for the lesser option. We should also remind ourselves that there is always the option of not voting for anybody at all.

    It is not just in the political sphere where the lesser evilism principle is often invoked. It also gets trotted out whenever we try to highlight exploitation, injustice, or any other form of mistreatment we see going on in the world. ‘Well, that might be bad’, the response usually goes, ‘but at least it’s not as bad as X’, where X is some situation that either exists now, could potentially exist now, or has existed at some point in the past, that is deemed to be worse than the state of affairs we are highlighting. This is clearly a form of the lesser evil principle: the argument is that the situation we are complaining about is the lesser evil when compared to some other situation, and therefore we should just stop complaining about it.

    The problem with this argument is that no matter how bad a situation is, it is always possible to come up with a situation that seems worse. Don’t like being forced to work 40 hours per week just to survive? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not unemployed! Don’t like being unemployed? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not being forced to work as a slave! Don’t like being forced to work as a slave? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not starving to death! Don’t like starving to death? Well it could be worse – at least you’re not dead! And so on. This response might be referred to as ‘shifting counterfactuals’: whenever you complain about a situation, a new counterfactual situation is invoked to make the situation you are complaining about seem less bad by comparison.

    In a previous blog post I argued that we can only meaningfully evaluate a given state of affairs relative to another ‘reference’ state of affairs. This means that we need to first establish a counterfactual before we can make meaningful evaluations. What should this counterfactual be? I think the only logical option is to take as counterfactual the best possible state of affairs that could exist given the current state of technological development. Our existing economic system does not fare too well under this maxim. It is not difficult to conceive of socio-economic systems that would be vastly superior to modern-day capitalism in almost every respect. As the economic anthropologist Jason Hickel puts it: we live in a shadow of the world we could have.

  • Unite and fight for LGBTQ+ rights!

    In recent times, right-wing parties have attempted to whip up transphobia as a way to create division amongst ordinary people. However oppression, harassment, and bullying of LGBTQ+ people are nothing new. LGBTQ+ people have faced persecution for centuries; but they also have a proud history of standing up against such persecution. This has led to victories in this country such as the equalization of the age of consent and marriage, and the implementation of other laws that have improved LGBTQ+ rights. But no gain is permanent under a capitalist system that is perpetually in crisis. Right-wing parties inevitably resort to the politics of division as a way of deflecting from their inability to deal with issues such as low pay and crumbling public services.

    Life can still be extremely difficult for LGBTQ+ people in this country. Surveys show that two-thirds LGBTQ+ people are afraid of being open about their sexuality for fear of a negative reaction. LGBTQ+ people face harassment on a daily basis, the majority of which goes unreported due to the belief that nothing will happen as a result. Well-publicized findings of institutionalized homophobia in the police, such as the Casey Review into the Metropolitan Police, also deter LGBTQ+ people from reporting the harassment they face. And this is after all the gains that have been won in recent times. In Britain today, austerity is threatening to roll back these gains. LGBTQ+ people are disproportionately likely to experience mental ill-health or homelessness, issues that are exacerbated by cuts to public services.

    Sadly, discrimination against LGBTQ+ people – particularly trans people – appears to be on the rise again. This is largely as a result of right-wing propaganda which attempts to blame trans people for the oppression of women, rather than the lack of services, rights, and support being offered to them. It is important to understand that capitalism is a system that requires division amongst workers to function. In Britain and across the world, a tiny group of people own and controls the means of production – industry and technology – and uses this to amass great fortunes. It is in the interest of this group of people to keep us divided as that weakens our ability to fight back. All too often it is LGBTQ+ people who are at the sharp end of this divide-and-rule strategy.

    Many LGBTQ+ people face bullying and harassment at work and are often forced to put up with this because the alternative means poverty and eviction. We therefore need a trade union movement that fights against discrimination in the workplace, and which has oversight of the recruitment and promotion process. LGBTQ+ people are also forced to deal with the effect of the capitalist class’s divide-and-rule strategy in the education system, not only through bullying but also through an unrepresentative curriculum. Student and education unions must organize and campaign against bullying of LGBTQ+ people, and the curriculum should be updated to include more on LGBTQ+ history. We also need to increase funding in LGBTQ+ healthcare and ensure that this is accessible to all.

    Sixteen years of austerity has stripped LGBTQ+ services to the bone. This has been exacerbated by right-wing parties turning on LGBTQ+ (particularly trans) people to whip up hate and division as part of their ‘culture war’ agenda, which has led to funding being diverted away from LGBTQ+ services. Labour is proving to be no more of an ally to the LGBTQ+ community than the Tories were when they were in power. It is important therefore that we not only protect existing LGBTQ+ services but that we also provide additional services to meet the needs of the community. We must also build more shelters for LGBTQ+ people fleeing homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic families or partners, and other abusive living situations.

    The working class is the force that can get rid of capitalism. Strike waves and other collective action demonstrate how much power the working class has when it us united. To fully harness the power of the working class, however, it is necessary to build a worker’s party with a programme for fighting for jobs, homes, services, and rights for all. The LGBTQ+ community has a huge and vital role to play here. We must encourage LGBTQ+ campaigners to stand alongside workers in local and general elections on a common platform against cuts and for the public services we need. What is required is a movement with a democratic and accountable leadership that will fight for LGBTQ+ rights. Unfortunately, Pride events have become increasingly corporatized and have moved further and further away from their radical roots. It is time that Pride organizers reclaimed the movement for ordinary LGBTQ+ people.

  • Techno-capitalism

    Neo-feudalism, or new feudalism, is a theorized contemporary rebirth of policies of governance, economy, and public life, reminiscent of those present in feudal societies. It refers to the idea that capitalism is evolving, or has already evolved, into a modern socio-economic system that bears similarities to the feudal social orders of ancient times, but with unique modern features. The term neo-feudalism has been popular since the early 2020s but the concept has been around much longer. The idea was first put forward by the German philosopher and social theories Jürgen Habermas, who used the term Refeudalisierung (‘refeudalization’) in his 1962 work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere to criticize the privatization of the forms of communication.

    Recently, the Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis has proposed that capitalism has evolved into a new feudal-like structure of economies and societies which he refers to as ‘techno-feudalism’. Varoufakis explains that unlike under capitalism, feudal economies have the quality of being dominated by very small groups of people who predetermine the behaviour of markets as they see fit. He notes that massive online platforms such as Facebook and Amazon are primarily governed by the whims of single individuals and small teams, and thus are not truly capitalist markets of free trade, but rather feudal markets of stringent control. Varoufakis summarized the argument in his 2023 book Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. But is he right?

    To answer that question we first need to define what we mean by ‘capitalism’ and ‘feudalism’. Or more specifically, we need to understand the key difference between the two. One distinction often made is that under feudalism, workers were tied to the land and owed labour to a lord; whereas under capitalism, workers are free to enter contracts for wages and can change employers or withdraw their labour if they wish to. I think this is a false distinction. In practice, most workers are no more free to withdraw their labour under capitalism than they were under feudalism. In both systems workers basically face a choice between working or starving. The only real difference is that under capitalism this stark choice gets masked behind the pretence of worker ‘freedom’.

    Another distinction often made concerns property relations. Under feudalism, land was held through loyalty (fiefs); whereas under capitalism, productive assets such as land are owned as private property. Again, though, this seems to be a distinction without a difference. Both systems involve non-democratic, private ownership of the means of production. The only real difference is that under capitalism the means of production includes machinery and not just land. Yet another distinction often made concerns social mobility. Feudalism had a rigid class structure based on birthright; whereas capitalism supposedly allows for upward mobility through success, merit, or capital accumulation. In practice, however, it is extremely rare for a worker to change class and become a capitalist.

    Both feudalism and capitalism are exploitative systems in which a small ruling class dictates economic decisions and a larger working class lives with the consequences. The thing that distinguishes them is the underlying economic logic. Feudalism was an agricultural system based on traditional obligation and consumption of surpluses by elites. It was essentially a static system that survived largely unchanged for centuries. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a dynamic system driven by competition, accumulation, and growth. This drives technological innovation and competitive efficiency but it also has tremendous downsides, particularly on the natural world. It is an unstable system that inevitably leads to war and crisis and is fundamentally unsustainable in the long-term.

    The accumulation drive of capitalism has not gone away; on the contrary, it is as powerful as ever. For that reason I cannot subscribe to Varoufakis’s techno-feudalism thesis. If anything, new technology is being marshalled to exploit workers further and drive accumulation to an even greater degree. Therefore I think ‘techno-capitalism’ would be a better term to describe the system under which we now live. The rise of AI will only turbocharge this process of worker exploitation and capitalist accumulation – unless we do something to fundamentally change the system and its underlying logic.

  • Measuring ED&I scientifically

    It is now generally accepted by most (although not all) people that promoting and delivering Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (ED&I) is a good idea. But what exactly do we mean by ED&I? The usual definition given is something along the lines of: ‘equality’ means ensuring everyone has the same rights and opportunities, regardless of their personal characteristics; ‘diversity’ means recognizing, respecting, and valuing individual differences, including backgrounds, beliefs, skills, and identities; and ‘inclusion’ means creating an environment where all people feel welcomed, respected, and able to contribute fully. That’s all well and good; but how might we go about measuring these things? In this blog post I will attempt to answer that question using the concept of entropy.

    Consider a organization with members who are categorized into n groups based on personal characteristics (race, gender, sexual orientation, and so on). Let pi denote the proportion of people in the organization who belong to group i. To measure the ‘fairness’ of the organization scientifically we need to define a function Hn() which takes the proportions p1,…,pn and outputs a positive number, with the interpretation that that Hn(p1,…,pn) represents a quantitative measure of the organization’s fairness. What properties should this function have? First of all it should be continuous, so that changing the values of the proportions by a small amount only changes the fairness of the organization by a small amount.

    The function Hn() should be symmetric, so that the output remains the same if the proportions are reordered. This ensures that we are not applying preferential treatment to one particular group. It should attain its maximum when all proportions are equal. It should also increase with the number of outcomes when all proportions are equal; that is, Hn(1/n,…,1/n) < Hn+1(1/(n+1),…,1/(n+1)). The final property this function should have might be called ‘additivity’: if the organization is split into sub-organizations, then the fairness of the organization should be equal to a weighted sum of the fairness of the sub-organizations, where the weight is equal to the proportion of members belonging to that sub-organization.

    It turns out that the only function that satisfies these criteria is the so-called ‘entropy’ function: Hn(p1,…,pn) = -∑ipilog(pi). This gives us a basic measure of fairness. However it is not sufficient for most purposes. In the real world we usually want to compare these proportions against a baseline, which will usually be the corresponding proportions in the population as a whole. Let us now denote these baseline proportions by p1,…,pn and the corresponding proportions within the organization by q1,…,qn. Further, let X and Y be random variables which take the value i with probabilities pi and qi respectively. Then we can measure the fairness of the organization using the ‘relative entropy’ H(X|Y) = -∑ipilog(qi/pi), where I have suppressed the dependence on n for convenience.

    Note that a high value of H(X|Y) means that the organization is not representative of the population as a whole, whereas a value of zero means that it is perfectly representative of the population. Therefore, an organization would generally want to decrease the value of H(X|Y) as a high value represents a lack of diversity. This therefore gives us a measure of (lack of) diversity; but what about equality? Let us now suppose that the organization is stratified into a hierarchy with m levels. Let qij be the proportion of people in level i of the organization belonging to group j, and let Yi be a random variable which takes the value j with probability qij. Then the within-level entropy for level i is just the relative entropy H(X|Yi).

    How do we account for entropy across levels?Let rij be proportion of people in group j belonging to level i of the organization, and let Zj be a random variable which takes the value i with probability rij. Further, let ri be the overall proportion of people belonging to level i of the organization, and let and let Z be a random variable which takes the value i with probability ri. Then we may define the cross-level entropy for group j as the relative entropy H(Z|Zj). A high value of H(Z|Zj) means that members of group j are facing discrimination (either positive of negative). Therefore, an organization would generally want to decrease the value of H(Z|Zj) as a high value represents a lack of equality with respect to that particular group.

    The overall entropy H can then be defined as a weighted double sum: H = ∑i∑j[qijH(X|Yi)+rijH(Z|Zj)]. This gives a combined measure of both equality and diversity, which  can be considered as a measure of inclusion. Thus we have successfully defined measures of equality, diversity, and inclusion. The next step is to apply these measures to some real-world data; I will leave that for a future blog post.

  • Word-initial velars in the IEW

    In a previous blog post I listed entries from the 1959 Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (IEW) with velars in different phonological environments. These data suggest that in palatalization of plain velars was blocked before *eiT, *o, and *r, and that labiovelars were delabialized after *s and before *H₂, *l, *m, and *u. In that blog post I only included entries with reflexes in at least two branches of both the centum and satem languages, where there is no uncertainty in the reconstruction, and where the velar only occurs in one phonological environment; and I excluded onomatopeic cases. Here I will investigate what happens if we relax the first condition and allow entries with reflexes in at least one branch of both the centum and satem languages. I will focus on velars in word-initial position.

    There are eighteen entries with a plain velar after *s and before *e: *sked- ‘split’, *skeH₂i- ‘bright’, *skeH₁t- ‘jump’, *skeH₁u- ‘cut’, *skei- ‘cut’, *skel- ‘bend’, *skel- ‘dry’, *skep- ‘cut’, *sker-  ‘cut’, *sker- ‘jump’, *sker- ‘wrinkle’, *skerbh- ‘turn’, *skerdh- ‘pitiful’, *skert- ‘across’, *skeu-  ‘get ready’, *skeu- ‘sneeze’, *skeud- ‘throw’, and *skeud- ‘unwilling’. There are seven entries with a plain velar after mobile *s and before *e: *(s)kel- ‘stab’, *(s)kel- ‘hit’, *(s)kel- ‘call’, *(s)kerd- ‘gird’, *(s)kert- ‘turn’, *(s)keu- ‘pay’, and *(s)keuHd- ‘shout’. There is one example with a labiovelar after *s, *skʷalos ‘fish’, where the *a vocalism points to a wanderwort. This suggests that labiovelars were delabialized after *s. I will therefore exclude these cases from now on.

    There are two entries with a plain velar before *eT, where T is any stop. The first, *ghed- ‘defecate’, should be reconstructed with a palatovelar; and the plain velar in the second, *ked- ‘smoke’, is reconstructed based on two Greek words that are probably unrelated to the other reflexes. There are four entries with a plain velar before *eiT: *geibh- ‘bend’, *geid- ‘stab’, *gheidh- ‘desire’, and *gheig̑h- ‘desire’. There is one entry with a palatovelar in this position, *g̑eid- ‘suck’, which is barely attested. There is one other entry with a plain velar before *ei, *keis- ‘arm’, where the plain velar is reconstructed based on three Dutch words that are probably unrelated to the other reflexes. This suggests that palatalization was blocked *eiT, but not before *eT or *ei when not followed by *T.

    There are five entries with a plain velar before *el. The Greek reflexes of the first, *ghelH₂d- ‘ice’, point to a zero grade *ghlH₂d-; whereas the third, *kelH₁- ‘drive’, and fourth, *kelH₁u- ‘wander’, are probably derived from the root *kelH₁- ~ *kleH₁- ‘call’. In all three cases the root may have contained a labiovelar which was delabialized by the *l. The second, *ghelou- ‘turtle’, and fifth, *kelg- ‘wind’, are barely attested. There is one entry with a plain velar before *em, *gem- ‘grasp’, where the Baltic reflexes point to an original labiovelar which was delabialized before *m in the zero grade. There is one entry with a plain velar before *en, *ken- ‘appear’, where the Slavic reflexes point to an *o-grade where palatalization could have been blocked by the *o.

    There are five entries with a plain velar before *er. The Baltic reflexes of the first, *ghers ‘weed’, third, *ker- ‘cherry’, and fifth, *kerm- ‘tire’, point to zero grade formations where palatalization would have been blocked by the *r. The second, *gherto- ‘milk’ could just as well be reconstructed with a labiovelar. The fourth, *kerd- ‘gird’, is probably derived from the root *(s)ker- ‘turn’, in which case it may have contained a labiovelar which was delabialized by the *s. There is one entry with a plain velar before *u, *gheubh- ‘bend’, where the Germanic reflexes point to a zero grade, so this may also have contained a labiovelar which was delabialized by the *u. There are no entries with a plain velar before *i. This suggests that plain velars were palatalized before *e and *i.

    There nine entries with a plain velar before *o: *gol- ‘bald’, *ghoilos- ‘froth’, *ghom- ‘stall’, *ghostis ‘stranger’, *ghouros ‘horrible’, *ghou- ‘pay’, *kob- ‘fit’, *koros ‘war’, and *koselo- ‘hazel’. There are three entries with a palatovelar in this position. The Indic reflexes of the first, *k̑onk- ‘doubt’, point to an *e-grade where the velar could have been palatalized by the *e. The second, *k̑ongho- ‘mussel’, is probably not reconstructable for PIE as the phonological correspondence between the Indic and Greek reflexes is irregular. The same cannot be said of the third, *k̑ormo- ‘torment’, but we also cannot rule out the possibility of a an *e-grade formation existing here too. This suggests that palatalization was blocked before *o.

    There are eighteen entries with a plain velar before *r: *grem- ‘damp’, *greus- ‘crumble’, *greus-  ‘burn’, *groHd- ‘hail’, *ghrebh- ‘scratch’, *ghredh- ‘stride’, *ghreib- ‘grip’, *ghrendh- ‘beam’, *ghreH₁u- ‘collapse’, *kred- ‘beams’, *kreH₁p- ‘strong’, *kreH₂u- ‘put’, *krei- ‘stroke’, *krep- ‘body’, *kret- ‘shake’, *kreuH₂- ‘blood’, *kreu- ‘thrust’, and *kreup- ‘scab’. There is one entry with a palatovelar in this position, *k̑rei- ‘shine’, which is barely attested and probably not reconstructable for PIE. This suggests that palatalization was blocked before *r. The blocking of palatalization before *r is well-known and is backed up by the gutturalwechsel (interchange between palatovelar and plain velar reflexes) in words such as *suekru- ~ *suekur- ‘in-law’.

    There thirteen entries with a plain velar before *H₂: *ghH₂eit- ‘hair’, *kH₂eilo- ‘whole’, *kH₂el- ‘beautiful’, *kH₂elni- ‘narrow’, *kH₂emp- ‘bend’, *kH₂ento- ‘corner’, *kH₂epro- ‘he-goat’, *kH₂eput ‘head’, *kH₂er- ‘revile’, *kH₂er- ‘hard’, *kH₂et- ‘plait’, *kH₂et- ‘bear’, and *kH₂eu- ‘humble’. There are three entries with a plain velar before *l: *klem- ‘slack’, *kleno- ‘maple’, and *klHuo- ‘bald’. There are five entries with a plain velar before *u: *gues- ‘twig’, *guosdho- ‘nail’, *kuers- ‘wood’, *kuet- ‘ferment’, and *kuoi- ‘wish’. In contrast, there are no entries with a labiovelars in any of these positions. This suggests that labiovelars were delabialized before *H₂, *l, and *u, as well as before *m, as was suggested above.

  • Can local authorities go bankrupt?

    Local elections are taking place across the UK on the 7th May. Where I live in Surrey these will be to elect councillors for two new ‘unitary authorities’: East Surrey and West Surrey. I live in the latter, which is an amalgamation of six previously separate borough councils in the western half of the county. All operations, services, and existing debts associated with these borough councils will be merged under this new unitary authority. The key challenge facing West Surrey is that it will start life with debts exceeding £4.5 billion (!). The debt was created in boroughs under the control of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats – specifically Woking and Spelthorne – and equates to around £7,000 per resident. This will be the largest local authority debt per head of population in the country.

    It is often said that as a result of this £4.5 billion debt, West Surrey will start life effectively bankrupt. The claim is based on the fact that Woking Borough Council, which accounts for £2.6 billion of the £4.5 billion, supposedly declared bankruptcy in 2023 when it issued something called a Section 114 notice. This is a formal report issued by a UK local council’s Chief Financial Officer (under the Local Government Finance Act 1988) indicating that the authority cannot balance its budget and faces unlawful expenditure. Such notices are issued when expenditures are expected to exceed income. As a result, all new spending is banned, except for statutory services (e.g., social care, child protection) and essential safeguarding.

    However, this does not mean that Woking Council is bankrupt, contrary to popular belief. As I explained in a previous blog post, a council in Britain cannot go bust in the same way that an individual or private company can. Because only an act of parliament can dissolve a local authority, council services and the financing to provide them are implicitly underpinned by central government. To declare that a local authority is bankrupt is therefore to commit a category error. Actually the claim usually made is that Woking Council is ‘effectively’ bankrupt. Note the weasel word ‘effectively’. Those making the claim know that they cannot remove this word and simply say that Woking Council is bankrupt because this isn’t really true.

    The claim that Woking Council is bankrupt unravels further once you discover that the borough’s debt is owed almost entirely to central government. Originally the debt was to the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB), which provided funding to local authorities; in 2020, the PWLB was abolished as a statutory organisation and its functions were allocated to HM Treasury, which is presumably now who Woking Council owes the £2.6 billion to. The same goes for the rest of the £4.5 billion debt that West Surrey will inherit. This means that the entire debt could be written off by the UK government at the press of a button. In fact central government has already agreed to write off £500 million, which raises the question of why it doesn’t just write off the rest if it.

    This state of affairs seems even more ludicrous when you consider that one of the functions of central government is to provide funding for local authorities for necessary public services. Not only is the UK government not providing adequate funding; by refusing to write off the debt, it is effectively demanding that West Surrey provides money to the UK government! This is a crime against logic. The UK government is monetarily sovereign and can create money by fiat; it doesn’t need anyone to provide it money. The sensible thing to do would be to use the consolidation of the boroughs of West Surrey as an opportunity to write off the debt and begin again with a clean slate. But since when did common sense ever factor into decisions made by our political class?!

    The real reason the debt is being enforced has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with politics. The UK government knows that writing off the debt would create a precedent and encourage other local authorities to go into debt as well. They must therefore enforce the debt to ensure that other local authorities don’t step out of line and continue to pursue the austerity agenda. Viewed in that light, things seem rather bleak; but there is a more optimistic take on the situation. Woking Council has demonstrated that it is possible for a local authority to go into debt. Although it did that through speculative investments, there is no reason a local authority couldn’t go into debt for other reasons.

    In particular, there is nothing to stop a local authority going into debt to properly fund public services or build affordable housing. Indeed, this is precisely what Liverpool’s 1983-1987 socialist council did. As long as that debt is denominated in pound sterling – as almost all local authority spending is – it would be implicitly underpinned by central government, who would have the power to write off the debt at any time with the press of a button. The whole idea that a local authority can be in debt to central government is nonsense. It is a bourgeois conception to provide justification for policies designed to discipline the working class. The only thing preventing local authorities from properly funding public services is a lack of political will.