Groucho Marxism

Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics

  • The problem(s) with utilitarianism

    In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions to maximize happiness and well-being, or ‘utility’, for the affected individuals. Utilitarianism is a version of consequentialism, which posits that the consequences of any action are the only standard of right and wrong. The idea that we should aim to maximize utility seems perfectly sensible at first, but dig a little deeper and problems soon begin to emerge. The first problem we encounter is that of quantifying utility. It just isn’t possible to do this in any non-arbitrary way. All we can really do in practice is say that one individual is happier or more well-off than another individual. This demonstrates that happiness and well-being are relative rather than absolute concepts.

    Even if we could meaningfully quantify utility, it would be impossible to do the calculation that utilitarianism requires because the consequences of actions our are inherently unknowable. Then there is the problem of how to aggregate the utility of different individuals. The obvious solution to add together the utility of different individuals (assuming we could quantify them in the first place) leads to paradoxes such as the so-called ‘repugnant conclusion’, whereby an immense population with lives that are only barely worth living is deemed superior to a smaller population enjoying a life of great fulfilment. Other measures of aggregate utility, such as taking the average utility, avoid the repugnant conclusion but create other paradoxes.

    Another problem with utilitarianism, and with consequentialism more generally, is that judging actions based on consequences means the actions of an individual can end up being judged more or less harshly based on factors that are completely outside of an individual’s control. I’m sure we’ve all been in situations where our actions have resulted in consequences which could have been have been a lot worse had outside factors not gone our way, or conversely, could have been a lot better if outside factors had not gone against us. Yet another problem concerns justice. It’s not hard to think of situations where an obvious miscarriage of justice would result in greater overall ‘utility’ – for example, framing an innocent person for a murder in order to provide some closure to the murder victim’s family.

    So we can see that there are many problems with utilitarianism. This wouldn’t matter it utilitarianism was a fringe view, but the whole of neoclassical economics, by far the most dominant paradigm in the academic economics world, is based on the idea of that individuals act so as to maximize their ‘utility’. A neoclassical economist might argue that the point of economics is to describe what people do rather than to describe what they should do, so the philosophical objections to utilitarianism outlined above are irrelevant. The problem with this argument is that these are not just philosophical objections; they are objections based on how individuals act in practice. The idea, for example, that people work out all the possible consequences of their actions before taking them is obviously nonsense.

    This isn’t just an academic argument though: utilitarianism is an idea that has impacts in the real world. Perhaps the most egregious example of the mess this idea can get you into is the case of Sam Bankman-Fried, the American entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in 2023. In 2024, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit $11 billion. Bankman-Fried was vilified in the media, but he was a committed utilitarian who probably thought what he was doing was right. Prior to his arrest and conviction, Bankman-Fried publicly stated he supported the ‘effective altruism’ movement, the philosophical and social movement that advocates calculating benefits and prioritizing causes to provide the greatest overall good.

    What are the alternatives to utilitarianism and consequentialism? Perhaps the most well-established alternative is known as deontology, according to which the moral rightness of actions is based on a set of norms or principles. Immanuel Kant is one of the most well-known deontologists. The foundation of Kant’s ethics is the so-called categorical imperative. Kant gave four separate formulations of his categorical imperative, of which the best known is probably the first: ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.’ Although Kant usually gets the credit for this, this idea actually goes back many centuries, and is often referred to as the ‘golden rule.’ This seems to me a pretty solid basis on which to base a normative ethical theory.

  • A discrete principle of stationary action

    The principle of stationary action is a great unifying principle of physics, and is usually presented in a continuous-time framework. In this blog post I will attempt to present a discrete-time formulation of the principle in accordance with the materialist conception of physics I put forward in a previous blog post. Let x(t) denote the state of a physical system at (discrete) time t. This state may be thought of as a vector x = (x1,…,xm), where xj(t) denotes the position of the particle j in the system at time t. The discrete velocity of the particle j at time t is given by uj(t) = xj(t+1)-xj(t), where for simplicity I have taken the time increment to be 1. If wj denotes the mass of particle j then the kinetic energy of the system at time t is given by K(u) = ∑wjuj2/2, where u = (u1,…,un).

    Let P(x) denote the potential energy of the system, which depends only on the state x. Then the Lagrangian of the system is defined by L(x,u) = K(u)-P(x), and the action of the system is defined as ∑L(x(t),u(t)), where the sum is taken between two fixed time points, which we may take as 0 and T. The principle of stationary action states that the system will take the path that maximizes or minimizes the action. For concreteness, let us assume that the particle takes the path that minimizes the action. Let us denote by S(x,t) the minimum of the sum of ∑L(x(t),u(t)) taken between times t and T, where the minimum is taken over {u(t)}. Then, for each t<T, S(x,t) = min{L(x,u)+S(x+u,t+1)}. This gives us a recursive expression for the function S.

    The momentum of particle j is given by pj = wjuj, and the Hamiltonian of the system is defined by H(x,u,p) = pu-L(x,u), where p =(p1, … ,pm). Note that from our definition of the Lagrangian above, H(x,u,p) = K(u)+P(x), the energy of the system. We want to derive an expression which relates the functions H and S. From the above we have that S(x,t)-S(x,t+1) = min{L(x,u)+S(x+u,t+1)-S(x,t+1)}. We may re-write this formula using discrete derivatives as -St(x,t) = min{L(x,u)+Sx(x,t+1)u}, or alternatively, using the fact that min{a,b}=-max{-a,-b}, as St(x,t) = max{-L(x,u)-Sx(x,t+1)u}. This can be written using our definition of the Hamiltonian as St(x,t) = max{H(x,u,-Sx(x,t+1))}.We have just derived a discrete version of the so-called Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation.

    The continuous time version of this equation is a result of the theory of dynamic programming which was pioneered in the 1950s by the American mathematician Richard Bellman and co-workers. It is very similar in form to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation in classical physics, hence the name. The Hamilton-Jacobi equation was in turn named after the Irish mathematician William Hamilton and the German mathematician Carl Jacobi, and is an alternative formulation of classical mechanics, equivalent to other formulations such as Newton’s laws of motion. The Hamilton-Jacobi equation is considered the ‘closest approach’ of classical mechanics to quantum mechanics, as the Schrödinger equation of quantum mechanics can be derived from it.

    The principle of stationary action can also be used in macroeconomic modelling. In this context, we have an economy which produces m commodities, and the state xj(t) denotes quantity of commodity j produced by the economy t. We also assume that the economy uses n different types of labour, and uk(t) denotes the quantity of labour of type k employed at time t. Note that unlike in the physical case described above, in general m and n will be different. Furthermore, the ‘mass’ wk denotes the average wage for labour of type k, and the ‘kinetic energy’ is just the total wage bill: K(u) = ∑wkuk = wu. Thus, unlike in the physical case, the kinetic energy is linear in u. The ‘potential energy’ is negative and can be interpreted as depreciation: P(x) =-dx, where d is the depreciation rate.

    So the Lagrangian for our economy is given by: L(u) = K(u)-P(x) = wu+dx, which is just wages plus depreciation. Thus the Lagrangian represents the total costs incurred by capitalists. In the physical case, the state of the system evolves according to x(t+1) = x(t)+u(t). The economic case generalizes this to x(t+1) = x(t)+f(x(t),u(t)) for some function f. Just as in the physical case, we assume that production follows the path which minimizes the action ∑L(x(t),u(t)), which is to say that capitalists act in such a way so as to minimize their costs. The ‘momentum’ of commodity j, pj, is just the price of the commodity, and the Hamiltonian of the system is then defined by H(x,u,p) = pf(x,u)-L(x,u) = pf(x,u)-wu-dx, which represents gross profits, as pf(x,u) = p(x(t+1)-x(t)) represents nominal net output, and wu+dx represents costs.

    Clearly, there is more to be investigated here in terms of connections between the two models, but I will leave that for a future blog post.

  • Deaths under socialism and capitalism

    Critics of socialism (or Marxism) love to point out how many people died in socialist regimes. Particular examples they like to cite are the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933 which killed around 6 million people, and the Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 which killed around 30 million people. These numbers seem shocking, but as any quantitative social scientist will tell you, numbers like these are largely meaningless on their own. In order to give them some meaning we need to place them into context. The best way to do that is to compare them against a counterfactual – that is, to try to figure out how many people would have died from these or similar events if the regimes they occurred under had been capitalist rather than socialist.

    This is of course very difficult to do in practice, as who knows what would have happened if the Soviet Union and China had been capitalist at those times. The Soviet Union would have had a different name for a start! What we can do though is compare these events with mass death events that occurred under capitalism. Here, capitalism does not fare too well. The deadliest event in human history was WWII, which killed around 80 million people; and before that there was WWI, which killed around 20 million people. The total death toll from these events was around 100 million, way above even the most inflated estimates of the total number of people killed by Stalin and Mao. These wars were both started by capitalist countries. Even so, does it really make sense to attribute these deaths to capitalism?

    If critics of socialism want to attribute deaths that occurred under socialist regimes to socialism, then by symmetry they must attribute deaths that occurred under capitalist regimes to capitalism. Conversely, if they don’t want to attribute deaths that occurred under capitalist regimes to capitalism, then they cannot attribute deaths that occurred under socialist regimes to socialism. Otherwise, they are cherry-picking data to fit their narrative. Such a critic may counter that of the 80 million that died in WWII, around 25 million were citizens of the socialist Soviet Union. Indeed, some particularly exaggerated estimates of the death toll under socialism include these 25 million deaths. But this makes little sense when these people died as a result of a war started by a capitalist country (Nazi Germany).

    It must be understood that both WWI and WWII were imperialist wars driven by capitalist interests. It is entirely appropriate therefore to attribute the deaths that occurred in these wars to capitalism as an ideology. By the logic set out above, we must therefore also attribute the deaths that occurred in the Soviet and Chinese famines to socialism. This doesn’t really paint either system in a very flattering light. It seems that under both systems there is likely to be an event that will result in mass deaths; the only difference is that under capitalism this event is more likely to be a war, whereas under socialism this event is more likely to be a famine. I think that this tells us something about the nature of the two ideologies.

    The Hungarian economist Janos Kornai argued that the key distinction between capitalism and socialism is that the former is a demand-constrained system, whereas the latter is a supply-constrained system. A demand-constrained system is one where employment and output in the system are what they are because of the level of aggregate demand is what it is; if the level of demand increases then output and employment in the economy will increase, with little increase in prices. By contrast, a supply-constrained system is one where an increase in the level of aggregate demand, say because of larger investment or larger government expenditure, does not have the effect of raising output and employment in the economy, but instead increases prices.

    The fact that socialism is a supply-constrained system means that if demand for basics such as food goes up, the supply does not respond, which creates shortages – and in extreme cases, famines. Capitalism does not have this issue, but inevitably leads to war due to the inherent need for competition, expansion, and profit, which can escalate to conflict between nations vying for resources, markets, and geopolitical power. It may seem therefore that both systems are equally bad; but I think this is wrong-headed. It generally better for a system to be supply-constrained, as then actual production is matched to production potential. If a system is demand-constrained then either production potential is under-utilized, or production is unsustainable. On that basis, socialism is clearly the better system.

    The issue with socialism arises when the system’s production potential falls too low to meet demand. This was the cause of both the Soviet and Chinese famines in the mid-twentieth century. In theory this would also be an issue if socialism was implemented now, as global demand for goods and services is currently higher than the Earth’s production potential: humanity currently uses the equivalent of around 1.8 Earths to provide the resources consumed and absorb the waste produced. However, it is precisely capitalism’s lack of a supply constraint that is the cause of this over-consumption and the resulting environmental devastation. The future of out planet relies on us curtailing our economic activities to a level within planetary boundaries. Such a curtailment will never occur under capitalism.

  • What can we do about climate change?

    The term ‘climate change’ refers to  both global warming – the ongoing increase in global average temperature – and its wider effects on Earth’s climate system. It is generally accepted now that climate change is happening and that it is already having an impact on the environment. Many such impacts have been observed in the first decades of the 21st century, with 2024 the warmest year on record since records began back in 1850. The future impacts are likely to be devastating and will include increased flooding, extreme heat, increased food and water scarcity, more disease (including pandemics), and economic loss. It is not surprising therefore there is widespread public support for policies to mitigate climate change.

    Why, then, have governments been so slow to implement such policies? It certainly isn’t for lack of options. There are several renewable energy sources available: solar, wind, hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal. Furthermore, these have rapidly become more efficient and cheaper over the past 30 years. The International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, 90% of global electricity will need to be generated by renewables. Renewables also cause much less air pollution than fossil fuels, improving public health, and are less noisy. The main argument used against moving to renewables, particularly solar and wind, is that they are not available constantly. But how much of a problem is this really?

    There are in fact several solutions to the so-called intermittency problem. These include storage, improved interconnection between different variable sources to smooth out supply, and introducing overcapacity so that sufficient energy is produced even when weather is less favourable. Whilst it might not be possible to rely on solar and wind energy entirely, these sources can still be used to make up the bulk of energy production. Denmark, for example, generates over two thirds of its energy supply using solar and wind. And Denmark is hardly the sunniest country in the world (although it may be one of the windiest). Any shortfall from these variable sources can be made up with renewable energy from other renewable sources: hydropower, bioenergy, and geothermal energy.

    Indeed, we know it is possible for a country to use renewables for 100% of its energy needs, because there are countries that already do this. Albania, Bhutan, the Central African Republic, Costa Rica, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Iceland, Lesotho, Nepal, and Paraguay all rely entirely on renewable energy sources. Hydropower makes up the majority of the energy supply in all of these countries. The major advantage of hydropower systems is their ability to store potential power for later production on demand, obviating the intermittency problem. They have disadvantages too, including dislocation of people and adverse impacts on the local environment; but these can be mitigated by using bioenergy and geothermal energy, which also don’t suffer from intermittency.

    The precise ratios of energy produced by each of the five main renewable sources will be different in each country, and will depend on local geographical, economic and social factors. The key point is that renewable sources are clearly sufficient to meet our energy needs. Unfortunately some countries don’t seem to have got the memo. Less than half of the UK’s energy is currently provided by renewable sources, and the figure is less than a third in China and less than a quarter in the US. This is reflected in CO2 emissions per capita figures: according to the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research, the UK produced 4.4 tons of CO2 per person in 2023, China 9.2 tons, and the US 13.8 tons (!). Albania, by comparison, produced just 1.6 tons of CO2 per person, and Paraguay 1.1 ton.

    A critic might counter that moving to renewable energy does not guarantee lower per capita carbon emissions. Iceland uses renewables for 100% of its energy needs, yet had per capita emissions of 8.8 tons of CO2 per person in 2023, twice that of the UK (although lower than China and the US). Our critic might also argue that it isn’t fair to compare countries like the US and UK with countries like Albania and Paraguay, as the former are much richer than the latter. And of course that is true. Indeed, all the data shows that there is a massive positive correlation between economic activity and CO2 emissions. This suggests that although moving to renewable energy sources is a necessary step to reduce emissions, it is not sufficient.

    It is possible to weaken the connection between economic activity and CO2 emissions to a certain extent. The UK, for example, has reduced its annual CO2 emissions by around 50% since the year 2000, whilst at the same time experiencing economic growth (albeit weak). But I am not convinced that it is possible to sever the connection entirely. Realistically, to reduce carbon emissions to a level that will not result in runaway climate change (assuming we haven’t passed that point already), I think we need to drastically curtail our economic activity. That will never happen under capitalism, which relies on continuous growth of such activity. The only way we can hope to stop climate change is to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a system that does not rely on endless growth – namely, socialism.

  • How much should we spend on defence?

    In February this year, Keir Starmer set out plans to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, stating that this would be offset by cuts to aid spending. This was met with uproar by many on the left, and its not hard to see why. Figures from the Stockholm Peace Research Institute (SPRI) fact sheet show that the UK spent $82 billion on defence in 2024, equivalent to 2.3% of GDP and easily above the 2% baseline required by NATO. According to the SPRI, the UK already ranked sixth on the list of countries by total military spending in 2024. Our military spending in that year was already well ahead of comparable countries like France ($65 billion), Italy ($38 billion), and Spain ($23 billion). The only western European country ahead of the UK was Germany, with spending of $89 billion.

    Why, then, does Starmer want to increase defence spending further? Ostensibly it is to defend the UK from higher threat levels in an increasingly multipolar world. But this makes little sense when other countries do just fine with significantly lower levels of defence spending than the UK. It also makes little sense given that we are a member of NATO. Total military spending by NATO countries in 2024 came to $1.5 trillion, well above the total military spending of the rest of the world put together. It’s not clear why a supposedly defensive military alliance would need to outspend the rest of the world in this way; surely at most it only needs to match the rest of the world’s expenditure. Regardless, the UK cannot possibly be under any serious threat when it belongs to such a powerful alliance.

    The real reasons Starmer has committed to increase defence spending are twofold. The primary reason the UK government spends so much money on defence is not to protect its citizens, but to maintain and increase its power and influence on the global stage. It does this primarily through hard power; that is, by attacking or threatening to attack countries that act in ways the UK government doesn’t like. Thus, ‘defence’ is really an Orwellian euphemism for ‘attack’. The second reason is the power of the arms lobby. BAE Systems, a UK-based company, is number six on the list of global weapons manufacturers, and number one on the list of companies outside the US. This company and others like it actively lobby (bribe) our politicians to make decisions that are favourable to them, which usually involve increased arms production.

    The high levels of defence spending in the UK therefore have little to do with keeping the country safe, and much more to do with attacking our adversaries and kowtowing to the arms industry. This raises the question of much should a country like the UK should spend on defence if the aim is to simply protect its citizens. Is it even necessary to spend any money on defence at all? Some countries have managed to reduce their defence spending to near zero. To find one we need look no further than our closest neighbour. Ireland spends just $1.5 billion on defence annually, equivalent to around 0.25% of its GDP, the lowest per GDP figure in the EU. That’s less than 2% of what the UK spends in absolute terms and around 10% of what the UK spends in per GDP terms.

    Has Ireland’s lack of defence spending made it any less secure? Clearly not. The country has not been under any threat of invasion by a hostile power since WWII. Moreover, Ireland is not a member of NATO, which shows that NATO membership is not necessary for national security (although it is more than sufficient). A critic might counter that although Ireland has not been under any threat of invasion in recent history, that doesn’t men that it won’t come under such a threat in the future, and when it does it will be woefully unprepared. The problem with this argument is that there is no limit to how far you can take it and it can therefore be used to justify any level of military expenditure. In truth, it simply isn’t possible to prepare for every eventuality that might occur at some point in the future.

    Ireland is an useful comparator because it is very similar to the UK in many ways, particularly in terms of culture and geographical location. Comparing Ireland with the UK is about the closest thing you can get to a controlled experiment in geopolitics. Its interesting to note then that despite the fact Ireland was until recently considered a poor country, Ireland’s GDP per capita is now roughly twice that of the UK. I’m not suggesting that Ireland’s impressive economic growth in the last few decades is entirely down to its low levels of defence spending, but I do think it was a factor. It is generally accepted that investing in defence not the most efficient way of encouraging economic growth when compared to investing in other sectors.

    This makes Starmer’s commitment to increase defence spending seem even more nonsensical, especially when you consider that his and Labour’s election campaign was fought almost entirely on the promise of increased economic growth. There is simply no good reason for further increases to UK defence spending, and plenty of reason to think it could be drastically reduced. Unfortunately, for the time being it seems we are doomed to continue wasting even more public money on defence – money that would be much better spent elsewhere.

  • Deciphering Das Kapital

    I have just finished slogging through Volume 1 of Das Kapital, Karl Marx’s magnum opus. I’ll be honest, I did not find it an easy read. Marx may have been a very clever chap who changed the course of history, but he was a dreadful writer. Or perhaps I’m being a bit harsh. It could be that the reason I found the book so difficult to get through is that writing styles have changed significantly in the past 150 years. Whereas today the preference is for short sentences, in Marx’s time the trend seemed to be for endless, rambling sentences, with multiple sub-clauses, which you invariably lose the thread of half way through and half to re-read multiple times to understand what the author is actually talking about. This makes reading books like Das Kapital a rather tedious process.

    Another thing that makes reading Marx difficult is that he invented a whole new lexicon to describe the economy (although he wouldn’t have called it that himself – the word ‘economy’ was only given its modern meaning by Keynes, around 80 years after Marx wrote Volume 1 of Das Kapital). This is partly what made Marx such an original and insightful writer, but it also makes a lot of his arguments rather opaque and impenetrable. In this blog post I will attempt to cut through some of Marx’s jargon. Let us begin with labour, the physical act of working by human beings. This is probably the key term used in Marxian economics and most other terms are derived from it. This should not surprise us as Marx saw human labour as fundamental to the workings of capitalism.

    Given our definition of labour (the physical act of working by human beings), we can define labour power as the capacity to do labour. The distinction between labour and labour power is a fine one: labour power refers to the ability to do work, whereas labour refers to the work itself. A physical analogy may be helpful here. Labour power can be thought of as analogous to the power of a car engine, whereas labour is analogous to the energy expended by the car when it moves. In other words, labour power is a measure of power, whereas labour is a measure of energy or work done. The distinction between the two is important because under capitalism, a worker sells their labour power to a capitalist for a wage, rather than selling the product of their labour

    A worker is of course simply a member of the working class – that is, the set of people who do not own any means of production. In contrast, a capitalist is a member of the capitalist class – the set of people who own some means of production. The means of production is just the aggregate capital goods that society uses to produce things. And by capital goods, we simply mean commodities that are used as inputs for production. A commodity, in turn, is simply a good or service produced by (human) labour and offered as a product for general sale. Capitalism is a system based on the private ownership of the means of production; socialism, in contrast, is a system based on public (or social) ownership of the means of production.

    Marx defines abstract labour as human labour as a generalized activity, in contrast with concrete labour, which is human labour as an activity which has a specific effect. The concept of abstract labour is central to Marxian economics, but is a little tricky to get your head around. I like to think of it like this. When capitalists hire workers they are effectively purchasing their abstract labour power, even if they are hiring them for a specific role. This is why your boss can tell you to do things that are not in your official job description, and in practice there is little you can do to say no. The difference between abstract and concrete labour is therefore somewhat analogous to the difference between labour power and labour itself.

    Along with labour and labour power, Marx also defines the concept of labour time: the period of time that a worker spends doing (paid) labour. In mathematical terms, labour power can be thought of as the derivative or rate of change of labour – that is, the rate at which labour can be expended – and labour time can be thought of as the integral or sum of labour over time. In physical terms, labour has dimensions of energy, labour power has dimensions of energy / time, and labour time has dimensions of energy x time. Labour time therefore has the same dimensions as the action, a central concept in physics. The socially necessary labour time associated with a commodity is then defined by Marx as the labour time required under prevailing social conditions to produce that commodity.

    We may define the labour value of a commodity as the socially necessary labour time associated with that commodity. This means that the labour value of a commodity has dimensions of energy x time, the same dimensions as the action from physics. In a previous blog post I argued that much as the evolution of a physical system is determined by the principle of stationary action, the evolution of a capitalist economy is determined by what might be called the principle of minimum labour values. If this is correct then we have uncovered a law of motion for capitalism – which was precisely what Marx set out to do when he wrote Das Kapital over 150 years ago.

  • Why (some) people hate the left, part 2

    In a previous blog post I proposed an explanation as to why some people seem to have a vehement dislike for those of us on the left. According to the conception put forward there, these people, who I referred to as ‘bourgeois centrists’, hate us leftists because of the damage our well-thought-out, evidence-based arguments inflict on their fragile egos. (They really should read Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday – see another blog post of mine for more details on this). Re-reading my old blog post, however, I realized that I had not provided a complete explanation. There is another reason people hate the left which holds independently of how well-thought-out (or not) our arguments are. To explain this, I will start with a personal anecdote.

    I lived in London for many years and like most Londoners I used to commute to work on the tube, which I absolutely despised. Not that I have any problem with the London Underground; on the contrary, I think it is a brilliant piece of public infrastructure. The problem I had was specifically with commuting on the tube and the air of misery that hung over it. So one day I decided I’d had enough and bought myself a bike for commuting. This had a transformational impact on my quality of life, but it came at a cost: to my surprise, I found myself regularly coming into conflict with drivers. Now a bit of conflict is inevitable when sharing a road with people, but this went way beyond that, with many drivers seeming to be annoyed simply by my existence on the road.

    This baffled me for a long time. After all, I reasoned, wasn’t I doing everyone a favour? By cycling to work I was reducing congestion both on the roads and on public transport, as well as reducing pollution. But after a while the explanation dawned on me. The reason I was coming into conflict with drivers was that they disliked me precisely because of the reasons I just described. They understood perfectly well that by cycling to work I was reducing congestion on the roads and on public transport, reducing pollution, and giving myself a good workout at the same time – and they hated me for it! In their minds I was effectively saying to them: ‘Look, you could be like me, free as a bird cycling to work, realizing all these benefits, but instead you choose to be trapped in a car getting stuck in traffic. You fool!’

    Of course, I wasn’t saying that at all, I was just cycling to work. But that didn’t matter; what mattered was drivers’ perceptions. Not only did they perceive me to be taking the moral high ground, but by cycling I was forcing them to reckon with the fact that by driving a car they were doing something which is actually extremely dangerous. Cars have become so normalized in our society that we tend to forget just how dangerous they are. We would do well to remember that when driving a car, we are manoeuvring a hunk of metal weighing over a ton travelling at speed where one false move could result in accidentally killing someone. Coming across a cyclist travelling on a spindly metal frame with zero protection immediately makes us aware of this, and some people don’t like that.

    I think that some people hate leftists for similar reasons that some people hate cyclists (we are probably talking largely about the same people here). In the same way that people hate cyclists because they perceive them to be taking the moral high ground (even though they aren’t really), people on the centre or right of the political spectrum hate us leftists because they perceive us to be taking the moral high ground (again, even though we usually aren’t). Similarly, in the same way that people hate cyclists because it forces them to face the fact that they are doing something dangerous, people on the centre or right of the political spectrum hate us leftists because we force them to face up to the fact that their political beliefs are fundamentally selfish and immoral.

    As leftists we need to understand that by taking a left-wing position, we inadvertently hold a mirror up to those who take opposing positions, and they often don’t like what they see. This, I think, is the main reason why there is so much hatred and vitriol for those of us on the left of the political spectrum. It is important that we understand this as we then can start to see these overreactions for what they really are: the lashing out of someone who hasn’t yet fully come to terms with what their political beliefs actually entail. This, in turn, should enable us to react calmly in face of provocation, and even feel some compassion and empathy for our political opponents. It is only by doing this that we can hope to win our opponents over and convince them that the left is right.

  • Materialism vs. idealism

    I mention materialism a lot on this blog. In fact materialism is a key theme that unites many of the topics I talk about. But what exactly do I mean by ‘materialism’? The word has two very different meanings. According to the first meaning, materialism refers to a tendency to consider material possessions and physical comfort as more important than spiritual values. That is emphatically not the meaning I am using! Rather, when I refer to materialism I am using the word in the philosophical sense. The usual definition given for this is: the theory or belief that nothing exists except matter. But I refer to materialism in a broader sense – the belief that reality has an objective existence outside of our perception of it. This belief is often referred to as ‘physicalism’.

    Most people would call themselves materialists according to this definition, but there are some who dispute this view. According to these ‘idealists’, consciousness is the fundamental substance of nature and reality is entirely a mental construct. It would be tempting to simply dismiss idealism as nonsense were it not for the fact that surprisingly many philosophers adhere to it. The main argument these philosophers use against materialism and in favour of idealism is that the existence consciousness cannot be explained in purely physical terms. This is usually just asserted as an axiom, that is, something which is self-evident. But as I explained in a previous blog post, the existence of consciousness can be explained in evolutionary terms, which is a materialist explanation.

    Some argue that quantum physics contradicts materialism. For example, in their book The Matter Myth, physicists Paul Davies and John Gribbin state: ‘Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less “substance” than we might believe.’ But Davies and Gribbin are arguing against the narrow definition of materialism – the belief that nothing exists except matter. Is there anything in quantum physics that contradicts the broader definition of materialism, i.e. that reality has an objective existence? There are certainly interpretations of quantum physics that contradict this view. For example, according to an interpretation known as relational quantum mechanics, the state of a quantum system must be defined as the relation between the observer and the system.

    Another interpretation that seems to contradict materialism is quantum Bayesianism, according to which many aspects of the quantum formalism should be interpreted as subjective in nature. So there are at least two non-materialist interpretations of quantum physics, and there may be others. However we cannot use such interpretations to reject materialism, for two reasons. First, they are only interpretations of quantum physics, and there is nothing in the quantum formalism that requires us to take one of these interpretations. Indeed, there are many more widely-held interpretations according to which reality is fundamentally objective. And second, even if we do adopt one of these interpretations, we cannot reject materialism entirely as there is still a materialist or non-subjective element to them.

    There are some who argue against both materialism and idealism, and claim that there must be some third thing that gives rise to both objective and subjective phenomena. What could this third thing be? One potential candidate is: information. Proponents of what is known as digital physics view information rather than matter as fundamental. For example, the physicist John Archibald Wheeler wrote: ‘all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe.’ The belief that matter is made up of information is often referred to as ‘it from bit’. But this belief is entirely compatible with reality having an objective existence, and it doesn’t make sense therefore to use it as an argument against materialism (in the broad sense of the term).

    There is a more practical reason we cannot use arguments from fundamental physics to argue against materialism. Even if we decide that on a quantum level reality is entirely subjective, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily subjective on the macroscopic level on which we live. The reason quantum physics is so difficult for us humans to wrap our heads around is that our brains simply did not evolve to understand reality at that level. This in itself demonstrates that what might be true at the macro level is necessarily true at the micro level and vice-versa. If we want to develop a practical philosophy by which to live our lives, does it really make sense to worry about what’s going on at the level of subatomic particles? The question surely answers itself.

    So much for the arguments against materialism. What about the arguments for it? It is very difficult to prove that metaphysical positions like materialism are ‘true’, but we can ask whether they are useful. Here, materialism has a clear upper hand over idealism. The scientific method is predicated on a reality which is entirely ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered. Conversely, religion is predicated on a reality that exists beyond the physical world that can only be accessed through our consciousness. The difference between materialism and idealism is therefore analogous to the difference between science and religion. I don’t want to dunk on religion but I think we can probably all agree that the former is a more useful lens through which to understand the world around us than the latter.

    This, I think, really gets to the crux of the matter. The reason a materialist worldview is superior to an idealist worldview is that the former enables us to fully explain the world around us, whereas the latter does not. Scientists understand this and have done for hundreds of years, but unfortunately other disciplines have yet to catch on. I think what Marx was trying to do in his writings was put the humanities on a scientific footing by analyzing society through a materialist lens. Whether he succeeded is debatable, but his approach was fundamentally the correct one. It is up to us now to continue the work that he started.

  • Dissecting the Gaza peace plan

    On September 29, US president Donald Trump announced a plan to address the ongoing Gaza genocide in a press conference at the White House alongside Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The plan calls for an immediate ceasefire, return of hostages, demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, deployment of an international stabilization force, transitional governance by Palestinian technocrats under international supervision, large-scale reconstruction, and a conditional pathway toward acceptance of Palestinian self-determination and recognition of Palestinian statehood. The plan was met with support from many countries around the world. On October 3, in response to the proposal, Hamas agreed to release all remaining hostages in Gaza.

    On October 8, Trump announced that Israel and Hamas had reached an agreement and signed the first phase of the deal. In this phase, all Israeli hostages are to be released in exchange for 2,000 Palestinian hostages within 72 hours, and Israel will also withdraw its forces to pre-designated lines within the Gaza Strip. The ceasefire went into effect on October 10. On the face of it there is every reason to welcome these developments. The people of Gaza have lived through unimaginable suffering over the past two years, and anything that will help alleviate this suffering must surely be a good thing. We might even start to wonder if Trump is such a bad guy after all! But scratch the surface a bit and things don’t seem quite so rosy.

    The first thing to note is how few hostages were actually being held by Hamas: 20. Yes, you read that right. Israel has apparently perpetrated a genocide resulting in the deaths of around 70,000 Palestinians, of whom at least 20,000 were children, in order to rescue 20 hostages. Listening to the mainstream media talk about this, you’d think Hamas had taken half of Israel hostage! Contrast that with the 3,000+ Palestinians who were being held hostage by Israel. Despite Hamas releasing all the Israeli hostages, at least 1,000 Palestinians hostages will remain in Israeli custody even after the ceasefire. Moreover, it seems likely that Israel will immediately target the 2,000 released hostages for assassination. This highlights the asymmetrical nature of the peace deal.

    Then there is the fact that it is not clear at this stage whether Israel will honour the agreement to withdraw its forces to pre-designated lines. There is also no guarantee that Israel will actually cease its onslaught. It seems more likely that the massacre will simply continue unabated. Indeed, top Israeli officials are already talking about resuming hostilities, and Israeli air strikes have been recorded in Gaza since October 10. And these are just the problems with the first phase of the deal. The following phases of Trump’s peace plan (outlined above) have not been committed to by Hamas, and are unlikely to be accepted as they effectively demand complete capitulation to Israel and the US. This will give Israel the perfect pretext it needs to continue the slaughter (if it even needs a pretext).

    Leaving aside the details of the peace plan, there is a more general question we need to ask here, which is: why is this deal even necessary in the first place? It is widely agreed that the US government could have stopped the Gaza genocide at any time in the last two years simply by withdrawing its support for Israel. So why didn’t it do that? We can only conclude that it didn’t do that because it didn’t want to. The US government was perfectly happy to see tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered and to see Gaza razed to the ground. It has not just been complicit in the genocide; it has been instrumental in facilitating it. That the US expects the world to be grateful to them for stopping it now, when they could have stopped it any time in the past two years, is risible.

    So what’s really going on here? What are Israel and the US actually trying to achieve with this deal? Luckily for us, we don’t need to guess, as Trump is such a buffoon that he invariably says the quiet part out loud. (I think that’s why liberals hate him so much.) In a recent speech pitching the Abraham Accords to nations in the region, Trump said: ‘So I hope everybody’s now joining up. We have no excuses. We don’t have a Gaza, we don’t have Iran as an excuse – that was a good excuse, but we don’t have that anymore.’  Here Trump is referring to the fact that Arab nations were unwilling to normalize relations with Israel whilst the genocide in Gaza was ongoing, or when Israel was attacking Iran. The implication is clear: the aim of this ‘peace deal’ is to further the Abraham Accords, not to end Palestinian suffering.

    The US has obviously decided that the ongoing massacre in Gaza is starting to become harmful to its economic interests in the region. Perhaps Israel’s bombing of Qatar, which occurred on September 9, was a red line. The timing certainly seems quite suspicious, with the peace deal being announced less than three weeks later. Note also that Qatar sits geographically right between Bahrain and the UAE, two of the five current signatories of the Abraham Accords. It seems that the true motivation for this peace deal has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns and everything to do with money, power and influence – as is so often the case in our capitalist world.

  • Are we sliding into fascism?

    The political situation across the Western world is looking pretty grim right now. In the US, far-right populist and wingnut Donald Trump recently began his second term as president and seems even more unhinged now than he did the first time round. In the UK, Nigel Farage’s far-right populist political party, Reform, is currently ahead in the polls and has been for some time. In Italy, Georgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, another far-right populist party, has been in power since 2022. In fact far-right populist parties are either in power or are very close to it in most European countries. This has led many to speculate that the West might be sliding into fascism. But are we really, or is this just hyperbole?

    In order to answer this question we first need to define what we mean by ‘fascism’. The word comes from the Italian fascismo, which in turn comes from the Latin fasces, a word used for bundles of axes and rods carried before the magistrates of the ancient Roman Republic as representative of their power of life and death. This doesn’t tell us much about what fascism is but does at least tell us where it was invented. Fascism arose in Italy in the 1920s as a last-ditch response by the capitalist class to prevent a socialist revolution, a very real possibility at that time. It was subsequently adopted by the capitalist class in Germany in the 1930s for exactly the same reason. Workers in both countries had suffered immensely during WWI and both countries were therefore ripe for revolution.

    This tells us how fascism arose historically and also points to a working definition. The usual definition given for fascism is something along the lines of: a right-wing, authoritarian, nationalist ideology characterized by centralized, totalitarian governance, strong regimentation of the economy and society, and repression of criticism or opposition. There are two problems with this definition in my view. First, it doesn’t pay sufficient attention to how fascism has arisen historically; and second, it is far too long! A pithier and more historically accurate definition of fascism is: a nationalist ideology designed specifically to crush a workers’ revolution. The nationalist element is key as fascism works by dividing the working class into in-groups and out-groups, and a divided working class is much easier to contain.

    In light of this definition, can we say that the West is heading towards fascism? There are two ways to approach this question. On one hand, you could argue that there is little possibility of a workers’ revolution happening in any Western country any time soon, so the conditions that have given rise to fascism historically do not currently exist. Seeing as we have defined fascism as an ideology designed specifically to crush a workers’ revolution, it therefore seems to make little sense to worry about this ideology taking hold at present. Proponents of this view might argue that the election of far-right populist parties is by no means inevitable. In the UK, for example, Reform may be ahead in the polls, but the next general election is not for another four years and a lot can happen between now and then.

    On the other hand, you could take the fact that far-right populist parties keep getting elected in Western countries as evidence that the ruling classes in these countries genuinely fear a workers’ revolution. A critic might argue that these countries are democracies and therefore the people in these countries decide who gets elected; but this is an extremely naive view of how Western ‘democracy’ works. In reality, people are forced to vote for parties that sit within a narrow band of acceptability determined by the ruling class. As evidence for this, we only need to think about how the media-political establishment in the UK reacted when there was a possibility of a party from slightly to the left of this narrow band of acceptability gaining power.

    Still, our critic might say, there is nothing forcing people to vote for far-right parties – they could still vote for one of the other parties on offer. But when people’s material conditions deteriorate, they naturally look for alternatives outside of the status quo. The ruling class, understanding this, normalizes and promotes far-right parties to draw people in and prevent them from looking for alternatives elsewhere. Recall how in the US, the big tech oligarchs obsequiously lined up to support Trump’s recent presidential campaign. Or how in the UK, the supposedly impartial BBC has consistently given a platform to Farage and his various far-right populist projects whilst demonizing left-wing politicians with similarly broad public support.

    The advent of social media and AI as made the ruling class’s life a lot easier in this regard. It is well known that social media leads to an ‘echo chamber’ effect, whereby peoples’ beliefs become entrenched when they encounter information or opinions that reflect and reinforce their own pre-existing views. And the rise of AI has facilitated a tsunami of misinformation which amplifies these echo chambers even further, making it extremely easy for the ruling class to spread and normalize far-right ideas. Taking all of this into account, things may seem pretty bleak; but perhaps there is some reason for optimism. We must remind ourselves that technology like social media and AI is agnostic and can be used for good as well as evil.

    I think we socialists should take a leaf out of the capitalists’ book and start making better use of social media and AI to spread our ideas. The fact that the ruling class seems to fear a workers’ revolution should give us encouragement, as it suggests that people are looking for alternatives to the status quo. If we can find a way to get through to these people then who knows, the revolution might come sooner than we think.