Viruses & Imperialism

The coronavirus pandemic highlights many features of imperialism today. But people often misunderstand what is happening and can easily end up giving a reactionary response.[1] For example, if modern capitalist production methods, especially in agriculture with factory farming, are seen by some to have caused or at least exacerbated this pandemic, how is it that viral outbreaks most commonly start in less developed capitalist countries? Or if, as some ecologists suppose, the pandemic is a sign of ‘nature’ responding to human intrusion, what are we to think of programmes to eliminate mosquito-borne malaria? This article begins with relevant facts about viruses, and then looks at developments in China, the US and the UK.

Appendices to the article discuss the ‘R’ reproduction number for a virus and the report on potential virus deaths that influenced UK government policy. Technical details and sources are given in footnotes.

Viruses

Contrasting with the global mayhem it has caused, a virus can be seen as just a submicroscopic infectious particle. It can replicate itself only within a host cell – of a plant, an animal or a human being, and it can sometimes transfer from one type of host to another. It may cause serious disease and death, or be relatively harmless. How problematic it might become depends upon the social and economic context.

Scientists estimate that about three-quarters of new human diseases originate from existing viruses in animals:

“Animals that harbour and can transmit a particular virus but are generally unaffected by it are said to act as a natural reservoir for that virus. For example, the H1N1 virus that caused the 2009 flu pandemic[2] … was likely passed to humans from pigs; for this reason, it was originally called ‘swine flu’.”[3]

There are around 150 animal viruses that affect humans, and there are possibly half a million more that could potentially do so.

The virus causing Covid-19 disease is thought to have come from a bat, which then passed on the virus to another animal and then it was passed onto humans. Along the way, this virus, like others, can mutate as it gets reproduced in the host’s cells, which can make it more, or perhaps less lethal to humans. The first outbreak of the disease was in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei province in China, and the most widely suspected original location was a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan that was selling freshly killed animals for meat.

Despite conspiracy theories, there is no evidence whatsoever that the virus was manufactured in or escaped from a laboratory, in China or anywhere else. Such accusations ignore how easy viral transmission can be when other factors come into play.

What made the new virus, SARS-Cov-2,[4] frightening was that it was roughly 10 times more deadly than the regular seasonal flu virus and that it could be transmitted more readily, since many who were infected and who could pass it on had no symptoms themselves. Even those who ended up having severe, life-threatening symptoms would usually only develop these after more than a week or so, giving the virus plenty of time to spread to family, friends and accidental contacts.

But the real issue for zoonotic viruses – the ones infecting humans that come from animals – is the animal-human connection.[5] The cells in all animals, including humans, are more similar than one might think. While many animal viruses have not been known to infect humans, there are still plenty that might. If a virus particle exists in a cow, a pig, a chicken, a bat or wherever, then there is also a chance that it can attach itself to particular cells in the human body. The more that animals and humans interact, the greater the chance. Equally, some viruses infecting humans can be passed on to animals.

Nature & society

In economically developed countries, most animals are kept away from people – apart from household pets that have not been found to be a threat to health. The risks of infection in livestock farming, etc, are also generally known and are kept under control with hygiene measures and vaccinations, although there have still been outbreaks. Some people may not like the capitalistic, large-scale farming of animals, but in this respect they tend to work well.

The risks of zoonotic viral epidemics have been far greater in the poorer countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. In these countries, markets are more common where live animals – not only ‘exotic’ animals, but also ducks and chickens – are slaughtered and sold for meat. These can raise the risk of human infection from viruses, including providing a forum for originating new viruses, especially if the trading is not strictly regulated and the markets are not kept sufficiently clean.

So, while the virus particles provide the potential for viral epidemics, that potential is only realised in particular social-economic contexts. An important context was brought out by a 2017 study of emerging infectious diseases globally. It argued that such diseases, and almost all recent pandemics ‘originate in animals, mostly wildlife, and their emergence often involves dynamic interactions among populations of wildlife, livestock & people within rapidly changing environments’.[6] Among the factors involved were large land-use change programs such as logging and mining concessions, dam building, and road development.

The risk of new infectious diseases emerging is clearly a global problem. As the chart taken from the 2017 study brings out, the risk spans every continent, although to different degrees in each country.

Estimated risk of emerging infectious diseases by location

Source: https://nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00923-8.pdf. Note that the projection used in the map diminishes the area of countries closer to the equator and increases that of regions nearer the poles.

These development-driven environmental changes have been going on for centuries, also pre-dating modern capitalism. What makes them more problematic now is the greater integration of the world economy, with more opportunities for travel, the expansion of urban areas and the shift of populations from the countryside to towns, especially if some former peasants wish to continue their previous ways.

But this does not imply that economic development should stop, or that travel and global integration are bad things that should be reversed. We do not need to adopt The League of Gentlemen’s ‘local shops for local people’ approach. Development gives evident benefits for humanity, not just in economic terms, but also by improving social connections, knowledge of the world, science and health. To take just one example of public health achievements: average life expectancy was less than 50 years before 1900, even in the richer countries; today it is more than 60 years even in the poorest and up to 80 years in the richest. Unless you believe in an afterlife and would be pleased to meet your maker at the earliest opportunity, that has to be a good thing.

Humanity has made progress by understanding, modifying and channelling nature to meet human needs. One should not think that the reckless way capitalism treats the environment is something that is inherent in all possible forms of economic system. The latter view would call a halt to development, despite 10% of the world still being in extreme poverty, and it would support the reactionary idea that ‘nature’ is a barrier that should be left alone. Viruses and other diseases have been dealt with in the past, and can be dealt with again. But, as the following sections will show, imperialism today creates many barriers to achieving this.

Capitalism & disease inequality

Capitalism will not readily minimise the risk of diseases emerging, since it costs money to do so. But an epidemic is still bad for business, and might also affect the ruling groups. So governments in rich countries will usually impose some health measures, promote widespread vaccinations and find other ways to stop or limit the spread of disease. Such measures mean, for example, that smallpox, measles, polio, malaria and cholera have been almost eliminated.[7] These things also apply to capitalist agriculture and animal farming, where big efforts are made to keep animals free from disease. If infected meat got into consumer products, food production companies would see their business collapse. Witness what happened to the demand for British beef after the outbreak of BSE, or ‘mad cow disease’, in the late 1980s!

By contrast, poorer countries have fewer sources of funds to deal with disease, and less scope for doing this when capitalist exploitation is less restricted. Dominated by the rich powers and their companies, they can do little to thwart the capitalist objective to screw out as much profit as possible. Poor countries are also more burdened with dangerous levels of pollution – often based on their dealings with the rich – and many of their population groups do not even have easy access to clean drinking water. The social and environmental changes brought about by the ruthless, capitalist one-sided development of poorer countries have destructive consequences, but that is an argument to stop this destruction, not to stop development itself.

China & the latest virus

Substantial evidence links the emergence of Covid-19 to a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan that sold fresh meat, fish and other perishable goods. Animals were also slaughtered for meat on customer demand. These types of market are common in many developing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, but they are not unknown in richer countries, for example fish markets selling live fish, crabs, lobsters, etc. The earlier comments made about the possible transmission of disease clearly imply that such markets should at least be tightly regulated. But China’s authorities have been concerned that closing the markets would encourage these practices to continue outside of a formal market setting, which could make things worse.

In many respects, the problem comes down to consumers not being happy that the meat is fresh, unless they see the animal killed. That in turn reflects a worry both about the quality of shop-bought meat and a desire to do things the old, trusted way as in traditional livestock farming and in more rural communities. These traditional ways will not easily disappear until safer, new methods gain acceptance, but it is very likely that China’s government will take stronger measures against wet markets in future.

The Chinese authorities had been slow to act on the outbreak in late 2019, and censored the initial warnings from medical personnel. However, they then acted quickly and decisively, including locking down Wuhan and other cities in the Hubei region on 23 January, thus affecting over 50 million people (other regions came shortly after). Detailed information on the new virus was given to scientists internationally by early January 2020. An English language article was also published on 24 January in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, warning about the risk of human-human infection.

China’s state is authoritarian and can sometimes seem to act in a paranoid manner. However, this country has a history of being dominated by major powers in Europe, by Japan and also by the US. That history, added to the more recent hostility of the US, gives plenty of material to support such a political response: they really are out to get me! Note that the US has military bases around China – including in South Korea and in Okinawa Island, Japan – and it is the major supplier of weapons to Taiwan, an island province that China rightfully claims.[8] China has no military bases around the US.

One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

US President Trump has used the latest virus pandemic to increase hostility to China, attacking the World Health Organization for being too ‘China-centric’ and stepping up the pressure on US allies to impose economic sanctions on the country’s major companies. This anti-China stance is a common theme in all US political thinking, worried as it is about the rise of China as a rival power.

Trump blames China for ‘covering up’ the virus in its early stages, thus setting the stage for a pandemic. There may be some validity to that view, but even if so, there are no grounds on which to criticise China’s subsequent actions. The allegation of a cover up does not excuse the delayed reaction of the US authorities when the virus was widely known about. It also has to answer reports on US mainstream media that the US intelligence agencies (the CIA) knew of a viral outbreak in China in November 2019. Of course, the CIA’s main concern was that it might affect US forces in Asia![9]

POTUS#45 has distinguished himself in this pandemic, easily exceeding any stupidity measure of which his critics might have thought him capable. From comparing the virus to a normal, regular flu epidemic, to promoting a drug, hydroxychloroquine, used for other conditions that was untested and possibly dangerous for Covid-19, to even suggesting that somehow injecting or ingesting household bleach might be a way of fending off the virus, his statements have stunned most observers, including the administration’s medical advisers.

Still, an egomaniac might easily become distracted by the fear that economic damage from the Covid-19 crisis, and now the protests against racist violence by the US police, could undermine his hopes for re-election as president in November. Who could expect any coherent strategy for dealing with the virus?

I will not deal with those economic outcomes of collapsed output and employment, which are easily found in daily news reports. But it is worth noting that in recent years severe cutbacks in funding to federal and state agencies responsible for dealing with such crises will have hindered an effective anti-virus policy in the US. For example, in 2018 the Trump administration ‘streamlined’, as the euphemism goes, the Global Health Security and Biodefense team, and put it into a more general directorate combining arms control and non-proliferation, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and global health and biodefence. At the same time, maintenance contracts on stockpiled ventilators lapsed and there was an insufficient stockpile of medical equipment. All this added to the confusion caused by the president’s own absurd statements.

To crown all these achievements, on 29 May President Trump terminated the US relationship with the World Health Organization, following up his previous decision to suspend US funding for it. His rationale was the previously alleged Chinese culpability and, for good measure, adding to his anti-China policies, he has also announced that in future Hong Kong would no longer have special trade and investment relationships with the US.

The English Patient

The US tops the world in the number of Covid-19 cases and in the number of fatalities from it, the latter passing the 100,000 mark just after US Memorial Day. But at least the US has a population of 328 million; the UK with its 67 million has no such size excuse for having the second highest number of virus deaths on the planet.

There are many parallels between the UK and the US handling of the virus impact. For example: the lack of specialist medical and personal protective equipment that would, in former times, have been seen as a necessary stockpile for emergencies; a too long delayed, confused and halting ‘strategy’ by the government to deal with the crisis, and a political leadership that tried to bluff its way through a pandemic and push back any criticism with an escalating series of half-truths and outright lies. One could also cite the narcissism of both Trump and UK Prime Minister Johnson as the reason they always have something else on their minds than dealing with the pandemic.

Johnson claims to be following the recommendations of his scientific advisers. This gives him cover for any decision his government makes that goes wrong. More than that, the scientists concerned have basically colluded with the government. Here is the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, recently criticising the somewhat less than independent role of many UK scientists:

“Every day a cast of experts – led by the chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, and the chief medical officer, Chris Whitty – lends credibility to this government by annealing their reputations with those of ministers. …

“The failures within the scientific and medical establishment do not end with government experts. The UK is fortunate to have an array of scientific and medical institutions that promote and protect the quality of science and medicine in this country – royal colleges, the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society. Their presidents have been elected to defend and advance the reputation of medicine and medical science. And yet they have failed to criticise government policy. Why? Surely their silence amounts to complicity.

“ … When advisers are asked questions, they speak with one voice in support of government policy. They never deviate from the political scripts.”[10]

In the UK, available resources for managing the pandemic were focused on the National Health Service, to the detriment of care homes. The sharply rising death toll in UK care homes was ignored for weeks until accumulating news media reports forced a modest change in government policy. It would clearly have been straying too far into the political arena for the main medical advisers to point out this problem in public.

Probably the most egregious policy error of the UK government was to have ignored for several weeks what was going on in Italy. That country’s health system was quickly in a state of collapse as infections and the death toll from Covid-19 soared. At least Italy had some excuse of being surprised at how quickly the virus could spread; the UK did not.

The first, outrageous policy response from the government was to go for ‘herd immunity’. The rationale was this: no vaccine was available for the new disease, it looked like the death rate among those infected was ‘only’ around 1%, so letting a large number of people get it and then recover would provide a buffer of immune people in the population – assuming, of course, that one could not get infected again later.

How disastrous this policy could turn out to be should have been obvious from the start. A rate of 1% for deaths might sound low, but not when the herd was judged to include 50-80% of the UK population! It would have implied anything from 300,000 to 550,000 deaths in total. Yet it took another two weeks or so for the implications to sink in. The bias of policy finally changed the week after a report from Imperial College, published on 16 March, spelled out to the government the potential scale of deaths under different scenarios, from no measures taken to a complete lockdown and suppression of the virus.[11]

Government policies

Lockdown policies in many economies to contain the new virus led to a slump in economic activity, output, employment and incomes. To some extent, richer countries were able to offset the disaster caused for people’s livelihoods by offering subsidies for wages, increasing grants and cheap loans to companies and reducing the cost of borrowing. The scale of the extra spending and liabilities taken on has been truly colossal.[12] Poorer countries were, as usual, in a much worse position, with their populations facing penury or facing risks of being infected with the virus if they continued working.

The global spread of the virus has nevertheless been very uneven. Some countries have so far been relatively lucky to escape from a big impact, whatever may have been the response of their governments. Others have had experience with previous epidemics and were well prepared to deal with this one. However, countries with right-wing, populist leaders – notably the US, UK and Brazil – have tended to be much worse at implementing an effective anti-virus policy.

The advantages enjoyed by richer countries in their virus-crisis spending plans are brought out by the very low, even negative yields they pay on government debt issues. But it is naïve in the extreme to assume that such high borrowing will have no cost. Interest rate costs on the debt may be minimal, but the extra debt itself has to be paid back and will be an economic burden – via taxation or spending cuts – in future years. That debt is added to already high levels compared to GDP. Among other reports about this issue on this blog, see here.

Some debts owed by companies, eg short-term low interest loans, might be paid back fairly quickly if the collapse of business activity stops and is partially reversed in the next six months. Yet that still leaves them with a net loss of revenue and far worse prospects than they had assumed before the crisis. In the UK’s case, the Bank of England has forecast 2020 GDP at minus 14% in 2020. While it projected a hard-to-believe bounce back of 15% in 2021, even that would still leave 2021’s GDP lower than in 2019.[13] Similar down/up hopes and guesses will apply to all countries in the rest of 2020 and in 2021. The Bank was also optimistic because private banks now have much better capital ratios than in 2007-08, so they are better able to bear losses from loans not repaid. But that is not saying much compared to that disastrous episode.

Viruses & Moribund Capitalism

From the point of view of ruling elites, viruses along with many other diseases are usually seen as being a little too indiscriminate. They can infect or kill anyone, rich or poor, so it makes sense to have public health systems in place to deal with them or to limit their damage, both to the national population and in economic terms. This particular virus has, however, been far more global, far more quickly and with a far greater impact than any other in recent memory.

The big, rich countries were well aware of the risk of pandemics, often had specialist teams of scientists to study and monitor them, and also supported international health institutions. This should make shocking the British and US delays and incompetence in dealing with the latest virus. But it is not much of a surprise when you examine the political leaderships in each country. And if you ask how did such people ever get into positions of responsibility, that question is answered by the fact that very large numbers of people voted for them. It is not in the nature of these ugly beasts to be prepared for a public health crisis, especially when there are other political objectives in mind, whether that is a Brexit fantasy or re-election.

The imperial grinding machine: what goes in, what comes out

In previous articles I have covered many aspects of imperialism, looking at how the major countries have exploited the world and wreaked havoc. One image I have used is of the imperial grinding machine, where the resources of the world available to meet humanity’s needs end up in crises, poverty, racism, war and oppression. The latest virus episode throws a different light on these topics, one that shows how they are not even good at protecting the more vulnerable in their own populations. While the major powers can handle the economic costs, or postpone the economic impact, this contrasts with many other countries where local populations are faced with the choice of losing their livelihoods or risking death.

Health risks and viruses are clearly global issues, but these cannot be dealt with effectively in the imperialist world economy. Even the international bodies set up to manage health are poorly funded and cannot work well to contain disease. Trump cutting funds to the World Health Organization is bad enough, but there have also been moves from the US to prevent future vaccines and medicines for Covid-19 from being ‘public goods’ available to all countries and not bound by patent rights. The UK also backs the US approach.[14] Both the US and UK governments are providing huge sums to their own pharmaceutical companies, and want them to benefit from any vaccine or treatment breakthrough by the patent protection of such ‘intellectual property’. In March, Trump even attempted to get exclusive rights to a potential vaccine from a German pharmaceutical company![15]

Every day the capitalist economy answers the question of what life is worth by asking back: how much can you pay? The world’s resources are monopolised by the major countries, but they still screw it up. Unable to run the economy without threats, violence and terror, we now see clearly that they cannot even save their own citizens’ lives.

Tony Norfield, 9 June 2020

Appendices:

a) Talking out of their Rs?

It is difficult to estimate how many people have been infected with a virus when there are few tests carried out, as is still the case in most countries. Full population tests may not be necessary for an accurate view of infections, since representative samples, as in opinion polls, might be sufficient. But with regular opinion polls, for voting preference, etc, there is usually already a good population-based estimate of voters, by age, gender, social circumstances, previous voting choice, likelihood to vote, and so on. This helps a pollster build a representative sample to reflect the population; the larger the sample, the more accurate it is. With this new virus, however, it is not possible to get many of the same kind of key, relevant data items, and without large scale testing, judgements on the course of the infection will be far less reliable than most opinion polls. In the absence of data, models for predicting the virus make many assumptions based on little evidence.

Early in the outbreak, recorded hospital deaths indicated that older people were more vulnerable to Covid-19, especially those who also had other diseases that led to difficulties breathing. It also seemed that younger people, especially children, were far more likely to develop only mild, or even no symptoms, even if they had been infected. But each of these assumptions is being at least partially revised as more evidence accumulates. One other unexplained feature of the virus is that the non-white section of the population seems to be more vulnerable to developing bad symptoms and dying. This seems to be the case even when factors such as socio-economic status and occupation are taken into account. All this makes estimates of the potential impact of the virus very uncertain.

Yet one virus parameter commonly promoted is its ‘basic reproduction rate’ R₀ (or R in the usual discourse, and in what follows). This parameter reflects the degree to which one infected person will infect someone else, and is critical for the future path of the virus in a population.[16] If the R number is two and that person goes on to infect another two people, and they each do the same, and so on, then there is a doubling of the numbers in each round of infection, which may be every couple of days. This leads to an exponentially rising number of infections.[17]

An R number remaining less than 1.0 means the virus will diminish and eventually die out; the lower the number, the more quickly. A number that stays above 1.0 means that infections could grow until more or less everyone is impacted, and grow more quickly, the bigger the R. So, governments would like to promote any reports of R < 1.0 from scientists in order to get out of the lockdown that is damaging economies.

But the reports of various R numbers in the media, no matter which scientists they are from, need to be read with caution. To put this in a fuller perspective, it is worth reading a critical article on such calculations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in January 2019. Its main point is that ‘many of the parameters included in the models used to estimate R are merely educated guesses; the true values are often unknown or difficult or impossible to measure directly’.[18]

Without mass testing, it will be difficult to get a good estimate of the virus reproduction rate, let alone the percentage of the population that has been infected. Of course, if the number of new cases diagnosed in tests trends lower, then one can argue that the R number has dropped, but all that is really being said is that the number of new cases is lower!

b) The Imperial College virus model

The media reports of Imperial’s projected UK deaths from the virus – from around 250,000 to 500,000 – had the salutary effect of making the UK government wake up. Three months on, those numbers seem crazily pessimistic, even though the reality of around 50,000 at present is no cause for celebration and the impact of the virus is far from over. Yet the report made a very well argued case in favour of suppressing the virus, to prevent both an extremely high death toll and the collapse of the health system.[19] A closer look at the report also qualifies the headline numbers.

One of Imperial’s scenarios did project 510,000 deaths, but that was if the R number for the virus were 2.4, and it was in ‘the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour’.[20] Mitigation, with some measures, was projected to result in 250,000 deaths, even assuming all patients could be treated in hospital (which was not very likely). So their recommendation was that much firmer measures would be needed to suppress the virus. In the most extreme range of measures they considered, schools and colleges being closed, social distancing, household quarantine and home isolation of cases, then, on various scenarios about the R value, total deaths from the virus could probably be reduced to less than 50,000. Interestingly, they did not consider any economic lockdown scenario in the 16 March report, but they noted that the effects on the economy would be profound.

I think the only criticism that can be made of the Imperial report – apart from my scepticism about being able to calculate R numbers with any precision – is that its extreme scenarios for deaths were pretty unlikely to come about. The ‘spontaneous changes’ in behaviour it noted were possible would have been inevitable if people began to see a high number of fatalities from the virus. Even with the low death toll in the UK in the early stages, people were ahead of the government in curbing their activity well before the government’s lockdown measures on 23 March. Some usually busy shopping streets, for example, were already becoming deserted by early March.

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[1] Critics of capitalism can be reactionary too, as Marx and Engels explained in the Communist Manifesto, especially Part III. See here.

[2] First recorded in Mexico and the US. Regarding the H1N1 virus name, the H and the N refer to two proteins on the surface of the virus particle, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, which help the virus attach to a target cell. The numbers refer to the form of those particular proteins, so you can also get H5N1, H9N2, etc, for different viruses.

[3] Campbell Biology, Pearson, 2018, p428.

[4] This name when expanded means Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus number 2, after the first viral outbreak of this type seen in 2002-04. That episode had a death rate of close to 10%, but less than 10,000 cases in total. The term ‘coronavirus’ describes the crown-like shape of the glycoprotein spike on the surface of this type of viral particle that enables it to attach to certain receptors in the host cell. Covid-19 means the Coronavirus disease of 2019, with the relevant symptoms, and the first cases have been traced back to November-December 2019.

[5] Examples of other animal origin viruses of recent years that have been passed on, helped by the proximity of humans to the animals concerned, including eating them, are: Avian flu 1997-, 2007-, 2013- (chickens, ducks, geese), Nipah virus 1998- (bats, pigs), SARS 2002-04 (bats), Middle East Respiratory Syndrome 2012- (camels), Ebola 2013-20 (bats, monkeys), Zika 2007- (mosquitoes). Bats and poultry have been such a common channel for human viruses that it is surprising that horror films about zombies and devastating viruses fail to mention them. Note that viruses are far from being the only problem; bacterial infections can also be widespread and deadly.

[6] See Allen et al, ‘Global hotspots and correlates of emerging zoonotic diseases’, Nature Communications, 24 October 2017, here.

[7] Viruses cause smallpox, measles and polio, malaria is caused by a mosquito-borne parasite and cholera is caused by a bacterium, usually through poor sanitation. Smallpox, a dreadful disease with a 30% death rate, killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century, but has been eliminated worldwide since 1980 due to a global effort.

[8] China’s Communist Party is not known for its openness to criticism, but its paranoia index will also have been dialled up by protests in Hong Kong. Joshua Wong, one of the leading activists, has had discussions with US Senator Marco Rubio, known for his reactionary and interventionist policies; some have also called for US economic sanctions to be imposed on Hong Kong - which Trump has now done - and carried US flags on demonstrations.

[9] ABC news report of 9 April 2020.

[10] Richard Horton, ‘How can any scientists stand by this government now?’, The Guardian, 27 May 2020.

[11] A very good report on the timeline of UK government measures and the rationale behind them, including the medical advice given, is The Guardian, ‘The inside story of the UK’s Covid-19 crisis’, 29 April 2020. The Imperial College report is reviewed in the Appendix.

[12] US federal government measures, including spending, grants and guarantees, amount to some $3 trillion, in addition to vast new loans and securities purchases from the Federal Reserve. The EU is also planning a €750bn fund, in addition to individual country measures. The UK government will likely borrow more than £300bn, with up to some £80bn going on various income subsidies. I will not detail all these spending plans, but those interested could consult the European think tank Bruegel’s report covering 10 EU countries plus the UK and US here.

[13] Note that starting from 100 for GDP, minus 14% gives 86. Adding 15% to that only gives 98.9, lower than at the start.

[14] See the interesting report from Asia Times, ‘US declares a vaccine war on the world’, 28 May 2020.

[15] An article on the attempted deal in March is here.

[16] If the R value is high, it does not matter so much for public health if the spreading of the virus in a population gets stopped at an early stage by appropriate measures.

[17] I will not deal with the mathematics here, but note that media reports usually only focus on the total of new infections, on the 5th round, for example, not the total of all infections, including past ones, that is much higher, of course. In the case of R = 2, new infections are 32 by the 5th round, but all infections by then amount to 63.

[18] See Paul Delamater, ‘Complexity of the Basic Reproduction Number (R₀)’, EID Journal, January 2019, here.

[19] Imperial College Covid-19 Response Team, Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID-19 mortality and healthcare demand, 16 March 2020.

[20] A similar projection for the US had a total of 2.2 million deaths.

Capitalism, Imperialism, Profit and Finance

The following notes are designed to assist anyone who has tried to analyse developments in global capitalism. Even if the reader has not, then the points made will highlight some issues that should be borne in mind when examining what is written or discussed on these topics.

1. Imperialism and world economy

Any attempt to understand things from the perspective of a national economy is bound to fail. Even the US, the world’s largest economy, can only be understood by looking at how it fits into the world economy. For example, the US dollar is world money, not just the national currency of the United States. Its importance and role depends upon the scope of US power versus other countries, both in economic and political terms. However, even the position of the dollar can be challenged by international developments. It is not an unchanging hegemony; nor has it been in place for all time. Signs that US power has limits are seen in the collapse of ‘The Project for the New American Century’ in 2006 and the political shambles of US policy in the Middle East and North Africa. However much destruction might be in US interests from a tactical perspective, it is hardly a recipe for continued hegemony.

Far less can the UK, France, Germany, China, Iran, Turkey, Brazil, etc, etc, be understood unless their positions in the world economy are taken into account. Their government and corporate policy choices are decided with this in mind. Nevertheless, a key point is that a small number of countries have a monopolistic position in the delivery of most key goods and services and, of the 200 or so countries in the world, there are only around 20 who count for anything in the hierarchy.

For this reason alone, Keynesian economic theory is useless for an analysis of the world economy (see here for a fuller discussion). Quite apart from its errors in understanding the profit-driven nature of capitalism, it focuses only on flows of income, rather the origin of that income and, at most, allows only for international trade balances. Almost always, a Keynesian approach is tied into a nationalist outlook, something that underpins so many apparently radical policies. ‘International’ Keynesianism might appear to be an exception to this, but it is a utopian technocrat’s toolbox. The OECD, or G7 meetings, might recommend changes in economic policy by different countries to benefit world economic growth, but everything still comes down to whatever is in the interests of the capitalist countries concerned.

2. Nationalism and imperialism

Attempting to ‘save’ the national economy to make things better for its inhabitants, for example, by calling for import controls or other forms of government regulation, is a reactionary policy. Firstly, it endorses the existing power of the national capitalist state to determine what will happen. Secondly, it raises national salvation above solidarity with people in other countries who are facing similar problems. This is particularly an issue for progressive people in the imperialist countries that have a dominant position in the world economy. If radicals make any concessions to those who are seeking to defend their privileges in a bankrupt system, rather than to show how the system is indeed bankrupt and must be overthrown, then they have only a short step from this to supporting imperialist aggression. The records of many wars stand in evidence.

I would possibly make one exception here. If, following a popular seizure of state power, that new government enacts policies to defend itself, then it could be seen as a legitimate, though temporary means of securing progressive gains. But if a radical in a rich country calls for such measures, while not mentioning the precondition of a popular seizure of state power before, then you know you have found an apologist for imperialism.

3. The ‘real economy’, finance and profit

There are different kinds of capitalist company and different ways in which they try to make a profit. All profit, rent or interest derives from the surplus labour performed by workers, but the process of capitalist market exchange hides this and makes it appear as if ‘making money’ in business is simply a result of special talent or, perhaps, luck, irrespective of the kind of business concerned. So, producing a good or service as a commodity in the market, buying and selling these commodities, being a real estate agent, lending money or dealing in foreign exchange, bonds and equities can all look, from a capitalist market perspective, as much the same kind of profit-making business. That view upsets common sense. So economists have come up with the notion of a ‘real economy’ of making things versus the rest of the economy, especially versus a ‘financial economy’. However, this distinction ignores both how capitalism is not bothered about making anything except profit and how all the major ‘real economy’ companies are heavily involved in the financial sphere, from stock market takeovers to financial dealings of all kinds.

The modern economy has a pervasively financial form, and the key signals for what is profitable, acceptable or viable to capitalism are transmitted through the financial markets – as reflected in a company’s share price, or a company’s or government’s ability to borrow money. This is basically a more developed form of the traditional ‘laws of supply and demand’ for the commodities a company might produce. It remains the case, nevertheless, that it is capitalist production that produces the profit that is shared, in various ways, among the different types of capitalist company.

Imperialism casts a new light on this process too. Access to funding, access to markets, the ability to use super-exploited labour, the ability to close off markets to competitors, or to use the legal system to protect property and patents, are all special privileges of the major countries, to which the weaker, poorer countries have far less recourse. This affects the profits appropriated by capitalist companies. If the analysis you read takes little or no account of it, you are reading the work of an ignoramus or, more likely, an apologist for the imperialist system.

4. Forms of profit and finance

In recent years, one area of my research was capitalist profitability, the rate of profit, etc. The more I looked into it, the trickier it got. Firstly, the available data do not necessarily measure what they claim to measure. For example, if a company registers a large profit, then that looks like what it has ‘made’, when the reality is that its profit is what its market position has enabled it to appropriate, perhaps by depending upon super-exploited labour from its suppliers, or from a monopolistic position in the world economy defended by patents and commercial laws. Secondly, even if these things were not a problem, then there is still the important question of the different ways in which different kinds of capitalist company generate their profits.

Marxist theory makes a big distinction between capitalist companies in the industrial and commercial sphere and those operating in finance. Ironically, government statistics do a similar thing, although legions of mainstream economists do not. This distinction is based upon the nature of the capitalist investment taking place. The investment by industrial and commercial capitalist (ICC) companies is different from financial investment.

ICC companies largely advance their own money, or at least do not borrow much. This is shown in their low borrowing ratios, with borrowing commonly well below the equity investment of the capitalist owners. However, advancing capital in the financial sector is a very different matter, one that has been poorly covered, or understood, by Marxist writers (except, perhaps, for Suzanne de Brunhoff in her Marx on Money, and one or two others).

Financial companies, such as insurance funds, pension funds, asset managers, hedge funds, banks, etc, advance money they are given by others. Banks also have an ability to create their own assets, via the banking system, as another way to ‘advance’ capital. All of this is a very different form of securing a profit than in the case of ICC companies, despite the fact that all of them rely upon the surplus labour performed by the working class.

For the financial companies, the revenues they gain are commonly in the form of interest on loans made or bonds purchased, or as dividends ‘earned’ from the equity securities they own, or as rents from their investments in property assets. For Marxist analysis, this is technically different from ICC profits earned – after paying interest, etc – from the advance of capital by the owners of such corporations.

The distinction is most simply seen by comparing the leverage of financial companies with ICC. Often, the borrowing ratios of the former are more than twenty times higher than the latter. As a result, with the same advance of the owners’ capital, the amount actually invested/lent, etc, by a financial company can be dramatically higher than for ICC investments. This is a practical expression of the fact that the rate of interest, or such ‘financial’ returns, is not the same as the rate of profit. They have very different roles in the capitalist system, as I argue in my new book.

Any notion of financial ‘investment’ gets even more complex with financial derivatives. Here, what is recorded in accounting practice as an ‘asset’ is simply a derivative with a positive market value. If the derivative market price changes so that it is a loss to the holder, then it becomes a liability.

What appear initially as clear concepts of investment, and the rate of profit on that investment, are complicated by the reality of modern finance. Just consider, for example, that corporations quoted on the major stock exchanges pay most attention to their ‘return on equity’ or their ‘earnings per share’, rather than to a rate of profit due on the invested capital. This is the case, even though the capitalist system’s underlying rate of profit ultimately drives the ‘return on equity’, etc.

5. Economic history

The subject of economic history has more or less disappeared from academic prospectuses. However, it is an indispensable for any understanding of the modern world. Luckily, there are books still being produced that delve into archives and bring to light hidden aspects of important past events, ones that usually contradict the standard mythology, whether on the funding of the welfare state in rich countries, the dealings between major powers or of the road to war and oppression. It may seem perverse that the most enlightening critiques of imperialism can come from what would appear to be mainstream or even conservative writers, at least the ones with their wits about them who do not blindly accept what ‘everybody knows’. By comparison, many radicals often just embellish the mythology with invented stories of ‘struggle’ and ignore inconvenient facts, notably the chauvinism of the masses in the major countries. Rather than a ‘struggle’ by the working class for reforms, a story that appears to be anti-capitalist, often the reality was instead that the ruling elites did a deal with the bureaucracy of trade unions and popular political parties to secure a national consensus that would support imperialism.

Tony Norfield, 1 February 2016

Women and Society

Societies must reproduce themselves year after year, or they would cease to exist. They do this not simply by producing enough food, shelter, clothing, etc, for people to survive. Just as importantly, there are particular relationships between the members of that society determining how things are produced. [1] Slave owners might force slaves to do all the work on pain of death. A class of landlords might extract payments of rent from the tenants working on their land. Capitalist employers will offer jobs to those whose work will make them a profit. But could there also be something more fundamental than this division of society into classes? Could it be that, despite the many ways in which societies develop, there is always the same group of people that come off worse, no matter to which economic class they might belong?

This, basically, is the stance taken by much feminist literature that identifies men as being the problem for women. In this view, men have a privileged position in all kinds of society and use that position to oppress women, either by force or by making sure that legal and other forms of discrimination keep women ‘in their place’. Many examples back this view, and they appear all the stronger as convincing evidence because only some have changed very much over history. These include denying women the right to vote in elections, to own property, to have the right to end a marriage or to get the same kinds of job as men for equal pay, or where social rules are invented that allow women less freedom than men. For example, still today in personal relationships, the socially ‘correct’ procedure is usually one where the man makes advances to the woman and invites her on a date, or proposes marriage.

What might account for this? Evidence shows that, on average, men are stronger and bigger than women. This might appear to back the idea of there being an innate male ability to use force against weaker women since time immemorial. Hunting for food and overpowering large animals is important in primitive societies. Yet, it should not be ignored that this is usually done in a social way by many hunters, even if they are men, who cooperate to capture the prey. It is not a wrestling match between a beefy hunter and a wild animal. Physical strength might be a key issue in hand-to-hand combat in a war, but even then it is a question of what weapons are at the disposal of the warring parties. Weapons are produced in a social division of labour, and do not occur naturally in the hands of the male fighter. In a deadly confrontation, most people would prefer to be a weakling with a gun than a muscle-bound fighter with a big fist. Still less are these physical differences between men and women an issue in everyday life now. How much physical strength is required to order groceries online or to type on a keypad?

Nevertheless, for the past several thousand years, the form taken by social organisation has meant that women have usually been in a subordinate position to men. This fact can make it seem valid to place the responsibility for women’s oppression at the hands of men, as it would not seem to be determined by a particular kind of society. However, that would be to miss out some important historical facts, ones that show how women in earlier forms of society were not subordinate to men.

1. The basis of social equality and inequality

Historical evidence shows that the social subordination of women has not always been the case. Even with no such evidence, on reflection it is not clear why it would be true. Just consider that the key to the maintenance of society depends upon there being children of adults – or else the social system dies out – and that women are the ones who bear the children. This makes one question why women would have been subordinate in all history. In primitive societies, where economic life was organised around kinship groups of people, not families as we know them today, this meant that women played a huge part in running society. The role of caring for, educating and socialising infants was specifically a woman’s task, following on from childbirth. It was obviously a fundamental feature of social reproduction. Often, in primitive society women had an equal, even higher status compared to men. While the identity of a child’s father was unclear, or at least not certain until recent DNA testing, it was obvious who the child’s mother was. Descent could only be reckoned in the female line, from mother to mother, and matrilineal custom prevailed in early societies.

A sign of this is seen in the belief system of ancient Greece, 2000-3000 years ago. This system included many female gods. Even though Zeus, a male, was the king of the gods, the females did not just include Aphrodite, the goddess of love. Artemis was a hunter goddess and Athena was the goddess of everything from wisdom and courage to law, mathematics, war strategy and the arts. Notably, one of the most important surviving relics of ancient Greece is the Parthenon, dedicated to the goddess Athena, and after whom Athens is named. This suggests that women had a significant social role in ancient society, although the evidence from the Greece of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Archimedes is that this social role had by their time already been undermined by the domination of males. As Engels put it in his book, Origin of the Family:

‘In the heroic age a Greek woman is, indeed, more respected than in the [later] period of civilization, but to her husband she is after all nothing but the mother of his legitimate children and heirs, his chief housekeeper and the supervisor of his female slaves, whom he can and does take as concubines if he so fancies’.

Between the time of the primitive societies in which women had an equal, even higher, status than men and that of the ‘heroic’ age of the Greeks, something had happened to change the social status of women. There was a shift away from more communal relations between groups of people, ones that included group marriage. In the place of such communal relationships, there was a shift towards monogamy, a single pairing of a woman and man, but one in which the male was dominant, and in which he also had more sexual freedom. The key factor prompting this major social development was the growth of private property at the expense of the resources available to the social group as a whole.

In the earlier forms of society, there were few resources available in excess of those needed to survive, and communal relationships between people, in economic as well as personal terms, tended to dominate. But as the productivity of agricultural production rose, and as surplus products came to be traded between different groups of people, this formed the basis upon which property also came to be owned by some individuals and groups more than others. Slowly, over centuries, and at a different pace in different areas of the world, individual property became a more important factor in social organisation, and class divisions developed within society.

If there was a move away from communal property, why was the focus on the man as the individual who owned private property and not the woman? The reason was that the surplus of resources that became this property arose outside of the domestic sphere that was the realm of the woman. So, from being at the heart of the community and society, the woman’s domestic role made her relatively isolated from the accumulation of wealth. Men had more direct command of tools and agricultural output, from crops to cattle, and more access to markets in which to sell these products. This led to a diminution of women’s social status, and, eventually, also to monogamy.

As Engels puts it: monogamy ‘was the first form of the family to be based, not on natural, but on economic conditions – on the victory of private property over primitive, natural communal property’. The institution of monogamy had nothing whatever to do with a man and woman wanting to raise children on their own. It had everything to do with the man being in control and having superior social rights, as made clear from the ability of the man to have affairs, etc, something which in the case of the woman was liable to be met with punishment. Monogamy as a social institution came about essentially as the ‘marriage version’ of the ownership of and control over property.

Some later forms of society were not as harsh on women as the classical Greek one. Furthermore, because relationships between people will always vary according to circumstance, there is no strict model that is followed by all societies at a particular stage of economic development. Even a society with a male-dominated monogamy can be more or less restrictive for women. Solid evidence about the social relations between men and women also gets patchier the further back in history one goes. Nevertheless, the historical evidence available to make inferences about these relationships backs up these points, especially the information about legal systems relating to property rights.

Another important point is that the property aspects of marriage and monogamy were of far more concern to the upper, richer strata of society. These strata had wealth to pass on to their offspring, while ordinary people had little or no wealth, and, for them, passing on small items of property to descendants would have been a very minor concern. But as social productivity developed to allow a surplus of goods well beyond what was needed simply to subsist, this was also the basis for a class society. The economically richer, more powerful minority of families had the means to control the labour of, or to buy the products from, the majority. Over time, these groups became a class of people ruling over all society, and the social system they put in place, along with laws and rules for morality, applied to everyone.

Women’s social status has been subordinate to that of men for a very long time, but not for all time, nor in all kinds of society. In his book, Origin of the Family, Engels gives examples up to as late as the 11th century in which there was far more freedom for women in pairing forms of marriage in Wales – and in which women could even divorce men on the grounds of bad breath! – than there was in much of the rest of Europe. What drove the subordination of women was the way that all developed societies eventually adapted to the growth of the economy, especially in commerce and commodity exchange. This occurred at the expense, in terms of social importance, of the social realm that women occupied.

2. Women and capitalism

Capitalism as a form of social production has existed for around three hundred years, developing initially in Europe and then throughout the world. Capitalism is a peculiar form of society, one that depends upon a division between workers, who own no means of producing what they need by themselves, and capitalists, to whom workers must sell their ability to work on the market. Capitalists are the owners of the means of production, and they will employ workers if they can profit from what they have produced. This is a different form of social production from earlier ones. It is not slavery, in which slaves are actually owned by the slave owners. It is not feudalism, where serfs must work part of the week for their landlord and hope to produce what they need to live by working for the remainder. In these pre-capitalist societies, despite the class distinctions, there was nevertheless usually some obligation of the rich to the poor, as much as there was one of the poor to work for the rich.

For example, the feudal lord had a duty to protect his tenants and manage disputes between them. In return, the tenants were usually under obligation to support the lord in any military campaign. Despite outrageous things like the droit de seigneur, which meant that the feudal lord had the right to have sex with a peasant bride on her wedding night, this did not prevent feudalism lasting for five or six hundred years in Europe. After feudalism, which ended in Europe around 1500, came the beginnings of a more commercial society, and also the beginnings of capitalism. This was a form of society where economic dealings between people, groups and countries were much more based upon market exchange, although that overlapped very much with earlier forms, depending upon the degree of economic development in each area. The big social change that signified the beginnings of capitalism was where a worker’s ability to work was also sold on the market. Workers became ‘independent’ wage labourers, often by being driven from the land, as with the enclosures in England, especially from the 1600s. Of course, this meant that workers also had a problem if they were not able to find work with an employer in the market. A ‘free’ labour market also meant the worker was free to starve.

What does this all mean for women’s position in society today? Engels makes important points on this question, stressing how the role of women changed as society developed economically:

‘In the old communistic household, which comprised many couples and their children, the task entrusted to the women of managing the household was as much a public and socially necessary industry as the procuring of food by the men. With the patriarchal family, and still more with the single monogamous family, a change came. Household management lost its public character. It no longer concerned society. It became a private service; the wife became the head servant, excluded from all participation in social production.’

This change in the status of women predated capitalism, and so it cannot be blamed upon capitalism alone. But within capitalism the subordination of women takes a new form. The new form of capitalist organisation of society meant that while some things became worse for women, others improved. For a working class woman, the downside remained that she was the person in the family who had most responsibility for looking after children and maintaining the household. The upside, given by the growth of industrial capitalism from the 19th century, was that she could again take part in social production, could earn a living and be a part of the broader society. The latter positive aspects nevertheless had, and still have, many negative features.

Female workers have consistently been paid less than their male counterparts for the same work. Partly, this was based upon the capitalist employer calculating that working women needed less of a wage on which to live since they were likely to be married to a man who also earned a wage that would support a household or family. It was also based upon the actions of established (male) workers’ trade unions that collaborated with employers to keep such wage differentials in place – a disgraceful anti-working class activity from the very institutions supposedly defending the working class. For example, during the First and Second World Wars, when principally men in the UK had been ‘called up’ to fight, women were introduced into the factories as much-needed labour. But the women were dismissed again, with unions often driving this move, once the war was over and were replaced by men.

Even in recent decades, when there have been laws to prevent discrimination and for equal pay for equal work, the social factors that determine employment usually mean that far fewer women than men get the better paying jobs. With a woman’s role being signified by capitalism, as in earlier societies, as being one where they have the principal, or full, responsibility for looking after the family, and where this role is considered to be outside what capitalist society will take into account, this remains the basic problem for women in society today. Even when a woman is not married and has no children, and so has none of these burdens, she is defined and valued according to social type. Something that is as basic and necessary for any society as looking after children lies outside what capitalist society is prepared to allow for, and so is an economic disadvantage for all women in this kind of social organisation. It is only the so-called ‘superwomen’ of the privileged sections of the middle class who can gain highly paid jobs and successfully ‘juggle’ the responsibilities of work and childcare, usually helped by poorly paid female housekeepers, nannies and childminders taking on the domestic burden for them (and their husbands/partners).

3. Gender, class and society

By developing society’s ability to produce more things in a given time with less effort, capitalism appears to offer economic freedom. Historically, capitalism has been the form of society that has most increased productivity, so that the necessaries of life, and much more, can be afforded in richer countries by anyone with a job. But this has been a very uneven development. Not only because of rich capitalist countries’ plunder of weaker societies, with slavery, colonialism and later forms of domination, but also because of the contradictions that exist even within the richer countries, including unemployment and poverty, and, of more specific interest for this article, the oppression of women.

Domestic work remains outside the social sphere of capitalist production and it is a private matter, even if some people are able to buy things, or buy help from other people, to do it. Household appliances, bought by most families, from washing machines to vacuum cleaners, also help to reduce the burden of domestic work. This burden, and the related responsibility of bringing up children, nevertheless almost exclusively remains that of women. It continues to affect the position of women in the capitalist jobs market, even if it has sometimes given them some ‘advantages’ over men in getting a job because they are more favoured by employers as cheaper forms of labour. The result is that social differences based upon gender are overlaid onto class relations between workers and employers in capitalist society.

As Engels put it: ‘The emancipation of woman will only be possible when woman can take part in production on a large, social scale, and domestic work no longer claims anything but an insignificant amount of her time’. This, however, cannot occur within capitalist society based upon production for the market, because the domestic sphere of work lies outside the capitalist labour market and employers have no reason to take this important sphere of social activity into account. They are concerned only with their profits, and this will also have a major impact on the policies of any capitalist government. Only a form of society where all kinds of activity that are socially useful are valued, and given resources so that they can function, will lead to the emancipation of women. That will not happen under capitalism, where market production is the way in which the owners of society’s productive resources determine what will make them a profit and what will not.

4. Feminism or a theory of society

The term feminist indicates someone who supports women’s rights, but it is lacking in many respects. To understand the social forces that oppress half of humanity in particular, and humanity in general, including males, means that one has to go further than feminism. The dysfunctional capitalist social system ruins everyone, including men – even including those who benefit from that system, although they would be the last to admit it, and would fight violently to keep it in place (actually, they would provide money for others to fight violently for them).

Gender, sexuality, disability, etc, are all forms of potential and actual social discrimination, in addition to the disadvantages that might come from someone’s economic position in society. But an upper class woman or homosexual, or a black capitalist, or a rich, disabled person will have better life chances than a poor, white, able-bodied, working class man. People are unequal in many ways. I am taller, stronger and faster than some, shorter, weaker and slower than others. I know more or fewer languages, and I am better or worse in playing a musical instrument, swimming or calculating, or even in finding my way out of a revolving door. But the thing that would probably make me better than most other people – no matter how stupid or incompetent I may be – is if I belong to a superior economic class. Just ask George W Bush. This argues against focusing on the way that society may ‘identify’ different groups of people, and instead to look at where people actually stand in the economic hierarchy. That is what really determines their circumstances.

The oppression of women under capitalism goes beyond that of working class women alone. But all these ways of restricting rights and opportunities are still based upon capitalism, its social mores and its form of economic regulation. Fighting for the rights of women under capitalism means fighting against capitalism. Any effective action to improve the position of women must be taken in the clear knowledge that this will also challenge the economics of this moribund system. Real opposition to women’s oppression does not start by taking into account what the capitalist system can afford to concede. The starting point is what society, not what capitalism, needs.

Tony Norfield, 27 August 2015

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[1] This article is based partly upon the 1884 book by Friedrich Engels, Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, available here. It is also based upon other readings and observation of contemporary capitalism. My aim is to clarify some important points about how the role of women in society has been determined, and what this implies for women today.

History and Change

Modern humans originated some 200,000 years ago. Agricultural society began a little over 10,000 years ago, and brought the first forms of civilisation. Capitalism as a form of organising social production began some 300 years ago, but many people see capitalism as the ultimate, unchangeable form of society, even though it has been such a small portion of human existence. If today we consider that, because we have lived our whole lives under capitalism, this would continue forever, that would be equivalent to believing, from humanity’s social standpoint, that the last eleven days in the past year would also continue forever. By contrast, history shows that things change. Not necessarily as quickly, although John Reed’s book, Ten Days that Shook the World, on the Russian revolution, indicates that it could even be less.[1]

Tony Norfield, 10 June 2015

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[1] The calculation has been changed from when this text was originally posted in order to make the point more clearly. Note that 300 years of capitalism divided by 10,000+ years of all forms of human civilisation is 3% at most.

Capitalism & Slavery

This is just a note on a web source I have just come across that has freely available digital copies of some important books, the Universal Library.

The 'book of the month' I would choose from this source is Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery, first published in 1944 and quite difficult to get from bookshops. It is a classic text that explains both the mechanism of slavery for capitalism through the example of the Caribbean slave trade, and the context for the moves to abolish slavery (first the slave trade, then, much later, slavery itself) in the British Empire in the 19th century.

I referred to this text in my book review of The Sugar Barons, 4 August 2011 on this blog, and am pleased now to have found it on the web (I wasn't looking before, since I had the book!).

Here is the link:

http://ia600508.us.archive.org/7/items/capitalismandsla033027mbp/capitalismandsla033027mbp.pdf