Admin

The climate crisis

November 26, 2013 by Admin

Philippines climate justice protest

By Wei Sun (Fightback, Christchurch)

World production and consumption have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to global ‘westernization’. While socially this can mean a higher standard of living for many in the developing world, the results are mostly negative on the local, national and global natural environment. For example, global transportation has increased the consumption of fossil energy, causing an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which has in turn increased the warming of Earth’s climate.

Investors want returns on their investment, so capitalism requires growth; a drive towards increased production and expansion into other ‘markets’ necessitates increased use of energy and natural resources. Greenhouse gas emissions are treated as an externality, not factored in to a firms expenses.

Figure 1

This graph (figure 1) shows the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million (PPM) Scientists now agree with 97% certainty that concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are the cause for increasing temperatures. For about 900 years, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere remained relatively stable, but there is a rapid increase following the industrial revolution. CO2 in the atmosphere grew from approximately 270ppm to 390ppm between 1900 and 2000, a 44% increase. This trend appears to be increasing, with CO2 recently reaching 400ppm. This has massive negative effects beyond just warmer weather.

Figure 2

Looking at this graph (figure 2), we can see that the frequency of natural disasters such as drought, extreme temperatures, famine, flood, insect infestation, landslides, wild fires and wind storms had been relatively stable for centuries, but began increasing slowly from 1900 to 1960, and then started rising rapidly. Within only 40 years, from 1960 to 2000, the number of disasters per year went up from around 30 to 425, that is an increase of more than 14 times. Much of the increase in the number of events reported is probably due to significant improvements in information access and also due to population growth, but the number of floods and cyclones being reported is still rising compared to earthquakes, which could not be affected by the climate.

Figure 3

According to a case study from the Himalayas in India, a glacier will advance in a healthy climate and retreat in response to a warmer climate. Before being affected by climate change, glacier length records were at maximum from around 1700 to 1825, and then began to decline. As we can see in the graph (figure 3) there is a massive retreat from approximately 1825 to 2000. Alarmingly, this trend seems to be continuing. According to the latest studies, the average glacier thickness loss is approximately 30% from 1976 to 2012.

The loss of mass from glaciers contributes to increasing sea levels, along with melting polar ice. Sea level increased approximately 20cm from 1880 to 2000. This puts low-lying countries at risk, particularly island nations. Oceanic acidity increases as the water warms, affecting the delicate balance of ocean dynamics, and putting ecosystems at high risk.

According to the Ministry for the Environment, the likely impacts of climate change on New Zealand include higher temperatures, though likely to be less than the global average, rising sea levels, changes in rainfall pattern (higher rainfall in the west and less in the east) and more frequent extreme weather events such as droughts (especially in the east) and floods.

Agricultural productivity is expected to increase in some areas although others will run the risk of drought and the further spread of pests; forests and vegetation may grow faster, but native ecosystems could be invaded by exotic species. It is likely that there would be costs associated with changing land-use activities to suit a new climate; undoubtedly the costs of this shift will be passed onto to consumers at the supermarket. People are likely to enjoy the benefits of warmer winters with fewer frosts, but hotter summers will bring increased risks of heat stress and subtropical diseases.

Drier conditions in some areas are likely to be coupled with the risk of more frequent extreme events such as floods, droughts and storms, rising sea levels will increase the risk of erosion and saltwater intrusion, increasing the need for coastal protection and glaciers are expected to retreat and change water flows in major South Island Rivers.

People are aware of the dangers ahead, which is why at the end of November thousands of people protested against deep sea oil drilling on beaches across Aotearoa. Deep sea oil drilling has additional problems as well. While it may be too late to stop the planet warming by up to two degrees, it’s not too late to prevent further warming. That can be done though social movements like those behind the Banners on Beaches protests. Social movements needs to align themselves with those who will be affected the most by climate change, who tend to be among the world’s most oppressed, people like Ioane Teitiota who recently attempted unsucessfully to become the first climate change refugee, or those affected by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. These movements can be most effective by targeting the structural causes of climate change, which lie in our economic system.

See also

The dangers of deep sea oil drilling, Byron Clark, Fightback
Bid for recognition of first official climate change refugee, Byron Clark, Fightback
Pacific migration: Climate change and the reserve army of labour, Ian Anderson, Fightback
Philippines Typhoon Haiyan Crisis: For climate justice now, Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring Masses, PLM), reprinted by Links

Filed Under: Environment, International, Pacific

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will: Gramsci’s relevance today

November 25, 2013 by Admin

by Ian Anderson, Fightback.

In Aotearoa/NZ in 2013, revolutionary socialism seems impossible. Many believe that exploitation, ecological destruction, and greed are inevitable; as Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek puts it, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

Capitalism is ‘hegemonic,’ dominant throughout society, even in the ideas of people who want to see social change. In this context the theory of ideological hegemony, developed by Antonio Gramsci in the early 20th century, still has relevance nearly a century later.

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian revolutionary socialist who lived from 1891 to 1937, and became active in socialist politics from 1916. Along with VI Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg and others, Gramsci broke with the Second International – at that time the dominant international organisation of socialists.

Leaders of the Second International had opted to support the imperialist slaughter of World War I. Rather than fighting for socialist, internationalist politics here and now, these leaders argued that economic struggle would inevitably lead to socialism at some point in the future.

Responding to the 1917 Russian revolution, Gramsci praised Lenin and the Bolsheviks for breaking with this lifeless orthodoxy in favour of meaningful social practice;

[The Bolsheviks] are not ‘Marxists’, that’s what it comes down to: they have not used the Master’s works to draw up a superficial interpretation, dictatorial statements which cannot be disputed. They live out Marxist thought… In this kind of thinking the main determinant of history is not lifeless economics, but man; [sic] societies made up of men, men who have something in common, who get along together, and because of this civility they develop a collective social will.

Gramsci participated in the 1921 formation of a new Italian Communist Party, and was active in the Communist Party until his imprisonment by Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1926. His most famous and influential writings were written in prison, now known simply as the ‘Prison Notebooks.’

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks explored Italian cultural and social history, but the goal was more expansive. Whereas many of Gramsci’s journalistic writings outside prison by his admission “were written with the day and were supposed to die with the day,” his Prison Notebooks were intended as a more general historical exploration, even an “absolute historicism.” This absolute historicism is a toolbox to be adapted to changing circumstances and historical conditions, with the unifying aim of overthrowing ruling-class power.

Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks developed his theory of hegemony, his most influential theoretical contribution. This was a development of Marx and Engels’ theory of the state, which held that the state ultimately serves the ruling class, by stabilising capitalism. Even by recognising demands such as the eight hour work day, the state prevents the capitalist system from collapsing through its own internal contradictions. As Engels argues in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State:

As the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check… it is as a rule the state of the powerful, economically dominant class.

Although Gramsci was a Leninist, his theory of hegemony has distinct observations from Lenin’s theory of state and revolution, dealing more extensively with ideological and cultural struggles in non-revolutionary conditions.

Russia’s Tsarist regime relied heavily on direct repression; massacres of workers and peasants who fought back. However, more developed capitalist states (particularly in the imperialist world) have a more sophisticated system for maintaining hegemony.

In non-revolutionary conditions, such as Aotearoa/NZ in the 21st century, the ruling class ensures hegemony through a combination of coercion and consent. Consent operates by meeting some needs, and through ideology; a system of ideas that justifies continued exploitation and oppression. While civil society ensures consent, political society applies coercion, or in Gramsci’s words:

State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected by the armour of coercion.

This is a carrot and stick approach; consent is the carrot, coercion is the stick. The army and the police force apply direct coercion where necessary; using guns, batons, pepper spray, tasers, prison cells when workers and the oppressed get out of hand. However much of the time, guns are unnecessary, as the system relies on consent, through an ideological system that justifies capitalist rule.

Capitalism is hegemonic within trade unions, political parties, churches, media institutions and other civil society bodies. Particularly in non-revolutionary times, the dominant forces within most of these organisations lead towards collaboration with the state to ensure consent, to direct discontent into appropriate channels.

This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but any sustained engagement with civil society bodies, such as trade unions and community sector organisations, will show their limitations. Queer support organisations rely on state funding and grants, limiting their ability to openly challenge government policy, let alone the ruling order which leads many queer/trans* youth to suicide or homelessness. Trade unions must compromise with employers to settle disputes, for example the Public Sector Association agreeing to redundancies in exchange for defeating a wage freeze attempted in late 2009.

To counter these pressures, Gramsci argues for a long-term war of position, a protracted cultural struggle in preparation for the war of manoeuvre, a revolution or frontal assault on the state. Gramsci notes that while frontal assault on the state was appropriate for Russia in 1917, “war of position… was the only form possible in the West,” because civil society is more developed.

In waging a war of position, socialists must develop a counter-hegemony. Hegemony operates through ideology, and through meeting needs, in ways that justify the prevailing system. Counter-hegemonic projects seek to construct a new hegemony, by formulating ideas and meeting needs in ways that sustain an oppositional culture.

This encompassing cultural struggle is the point of departure for ‘Gramscian’ approaches, particularly popular in academia. These approaches note Gramsci’s “anti-economism,” and emphasis on encompassing ideological struggle, as points of departure for a Gramscian approach, suggesting that “wherever power exists, opposition to it will emerge.”

For example, in her essay “Ideology, Hegemony and Inequality” published in Studies in New Zealand Social Problems (1990), Allanah Ryan notes the importance in a Gramscian approach of not simply seeking “narrow interests,” but incorporating “popular views” of various groups. Working in early 1990s Aotearoa/NZ, Ryan suggests “women’s rights and peace issues” as subjects that any meaningful counter-hegemonic bloc must address.

Gramsci’s ideas have been widely abused and taken out of context. In his 1977 article Gramsci versus Eurocommunism, International Socialist Chris Harman suggested that while Gramsci died in prison after years of ill treatment, “he has suffered more misfortune since his death from the distortion of his ideas by those who have nothing in common with his revolutionary principles.”

Harman details the role of Stalinism in distorting Gramsci’s ideas. When the Italian Communist Party got hold of the Prison Notebooks, they were not published for ten years. When the Communist Party finally published the Prison Notebooks, they were heavily censored, in Harman’s words, “to present Gramsci as the loyal Stalinist par excellence.”

In reality, Gramsci had become increasingly critical of the Stalinist turn in the world communist movement, particularly the ‘Third Period’ which saw a sectarian turn against reformists in the working class movement. Gramsci had returned to the idea of tactical unity with other working-class forces while retaining an independent communist organisation, recommended by Lenin in 1921. However, the Italian Communist Party sought to use Gramsci’s name in death to shore up their sectarianism.

In the early 1960s, the Italian Communist Party published Gramsci’s full works uncensored. After Stalin’s death, many Western Communist Parties took a sharp turn away from the sectarianism of the Third Period towards accommodation with ruling Western regimes. At this point the Italian Communist Party used Gramsci’s work, particularly his criticism of the Stalinist Third Period, to justify their ‘historic compromise’ with the ruling regime in Italy.

This laid the basis for what became known as Eurocommunism, defined by compromise with dominant political order. Eurocommunists came to defend the existing Social Contract, rallying to the defence of existing democratic institutions tied to capitalism.

However, socialism cannot come through defence of declining democratic institutions, through voting Labour or joining your union. Although engagement with institutions is necessary, the system is ultimately broken. Socialism can only come through sustained independent opposition in every sector; in the electoral, workplace, campus, community sectors; and the formation of a historic bloc bringing these struggles together in unified opposition to the ruling order.

Gramsci’s revolutionary work was centred on the Turin factory council movement, democratic bodies of workers which sought control over production. In the 21st century West, the Occupy movement has offered a glimpse of what this direct democracy could look like, particularly Occupy Oakland’s combination of a radical, democratic commune with militant industrial tactics in the port.

The Italian Communist Party in Gramsci’s period also contested elections, with the intention in his words “to rip the democratic mask from the double face of the bourgeois dictatorship and show it in all its horror and its repugnant ugliness.” In non-revolutionary conditions, counter-hegemonic engagement in official politics such as elections must always be oppositional. There are no short-cuts, and by entering into capitalist governments, we run the risk of sacrificing long-term strategy. Community-based organisation can both win concrete reforms, and lay the basis for winning peoples’ power.

Today many ‘Gramscians’ have no meaningful connection with attempts to develop a new communist practice, instead using the notion of a protracted cultural struggle, a “march through the institutions,” to justify their turn away from revolutionary politics. While the first generation of Eurocommunists had used Gramsci to justify a ‘historic compromise’ with liberal democracy, many current Gramscians abandon even the superficial trappings of openly communist politics.

In a particularly revolting UK example, “social entrepreneurs” The B Group grouped around capitalist Richard Branson appropriate Gramsci’s call for cultural struggle, without any notion of abolishing private property and exploitation. Subtler examples abound throughout academia, with liberal academics speaking of “hegemony” and “counter-hegemony” totally divorced from anti-capitalism.

This confirms one of Gramsci’s key ideas; most intellectuals operate as functionaries, mechanically serving the ruling order. Stalinist politicos, academics, “social entrepreneurs” and others have claimed Gramsci’s argument for a protracted cultural struggle, while divorcing it from anti-capitalist politics.

In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci referred to revolutionary socialism as the “philosophy of praxis.” Praxis is the combination of theory with practice; ideas tested through action, action developed through reflection. In The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire defines praxis this way:

Reflection without action = verbalism
Action without reflection = activism
Action + reflection = praxis

Criticising establishment intellectuals, Gramsci argued the need for the fusing of revolutionary intellectual work with popular philosophy. Organic intellectuals, thinkers from within the working class and oppressed groups, must play a key role in forging this new revolutionary consciousness; or to use a more contemporary slogan, “nothing about us without us.”

Gramsci himself was an organic intellectual, a worker from a poor background – unlike Marx, Engels, Lenin and other revolutionary leaders who had betrayed their privileged class origins and committed themselves to revolution. Although it is not enough, lived experience of oppression is crucial to the collective process of developing revolutionary consciousness.

Gramscian cultural approaches contrast with the ‘mechanical materialism’ often associated with vulgar Marxism. ‘Mechanical materialism’ denies lived experience of oppression, and the complex relationship between culture and lived experience, in favour of lifeless economic determinism.

Revolutionary consciousness must be rooted in local conditions, in the memory of the class. We must study our own environment, our own history, our own place in society. An encompassing cultural struggle must draw lessons and knowledge from intersecting struggles; worker, student, queer, feminist, indigenous, anti-imperialist and ecological struggles among others.

Ultimately, Gramsci argued, social forces must be brought together in the ‘Modern Prince,’ a new collective revolutionary vanguard, or communist party. While this organisation immerses itself in the immediate struggles of the workplace, and the wider community, it maintains its independent opposition to the existing state structure. As phrased by US group INCITE! Women of Colour Against Violence, “the revolution will not be funded.”

The possibility of a new communist vanguard seems remote today in Aotearoa/NZ, just as the Bolsheviks did not predict the generalised strike action that led to the 1917 Russian revolution. However, we can only forge an egalitarian society through meaningful commitment to the praxis of revolutionary socialism.

Paraphrasing Gramsci, we need pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.

Filed Under: Revolutionary History

Fighting Rape Culture in Aotearoa: A Survivor’s Perspective

November 22, 2013 by Admin

Marika Pratley is a Wellington member of Fightback. She also volunteers for Wellington Rape Crisis, and is a survivor of rape and sexual assault.

This article is based on a speech Marika presented as a survivor at the Stop Rape Now Wellington demonstration on Saturday 16th of November 2013. Note: The original speech was improvised, this is not a transcription.

I would like to acknowledge that the last few weeks have been triggering and overwhelming for many survivors. I myself have had moments where I could not listen to the news and had to take days off work because it was overwhelming. I am thankful to everyone who has been supportive of survivors.

I am a survivor of sexual assault and rape. I experienced sexual assault and rape for the first time when I was a preschooler. More or less my entire life I have had to deal with the consequences of this trauma, as well as learning to engage with rape culture in its various manifestations in New Zealand. These exist both on an institutional level (in the court rooms, media, etc) but also in a social and more general cultural context.

Survivor Support needs to be accessible

As a survivor, I have had to use many counselling services over years to be able to manage my recovery – which is an ongoing process. I am fortunate that I also have a highly supportive family. Having access to both these things is not something all survivors are able to experience. With the development of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression, there have been many times where my mental health has been severely impacted. It has been absolutely essential that I have had access to survivor support services for my recovery to be possible.

One of the first times I had problems accessing care was as a young adult. In 2009 ACC had funding cuts, and new criteria was developed for survivors of sexual abuse/violence, who needed to use ACC to subsidise counselling fees. Even with ‘free services’, therapists still used ACC to subsidise, since ‘free services’ rely on charity, trusts and grants to keep their services going. One of the major reasons I had to go back to counselling is because I was raped and sexually assaulted again as a young adult – not just once, but by 3 different people on 3 different occasions, all within a few months of each other. Not only were these new incidents that I had to ‘survive’, but they simultaneously retraumatised me of my previous experiences as a child, leading to some major complications in the overall trauma I have experienced.

Although I had an ACC claims number for my childhood trauma and files on record, on the first appointment with my new therapist I had to go through an interview process to ‘reactivate’ my claims number. This meant I had to prove that the trauma was still impacting on my wellbeing. The interview felt like an interrogation and was highly retraumatising. My mother who has worked as a psychiatric nurse for over 30 years, and currently holds a PhD in Mental Health Nursing, was with me as a support person and was horrified from a professional perspective. Since this interview process was introduced, many therapists and counsellors have stopped being affiliated with ACC, as it is ethically problematic, professionally questionable and retraumatising for their clients. In a way, it is quite bizarre that Sexual Assault and Rape survivors go through the Accident Compensations Corporation to begin with when sexual violence and rape is not an accident.

Since the ACC changes, services such as Wellington Rape Crisis have also lost major government funding. This is despite the fact that they are an essential service, making care accessible for survivors. To realise how much of a problem sexual violence is in our society all we need to do is look at the statistics – one out of four women, and one out of six men are reported to be survivors of sexual assault and rape. It is concerning that the government does not prioritise the accessibility of survivor services. Sexual violence prevention education also needs to be essential/accessible within all education sectors, from primary school to tertiary education, so that young people can be challenged about their internalised ideas around rape culture, such as slutshaming and other rape mythology which justifies rape, and in some cases means some people are raping without being consciously aware of it. (I.e. having sex with someone without asking or thinking it’s ‘ok’ because they are drunk and wearing a short skirt).

At the moment, I currently juggle 3 casual jobs, and my therapy costs $100 per session. Although I appreciate the long term benefits of the therapy, this financial cost adds further stress, as I struggle to get by each week (despite living in a ‘single’ situation). I I know that me being a survivor with economic barriers to care is not unique and can only imagine what it is like for solo parents, children, and other working class folk or beneficiaries who are survivors, who lack the means to receive adequate support.

The Stigma of Being a Survivor/Rape culture in wider society

Rape culture has enabled a stigma against survivors to develop. Not only are there bullshit rape myths which recirculate, but there is also an overlap with misogyny/’slutshaming’, whorephobia and mental illness stigma. Having to deal with rape jokes, and other narratives which exploit the suffering of survivors for entertainment value, is an example of cultural norms and everyday social interactions denying the needs of survivors. Rape myths are also reproduced in the media, speculating whether a survivor actually got raped or not. The very fact that funding for survivors gets cut, while police continue to incorporate rape mythology such as ‘your skirt was too short’ as a part of common protocol, reinforces ideology at an institutional and material level that survivors are to be devalued. All of these ideological manifestations repeatedly reproduced, are the building blocks of the matrix which enables rape culture to exist. We need to dismantle rape culture and replace these building blocks with ones which empower survivors, and enable their recovery without this stigma attached.

Filed Under: Oppression & Liberation

Pseudoscience and the left: Imaginary solutions to real problems

November 21, 2013 by Admin

by Daphne Lawless and Byron Clark

Anyone familiar with the political Left will be familiar with well-meaning activists insisting that scientists and experts are “lying to us” about important features of our daily life, and only a dedicated band of outsiders know the truth. Activists in Aotearoa/NZ have been giving dire warnings about the fluoridation of our drinking water, and promoting pseudo-economics such as “Positive Money”. Meanwhile, the Green Party of Canada – while correctly attacking the Conservative government’s climate change denial – includes unscientific “scare” data about the health risks of not only fluoridation, but also Wifi routers, in its manifesto.

“I really think the Green Party is just doing the same things everybody else does, which is to make up an idea that matches with your ideology, and then go looking for evidence to support it,” said Michael Kruse, chair of Canadian non-profit Bad Science Watch. There’s a word for this – pseudoscience. And it’s a problem on both the political Right and Left.

What is pseudoscience?
The skeptic website rationalwiki.com defines pseudoscience as an idea “which tries to gain legitimacy by wearing the trappings of science”, but does not in fact use the rigorous methods and standards of proof of science. In other words, it’s much like a conspiracy theory. The basic idea is that “official” science is lying on one particular subject – forming a conspiracy against the general population – but the purveyors of the theory know the real truth. It looks like science, but it isn’t – because the basis of the scientific method is the possibility of proving theories wrong. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, relies on fear and “what if?”s. It’s based on an emotional appeal while pretending to be rational.

Anti-fluoridation and anti-vaccination campaigners have made great strides among the Left in recent times. The claims are very similar – that fluoride in drinking water, and vaccinations, are secretly dangerous to our health, and that the Government is covering this up for reasons of their own. Perhaps they’re in league with big business providing fluoride or vaccines – or perhaps it’s a deliberate ploy to destroy our health so we’re more easily controlled.

The strange thing about this is that anti-fluoridation began as an extreme-right belief in the United States of the 1950’s. The character of General Jack D. Ripper in the film Doctor Strangelove was a parody of those who believed that fluoridation was a Communist plot to poison America’s “precious bodily fluids”. The language is the language of the libertarian right – the right of “freedom” from government interference in our bodies and our health. It’s not the language of the socialist left – the language of the common good and of the rights of communities. It’s also the language of fear and guilt, rather than empowerment – note how anti-vaccination campaigners try to make parents afraid of “causing” autism in their children.

pseudoscience smoking

Corporate pseudoscience
Part of what makes pseudoscience very hard to fight is that, in some cases, members of the scientific establishment do lie to us, on behalf of the powerful. The most pressing example of this currently is those scientists in the pay of Big Oil and other corporate entities who deny that global warming is happening, or that, if it is happening, it’s nothing to do with human activity.

Similarly, Big Tobacco spent most of the 60’s and 70’s buying the support of any scientist who could stomach arguing that smoking didn’t cause cancer. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical industry, a common target of pseudoscience proponents, has engaged in numerous practices that distort science- such as only publishing favourable data about drugs and expunging other tests which show more negative results. They have also conducted tests on groups different from the real-world patients who will receive the drug, who will therefore possibly experience different outcomes. These are documented in Ben Goldacre’s 2012 book Bad Pharma.

Just as with tobacco and fossil fuel distorting science to favour their interests, the cause of these practices in the health sector is economic, not scientific. It is not science itself that is at fault – a mistaken conclusion for even legitimate critiques of the industry – but a system that puts private profit ahead of science, and the misuse of science for profit.

Political pseudoscience

Twisting science for political and financial ends goes back a long way – and not just by the prophets of capitalism. For decades, science in the Soviet Union was driven down a dead end by government support for the ideas of Trofim Lysenko – biological pseudoscience which happened to conform with Stalin’s idea of how evolution “should” work.

Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution was twisted in the early 20th century into “social Darwinism” and “eugenics” – the idea that only the “strong” should be allowed to have children, and the “unfit” (the disabled, the disadvantaged, or whoever the eugenicists didn’t like) should be left to die. The extreme outcome of this was the Nazi policies of extermination of the disabled, gay people and “inferior” races.

On the other hand, fundamentalist Christians have created an elaborate pseudoscience of “creationism”, to protect the privileged place of religion in the culture of the United States against the materialistic implications of evolution. In recent decades these arguments have caught on in the Islamic world – even though Muslim scientists had anticipated the idea of biological evolution as far back as the 13th century. So both evolution and the opposition to evolution have been used in the service of pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience works backwards from real science. Real science says: we have proven this hypothesis beyound reasonable doubt, therefore we should change our behaviour. Pseudoscience says: we would have to change our behaviour if this was true, so it can’t be true. Most global warming deniers start from the point of view that if human-made global warming is real, we would have to adopt socialist and green politics to preserve civilisation. And that is what the proponents of pseudoscience really want to protect – their pre-existing beliefs of how the world should work.

Is economics a pseudoscience?
The relationship of our rulers to science has changed over the decades of capitalism. In the early days of the Enlightenment, science went hand-in-hand with political and social revolution – the scientific emphasis on experiment and discovering what worked was the opposite of the aristocracy’s reliance on tradition and the Church. As the British socialist Tony Cliff puts it: “the aristocrats had the Bible, the bourgeoisie had the Encyclopaedia”. When put came to shove, the Encyclopaedia won out.

Understanding how the world really worked was vital for the new capitalist class to take power, and to increase their wealth through industrialisation and technological breakthroughs. But along the way, Karl Marx developed Adam Smith’s new science of economics to a point where it pointed out the limits, faults and further trajectory of the capitalist system. After that point, it became in the capitalist class’s interests not to understand how their system worked – how could they justify their power if it was based on exploitation, and doomed to ever worsening crisis?

Alfred Marshall’s “marginalist” economics attempted to justify the wage and profit system with an imaginary construct called “utility” – and this is the basis of the economics of today, which increasingly resembles a pseudoscience itself. Modern capitalist economics cannot predict the future, as the global financial crisis showed. And yet, its tenets remain unchallengeable in the academy, to the point where British students have demonstrated against the continued teaching of “pre-crash economics”.

Economics has become a kind of religion, belief in which is necessary unless one be cast out as a heretic. For example, a columnist for the big business magazine Forbes loudly demanded that the new socialist city councillor in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, be banned from teaching economics – a subject in which she has a PhD – because she doesn’t believe in the capitalist version. Science can prove itself in practice and has nothing to fear from opposing views – pseudoscience can only rely on force and rhetoric.

The retreat of the modern capitalist class from science is also shown by the growth of non-rational modes of thought in business. Although scientific psychology is used to make workers more productive and to market goods to consumers, businesspeople and sales staff alike increasingly embrace magic, “the power of positive thinking”, wish-fulfilment fantasies like The Secret, pseudo-philosophies like Ayn Rand’s Objectivism, and other non-rational ways to convince themselves that they “deserve” their privilege and power. And since the beliefs of our rulers are generally the beliefs of society, it’s no surprise that superstitious beliefs have become increasingly popular throughout society since the high point of rationalism in the 1950s.

Science as oppression
Although science is potentially one of the greatest allies of the oppressed, given all of the above, working people, women, LGBT and other oppressed peoples have no reason to trust the “scientific establishment”. A classic example of oppression by scientists is the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service gave fake “health care” to African Americans with syphilis, so as to monitor the progress of the disease as the test subjects sickened and died. To this day, the memory of Tuskegee discourages African-Americans from participating in medical science.

When oppressed people lose faith in science as practiced by their oppressors, or in their traditional practices, creative pseudoscience tends to spring up. Beliefs which are in fact ridiculous, but conform with “common sense” and the life experience of the oppressed, are a comfort and a source of inner strength – in the same manner as religious observance.

Like religious beliefs, true believers in pseudoscience will respond to criticism of their beliefs with angry attacks rather than debate. The argument will be framed as a choice between “official science” and pseudoscience – without any suggestion that the truth might lie elsewhere. For example, criticise the pseudo-medicine of homeopathy, and you’ll get angry comments that you must be a “shill” for the Western medical profession – whom any good lefty can tell you are the Bad Guys.

Pseudoscience – like its cousin, conspiracy theory – arises because it looks good and makes sense, given our everyday experience of the world. Of course fluoride is probably a poison if “they” are putting it in our water supply! Or, of course the money system is the problem with capitalism, which would be fair otherwise! It’s also much easier than real science – because the goal is not to establish truth, but to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Against imperialist rationalism
Skepticism as a social movement has grown significantly in recent years, with the Internet allowing pseudo-scientific claims to be debunked almost instantaneously. Yet this movement has not appealed to oppressed groups. Magicians Penn Jillette and Teller spread critical thinking through their long running TV series Bullshit! (which aired in New Zealand on Prime) but their right-wing libertarian political views meant their flavour of skepticism was one linked to individualism and shying away from any social theory that might add an extra dimension to the critique.

Ironically enough, Penn and Teller also peddle pseudoscientific global warming denial. It’s no coincidence that other proponents of atheism and the scientific method, such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, have also strayed from an opposition to religion and pseudoscience into racist, sexist and pro-imperialist positions.

The hardcore rationalism espoused by many skeptics, not only defending science but suggesting that all other forms of thought are illegitimate, ignores the fact that non-rational modes of thought are an important part of what it means to be human. Psychology, culture and art are based on intuitive, associated and other non-rational modes of thought – outside the domain of science, but not necessarily in conflict with it.

Similarly non-Western ways of thinking – such as tikanga Maori, Chinese traditional medicine or other “lifeworlds” – though often non-rational, play an important cultural and psychological role in binding marginalised and oppressed communities together, and a source of resistance to capitalist oppression backed up by “instrumental rationality” – science in the service of exploitation.

In fact, the place where non-Western beliefs become pseudoscience is the place where they have been appropriated and commodified by the “alternative medicine” industry. Concepts such as the Chinese qi and various Native American practices have been ripped out of their cultural contexts and are peddled to the middle-class as pseudoscientific remedies for the ailments of life under capitalism.

Science for the oppressed
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described their political and economic programme as “scientific socialism”, to distinguish it from the various brands of “utopian socialism” – which would paint a glorious picture of an imagined future free from want or oppression, but would give no clues on how to get there from here. “Scientific” meant that – as far as they were concerned – communist politics grew out of what was happening here and now, and could precisely identify how elements of the present could create a better future.

It is in this sense that science – or more rightly, the scientific method – is our greatest ally. The scientific method – including rigorous “double-blind” testing and peer review free from ideological bias – is the best way that humanity has found for gaining understanding of and power over our environment. That it has been misused and warped to increase oppression is not a problem with the method itself, any more than the nuclear bomb proves that particle physics is wrong.

Socialists and other critical thinkers on the political left should stand with the movements against pseudoscience, which is non-rationality disguised as rationality – and that includes a lot of what our rulers want us to believe is “science”, like their mumbo-jumbo economics. But if non-rational thinking is demonised as the source of all our problems, then it’s people of colour, non-Western civilisations and women – traditionally associated with the Other of the Enlightenment – who end up first in the firing line.

Defending “science” without separating the method from the oppression committed in its name leads to a reactionary defence of the current capitalist-imperialist world order. We need to show those outside the left that we are not all vaccine denying fluoride fear-mongers, and the leftist adherents of pseudoscience that we can support science without supporting the racism, sexism and imperialism committed in its name.

Real science can free us – pseudoscience can only give us justifications for our own slavery. It backs us into dead ends, tilting at false enemies and distracting us from the real one. It is an imaginary solution to a real problem, to which the scientific method is a major part of the real solution.

See also