Monthly Archives: April 2022

Over seventy years since publication, the first British edition of Eric Williams classic Capitalism and Slavery remains vital, despite establishment critics, argues John WestmorelandEric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (Penguin 2022), 304pp.Blood at the root

The republication of Eric Williams classic account of Britains role in the slave economy of the Americas and the Caribbean comes at a time when there is a renewed interest in Britains role in the slave trade, stimulated by the Black Lives Matter protests that rocked cities across the UK and USA.

Williams thesis, first published in the USA in 1944, has rightly been hailed by discerning scholars as a masterpiece. For some reason you will have to guess - the book has not been published here in the UK before. Williams argument has come to be known as the Decline Thesis because it links the decline of the slave economy in the Caribbean with its eventual abolition.

In 1944, Capitalism and Slavery provided a starting point for a new generation of students interested in the history of slavery and the civil rights of Black Americans. Written in an elegant and persuasive style, the book postulates an analysis that owes much to Marxs writings about the origins of capitalism, and where the capital that financed the system that bears its name came from.

In short, Williams argues that the trade in slaves and the profits from the plantations on which they laboured provided the capital that funded the industrial revolution in England and Scotland, and built the great port cities connected with the triangular trade. Glasgow, Liverpool, Bristol, and London were at the northern tip of a trade triangle connecting the coast of Africa with the Caribbean and American colonies. Manufactures left Britain for the west African coast where they were traded for slaves, a human cargo that was shipped to Britains colonies to be traded in turn for the valuable commodities of cotton, tobacco, rum and sugar.

Sugar was the commodity that enriched investors in the City of London. The sugar barons were renowned for preposterous wealth, and many stately homes were built and furnished through sugar wealth. The insatiable appetite for sugar in Europe exacted a terrible toll on the slaves who worked the plantations. The demand for sugar generated the demand for slaves.

However, as capitalism matured, the capitalists started to favour the free market views expressed by Adam Smith and turned against the mercantilist slave system that protected an inefficient and insatiable planter class. Free markets favoured an expanding empire where British finance outmatched foreign competition. This shift in thinking was prompted by the decline of the slave economy in Britains Caribbean possessions that set in after the American colonies gained their independence in 1776. The steps to the abolition of the slave trade and slave emancipation in the colonies thereafter link closely to the development of British capitalism.

Firstly, when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, economic considerations loomed large. In market terms British colonial sugar production lagged behind that of Saint Domingue (Haiti) and Brazil. Indeed Saint Domingue produced more sugar than all the British colonies combined, and the growing market in North America, freed from the obligation to buy British sugar, meant the protection of British sugar from cheaper suppliers made little economic sense.

The economic case for the abolition of the slave trade was strengthened by the calculation that the slave population in the West Indies could be replenished naturally and the navy could be put to more useful tasks than policing the Caribbean.

Secondly, after the capitalist class confirmed its political ascendency in Britain after the passing of the so-called Great Reform Act in 1832, it was swiftly followed by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 that emancipated slaves in the Caribbean. By this time the sugar supply was boosted by production in India and European grown sugar beet. Again the market triumphed over protection. The only negative economic aspect was that the slave owners had to be paid compensation for their loss of property.

The final nail in the coffin of mercantilism came in 1846 when the protective sugar duties were finally abandoned. At this point British pre-eminence in the world saw them commit wholeheartedly to the free market where they held sway. The protective Corn Laws, a constant annoyance to free-market ideologues, were also repealed at this time.

Therefore Williams established a clear connection to the development of capitalism and the move to slave emancipation. This connection of capitalism to the barbarities of the slave trade and slave production continues to enrage conservative thinkers. And its not just that the capitalist system is shown to be rooted in the blood and misery of enslaved Africans. Even more infuriating is Williams exposure of the real reasons for abolition as being in the economic interests of capitalists rather than the evident determination and humanitarianism of the abolitionist movement.

A good many national myths had been developed concerning William Wilberforce and his abolitionist saints, and these are myths that the Tories are out to preserve.

That the publication of Capitalism and Slavery has produced an instant reaction (and condemnation) on the Conservative Home page says something about the likely effect it will have on a new readership.

Tory MP David Davis has taken up the cudgels against Williams and brought all his intellectual might to bear. His argument, the less hyperbolic part, is a regurgitation of arguments first used by the American historian Seymour Drescher in the 1970s. Drescher challenged the data used in Williams economic analysis, which will be dealt with later. What is more novel is that Davis tries to reframe the narrative in a way that not only restores the virtue of Wilberforce and the saints, but tries to claim that British abolition was a moral endeavour that set an example to the rest of the world.

Our history with slavery is a lot more nuanced than many would have you believe, he says. It is doubtful if those experiencing the horrors of the middle passage or performing back breaking work under brutal slave masters and tropical heat would find solace in his nuanced history, much of which seems to have been downloaded from Wikipedias entry on Britains West Africa Squadron.

Deflection, rather than nuance, is what Davis is about. His attitude to Britains role in the slave trade is to acknowledge the shame without explanation of cause or content in order to shift the focus. For thousands of years, humanity had been characterised by the enslavement of one people by another. Over 550 years ago, Europeans began the transatlantic slave trade. While Britain was not the worst practitioner of this evil, we must acknowledge our part; we can no more re-write history than those who tear down statues.

The Tories are keen to turn the history curriculum into a fable about British values, and for Davis the act of ending the slave trade and slavery in the Caribbean is a cause for celebration. So he doesnt dwell on the horrors Britain imposed on foreign subjects, he moves quickly to explain how Britain became the worlds leading force in the emancipation of slaves.

Perhaps Black Lives Matter should take the knee in gratitude to their white emancipators! The history of Britains West Africa Squadron, if the Tories get their way, will no doubt gain a place in the curriculum so that the good parts of the British Empire can be learned. Davis says:

Founded in 1808, the West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy had the singular purpose of stopping transatlantic slave ships. For over 60 years, the force patrolled international waters, captured 1,600 slaver ships and rescued 150,000 slaves.

And (wiping a tear from his patriotic eye): It was an astonishing tale of derring-do and heroism, of great deeds done solely for the purpose of destroying a great evil.

This line of argument might absorb some undefended minds in academia, but not many. Setting the record straight on the West Africa Squadron isnt too difficult. More importantly it is part of the history of imperial expansion with solid capitalist motives.

The idea that Britain was a force for decency in the world in the nineteenth century is laughable. Britain was a capitalist force for profits. A list of British ruling-class crimes in search of profits across the globe is too long to go into. Historians like Eric Williams have their counterparts across the globe in former British colonies, and it is better to let them recount their own tales of British heroism and decency. If the British hadnt wiped out the peoples of Tasmania man, woman and child, perhaps they could join in the chorus of approval.

The West Africa Squadron came from the 1807 Act abolishing the slave trade. The thinking was that if Britain had just closed off a market to British subjects they were damned if French, Spanish or Portuguese traders would benefit. For Davis, Britain was all about upholding justice on behalf of conquered peoples in the same way as the USA has considered itself a world policeman in our times. In reality, Britains desire for international justice, as with the USA, was closely linked to the imperial project of gaining British naval supremacy. Britain ruled the waves and waived the rules.

Michael Jordan has successfully debunked Britains honourable abolitionist claims in The Great Abolition Sham (The History Press 2005). Jordan shows that the Act abolishing the slave trade in 1807 contained provisions that pleased the anti-abolitionists. Slaves seized by the navy were treated as prizes by the terms of the Act. They were often dragooned into Caribbean regiments that had been decimated by disease. They were indentured in the same way as apprentices, but without pay. The Act therefore maintained plantation slavery.

Britain waived the rules by turning a blind eye to ships flagged with countries with whom a mutual trading interest was established. At the Congress of Vienna, where the chance to abolish slave trading was on the agenda, the British, represented by Castlereagh, consented to allow the Bourbon regime in France to continue trading to restock French colonies.

Stopping the slave trade took up only a small number of ships but was an important part of the assertion of British naval supremacy. Britains domination of the Atlantic and West African shipping lanes was to have a massive pay-off when European nations partitioned Africa in a frenzy of imperialist robbery after 1875. Britain secured all the most profitable parts of Africa and ruled their new subjects as racist overlords. Apartheid in South Africa is just one such example from many.

The final point in this debate was made by Eric Williams himself. Emancipation meant little for the freed slaves without their being given some means of support that would help them make an independent living. The former slaves were plantation workers in the main. They were trapped on islands dominated by plantation agriculture. Abolitionist freedom meant the triumph of the free market, an imperialist economic victory. The former slaves were not made economically equal and therefore remained unfree.

Racism, the most obvious British value in the Caribbean, was the ideological cement of British rule. In 1865 at Morant Bay in Jamaica the former slaves rose in rebellion. British troops crushed the rebellion in what came to be known as the Morant Bay Massacre. Whole villages were burned. Those who could not vouch for their innocence were shot, hanged and flogged. Women were hung from trees and some were flogged by British soldiers.

David Davis MP chose not to mention Morant Bay. Too much nuancing obviously spoils a good yarn.

Williams thesis is a major challenge to the history taught in schools and universities. The challenge is dealt with in the time honoured liberal fashion of misrepresenting Williams through omission and exaggeration, and attacking what is left.

For example, A level students studying the abolition of the slave trade are informed by the exam board textbook that:

The weakness of [Williams] argument lies in the definitive assertion that economic considerations were the primary motive for abolition and that every action is motivated by it. This polemical approach reduces the importance of other factors and therefore by focussing so intently upon one feature, opens itself up to criticism.i

This conclusion is offered to students after one introductory paragraph and a selected quotation. It is an example of liberal historical training. Williams sophisticated historical argument is disempowered by reduction that itself amounts to assertion, and this is followed up by considering an array of liberal historians to dissolve any lingering sympathy in a sea of considered liberal opinion.

And thus liberal balance is counter posed to Marxist dogma. And who would aspire to be an unbalanced dogmatist? There is not the space here to consider the liberal critics of Williams in great depth but we can counter some of the major criticisms. Williams could only be accused of focussing so intently on one feature of abolition by someone who has never read Capitalism and Slavery.

Firstly, critics of Williams have argued that the industrial revolution in Britain was not financed by the profits of slavery, rather capital was generated by developments here. The agricultural revolution, for example, freed labour for industrialisation that in turn generated labour saving inventions like steam power.

However, Williams does not argue that slavery begat capitalism, just the opposite; capitalism begat slavery. He writes:

When by 1660 the political and social upheavals of the Civil War came to an end, England was ready to embark wholeheartedly on a branch of commerce whose importance to her sugar and her tobacco colonies in the New World was beginning to be fully appreciated (p.27).

This takes Williams onto an analysis of the mercantilist system, which his critics accuse him of positing as a completely different entity to market capitalism. In chapter 2, The Development of the Negro Slave Trade, Williams shows that the mercantilist system, protected from foreign competition, was an early capitalist method of securing the European market for slave produced commodities.

Williams makes it clear that slavery suited plantation agriculture because free labour abhorred it, and this is a consideration in line with modern corporate investors who have their commodities produced by child labour that is nothing less than modern slavery. Slavery provided an abundance of labour that could be worked to death and replenished. Therefore it made economic sense, and was politically acceptable in Britain too.

In chapter 3, British Commerce and the Triangular Trade, Williams shows exactly how the industrial revolution was stimulated and paid for in good part by slavery. The reductionist criticism of Williams implies that the capitalists here waited for the profits to roll in then invested it, but his approach is far more persuasive than that. Williams shows how the triangular trade stimulated industry, agriculture and further imperial trading opportunities. It developed major seaports like Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow. In these cities industrial capitalism got a boost as well as the docks. Ship building and design, dock building and civil engineering, metal working, rope making, crane design and manufacture all took off. In these great cities industrial capitalism leapt forward contributing to the development of the system as a whole.

The implications for further imperial expansion should be obvious. It led to Britain being the workshop of the world in the nineteenth century as well as the dominant imperialist power.

The second important attack on Williams thesis comes from the American historian Seymour Drescher.

Drescher researched Williams sources and found them wanting. He reversed the Decline Thesis by showing that the abolition of the slave trade was not in line with capitalist reasoning as Williams claimed. For Drescher, the slave economy was not declining, but was actually reaching its full potential. Therefore abolishing the slave trade in 1807 dealt a death blow to a vital economic area, whether slavery was inherently evil or not. Drescher did agree that economics played a part, but not in the way Williams claimed - or in the way that Drescher claims he claimed.

Dreschers argument centres on his oft quoted view that slavery was aborted in its prime and this is the theme of his book, Econocide, published in 1976. But it is not the devastating demolition of Capitalism and Slavery that his supporters think. In the first place, recent research done by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL supports the economic arguments of Eric Williams. And Capitalism and Slavery is about much more than economics. Williams shows capitalism to be a form of political economy, not just an economy.

This is why Dreschers analysis falls flat in my view. He worships at the altar of classical economists who see capitalism as rational and virtuous. Capitalists do not always make decisions that ward off crisis and they have a long history of doing the opposite. So to say that abolition was somehow contrary to the advice offered by modern economic analysis based on new data crunching techniques is meaningless in explaining why it happened.

For example, Drescher argues that the value of plantations in the Caribbean were rising at the time of abolition, and therefore there was still profit to be made. But isolating economic data in this way exaggerates the importance of it, and by decontextualizing it, distorts it. House prices in Doncaster are rising at the moment, but the reason is not because Doncaster is booming, trust me.

Politicians and campaigners alike fight for change because of how events in the immediate past prompt them to think about the future. As Williams explains, in a quarter of a century Britain had lost American colonies, intensified the exploitation of a vast market in India, and entered into a war with another great imperialist power that would impact upon the world. Britains fortunes no longer relied on its West Indian trade. And the trajectory of British capitalism certainly went against the idea of Econocide.

The final critique from which Williams should be defended flows from the incorrect assumption that his analysis is a form of economic determinism that leaves out the actions of individuals, their courage and tenacity. When people like David Davis and William Hague eulogise William Wilberforce and the saintly Clapham Sect upon which the British abolitionist movement was largely founded, they are in fact following a tradition begun in 1807.

The abolition of the slave trade produced an astonishing volte face in the British establishment. Having spent thirty years blocking all attempts at abolition of the slave trade, once the act of abolition was passed they celebrated it as a triumph for the whole nation. Amid the outpouring of articles, engravings and plates depicting Britannia trampling on the emblems of slavery, the Duke of Norfolk opined that abolition was, the most humane and merciful Act which was ever passed by any legislature in the world.

In chapter 10, The Saints and Slavery, Williams deals with something Marxists are well acquainted with: appearance and reality. Williams intention is not to deny the many commendable attributes of the abolitionists, rather he seeks to set their actions in a changing economic and political world. He writes of the abolitionists: The humanitarians were the spearhead of the onslaught which destroyed the West Indian system and freed the Negro (p.169).

He goes on: The British humanitarians were a brilliant band. Thomas Clarkson personifies all the best in the humanitarianism of the age. His praise is limited to a few of the brilliant band, perhaps too few, but his intention is to reveal what lies beneath.

The abolitionists were not radicals. In their attitude to domestic problems they were reactionary. The Methodists offered the workers Bibles instead of bread and Wesleyan capitalists exhibited open contempt for the working class. Wilberforce was familiar with all that went on in the hold of a slave ship but ignored what went on at the bottom of a mineshaft (p.170).

Williams doesnt write this maliciously. He correctly locates the limited space that humanitarianism enjoyed. The arguments for abolition never strayed into anti-capitalist sentiment even though there was huge popular support for abolition in working-class districts. To connect chattel slavery with wage slavery in mine and mill never entered their heads. Their strategy was purely parliamentarian.

In the abolitionist propaganda and petitions that roasted the planter class, there was no condemnation of their racism. Rather they were fellow Christians who had strayed into cruelty. The humanitarians regularly played on anti-mercantilist sentiment too.

In the call to abolish slavery in the Caribbean many abolitionists supported boycotting West Indian sugar in favour of Brazilian and Indian sugar. Did they know nothing of the appalling conditions suffered by free labour there?

The fact is that the abolitionists pursued a moral cause with determination. When their appeal coincided with favourable economic arguments for abolition, the establishment, at the time and since, chose to seize on the moral arguments to deflect from the economic reasons. This was done to present capitalism as virtuous, and is in substance exactly the same as presenting a war for oil as a war for democracy.

Capitalism and Slavery is a must read book and is the essential starting point for a new readership. It is a book that will hold the readers attention, and presents a powerful analysis in a persuasive and easy to understand way. Reading it is a pleasure.

There are certainly aspects of this topic that Williams does not cover in great depth; it is a relatively short book. One area that students will want to explore further is the role of slaves in freeing themselves, and a good place to follow this up is through the work of C.L.R. James. James was Williams mentor and his book, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint LOuverture and the San Domingo Revolution, is a masterpiece.

i Challenges to the authority of the state in the late 18th and 19th centuries (Pearson 2015), p.121

Counterfire is expanding fastas a website and an organisation. We are trying to organise a dynamic extra-parliamentary left in everypart of the country tohelp build resistance to the government and their billionaire backers. If you like what you have read and youwant to help, please join us or just get in touch by emailing [emailprotected] Now is the time!

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Capitalism and Slavery - book review - Counterfire

JAMES Watson (Letters, April 8) repeats the oft-expressed canard that our children and grandchildren will have to pick up the bill for the National Debt. This is just incorrect. The National Debt started in 1694 and has grown steadily with the economy ever since. It has never nor will it ever be repaid.

It is not a debt in the domestic sense. Money is created by the government and the difference between government expenditure and taxes raised is added to the National Debt under double-entry accounting rules. It is a debt to the Bank of England which is in turn owned by government so repayment would simply deflate the economy.

Banks create money under licence from the government. To maximise the economy there should be full employment at decent wages. If banks create insufficient money to achieve this in the private sector then government should do so by spending in the public sector.

The only limit to public expenditure is from the onset of wage-driven inflation which government can address by reduced expenditure and increased taxes.

Current inflation is due largely to the rise in international commodity prices. No amount of interest rate fiddling by the Bank of England can address this.

There is no reason why Rishi Sunak cannot help the impending poverty and hardship for those at the bottom of the social scale. Only political dogma, economic ignorance and characteristic meanness of spirit prevents this. He did so when Covid hit so why cannot he do it again?

John Moreland, Killearn.

COST OF LIVING WILL BE KEY FACTOR

REBECCA McQuillan ("Dont celebrate yet, Nicola. SNP reign could be shaken by cost-of-living crisis", The Herald, April 8) puts forward some interesting analysis regarding voting patterns and the forthcoming local elections. The cost of living crisis is going to impact on every household in the country as she says, but it will disproportionately affect the vulnerable who include those on benefits (and state pensions) who received a lower-than-inflation increase from the Chancellor.

Ms McQuillan mentions recent opinion polls; one of the findings was that 63% of voters felt Finance Secretary Kate Forbes should be doing more in the midst of the crisis, sentiments I am sure Ms Forbes would agree with. However, the Scottish Parliament has no borrowing powers, its hands are tied and is dependent on Rishi Sunak whose response to the cost of living crisis was to give every household a 200 loan, to be paid back, and to reduce household council tax bills by 150 per year. All very well, but if you are exempt from paying council tax, you may well be missing out on 150 and if you are living in fuel poverty, paying back a loan could be the straw that breaks the camels back.

This cost of living crisis is a real one for millions of hard-working families, millions who depend on benefits and millions who have been grateful for the Scottish Governments mitigating measures in the form of its welfare fund, which has increased massively during the pandemic. The Scottish Government has prioritised tackling child poverty, as Ms McQuillan alluded to, with the Scottish Child Payment due to more than double this year to 25 a week.

The cost of living will certainly be a factor in the local elections how could it not be? Voters will have the final say and they have given a clear verdict over the last decade and half here in Scotland. At no time during this time has Scotland voted for a Conservative government at Westminster, or for that matter, a Labour or LibDem majority in Scotland, and with the present opposition in Scotland I dont think that is about to change any time soon.

Catriona C Clark, Falkirk.

LET DOWN BY OUR LEADERS

THINGS are not working in our country at the moment, nor have they been for several years. I agree with Kevin McKenna's column ("Sturgeon and Salmond should move on: Their time is over", The Herald, April 9) with regards to Scotland. Boris Johnson should now not be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and those in his own sycophantic party who voted him into that very important position should hang their heads in shame.

Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and others are not fit to hold the positions in which they find themselves the former because he is currently living up to the oft-quoted phrase "there are three kinds of lies; lies, damned lies, and statistics", and the latter because, as Lawrence Pertillar says in his poem Wishes to be Liked", "Nor will I ever believe one I suspect, To have a leadership position.

But cannot make a decision. With kept wishes to be liked."

I am so, so angry about the political state of our country, and indeed the world, that I spent time tracing a copy of a poem called Parable of the Talents by the American Octavia E Butler, which I wish to repeat here:

"Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be lead by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery".

Sadly the last sentence cannot be heard by the Russians who are living under the rule of Putin.

Walter Paul, Glasgow.

BUCK STOPS WITH THE VOTERS

I WOULD disagree with Nicola Sturgeon's mealy-mouthed acceptance of blame while tying herself in knots with the double negative "I didn't not say to sign the ferry contracts" and "we are a collective therefore the buck stops with me".

I say this, not in her defence, but because she is simply exploiting the gullible electorate who have voted her and the SNP back into power despite her previous "judge me on education" Curriculum for Excellence lying in tatters, and they may vote for her again. No, the buck stops with them, not Ms Sturgeon.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. But it seems she can fool some of them all the time.

Voters should remember this the next time they or a loved one's consultation or medical procedure is cancelled or comes too late, when they cannot get an appointment or procedure this side of Christmas. Many still seem unaware it is the Scottish Government that has full autonomy over the NHS in Scotland but clap like performing seals when the First Minister deflects this as the fault of a big bad posh Tory in Westminster.

They should remember this when they are driving around the traffic cones, barriers, temporary traffic lights and over the thousands of potholes on their way to the polling booth and perhaps think of how many drug deaths could have been avoided, food banks made extinct, littered streets cleaned and services supported with the millions squandered on malicious prosecutions, compensation pay-outs, pretendy foreign embassies and the ferry follies while reducing the shipbuilding pride of the Clyde to joke status.

No, it's not Ms Sturgeon; the buck stops with us.

Allan Thompson, Bearsden.

CREDIT TO THE PM WHERE IT'S DUE

STEWART F Falconer (Letters, April 8), asserts that there is not one thing that Boris Johnston can be proud of.

I will give off the top of my head just two examples. The first was his swift decision-making when this dreadful Covid virus first raised its head and showed it was a truly deadly danger to mankind. Whilst other countries dithered and procrastinated, especially the EU members, Mr Johnson acted by investing billions to find and secure a safe vaccine from scratch. Had he waited like everyone else who knows how many extra thousands would have died or been seriously ill and of course as a result of which, the NHS would have fallen over.

The second is the leadership role the Prime Minister has taken in Ukraine in terms of sanctions and aid. It is on record that its President acknowledges the vital role undertaken by the UK Government in supplying the defensive armaments that has helped to mitigate the still-dreadful death toll being suffered by the Ukrainian people.

So yes, I agree with the sentiments expressed in the letter of April 6 from Allan Sutherland which so upset Mr Falconer. Partygate, Wallpapergate and the rest of the gates still to be unearthed can wait their time to be answered, but in the meantime give credit where it is due to this Prime Minister.

James Martin, Bearsden.

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Letters: Sunak could easily help the poor. Why won't he? - HeraldScotland

Morgenthau, one of the twentieth centurys foremost scholars of international relations, believed the state was the highest authority on the international stage, making the creation and enforcement of international law far more difficult than in a domestic context.

A brief comparison between the US Constitution and the UN Charter illustrates his point. The US Constitution, as those of who have followed the raging debate on gun control with horror will know, is the subject of constant discussion and revising in the United States.

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Since its drafting, the constitution has been subject to 27 amendments which have covered everything from abolition of slavery and the right of women to vote to the national prohibition of alcohol and the creation of presidential term limits reforms which have transformed power relations within the United States and changed the way its citizens live their daily lives.

In contrast, the UN Charter appears to be fixed in aspic. Since its drafting in 1945 admittedly almost 200 years later than the US Constitution the founding text of the United Nations has seen only five changes made. Four of these were to expand internal bodies like United Nations Security Council or the Economic and Social Council as more states joined and the single qualitative amendment to the UN Charter in 1968 was, ironically, to change the requirements for amending the Charter. After that, and one more for another increase in the

size of the Economic and Social Council in 1973, the UN Charter has not been updated since.

Who could not argue that the world has been transformed since 1945? Not only have the powers of the world waxed and waned, with countries like India and Germany having emerged as influential global actors just as Russia becomes an international pariah, but the technologies states use today to wage war would have been unimaginable to those drafting the charter in 1945.

For centuries, battlefields looked like the Somme. They were distant fields, far from towns and cities, where men fought and died. Todays wars, however, are waged predominantly in urban environments where civilians are increasingly forced into the firing line. Across the

world, cities which have stood for centuries Aleppo, Bucha, Gaza, Mosul are now synonymous with the murder of innocent people in their living rooms and on the streets of their home.

Yet long after this horrifying development has become the norm in modern conflict, international law has struggled to adapt. As war returns to the European continent, it does so in a new way with new weapons and new methods of killing without a human being ever needing to step foot on the battlefield.

And just as these new forms of warfare emerge, the international order which must regulate them is at risk: both from the unprecedented assault from rogue states like Putins Russia but also from the gentle erosion of its relevance through a lack of enforcement.

Indeed, this was the topic of discussion when I took part in negotiations to limit the use of explosive weapons in populated areas at the UN in Geneva this week. Now, 90% of the victims of these weapons, designed mostly for open battlefields rather than populated areas, are civilians. We are seeing it now in Ukraine, with Russian forces targeting peoples homes, schools, hospitals, and train stations.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the US Constitution, argued to the end of his days that the text he had drafted was a living document to be shaped and updated by every generation so that it may remain as relevant to them as it was to its drafters. No society, he argued can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law.

Jeffersons centuries-old warning was right. The well-meaning drafters of laws and norms around the use of force in international relations created an international system born from the ashes of the Second World War and respected by those who remembered its horrors. As that generation passes, the system they created must continue to be strengthened.

In the absence of a universally accepted hierarchy of power in international relations, Morgenthau argued that states must assume responsibility for the creation and enforcement of international law. It is not enough to create an international architecture of treaties and

agreements then leave it to wither and rot under an empty sky.

States must nurture and update these treaties to not only make them relevant to the modern international system, but actively enforce them.

Words on a page will not bring about world peace. The UN is and will remain the foremost architect of an international order which can create and preserve peace among nations but only if these rules are enforced by states.

If we believe that an enforceable system of international laws, norms and treaties are the best way to keep us free and at peace, then we must be willing to not only defend that system from the assault it is currently under, but ensure we breathe new life into it to be robust enough for the moment we find ourselves in. That will take leadership.

From the use of chemical weapons in Syria to Putins war of aggression against his neighbours, global leaders have broken international law with little or no meaningful consequences. Just last month, the Prime Minister described Saudi Arabia a state which orchestrated the murder of a journalist and the dismemberment of his corpse as a key international partner.

Putins abhorrent crimes in Ukraine did not emerge from nowhere: he saw that the international rules-based order has been freely violated by many including himself for years and that no consequences were ever faced. This age of impunity must end.

Stewart McDonald MP is the SNP spokesperson on Defence

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Now 90% of victims of weapons of war are civilians international law must react to this new reality - Stewart McDonald - The Scotsman

Claire Schwartz: How would you describe the current political landscape as represented by the field of presidential candidates?

Franoise Vergs: On the far right you have Marine Le Pen [the National Rally candidate] and ric Zemmour [the journalist and pundit who has long cultivated relationships with far-right politicians]. And then you have Valrie Pcresse [who is running on the ticket of the Soyons Libres party she founded in 2017] and Emmanuel Macron. Macron is the candidate of the right, the candidate of the dominant classes and of business. He is a neoliberal who wants to roll back the social protections that were won through the struggles of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s: retirement pensions, minimum wage, everything. He is extremely dangerous.

Houria Bouteldja: On the left, we havent had a good candidate in a long time, and now we have one in Jean-Luc Mlenchon [a former member of the Socialist Party, running as the candidate of the left-wing party La France Insoumise, which he founded]. The French left is very Islamophobic, and a few years ago Mlenchon, too, spoke about Muslims in very problematic ways. But in the past three years, hes really changed. Now he recognizes that the French police are becoming more and more fascist. And he has moved, too, on international issues. For example, in November [when France sent police to the overseas department of Guadeloupe to stamp out uprisings over Covid-19 measures and high fuel prices] he denounced the state repression of the Guadeloupean people. Im not saying that Mlenchon is a revolutionary, not at all. But in the framework of the French system, he has become very radical.

FV: On the left (in quotes because one wonders where is the left in that left), you have the Socialist Party candidate, Anne Hidalgo, the perfect figure of socialist betrayaltotally in tune with liberalism. Her policies are anti-migrant. Shes never said a word about police violence. The disappearance of that Socialist Party would not be a loss. Nathalie Arthaud for Lutte Ouvrire, a Trotskyist organization, and Phillipe Poutou for the New Anticapitalist Party, also Trotskyist. The Green Party defends a white bourgeois ecology. The Communist Party has nothing much left of communism. Another candidate of the far left did not receive enough signatures to get on the ballot.

I agree with Hourias analysis of Mlenchon. It is extremely important that Mlenchon has brought back the idea of a non-aligned position with regard to the war in Ukraine. That Western media and politicians do not understand what it means, or pretend not to, is not surprising. A short reminder. The idea for a movement of the non-aligned emerged during the 1955 Bandung conference [a gathering of people from Asian and African nations]. It concerned states that did not want to formally align themselves with either the United States or the Soviet Union, but sought to remain independent or neutral. The objectives, as described in the Treaty of the Non-Aligned Movement, were to create an independent path in world politics that would not result in member States becoming pawns in the struggles between the major powers. It was neither Washington nor Moscow, making room for opinions on global matters and wars from the South.

By endorsing a non-aligned positionrefusing the supposedly unanimous position (see the position of African and Asian states) that is not just pro-Ukraine, but also pro-NATOMlenchon is reconnecting with that history. Our task, then, is to bring content to this non-aligned movement and to refuse to let it stand in for some kind of passive pacifism, where we are against war in some general, abstract way, and not against NATO, against imperialism, against the increasing militarization of Europe. Still, I do not take a public position on the elections out of principle, because even though Mlenchon has supported the strike in Guadeloupe and protested against the repression of the Guadeloupean people, I still think his position on the overseas territories needs to be amended. Im waiting for a left that would really move forward with the processes of its own decolonization.

All the same, there is something really at stake in this election, and it is crucial that Mlenchon wins a lot of votes. It will say that something else is possible. And then we will have to work.

CS: You pointed to an anti-racist shift in Mlenchons position over the past three years. It strikes me that in that same period Macron has become increasingly explicitly Islamophobic. Can you speak to the social contexts of those changes?

HB: If you look back, youll realize that Macron was not always as Islamophobic on the face of it. He ran a campaignthe first one, in 2017where he distinguished himself by the fact that he didnt appear Islamophobic. But as head of state, he was entrapped by the states racial logic. In fact, it only took one uprisingthe gilets jaunes protests [which were sparked in 2018 by a planned rise in taxes on diesel and petrol and soon transformed into a wider anti-government movement]for him to become Islamophobic. Why? The gilets jaunes was not simply an uprising of poor whites; it was an uprising of poor whites who didnt consider Islamophobia a priority. Even if many who participated in the uprisings were themselves racistas by and large French people aretheir priority wasnt to rage against nonwhites; it was to target the state, to make social demands. And in an attempt to reconstruct unity on the basis of whitenessto reconstruct a unity between poor whites, the bourgeoisie, and the statethe bourgeois state imposed an Islamophobic agenda. In other words: The state turned poor white people against Muslims in order to prevent unity of the working classes.

FV: The anti-migrant politics do not have the vast support in France that the media suggests. French people, the youth, say to themselves: Okay, we are told we are French, i.e. white, but we are poor. We cannot find jobs. Our children cannot find jobs. In some parts of the countryside, you have to go 200 kilometers before finding a hospital. The gilets jaunes repopulated the language of the French Revolution: The people against the aristocrats. Suddenly there was a real fear among the bourgeoisie that people would turn against the state, so the state has wielded the specter of immigration to remind the French people that Frenchness is really about not being Muslim. There is a perpetual reconstitution of what it means to be French by way of these colonial and racist tropes. It very often takes place on the Muslim body, especially the body of the Muslim woman. A woman wears a burkini, andoop!the French nation-state reconstitutes itself. It is a constant process in which media, TV, films, books, declarations, manifestos, petitions, play an important role. The violent reactions of the state and the dominant classes show a deep fear of losing their position.

CS: Where have you seen movements to contest these attempts toward reconstituting Frenchness by way of a racialized other?

HB: After George Floyd was murdered, there was a mobilization. The movement in the US was refracted in France through the struggle for justice for Adama [Traor, a Black man who died in French police custody after having been violently restrained]. Thirty thousand peoplemostly Black and Arab people, who came to France in postcolonial contextsmarched in the streets. This mass mobilization against racism, plus the gilets jaunes? For the powers that be, it was a nightmare.

The first chance that presented itself for the state to break up these mobilizations and reassert its identity was the murder of Samuel Paty [a French secondary school teacher who was beheaded, allegedly because of a lesson about free speech in which he shared cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad naked]. That moment was really a tipping point. After Patys murder, there was a general ambiance of sacred unity around the new martyrwho had died, as it was being figured, at the hands of Islam. What Mlenchon did at that moment was critical. He said, I stand by my values, which is that we need a unity of the popular classes. Against every expectation, he refused the division and separation sown by the bourgeois state. This is why Mlenchoneven as there are many things one must critique him forplayed an absolutely vital role, one that fundamentally distinguishes him from the other candidates. He is the only one who understands the function of Islamophobia as a counterrevolutionary tool. Its not that were trying to figure out whether hes a revolutionaryhes not. Still, I really do think hes something remarkable in France, where were going on 20 years of incessant Islamophobia.

CS: Where do you see these insurrectionary energies coming from?

HB: On the one hand, I attribute them to our antiracist struggles, and on the other, to the fact that the French government is becoming more and more right wing. The far right is becoming stronger and stronger.

FV: What we are seeing is really the return of the 19th-century bourgeoisievery conservative, racist, colonial, Catholic, antisemitic, anti-migrant, terrified of the proletariat. Macron is really a child of that conservative French bourgeoisie, but he is able to mask it behind his youth, his cosmopolitanism, etc. He wants to appear as the young president who will close the chapter on colonial historyso he asked historians to write reports on the war in Algeria, on the stolen objects in the museum, etc. He wants colonialism to be memorysomething people put behind themso it wont be political history, which can be activated in the present. His form of ceremonial reconciliation is aimed at erasing the radical dimensions of reparation and restitution, and representing Frenchness as a new form of humanitarianism. He says, We recognize the crime, slavery was bad, colonialism was bad, objects were stolen, etc., while at the same time carrying out an incredible repression of real reckoning. There are tremendous attacks on decolonial theory in schools and universities, for example.

We are certainly seeing a rise in new forms of fascismstate feminism, corporate feminism, attacks on the university, attacks on decolonial theorybut there is a lot of emerging discussion and debate. In the womens movement, feminists against mainstream feminism are becoming stronger. Likewise, though the repression of the gilets jaunes was really brutal, this brutalitythe police doing to white people what they have always done to people of colorshowed that, if you turn against the state, whiteness will not always protect you. This also showed the possibilitythe necessityof constructing an alliance between the poor white proletariat and decolonial movements.

HB: Peoplepoor people, including nonwhite peopleare angry, and they are expressing their anger by demonstrating in the streets.

FV: But we still have a lot of work to do to connect antiracism and antifascism. Not all antifascists have been connected with antiracist movements.

CS: The ongoingness of colonial histories finds vexed expression in the figure of ric Zemmour, an Algerian Jew who takes no pains to couch his Islamophobic and anti-migrant racism. As far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Penthe father of current presidential candidate Marine Le Pentold the French newspaper Le Monde: The only difference between ric and me is that hes Jewish. Its hard to call him a Nazi or a fascist. This gives him greater freedom. In opposition to the historical idea of the Jew as Frances other, we now see this figure of the Jew as, in a manner of speaking, the fullest realization of French nationalism. How might we understand Zemmour in historical context?

HB: I think you can consider Zemmour from a psychoanalytic anglebut psychoanalysis tied to political history. His neuroses are really a product of republican integration. Hes a good student, in a manner of speaking. That is to say, his parents accepted the narrative of integration. They came from Algeria. They were Jews, but not too much. They were first and foremost French. I imagine that when one is a Jew from Algeria in a France that is simultaneously Arabophobic and antisemitic, one is very worried about structural racism, and that worry shaped their route to integration, which is the only thing France offers everyone. In fact, I think Zemmour is tortured by this journey that he wants to complete. He wants to disappear the Jew in him, and he cant stand to see Muslims or other Jews who want to maintain a sense of their identity. And, in fact, this completely delirious Islamophobia is in response to a Muslim world that accepts itself and doesnt hidewhere people observe Ramadan, go to the mosque, have Muslim or Arab names. He wants all victims of racism to stop resisting and dissolve into the sea of whiteness. He wants to make it all disappear because people who resist remind him of his own cowardice. In other words, he wants everyone to make the same sacrifice he made.

His attempts to rehabilitate Marshal Ptain [chief of state of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944], who participated in the final solution, are the logical conclusion of his journey. In undertaking this process of hysterical assimilation, Zemmour is saying, in a certain way: I want the French to exterminate meculturally, if not physically. Hes saying, in fact: I want the whites to finish their work.

France produced this creature. Hes a creature of colonialism because hes Algerian. Hes a creature of the relationship of France to nonwhites in general and to Jews in particular.

FV: It is important to remember, too, that even if Ptain is widely recognized as a collaborationist of Nazism, many Vichy-era judges, magistrates, police chiefs, army officers and civil servants remained in their posts after the war, or found careers in the overseas departments and then back in France again. The full circulation of their violence is not often discussed.

One of the most infamous figures is Maurice Papon, who was the secretary general for the police in Bordeaux [during World War II], where he participated in the deportation of Jewish children. And then he became the prefect of Constantine [during the Algerian War], where he repressed and tortured Algerians. In 1961, as a prefect in Paris, he orchestrated the October 17th massacre of Algerians demonstrating against the curfew that was imposed on them. So, at the state level, there is profound complicity between colonial repression and antisemitism. When Papon was on trial for the deportation of Jewish children, the 1961 massacre was not included in the accusation. But colonialism and the making of antisemitic France are deeply connected.

CS: Even as these circuits of violence expose how antisemitism and colonialism have both been mechanisms for reconstituting French nationalism, theres also a way that the Holocaustthat urtext of antisemitic violenceis repeatedly called up in conversations at the highest level of the state. Whats the role of the memory of the Holocaust in particular in the construction of contemporary Frenchness?

FV: Its part now of the national narrative. We atone for that. Vichy was bad. And so now we can be past that. But it allows for the weaponization of the specter of antisemitism. There are Islamophobic Jewish organizations in France, condemning BDS, and anything that appears pro-Palestinian.

CS: After the election, what comes next for the left and for decolonial struggle in France?

HB: After the elections, the conversation about decolonialism will die down among the white left. We are in a dialectical relationship with them. In a certain sense, the left vampirizes us, taking over the management of our questions. That is to say, in order for the left in France to represent itself in a certain way, it is necessary to make us disappear. Their movement is not our movement. Even if Mlenchon is more interesting than the other candidates on the question of Islamophobia, and more sympathetic to our struggles against police violence, he is not us.

The elections are cyclical, but the struggle is continuous. We will continue to pursue our project of building an international decolonial movement. We began one important iteration of this project in May 2018, when we convened the first Bandung du Nord conference, an international gathering of nonwhite movements and people in Paris, in a historical filiation with the 1955 Bandung. Whereas the original conference gathered nonwhite people in alliance with all of the colonized South, we called our reworking the Bandung of the North because our task is to create an alliance of nonwhite people living in the Northto think together about the coarticulation of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. And inside of these articulations, were thinking about questions of gender, ecology, economy, capitalism, etc.but always on the condition that our anti-racism is formulated in terms of an anti-imperialist struggle. In France, any struggle that is anti-racist without attending to anti-imperialism will produce an integrationist politicbecause that would mean that were looking to improve our situation only within the imperial borders of the Republic. We are not.

We believe that the South leads its own struggle. If one needs to fight against Muammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad, African autocrats, or whoever, we are in solidarity with people who lead those struggles, but we do not lead them. Our best mode of solidarity with the global South is to fight against our own imperialismright now, against Macron, against NATOand therefore to liberate the South, in a certain sense, from us.

More here:

Waiting on the French Left to Decolonize Itself - Jewish Currents

Followers are criticizing TikTok influencer Drew Afualo, whos known for public takedowns of misogynists, over her partnership with Shein, a fast-fashion brand that has been accused of exploiting its workers.

Afualo, who has 6.9 million TikTok followers, posted about her brand deal with Shein on March 16. In her video, she shows off a haul of items she has from Sheins SheinX collection, which is a collaboration with independent designers. The TikToker also alerts viewers of a discount code they can use when shopping at Shein.

https://www.tiktok.com/@drewafualo/video/7075852791062908206?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7016721189293147654

Afualo defended her partnership against critical comments, stating that not everyone can afford to shop sustainably, sustainable fashion is a privilege, and that commenters are casting stones from a glass house. She also cited that Shein sells affordable plus-size clothing. (The Daily Dot has reached out to Afualo for comment via email.)

Shortly after Afualo posted about the partnership, TikTokers posted videos criticizing the move. TikToker @agojaa said she was disappointed in Afualo and cautioned viewers against [glorifying] influencers.

It really saddens me that Drew chose to collaborate with a brand which is well known for exploiting people, focusing on fast fashion, and microtrends, @agojaa says in her video, which by Thursday had been viewed over 35,000 times. Which are probably the biggest issue in fast fashion at the moment.

She also says Drews haul was problematic itself and that she disagrees with Afualos promoting and profiting off of Shein.

An investigation from Sixth Thone found that some of Sheins factories are considered a fire risk, and the BBC reported on an investigation from Public Eye that found that Shein employees work extended hours to make a living wage.

Alice March, another TikToker, posted her thoughts about the partnership on March 22. She said that even though she fucking [loves] Afualo, she was upset that the influencer publicized how much money she has made via TikTok and then implied that she cannot afford to shop sustainably or buy clothes in her size from a brand other than Shein.

The problem isnt you shopping fast fashion, March says, addressing Afualo in her video that got over 25,000 views. Its you being a front face to you supporting women and speaking against men. And then promoting a company that completely exploits women in other countries. (The Daily Dot reached out to @agojaa and March via Instagram direct message.)

TikToker and climate activist Karishma Porwal announced she was unfollowing Afualo because of the partnership.

Its the blatant lack of accountability in her comment section that really disappointed me, Porwal says in a TikTok posted on Friday that received over 67,000 views. Yes, you deserve to dress cute. And women of the global South deserve to eat. They deserve to save up for their children to send them to school. They deserve to work in a factory that wont collapse on them.

In a phone interview with the Daily Dot, Porwal said she referenced what she learned from watching The True Cost, a 2015 documentary about the labor practices involved in fast fashion production.

In the comments section of a follow-up video, Porwal apologized for speaking for plus-size women like Afualo and assuming her financial situation. However, Porwal doubled down on her take on the partnership.

Any influencer being paid by Shein/Zara/H&M or any other fast fashion brand is accepting money made from slavery, Porwal commented.

The same day that Porwal posted her initial TikTok, Afualo tweeted a response to the criticism. She said critics were reducing [her] character down to nothing more than one deal [they] PERSONALLY dont care for is trash.

Watching thin women try to call my feminism performative after seeing one brand deal they dont like, truly is so rotten, Afualo tweeted.

While @agojaa and March havent posted about whether or not they received backlash for their videos about Afualo, Porwal posted a TikTok saying that she was receiving messages telling her to kill herself for criticizing Afualo.

In her TikTok, she included a screenshot of a tweet that tells Afualo to keep [her] foot on their necks, they being people criticizing Afualo. At the time of publication, the tweet appeared in Afualos likes on Twitter.

In a phone interview with the Daily Dot, Porwal said that the tweet was such a violent thing to say and that Afualo liking it was problematic.

Porwal also told the Daily Dot that Afualo blocked her on TikTok.

That, to me, is a telltale sign of like, you know that youre wrong. And you dont want to be held accountable for what happened, Porwal told the Daily Dot. You dont want to have a conversation.

*First Published: Apr 7, 2022, 2:54 pm CDT

Tricia Crimmins is the IRL staff writer at the Daily Dot. She is also a New York-based comedian studying at Columbia Journalism School. Previously, she has written for Mashable, Complex Networks, and Moment magazine. She can be found on Twitter at @TriciaCrimmins.

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Its the blatant lack of accountability: Anti-misogyny TikTok influencer accused of hypocrisy over Shein partnership - The Daily Dot