ONE Adam Smith’s passing observations in his book The Wealth of Nations is that humans resort to trade, exchange, the Market, as an alternative to war. We all know that war decimates. It decimates human civilisation and the ecology. If you want something which I have, why not trade, exchange, come to the big bargaining yard, the Market, instead of robbing it, grabbing it, fighting over it? Or killing our families, leaders, classes, elites, governments, nations over it? Thus, Markets are as old as human civilisation. Markets predate Capitalism by thousands of years. Markets might have been invented as a civilising instrument, to avoid war.

Additionally, Smith’s insight suggests, or leads to the conclusion that if trade, exchange, or the Market is unfair, then war could result. If Market does not achieve equity then war could result. The Market equilibrium must therefore be guided by a moral equilibrium. Thus, all labour, from top to bottom – from the masters of industry, government, to the ordinary workers, journeymen, artisans, proletarians, civil servants – deserve equity in the labour Market. Moreover, putting aside equity, if the parties buying and selling their labour, assets, resources, are unhappy with the exchange or trade, there will be, resentment, dis-ease, war!

Karl Marx developed this idea in his analysis of labour and class warfare. His idea was that the workers, servants, serfs, peasants, peons, plebeians, proletarians, under Capitalism, were exploited. This is because the masters bought the labour of the workers at undervalued rates. And Capitalist ideology codified and enshrined this undervaluation. This ideology, reinforced by church, school, law, the media etc, facilitated this undervaluation, smoothened over this contradiction, making the worker not recognize the real value of his labour. The master, however, understood value: he would take the surplus of this undervalued labour and create wealth for himself; or for his family; or for the elite group to which he belonged. The surplus, therefore, perpetuated the ideology which kept the workers blind to the contradictions, the inequity inherent in wage labour.

Marx’s solution to this entrenched system of undervaluation of labour, this inequity, was social war. Actual physical social war. It was the task of the workers to overthrow the bourgeois class and form a proletarian revolution. The social war would lead to Socialism; and economic system which would, he presumed, lead to equity. Social war and revolution were imperative because the labour Market was oppressive, leading to a perpetual recycling of an oppressive ideology. In other words, in the absence of equity, fair trade and exchange, a fair Market, the solution was revolution, the overthrow of the master class.

Today’s Classical Economics perpetuates inequities in our relations of trade, exchange and the Market. This is why one may safely say that modern Classical Economics is the nursemaid of oppression of the ordinary persons, the masses.

This Economics has invented a word: externality. An externality describes what the United States refers to, in its bombing campaigns, as fallout: collateral damage.

So if a US drone goes on a killing mission against an Afghan elder, bombs him, or breaks his head or legs, and in the process an entire wedding party gets wiped out, these deaths are regarded as externalities, fallout, collateral damage. Classical economists, corporation heads, government leaders, the financial chiefs of banks, do the same when it comes to executing projects.

Thus, for example, if the Government wishes to build a megaproject across thirteen communities, it will get a contractor costing for the highway. What is the cost of labour, aggregate, contractors fees, contractor’s time, demolition of property, legal fees, engineering fees, work preparation, etc? This is good. This is put onto the Government’s accounting books. These, as far as it is concerned, are the costs. But what are the other costs? The externalities?

The cost of the destruction of already existing street connectivity? The costs of the dislocation, fragmentation, destruction of homes, cultural centers, community? The costs of the alienation of agricultural lands? The costs of destroying multi-billion dollar businesses and commercial networks? The cost of the disruption of secure systems of land tenure and inheritance? The ecological costs to wetlands and mountain sides, the off-site impacts? The costs of flooding and flood relief? Like the extermination of the wedding party in Afghanistan, these costs are not factored into the Government’s costs. They are regarded as invisible: externalities.

The concept of externality is a clever way of hiding theft and surplus wealth. Just as Marx calculated that surplus labour value goes to the masters to perpetuate the system of oppression; so too, the surplus gained from the undervaluing or non-evaluation of externalities goes to the financial, commercial, contracting, corporate and Government elites.

What is made invisible, not accounted for, goes under the counter. In other words, the terms of trade and exchange are not fair. Externalities mean skimming. It often involves the monetization of invaluable social, economic, ecological and financial assets the better to distribute to the governing elites.

That is how and why revolution and wars begin; with such fundamental inequities in the terms of trade, exchange and Market disequilibrium. That is why these elites must be perpetually called to account. Why we need an accounting revolution. Because elites will use surplus externality value to keep robbing the valued assets of the polity and the masses; and moreover use this surplus to continue to oppress them.

WAYNE KUBLALSINGH