This post is a bit of an experiment: partly holiday blog and partly a bunch of random thoughts about political economy. I don’t know whether it will work, but lets see.

The bus from Lübeck dropped me off at the corner of Skandanaviankai and Skandanavianallee. I was about to go on a journey… yes, that’s it. Scandanavia. I could see the ferry terminal down the road, but it had numerous signs saying no pedestrians, giving me the impression that to walk down this road was to be crushed by a big truck. But seeing no alternative pedestrian route, I walked it anyway. I walked through a barren road, filled with weeds, tarmac, and piles of containers destined for who-knows-where. The road widened and directed vehicles to get into the right lane. I followed signs to Malmö, and walked through corridors through parked trucks. Barriers appeared in front of me, where passengers would get their passport checked, and saw a woman in a fluorescent jacket behind a railing. “Excuse me!” I asked, “How do I get to the passenger terminal?” “Oh, hello Mr. Lee! Just take a walk up those stairs by the barrier, and cross over the bridge. I’ll be over in a minute.” “Thanks!” I said. Wait. What? How did this woman know who I was? As I walked, I wondered whether this was a Kafka novel, where all manner of confusing signs had been placed in front of me, simply for the purpose of confusing me, whether I was somehow expected to be lost in this ferry port. I went over the bridge and waited in the reception. The woman, I found out was called Olga, and knew my name because I was the only foot passenger on her list today.

As you do, I was starting on Marx’s Capital Vol II on this holiday. While Vol I has been recognised as a literary classic, Vol II was unfinished, unappreciated and ignored. There are some good reasons for this. It is dry, confusing, and has little of the fantastic literary style of Vol I. David Harvey does a great job in A Companion To Marx’s Capital: The Complete Edition of explaining this, but also describes how ignoring Vol II has left a massive gap in the theory. Harvey’s later work explains how capitalism constantly reshapes the environment. Natural land is built on, farmed, modified; industries built up; roads and transport constructed; then new technology appears, and these industries are abandoned. Capitalism constantly changes our landscapes and cities as businesses compete to build new technology and gain competitive advantage, while old infrastructure is worthless and left to rot and rust. We can see this in the way that major ports in the UK lie abandoned; while massive airports have emerged in our cities instead. Our urban environment is always in flux in capitalism.

This ferry terminal at Travemund was an example of this. In the past, ferries were very popular ways to travel. Before low-cost air travel, ferries were the way many people would travel. Even in the 90s, they were still popular, and I used to take the ferry to Esbjerg in Denmark most years with my family. But these passenger ferries no longer run, unable to compete with modern air travel. The last one from Newcastle to Denmark left in 2014. I still have good memories of these journeys. I loved the little cabins with portholes looking out to sea, standing on deck and watching the waves, and of course, the 90s arcade machines with games like R-Type. (Speaking of old technologies, the 90s arcades with controls consisting of no more than a joystick and a couple of buttons to bash at 20p a go were so much better than new modern ones! An I’m not just saying in because I’m a grump.). However, these sentimental attachments to modes of travel mean little in a world driven by technological innovation, merciless competition, and profit.

In the present, and on the deck of the ferry to Malmo, I had a good view of the port. The space around port had probably been incredibly diverse in wildlife before this port was built, an environment where marsh and reeds were common, where silt piled up next to the banks, and where sea and fresh water merged. All this was gone on this port now: it was covered in tarmac. I could see a clear footpath, the path I should have taken to get to the terminal, but it seemed like there were no signs anymore. I guess so few foot passengers got the bus that they didn’t bother with signs now. It may have been a common passenger terminal in the past, but now my field of view was covered in frieght containers, like a sort-of industrial-scale Legoland. Diggers churned up the remaining soil I could see. Even though I most of my vision was of tarmac and containers, evidently, this wasn’t enough space. Capitalism demands constantly growing economy: more stuff sent to more places for more people to spend and consume. The passengers on the ship had changed too. Rather than families and holiday-makers like I used to see on the ferries, everyone else on this ship appeared to be a truck driver. As well as changing the built environment, capitalism changes demographics too; the people that took this ferry were different demographic section to the ones I shared ferries with when I was younger.

It wasn’t particularly romantic, but I still had my sentimental attachment to sea-travel, and I greatly enjoyed the journey. I focused on reading. In everyday life, I don’t often focus on reading for long periods, without getting distracted, but here I was forced to, which was challenging but eventually very enjoyable. The ferry lasted about ten hours. Some of the time I just watched the sea, and eventually I got a fantastic sunset to watch. Before docking in Malmo, I even got to go right under the famous bridge from Denmark to Sweden. Finally, I got to meet Liz after her own trip to Sweden. Hooray!

Capitalism demands that everything be measure by price. But we can understand our sentimental attachments to things part of what Marx calls the “use-value” of things we buy. In capitalism, the price, or the “exchange-value” is everything. Considered in this way, of course people will fly instead of taking the ferry, you get from A to B much faster and possibly cheaper too; we are told there is no stopping this change of technologies, so accept that planes will replace ferry travel and move on. Capitalism would like people to have no personal attachment to products, and merely to behave as rational and logical calculating machines, we will always have feelings towards the world around us. Having an emotional attachment to our world is part of being alive, but the capitalist system can only see prices, efficiency, profit. Marx rejects this, and insists we focus on “use-value”, which includes the purpose and connection to our world, not simply a price. The “use-value” of ferry travel for me is the time it gives me to read, a feeling of calm as waves rock the ship, and time I have to sit and watch the sea. Focusing on “use-value” rather than the price leads us to conclude that profit and efficiency should not demand cheaper and faster travel. It should also be travel that enables us to connect to the world, and improves our relationships and our lives. We should aim to build genuine emotional connections to the world when we travel, because we are emotional beings. We are not capitalist automatons.

Later on this trip, I got the ferry overnight from Holland to Harwich, and similarly, I enjoyed this experience greatly. But these sentimental attachments to travel don’t mean much in a profit-driven world, and I imagine ferries will continue to decline. Even though we are regularly told that change is inevitable, the particular technological changes we see in today’s society are not necessary. They are only required because competition demands new and more efficient technologies. We are told there is nothing we can do to stop new technologies from usurping old ones, and no point in hanging onto the past. This is wrong. Our personal attachment to forms of travel we enjoy is essential.