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Wednesday, June 5, 2024

Running Commentary: Up, up and away (1987)

The Running Commentary column from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up, up and away

June is bursting out all over. And one of the biggest balloons fit to bust is that of Richard Branson, who is putting all his ego into one basket to fly in a hot air balloon across the Atlantic.

It's a strange thing for anyone to do. least of all him  surely he can afford a seat on one of the Virgin Atlantic flights. Of course it's being presented as a challenge. The media loves dramatic pictures of the rich wasting their money in ever more extravagant ways. The same reasons, the same "get up and go" mentality that is supposed to drive Richard Branson as a high-flying capitalist, breaking new markets, also apparently force him to break daft records (“Mr Branson, why do you exploit the working-class?" "Because it's there.").

The real basis behind the Atlantic crossing is as one part of the publicity for Virgin and Branson's plans to turn his £260 million business into a billion pound concern and from there make Virgin the biggest entertainments multinational in the world. That's all you'll be seeing on TV this month when the cameras cover the ocean crossing — one big advert.

Richard Branson is one of Margaret Thatcher's favourites. She originally wanted him to lead a campaign to encourage more adventurous entrepreneurial activity among British business, but he preferred the national litter brigade that is UK 2000.

As far as Thatcher is concerned never mind fly across the Atlantic, he could walk across it. His life reads like one of her speeches: he set up a small business running a record shop at the age of twenty and after fifteen years he had amassed a personal fortune worth £160 million (the average owner of a record shop would have to save their wages for ten thousand years to get that). What is not so widely known, glossed over in the life story, is that Branson found himself in a pickle early on when he tried to defraud Customs and Excise of £60,000 and was only saved from prison by his youth; and that his climb started with the help of £10,000 from a friend. Obviously the lesson for us all is that the only way to get on inside capitalism is to have the right friends and the right lawyer.

In fact, while Richard Branson is cooped up in his pressurised aluminium capsule 35.000 feet above the Atlantic for a week or so (it's his companion I feel sorry for), the profits from Virgin record company won't suddenly dry up. The money will keep rolling in — he may break records but you can be sure he plays absolutely no part in making any records. Richard Branson is not needed, he's redundant, like anyone who lives off ownership, off the work of others. It's bad enough having these parasites, but to have them parading themselves on TV . . .


Ministering to women

The Labour Party has promised that if it is elected to government it will establish a Ministry for Women with Cabinet status. A party policy document, Labour's Ministry for Women, refers scathingly to male domination within society:
With few exceptions, men make the laws, administer the laws, carry out ministerial decisions. control our industries, run our public services and negotiate pay and working conditions. Women are not in positions to articulate their demands or to ensure their needs are considered.
To overcome this male domination, Labour proposes that the Minister for Women should sit on key cabinet committees and have regular access to the Prime Minister. A House of Commons Select Committee would be set up to monitor the Women's Ministry which would be directly responsible for sex equality legislation and the updating of the Sex Discrimination and Equal Pay Acts.

For many women workers, dissatisfied with the double burden of (low) paid work outside the home and unpaid housework and childcare inside the home, fed up with the lack of good child-care facilities and concerned about health issues that particularly affect them, Labour's proposal may seem attractive.

And if Labour's analysis of the problem (as quoted above) were actually correct there might be a certain logic to setting up a Ministry for Women. But, while it is true that most (though by no means all) positions of power and influence are occupied by men, to say, as Labour does, that "men make the laws, administer the laws . . .", gives a highly misleading impression. It would be more accurate to say that a small handful of men and one or two women make the laws, and control industry and society while all the rest of us - men and women - never get a look in.

And while it is also true that in many areas of life women workers do get a worse deal than men workers and a Ministry for Women just might ensure a higher degree of equality with working men, that equality will be worth very little if it still means, as it will, that a handful of people own and control wealth and monopolise power while the rest of us are excluded from a share in either.


Persuasion

The look of scepticism takes a moment to register. You sense the turmoil going on in the mind. There is a short embarrassed laugh. "Well, of course, it's feasible, but unlikely ever to happen". Have you suggested something outrageously shocking? No, you have just presented the case for socialism. This initial acquaintance with socialism can cause severe shock to those who derive their attitudes toward life from daily helpings of the Express, or Telegraph.

Your interlocutor, still confused at having their illusions about society shattered, fixes you with a glittering eye and proceeds to catalogue reasons why socialism will remain a Utopian ideal. "We need leaders" . . . "Human beings are inherently aggressive" . . . "You will never convince the majority" . . . "The task is too daunting". A look of triumph replaces the previous incredulity as they bathe in the self-congratulatory assumption that your argument has been totally refuted.

Why should the concept of socialism prove such a difficult one to handle? For socialists the case is self-evident. The benefits of socialism are as obvious as the solution to yesterday's crossword.

However, as the prevalent ideas in society are those of the ruling-class, then the socialist propagandist has to contend with a lifetime's brainwashing. To many people, fed on a diet of carefully controlled misinformation by the media, the word socialism evokes a Pavlovian response — Reds under the bed. shortages and dull conformity — not forgetting the ultimate threat to civilisation, the replacement of Eastenders with an endless re-run of Politburo speeches. Socialism, of course, stands for none of these absurdities.

Socialists do not pretend that the transition to socialism will be perfect. However, when the world belongs to everyone and decisions are arrived at democratically by all involved in those decisions, who needs leaders? There are violent — sick — individuals in society, it is true, but contrast that with the massive, legalised, institutionalised violence committed by the state on behalf of its capitalist rulers.

The task of persuading the majority of the working class that wage slavery is not in their interests and that the means of creating a better society lie in their power, may appear daunting but to paraphrase Marx (Groucho); socialism is one club that should have us all as members.
Dave Coggan

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