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Sunday, June 2, 2024

Revolution meets Reform (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We recently attended a small SPEW meeting with the title of ‘Reform or Revolution’. There were around 8 others present, all fresh-faced and in their 20s, including two women. They were friendly enough, although the chairperson seemed surprised to see us and asked how we had got to know about their meeting (it was on their website). I told him we were SPGB and he said, ‘Ah, we know all about the SPGB’, though the other faces in the room told a different story. When I remarked that there was a bit of historical bad blood as they had stolen our name, he dismissively said, ‘Well, we are bigger than you’. Hardly a ringing endorsement of their integrity. And for all their hubris, they didn’t do any better in the election than we did (see page 5).

The much older speaker made a theatrically late entrance, and proceeded to give a motivational address designed to make the group believe that radical change might be just months or even weeks away. The claim was that workers at certain critical stages in the 20th century (France 1968, Chile 1973, Portugal 1974) had been on the point of taking over the means of production, had they not been failed or betrayed at the last minute by reactionary forces. And of course, the 1917 Bolshevik coup was an entirely successful workers’ revolution, later betrayed. This was a highly selective, even fantastical interpretation of history which a more discerning audience would likely have queried, with sources requested, but the group ate it all up with a spoon.

The group dynamic was that of acolytes and an avuncular mentor. The condescension was cuddly as a teddy bear. He did everything but hand out lollipops: ‘Now, who here can tell me what a reform is?’ The question was dumb enough to sound like a trick, so the group perversely clammed up, fearing a trap. Or they might have been thinking ‘Wait, if we’re after revolution and not reforms, how come our own election leaflet is full of them?’

We were allowed to ask some questions, which the speaker fielded deftly. On the question, would their revolution abolish money and private property, the response was an indulgent smile and an appeal to the group: ‘Now who here thinks it’s possible to achieve absolutely everything on the very first day of revolution?’ The group dutifully shook their heads. Achieve everything in one single day? How silly. And after all, lied the mentor in a CBeebies voice, the fact is that capitalism has not yet sufficiently developed the forces of production for that. Perhaps in the fullness of time the opportunity may arise for such things to be considered. So the world will be ready for socialism –some day. But as Evan Rachel Wood’s character says in the TV show Westworld, ‘Some day sounds a lot like never.’

This kind of manipulation can only ever work on young political ingénues who are never expected to question anything, and who fervently believe in the good intentions of the organisation. But it can’t last. People eventually see through bullshit. A few, persuaded by the cynical Leninist logic behind it all, may try to earn promotion to the elite ‘cadres’. Most will give up on the organisation, and maybe on politics, in disgust. Their experience would be so very different if they found us first.
Paddy Shannon

Which electoral strategy for socialists? (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood two candidates in the elections to the Greater London Assembly held on 2 May, the same day that the mayor of London was elected. We stood in the constituencies of Barnet & Camden and Lambeth & Southwark. The total electorate of these four London boroughs was 860,000, which meant that those who voted (about 340,000 did) would have seen our name and emblem on the ballot paper. Members and sympathisers distributed some 15,000 leaflets — not enough, but the bulletin sent to all 6 million electors in London stated that we were standing even though not what we were standing for.

The results were:
Barnet & Camden: Lab 70,749. Con 51,606. Green 18,405. LibDem 12,335. Reform UK 7,703. Socialist 1,639.

Lambeth & Southwark: Lab 84,768. Green 35,144. LibDem 22,030. Con 21,121. Reform UK 8,942. Socialist 2,082.
The Weekly Worker (9 May), commenting on the results, noted:
‘The London Assembly is elected by a complex combination of a party list system plus constituency candidates. The Morning Star’s Communist Party of Britain stood in the party list element, while candidates from the Socialist Party of Great Britain and TUSC stood in constituencies. (…) The CPB ranked 13th at 0.4% (10,915 votes) – an improvement on last time, when it obtained 0.3%. (…) On the left, the two SPGB candidates both came in last, with just one percent of the vote. Among the TUSC candidates, in City and East Lois Austin came in 7th (after an independent) with 4,710 (2%); April Jacqueline Ashley in Croydon and Sutton was 6th with 2,766 (0.7%); Andy Walker in Havering & Redbridge was 7th with 2,145 (1.3%); and Nancy Taaffe in North East was 6th with 5,595 (2.7%). These results show TUSC polling in the same range as the SPGB, though ahead of the CPB’.
In other words, TUSC (‘Trade Union and Socialist Alliance’), appealing to trade-union-conscious workers with a programme of attractive-sounding reforms (what used to be called ‘the minimum programme’), polled more or less the same as us standing on a straight platform of socialism — the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living with production directly to meet people’s needs, not profit —and nothing but (what used to be called ‘the maximum programme’).

These different election stances reflected the different approaches of us and them. TUSC is essentially a front organisation for one of the fragments of the old Militant Tendency that calls itself ‘Socialist Party of England and Wales’, or SPEW. As Leninists they consider that workers are capable only of acquiring a trade union consciousness (which on Lenin’s definition includes support for legislative and administrative measures to try to improve the lot of workers under capitalism). So, when they contest elections they see no point in advocating socialism as that would be to cast pearls before swine and so only propose reforms within capitalism. Even when they do talk of socialism they mean nationalisation (state capitalism).

We, on the other hand, argue that workers can understand socialism — can acquire a socialist consciousness, if you want to put it that way — in fact must as a condition for socialism being established. No vanguard can establish socialism on behalf of workers; it is something they must do for themselves. Socialism can only be established when and if a majority want and understand it. So, when we contest elections, we don’t offer to lead or do anything for workers; we put before them the straight case for socialism to, at this stage, as we put it in our election leaflet, allow them to ‘send a message to your neighbours and colleagues that you want a world of common ownership and democratic control’.

We know perfectly well how few workers currently want socialism and were standing to publicise further the case for replacing capitalism with socialism as the only lasting solution to the problems capitalism throws up for wage and salary workers and their dependents.

What the TUSC vote shows is that there would be no point in us combining advocating socialism with advocating reforms, as some have urged. This would not make any difference to the number of votes a socialist candidate would get. But it would confuse the issue by encouraging people to continue to think in terms of getting a better deal under capitalism rather than to get rid of it, to try to mend rather than end capitalism. Not that appealing just to trade-union consciousness got SPEW very far. Workers who want reforms evidently prefer to vote for reformist parties they consider to have a chance of being able to implement some. Meanwhile we will stick to advocating socialism and nothing but.

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

While Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was watching his team play Real Madrid in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-finals on Tuesday, his watch was making headlines around the world. Guardiola was wearing an extravagant Richard Mille watch worth £1 million ($1.26 million) on his wrist at Madrid’s Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.


Conspiracy theorists have for years now insisted that COVID-19 vaccines were the real killers, especially among young men — but a new study shows that there’s no data to back that up. 


Actual science is the great accomplishment of mankind. The antidote to ignorance, superstition, religious zealotry, and nonsensical beliefs in general. An eclipse exemplifies, to even the lay-est of laypeople, just how advanced modern science is. We were informed by astronomers, years in advance, exactly when and exactly where the eclipse would occur — down to the second, down to the meter — and everyone in the path of totality could literally see how exactly right those predictive calculations were. We should be celebrating and emphasizing this to laypeople, because these same scientists are the same people who’ve been telling us for decades that we’re destroying our climate with carbon emissions. So here’s my “by the way” retort to Montúfar’s aside: how many astronomers today — not in “ancient” times — are also astrologers? Spoiler: the answer is fucking zero. 


… I am aware of the dishonesty and stupidity of choosing any side in any war, and I am aware that all wars are immoral exercises in folly and absurdity. The only real beneficiaries are politicians and weapons makers. The great masses of regular people on both sides of any conflict always have to pay the price. The unlucky individuals who get killed or come home from the pointless war with mangled bodies and fucked-up minds pay the biggest price. Furthermore, whatever outcomes result from a war, no matter which side “wins,” serve mainly to lay the groundwork for future conflicts and more wars. 


South Africa has undergone a nutritional transition over the past 30 years characterized by the triple burden of malnutrition: households are simultaneously experiencing undernutrition, hidden hunger, and overweight or obesity due to nutrient-poor diets. The results of the first in-depth, nationwide study into food and nutrition since 1994, the National Food and Nutrition Security Survey, found that almost half of South Africa’s adult population was overweight or obese. While there was sufficient food to feed everyone through domestic production and imports, many families and individuals went to bed on empty stomachs.


Thirty years after the former liberation movement won the first democratic elections, South Africa remains the world’s most unequal nation, suffering from high unemployment, rampant crime, widespread corruption and a stagnant economy. 
(AFP)


Rough sleeping increased in all regions of England between 2022 and 2023 despite a Conservative 2019 manifesto promise to end rough sleeping before the next general election. An estimated 3,898 people slept rough in 2023, an annual increase of 27% – the largest annual rise since 2015. The numbers are more than double (up 120%) those in 2010. 


(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Halo, Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who knows what goes on behind the closed doors of convents? Bitter Winter (19 April) reported that the French Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit were so aggrieved at the behaviour of one of their nuns that they asked the Vatican to send in one of its Gumshoes to investigate her. The Sister was then effectively fired. Displaying secular umbrage she then took herself off to a tribunal and got herself awarded two hundred thousand euros for false dismissal. The tribunal apparently found the investigation biased because the Cardinal in charge of it was ‘friendly’ with another nun known to be an opponent of the one in question’.

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‘An influential traditional priest aged 63 has sparked outrage in Ghana by marrying a 12-year-old girl… During the ceremony, women speaking in the local language Ga told the girl to dress teasingly for her husband. They can also be heard advising her to be prepared for wifely duties and to use the perfumes they gifted her to boost her sexual appeal to her husband.’ Apparently, the girl (shouldn’t that be child?) ‘started the rites to become the priest’s wife six years ago, but the process did not interfere with her education.’ She will also be ‘educated’ in her ‘marital responsibilities such as childbearing’. An NGO reports that 19 percent of girls in Ghana are married before they reach eighteen and 5 percent get married before their fifteenth birthday (BBC 1 April).

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Charlie Hebdo is a French Private Eye-type magazine. In 2006 the magazine reprinted twelve cartoons depicting the founder of Islam which the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten had published in 2005. This did not go down well in certain sections of society. In 2015 two Algerian brothers entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo and killed twelve of the staff and wounded eleven more.

In 2022 Salmon Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses was attacked in New York. He was stabbed several times and as a result lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand.

In 2021, an educator in West Yorkshire was teaching religious studies. ‘The lesson that sparked the controversy was designed, ironically, to explore issues of blasphemy and free speech, and of appropriate ways of responding to religious disagreements’ (Guardian 31 March). What triggered the subsequent furore? He showed a cartoon which may have been one of those originally published by Jyllands-Posten. ‘The school immediately suspended the teacher, and ‘unequivocally apologised’ for using a totally inappropriate resource, promising to review the curriculum with “all the communities represented in our school”’.

The teacher was forced to leave his post and is apparently still in hiding.

Ain’t religion wonderful.
DC

SPGB June Events (2024)

Party News from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard



Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

What makes you happy? (2024)

From the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The World Happiness Report ranks countries and cities in terms of how happy their inhabitants are (see Socialist Standard, December 2020). Being comfortably off naturally tends to make people happier, but it is much more than just a matter of wealth, with countries such as the US, Japan and South Korea being fairly well down the rankings. At the bottom, though, are countries where people are impoverished and often live in fear. Destitution prevents people being satisfied with their lives, but being better off does not necessarily make you more satisfied.

These issues were discussed in an article ‘High life satisfaction reported among small-scale societies with low incomes’, by Eric Galbraith and a lengthy list of co-authors, published earlier this year in the online open-access US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, volume 121, no 7.

The researchers studied nearly three thousand people in nineteen societies, consisting of Indigenous peoples and local communities, in Central and South America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. This included, for instance, Tuareg in Algeria, Mongolians in the Ordos desert and farmers in Guatemala. Participants completed a survey on their life satisfaction, but because ‘only 64% of the households surveyed received any cash at all during the study period, we use the market value of persistent commercial assets as a proxy to estimate monetary income per person.’ In most cases, the estimated annual income was less than $1,000 per person. It is not stated what is meant by ‘persistent commercial assets’, but it is clear that the people studied were not well-off in monetary terms.

Higher household income generally correlated with more life satisfaction, at the level of both villages and individuals. But on the whole, the more positive aspects of a village, the happier its people were. Unfortunately, it is not explained properly what is meant by more positive aspects, except that it is not related to monetary income. And overall, at a given level of wealth, people in the small-scale societies were much happier than those studied in the larger World Happiness surveys. Some societies, though, were oppressed and marginalised, and their inhabitants were far less happy with their lot. Yet all in all, ‘remarkably high measures of subjective well-being are widespread among the 19 small-scale societies studied’.

So ‘reported life satisfaction in very low-income communities can meet and even exceed that reported at the highest average levels of material wealth provided by industrial ways of life’.

As research such as that for The Spirit Level by Wilkinson and Pickett has shown, in addition to the World Happiness Report, feelings of trust and equal treatment can be more important than actual income. Living in a society where people feel secure and help each other can be far more satisfying than having a supposedly high material standard of living. A socialist world will provide for people’s needs and wants, without being any kind of consumer paradise.
Paul Bennett