Exhibition Review: In the Wild (2024)

Exhibition Review from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Museum (part of the University of Manchester) underwent a sizeable redevelopment last year. One result of this is a much larger space for temporary exhibitions, which is currently occupied by ‘Wild’, a display on until June next year.

It is a thought-provoking exhibition, featuring paintings, animals as taxidermy mounts, and information displays that focus on specific projects concerned with rewilding (‘letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes’, rewildingeurope.com). An interesting concept is the baseline, a time when an ecosystem was healthier, though this can be subject to various interpretations.

Beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK about four hundred years ago, but they are now being re-introduced, as they build dams and so on, being ‘natural engineers’. In Yellowstone National Park in the US, the last wolves were deliberately killed in 1926, but this led to there being too many grazing animals, and wolves were re-introduced in the 1990s.

Knepp in West Sussex (knepp.co.uk) is the first major rewilding project in England. Its soil made it unprofitable as a dairy farm, and from 2001 it was transformed into a naturalistic grazing system with a range of habitats and herds of cattle, ponies and pigs. But, of course, it still has to make a profit, and this is achieved by means of safaris, accommodation such as yurts, and selling meat. It has been criticised as not truly being rewilding, as the landscapes are not in any real sense natural.

The Isle of Arran off the west coast of Scotland now includes the South Arran Marine Protected Area (arrancoast.com), aiming to ‘protect and restore a diverse, abundant and beautiful marine environment’. In Lamlash Bay this includes a No Take Zone, where no fish or shellfish can be taken from the water, seabed or shore. This is intended, among other things, to protect beds of maerl, a coralline pink seaweed that forms a space where small species can find food and hide from predators.

The exhibition makes the point that there can be a contradiction between rewilding and using land for housing and food. At the end, three possibilities are set out: prioritise nature and leave it to do its own thing; prioritise the relationships between humans and nature; or prioritise nature for the benefits it provides to people. These are hardly mutually exclusive, and different ones could be applied in different areas, rather than there being a single global policy. But issues such as this may well form part of democratic discussions and decision-making in a socialist world.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Harris in Blunderland (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Believe me, as president, I will go after the bad actors and I will work to pass the first-ever federal ban on price gouging on food,’ Kamala Harris declared in a speech on 16 August, adding: ‘My plan will include new penalties for opportunistic companies that exploit crises and break the rules’ (tinyurl.com/7c373bda).

Price gouging is not a term employed this side of the Atlantic where the equivalent would be ‘profiteering’ or ‘rip-off’. Basically, it’s when a firm or individual selling something to the general public takes advantage of some temporary shortage to jack up the price and reap an extra profit beyond what they would get in normal times.

What Harris was promising appeared to be to bring in legislation to stop the price of food rising, a people-pleasing promise when there’s a cost-of-living crisis.

Actually, when you look at the small print, all she was promising was legislation at federal level to prevent this when a State of Emergency had been declared such as for a forest fire, a hurricane or some other disaster. It wouldn’t apply in the case of a supply chain problem or a temporary shortage arising from some other economic or industrial cause. In any event, many of the states of the US already have such legislation.

In her first interview after officially becoming the Democratic Party’s candidate, Harris went further and promised not simply to stop grocery prices rising but to actually bring them down:

‘Prices in particular for groceries are still too high. The American people know it. I know it. Which is why my agenda includes what we need to do to bring down the price of groceries’ (tinyurl.com/5eyfpf7m).

She didn’t explain how she was going to do this. A federal act to punish ‘opportunistic companies that exploit crises’ won’t do it. Nor will naming a raft of measures an ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ as the Biden administration has already done.

These days ‘inflation’ is defined as a rise in some index of the price of a basket of consumer goods, whatever the cause. This can be caused by a depreciation of the currency through over-issue (the main cause since the 1940s) or by an exceptional rise in the prices of some key products in the basket of consumer goods (which was the main cause from 2020 till this year due to supply chain problems as a result of the Covid epidemic). In neither case would price controls work to stop ‘inflation’ any more than a command by King Canute stopped the tide coming in.

‘Inflation’, then, is the difference between what the index was at one date compared with what it was at a previous date. What this measures is the rate of increase. So, ‘bringing inflation down’ is reducing the rate at which prices are rising, not bringing prices down. Doing the latter would be ‘deflation’, which is what Harris seemed to be promising.

This is theoretically possible, but it would require a change of policy on the part of America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, which currently aims to keep the rate of increase in the general price level at 2 percent a year (even if not very successfully in the past few years). In other words, that prices, including the price of groceries, should rise at this rate every year.

Since it is unlikely that the Fed will abandon this policy or that she will pressure them to do so, we can confidently predict that a President Harris will not bring down the price of groceries. Anyone who votes for her because she has pledged this will find that they have been ripped off.

50 Years Ago: Confucius, Lin Piao and the CCP (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lin Piao is dead and in disgrace. Confucius who died a couple of thousand years earlier is getting the treatment reserved for high-ranking renegades — scapegoats of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party. (…)

The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party set out to develop and control capitalism, and now claim to have set up a Socialist society. Socialism will come sure enough, but in spite of them. What any student of Marxian economics would recognise as an emerging capitalist state was described as ‘People’s Democratic Dictatorship’ and when the state had gained control of the greater part of industry and agriculture it was supposed to have carried out the transition to Socialism. A state of affairs where, on their own admission, classes and the class struggle still exist.

This is not a harmless deception as capitalist society can only work against the interests of the working class and any government trying to run it must come into conflict with the workers. Part of any government’s armoury of weapons in this conflict are arguments designed to get workers to make sacrifices for the mythical nation and warn them of the dangers to the workers of wanting more of the wealth which they produce. Although there may be power struggles taking place in the top ranks of the government, the Lin Piao-Confucius campaign is also a weapon in the class war against the workers. Once workers become aware of their class status they will see through the deceits and come to understand that a class-less society cannot be brought to them from above. They will then form their own Socialist party in opposition to those who at present administer their exploitation. (…)

The Chinese ‘Communist’ Party having pursued the national liberation of China are, despite their protestations to the contrary, nothing but a party of capitalism. They have taken the terminology of Socialism and used it to disguise the State capitalism they administer. The ‘Thoughts of Mao’ may serve them now, but such is the dynamic of capitalism that they will ‘become antiquated before they can ossify’ and become redundant like ‘the ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions’ of Confucius.

(from Socialist Standard Special Issue on China, October 1974)

Action Replay: Bulls, lions and cuts (2024)

The Action Replay column from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July it was claimed that there had been massive job losses at the British Basketball League. But our focus here will be on a similar situation in another leading sport. That same month, the i reported that Rugby Football League and Rugby League Commercial, the organisations at the top of the game, were likely to make at least ten members of staff redundant. The big clubs are not happy with how the sport is being run; in particular, the marketing company IMG is being paid £450,000 a year, but so far to little effect, with no new sponsors found and TV coverage reduced.

Rugby league is the eighth most popular sport in the UK, but Super League attendances average well below ten thousand. Financially, the sport is not in great shape. In 2022 every Super League club in England lost money, the total (after tax) being over £12m; this figure excludes Catalans Dragons, who play in Perpignan in France. The largest loss was of £2.5m at Huddersfield Giants, and the smallest, at Salford Red Devils, was still over half a million. Salford may be helped out if the local council take full ownership of the Community Stadium where they play. Wigan Warriors had an operating loss of over £1m, from a turnover of £6.6m (they lost over £1.75m in 2021). Government support during Covid has been ended, and the loans involved are now having to be repaid.

Bradford Bulls, who play in the Championship as a part-time club, make use of a corporate hospitality suite to boost their income. The owners put in cash, and insist on keeping the elite academy, which costs £140,000 a year to run. Wakefield Trinity were the top-spending team in the Championship: they had been relegated from the Super League, have an extremely rich backer, and are still full-time, though they may have to leave their Belle Vue stadium, as it does not comply with current standards.

Central funding has decreased quite drastically, largely because of a cut in TV coverage. In League One – the lowest of the three tiers – Swinton Lions, for instance, have suffered a reduction in central funding of £150,000 since 2021. In 2023, West Wales Raiders, based in Llanelli, withdrew from the league. In the last few decades, attempts to expand the sport to clubs in Blackpool, Chorley, Nottingham and Sheffield have all been unsuccessful.

Three clubs, including Bedford Tigers, have applied to join League One next season. So maybe league can still expand beyond its traditional heartlands, but it will probably be a struggle.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: The capitalist witches’ brew that led to Grenfell (2024)

Editorial from the October 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The final report of the Inquiry into the Grenfell Fire makes devastating reading.

There was an active lack of interest in fire safety at the heart of central government:

‘In the years between the fire at Knowsley Heights in 1991 and the fire at Grenfell Tower in 2017 there were many opportunities for the government to identify the risks posed by the use of combustible cladding panels and insulation, particularly to high-rise buildings, and to take action in relation to them. Indeed, by 2016 the department was well aware of those risks, but failed to act on what it knew’ (Executive Summary (tinyurl.com/GrenfellExec), p. 7).

Then the most damning paragraph of the report:

‘One very significant reason why Grenfell Tower came to be clad in combustible materials was systematic dishonesty on the part of those who made and sold the rainscreen cladding panels and insulation products. They engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to manipulate the testing processes, misrepresent test data and mislead the market. In the case of the principal insulation product used on Grenfell Tower, Celotex RS5000, the Building Research Establishment (BRE) was complicit in that strategy’ (p. 10).

A regulatory body had been captured by the construction industry:

‘The National House Building Council (NHBC) […] failed to ensure that its building control function remained essentially regulatory and free of commercial pressures. It was unwilling to upset its own customers and the wider construction industry by revealing the scale of the use of combustible insulation in the external walls of high-rise buildings, contrary to the statutory guidance’ (p.14).

The local authority, Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), managed the property at arm’s length through a Tenants Management Organisation (TMO):

‘RBKC and the TMO were jointly responsible for the management of fire safety at Grenfell Tower. The years between 2009 and 2017 were marked by a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people. […] RBKC was responsible for overseeing the TMO’s activities, not monitoring its operations on a day-to-day basis, but its oversight of the TMO’s performance was weak and fire safety was not subject to any key performance indicator’ (p. 16).

The TMO allowed an unqualified person to be the fire safety manager, who carried out substandard assessments:

‘The demands of managing fire safety were viewed by the TMO as an inconvenience rather than an essential aspect of its duty to manage its property carefully’ (p. 17).

The TMO ‘wanted to reduce the cost’ by using the specific type of cladding panel that failed so appallingly but were badly advised by an incompetent firm of architects. In fact:

‘[not] one of those involved in the design of the external wall or the choice of materials acted in accordance with the standards of a reasonably competent person in their position’ (p. 19).

Here, then, were the ingredients of the capitalist witches’ brew that caused Grenfell: a housing market largely geared towards the wealthy, with workers squeezed into as little land and living space as possible. Politicians driven by an ideological aversion to regulation and a desire to please the construction industry. A local authority holding its tenants (many of whom were vulnerable people on benefits) at arm’s length as an unwelcome cost not to be listened to. A regulator captured by the industry it is supposed to regulate. Builders concerned with growing their profits over the wellbeing of the people who will live in the buildings. Unscrupulous manufacturers willing to gamble with people’s lives to sell a few more units of their goods, knowing profit-hungry builders wouldn’t look too closely and would cut them in on the action.

Grenfell was not a mistake but the result of a combination of regular occurrences under capitalism.

September's "Done & Dusted"

Unfortunately, I went a bit AWOL for part of September. Apologies for that but real life intervened. I hate it when that happens.

Anyway, Hey-Ho — do people still say 'Hey-Ho' or am I away with the fairies in a Wodehouse World? — I was able to post a handful of completed Socialist Standards on the blog in September. I need to up my game for the last quarter of the year. At a bare minimum, I'd like to end the year with at least 1500 posts on the blog for 2024.

September's "Done & Dusted"

September 1914

September 1945

September 1955

September 1975

September 1977

September 1981

September 2010

September 2011

September 2024