Reform – Breaking the mould or flash in the pan? (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month’s local election results sparked a barrage of headlines forecasting a seismic change in the British electoral landscape. The tabloids in particular went full throttle with titles like ‘The Reform Revolution’, ‘Reform Shockwave’, and ‘Farage Eyes No 10’. The change being foreseen was the end of two-party politics now that a third party with significant public support was on the scene. And after over a century of political yo-yo between Tory and Labour, there does seem to be another credible contender in the waiting room.

More than a protest vote?

After all similar things have happened in other European countries with similar electoral systems to the UK. In 1990s Italy, for example, the existing post-war parties were wiped from the map to be replaced by others, some of which then didn’t survive and were supplanted by other new ones, one of which one is currently the ruling party. In France too changes in the electoral scene mean that the country currently has a president leading a party that was formed less than 10 years ago. Could similar things happen here, now that Nigel Farage’s Reform party seems to have made significant inroads into sections of the electorate that have traditionally supported one or the other of the two longstanding parties?

Many commentators seem to think so, especially as Farage seems to be ferociously tapping into issues aimed at getting the electorate – or certain sections of it anyway – worked up about the other parties’ policies. These include what he presents as over-emphasis on climate change measures, over-sympathetic treatment of asylum seekers, and insufficient focus on ‘national sovereignty’. Even electoral analyst Professor John Curtice, well-known for his even-handedness, has talked about ‘an electorate that still has little faith in the Conservatives and which is now disappointed by Labour’s performance in office’ and expressed the view that ‘Reform’s triumph was much more than a protest vote’.

Elected or dismissed?

The other thing that many who see Reform as here to stay point to is that the right-wing ‘populist’ view of the world they represent reflects a movement taking place more widely in other places with a democratic electoral system. There are examples to be found in Italy’s current Brothers of Italy party government, in Javier Milei’s presidency in Argentina, in Viktor Orban’s leadership in Hungary and, of course, the United States under Donald Trump. Parties of a similar ilk have also garnered substantial support in France and Germany. So is the UK likely to go the same way once the next general election takes place? Will Britain be ruled by Reform with Nigel Farage the country’s next prime minister?

Certainly, many things are possible in capitalist politics. That’s because, as the Socialist Party has never tired of pointing out, capitalism is a system that, unpredictable as it is in the details of its future direction, easily disorients and confuses the parties that try to run it. By its nature it can only have as its overall goal the securing of profit for those who monopolise the wealth of society. But we also know that, because of the anarchic nature of the ‘market forces’ under which it operates, no one and no government can foresee the twists and turns that it will take even in the short term and that may make the particular political team trying to administer it popular or unpopular with the electorate. Any party in power is always condemned to taking on the task of controlling the uncontrollable. Will it manage to keep control at least enough to gain voters’ favour at the next election? They do not know and neither does anyone else. As one sage commentator has, therefore, said and we have seen over and over again: ‘Governments are not elected, they are dismissed’.

So, in Britain currently, much depends on the extent to which the Labour government can win back some of the support it seems to have lost since last year’s election. Will a sufficient number of voters feel less afflicted than they do at present by the problems, mainly economic (eg, cost of living, inflation, insecure employment), that the market-controlled buying and selling system inflicts upon them? If so, the Reform vote (31 percent in last month’s elections) may subside, or at least take more voters away from the Tories than from Labour.

Will history count?

The other factor to take into account is that, while some of the countries mentioned earlier have seen the rise and fall of political parties as well as new parties and groupings coming to power, in terms of parties and governments Britain has tended to be more stable than most. Since Labour took over from the Liberals as the main party of opposition to the Tories in the early twentieth century, the two have alternated in government ever since. And this has happened despite the apparent threat from other parties and movements that have sometimes surged onto the scene but then sunk. Examples are Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement in the 1930s, the Social Democratic Party led by the so-called ‘Gang of Four’ which broke away from Labour in the early 1980s and at one point was polling one third of the electorate, and the significant breakthrough which seemed to be promised for the LibDems by the period of ‘Cleggmania’ prior to the 2010 general election.

Things may turn out differently this time of course. And if Reform’s recent election successes turn out to be more than a flash in the pan, socialists will find especially distasteful any spread of its open promotion of xenophobia and its so-called ‘anti-woke’ agenda, both likely to embolden racists and those with other retrograde outlooks. But whether Reform manages to last any longer as a serious political force than its previous incarnations (UKIP, Brexit Party) or not, what is certain is that, even in government, it would be no more capable of running smoothly and in the interests of those who have elected it a system which is by its very nature unstable, uncontrollable and has as its inalienable purpose the realisation of profit for the minority who monopolise the wealth produced by the majority.

Howard Moss

Letter: What would a socialist councillor do? (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

During last month’s local council elections, an elector put the following question to one of our candidates:

If I understand your position correctly, the Socialist Party of Great Britain believes that meaningful change can only happen through the democratic abolition of the current capitalist system, and the need for a system that prioritises human needs over profit resonates with me. However, I would like to better understand how Socialist Party representatives would engage with the existing structures in the meantime.

If Socialist Party candidates were elected to our local council, would they seek to influence decisions in ways that could incrementally empower local people, for example, by advocating for greater community ownership, encouraging democratic participation, or supporting measures that improve housing conditions, even within the current system? Or would the position be to abstain from participating in decisions that do not directly challenge capitalism as a whole?

In essence, I am curious: while recognising that systemic change is the ultimate goal, how would Socialist Party councillors use their platform day-to-day to represent and support their constituents? Are there specific steps you envision towards addressing issues like homelessness, unaffordable rents, and poor-quality housing, to use your example? How would you use your voice, which is effectively the representation of your voters’ voices, in practical terms?

Reply:

That is a fair question. Our correspondent has understood our position correctly. We do say that the various problems regarding housing, health care, education, transport, food quality and the standard of living and quality of life generally, as well as global problems such as global warming and war, arise from the nature of the capitalist profit system and can only be lastingly tackled within the framework of a society of common ownership and democratic control of the resources society needs to exist.

That is our only aim and what we campaign for, including when we stand candidates in national and local elections. We do not seek support on the basis of improvements within capitalism, desirable as some may be, and do not advocate any when we stand in elections. We stand for socialism and nothing else and only want votes on that basis.

What if one of our candidates were to be elected a local councillor? This assumes that those who voted for them would also want socialism and not, or not just, improvements within capitalism. Since, in elections at the moment, we only present one or two candidates, the situation would be one where there would not be a majority of socialist councillors. These would therefore be in the same position as the councillors representing parties that do not control the council. In other words, they would not be involved in decision-making and could only play an oppositional role.

In these circumstances, a socialist councillor could not do much other than argue the case for socialism, using the council chamber as a platform from which to explain how capitalism cannot be made to work in the interest of the majority excluded from ownership of means of production and hence the need for socialism where there would no longer be production for profit. This would not rule out explaining in detail how a socialist society might approach a particular problem under discussion.

Local councils have very limited powers in the fields you mention of community ownership, democratic participation, and measures to improve housing. The overall powers they do have are granted by the central government which also provides much of the money and lays down what it must be spent on. Nevertheless, councils do have limited discretion to make some minor changes.

In accordance with the mandate from those who elected them, a socialist councillor would not themself propose any measure to improve housing or democratic participation. But this does not mean that they would necessarily abstain on all matters, even if this might be taken to be the default position.

Any important decision would have to be referred back to local socialists and it is conceivable that the councillor could be instructed to vote for some measure (some extension of democratic participation perhaps) or against some measure that would manifestly make things worse (like selling off a park to developers or closing a library or a social centre). On the other hand, local socialists might decide the councillor should abstain on all votes as a matter of principle. So we can only speculate on what might be decided.

Would a socialist councillor act as a social assistant for those in their ward with some problem with the local administration? Would they draw to the attention of the local council potholes that needed filling or fly tipping that needs clearing? Maybe, but they wouldn’t want people to vote for them next time on the basis just of having been a ‘good councillor’. – Editors.

Cooking the Books: A fool’s errand (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Farage woos red wall with vow to reindustrialise UK’, read a headline in the Times (16 April). According to the journalist:

‘At a working men’s club in Newton Aycliffe, Co Durham, the Reform leader made his most audacious attempt yet to outflank Labour to its left on the economy, praising trade unions and calling for the return of nationalised heavy industry, coal mining and oil and gas extraction.’

This could be read as saying that Farage called for the return of nationalised coal and oil and gas. Actually, he has only called for the nationalisation of one steelworks called ‘British Steel’ and not even for the nationalisation of all steelworks in Britain. It is true, though, that he has called for more manufacturing and heavy industry in Britain and for allowing privately-owned coal mining and more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea.

It is a long time since the Labour Party has committed itself to trying to revive heavy industry in Britain. They have accepted the evolution of British capitalism towards capturing a share of world surplus value through financial services. Only its rather reduced left wing still dream of this. Here is Eddie Dempsey, Mick Lynch’s successor as General Secretary of the RMT union, writing in the Morning Star (3/4 May):

‘Thatcherism ripped up the industrial foundations of this country… We were left with a service and big-finance-dominated economy with communities stripped of stable work, identity and any real power to determine the course of their lives… The antidote is an organised economy and a wider society with a strategic role for the state driving investment with credible industrial planning to bring back high-quality jobs and good housing’.

It can be seriously doubted that Farage wants to see such a state-capitalist system introduced. If he did, he would indeed ‘outflank the Labour Party to its left’. His is just populist demagoguery. What he is plainly trying to do is to exploit for vote-catching purposes the loss of ‘stable work, identity and real power to determine the course of their lives’ felt by people living in areas formerly dominated by heavy manual work.

Farage has given no details of how he would bring about a reindustrialisation of Britain. Understandably, since private enterprise, which he favours, will only invest if there is a prospect of making a profit that is more than minimal. The domination of heavy industry in parts of Britain ended precisely because the industries concerned (coal mining, steel making, shipbuilding) were no longer profitable in the face of competition from cheaper producers in other parts of the world.

He could say he would follow Trump and seek to make heavy industry profitable by erecting a tariff wall around it but dares not because this would make no sense in a country so heavily dependent on international trade as Britain. Besides, it is not what those who fund Reform UK want. They are financiers whose priority is to be able to carry on their financial wheelings and dealings, internationally as much as nationally, without state regulation.

Dempsey will be sincere. But if tariffs are ruled out (to which he might not be opposed), then the only other way to try to make heavy industry, whether nationalised or private, profitable again would be through government subsidies but this would be at the expense of other sectors of the economy.

The economic law of capitalism of ‘no profit, no production’ cannot be bucked. The government could try to go against it by protective tariffs or large subsidies but the result would be to undermine the competitiveness of British industry generally, leading to loss of jobs elsewhere in the economy. Anybody seeking to reindustrialise Britain is on a fool’s errand.

Thoughts on art and artists (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the market system, art is often a commodity like any other. Art, as a skill, expression of an idea, attempt to move others, or simply a means to create beauty for its own sake, is in constant friction with commercial values.

On the one hand, art happens all the time outside of the market system. It is often not sold. Millions take part in creating tapestry or in knitting for gift-giving, in painting or making music as a hobby, in acting in local drama productions where payment will be minimal or totally absent, and so on. Thus, art seems almost a central characteristic of the human animal, even when money is not involved.

Likely, much art created by homo sapiens has been lost, which is understandable given it was created with natural substances that could decompose without trace. However, art from about forty to sixty thousand years ago has been found, such as Venus figurines worn as necklaces; Lion Man, the first figurine with animal features; the Borneo cave paintings depicting cattle, cupules (or cup-like indentations in rocks) which anthropologists have suggested may have served in a game or been used like musical instruments; and beautiful ostrich eggshell engravings, to name just a few of many other key discoveries. Humans from the earliest days possessed aesthetic sensibility, and may have worked to produce items that were intrinsically beautiful, or which possessed magical or other symbolic value. These were made by humans who lived in freedom, before the rise of states, exchange, and private property, and whose creative talents were developed in tandem with the development of tools and language.

Today, much art serves the needs of power and commerce. Students in art and design today will typically not be spending their lives beautifying our world, but rather living as workers to develop the design of packaging, posters, graphics, signage, fashion, animation, makeup, interiors, textiles, websites, and industrial goods, among other applications. Art today is therefore a prized skill that millions study for the purpose of serving industry. One could imagine many of these in use in even a classless society, but this also means that today’s art expresses the ideas, needs, and values of the rich. Our entire culture is based on appealing to the spending habits of the working class, or of the elite, to realise profits for the owning class. Most of what you see, touch, and use in your human world has been designed with money in mind. To that extent, our culture is creatively shaped by the needs of money itself. This is not simply a world designed according to techno-industrial development, rather it is a world designed by the needs of impersonal profit-making. We, flesh and blood humans of passion, emotion, aesthetic sense, and inspiration, live in a world in which art is distorted to serve the coldness of buying and selling.

Art is the expression of life, and you as a blue- or white-collar worker as well have been designed by our culture to live a particular one serving the unique needs of the owners. You have been moulded like so much plastic, thanks in fact to your neuroplasticity, into shapes that will feel excited by all the rubbish that the capitalist class sees fit to sell you. You have been designed as a worker who can fit into a corporate culture for five days of the week; you have been forged to consume commodities rather than live a true, authentic life of freedom and creativity. Despite such programming, it is in your nature to seek out and enjoy beautiful music, colourful paintings in the museum, and objects whose sleek, tainted, smooth, and sexy designs you covet. Meaning has been reduced to consumption. Not just that, but the artists involved have themselves been turned into machines whose creative spirits serve the capitalists in the attractive display of their goods.

In pop music, just as an example, the need to sell often leads to crass conventionality for no other reason but the hope of selling. Thus, after the first hits of Merseybeat, a hundred bands from around the world reproduced the identical style, especially with major labels courting anybody who could sound like the Beatles or Gerry and the Pacemakers. The same was true with almost any popular musical style: the rock’n’roll blues revivalists, folk-rock, psychedelia, hard rock, singer-songwriter, prog, metal, punk, dance, post-rock, and the list goes on. Many of these styles involved incredibly talented musicians, but they also inspired a generation of mediocre copyists. This was all due to a culture based on monetary values which distorted musical talent as it distorts everything to its image.

The music papers and radio stations also distorted talent by endlessly hyping one bad band after another as the greatest, latest, thing. Musicians are often evaluated by both the media and consumers according to how much they sell or to meaningless features of their personalities or lifestyles. While some famous bands were indisputably great, many famous acts remain indisputably have-beens. But even within the world of music, styles are themselves commodified, with fans devoted to classical competing with rock enthusiasts, who must then compete with followers of jazz, and so on. The reality is that all styles contain both a minority of the brilliant and a majority of the less inspired or inspiring. Many of the musicians were themselves aware of this, sampling the best of every genre even while the media were busy putting them into a box.

Conformity replaces individuality, artists who simply want to create what their heart dictates, although most artists who make no money probably don’t care about the marketplace and just continue according to their creative desire. It is often argued that capitalist competition was required to inspire the greats, however the reality is more likely the opposite, that many great artists failed to see the light of day, that competition generated commonness as much in art as in all commodities, that excessive resources were spent promoting rubbish, but that even the character of the art, for instance endless love songs about how much you want or need someone, was determined by what was viewed as sellable, as opposed to having reinforced originality and brilliance. Standards remain poor, everything produced is just ‘good enough’ for the masses.

Art in the service of commerce exists primarily to take your cash. It is impossible to even imagine what our world could look like without this distortion of our aesthetic sense serving the needs of the rich. Our cities serve the appearance and necessity of power, although they remain exciting places in which to live. There is just as much likelihood that a democratic society would have created futuristic cities far ahead of today’s capabilities that are limited by cost, than that it would have decentralised our living spaces so that we reside much closer to the living world. When the needs of human beings and the natural world come first, art will express freedom, community, nature, the universe, and those existential concerns that remain after the endless problems of a money society have been resolved.

Freed from today’s slavery in which we are required to serve the master class for most of our lives, perhaps more time will be spent in creativity. Perhaps even work will become more creative. Organisation will become more creative. How people may live together to establish the greatest joy will become a central creative venture. Art, in such a world, would not be expressed only in the artefacts or designs produced by artists, although those would also presumably continue to be valued, but art may be redefined as the creative life itself, as William Morris, Oscar Wilde, and many others have speculated.

In such a world, art will hold hands with science, and everyone’s life will be a form of art.

Dr. Who

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Billionaire Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been unmasked as the mystery buyer of one of Washington, D.C.‘s most expensive properties: a $23 million mansion that he quietly paid for in an all-cash deal that was so secretive, the home vanished from view on Google Maps soon after it closed.

                                                                                                                               [Yahoo]

Lenin brought his Bolshevik Party to power on the cresting wave of the democratic workers’ councils, or soviets, in 1917. Then, with a few changes, he essentially restored tsarist autocracy. Freedom of speech, the press, and assembly were again suppressed, and the absolute power of a non-elected monarch, a dictator, reappeared along with a centralized bureaucracy. Under Lenin, the chinovnik-bureaucrat apparatus once more became the master of the land and of thousands of industrial enterprises. It included many tsarist bureaucrats, who, together with a few Bolsheviks, were the bosses in the ministries. Lenin’s bureaucracy blended with the tsarist bureaucracy and quickly adopted the same rules. Everything that upset or challenged the interests of centralized economic and socio-political life was eliminated.

[Canadian Dimension]

A city divided by a 12-year gap in life expectancy… Sally Cartwright, the county’s director of public health at Cambridgeshire County Council, agrees that a lack of access to cheap, nutritious food, expensive gym memberships and insufficient exercise and community facilities in the area have all contributed to the gap in life expectancy…. Differences in wealth affect people’s health, she adds, as well as other triggers such as smoking, heavy drinking and poor diet. 

[BBC]

A veteran financial consultant and insurance executive is warning his fellow capitalists that their commitment to profits and market supremacy is endangering the economic system to which they adhere and that if corrective actions are not taken capitalism itself will soon be consumed by the financial and social costs of a planet being cooked by the burning of fossil fuels. 

[Common Dreams]

Some argue that ecological change has historically posed great challenges to existing systems, and therefore, climate change must do the same to capitalism. This view overlooks a key fact: unlike previous modes of production, capitalism is fundamentally based on change. Then there is the assumption that climate change will create such severe problems — food shortages, infrastructure collapse, mass death — that capitalism simply can’t cope. But capitalism has always been adept at placing death in some corners of the world, so that life – and profits – can continue elsewhere. Mass death has never been a fundamental problem for capitalism; the system itself was built on colonialism, wars, and genocides. 

[Rebel]

A legal team representing Hamas pro bono — since it would be illegal to receive money from the group — claims in its own filing that while Hamas’s actions fit the definition of ‘terrorism’ in British law, so do those of the IDF, the Ukrainian army and even the British military. 

[The Times of Israel]

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

Lords of the Land (2025)

Book Review from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis. By Nick Bano. Verso £10.99.

The author is a tenants’ rights lawyer, and here he gives a thorough account of the rise of private landlordism in Britain, its consequences, and how he believes it can be done away with. A number of examples of cases illustrate how devastating tenants’ situations can become.

Back in the 1970s, council housing was much more widespread than now, and private landlordism appeared to be on the way out, with just seven percent of households renting privately. But under Thatcher and later governments, council housing declined and private landlordism grew. It is mainly small landlords (about 2.5 million of them) who rent homes to tenants, while corporate landlords primarily invest in commercial property. The poorest tenants may pay over half their income to landlords; as Bano puts it, poorer people transfer the bulk of their wages to better-off people for poor-quality housing.

The 1972 Housing Finance Act attacked low council rents, and more generally the state has facilitated and supported the raising of rents. Tenants find it hard, and even impossible, to resist a rent increase, rent strikes are illegal, and landlords have the legal right to make someone homeless (‘no fault’ evictions are still legal). Assured shorthold tenancies give power to the landlord, and increases in Universal Credit mean that tenants who received these benefits can pay more in rent. Some landlords even charge viewing fees so that would-be tenants can have a look at a property.

Bano supports Marx’s view that the interests of landlords are opposed to everyone else’s. Tenants want lower rents; capitalists want this too, as it means lower wages, and they also want lower commercial rent for offices etc. Residential property is an attractive form of investment, and the author refers to ‘a large petty-bourgeois rentier class’ who are ‘dependent on housing wealth’. But small landlords are not a separate class, as in most cases they still depend on wage labour to survive, even if their income is topped up by rent.

The real problem, the author says, is not the supply of housing, but its cost. Around seventy percent of housing is under-occupied (though it would have been good to have a bit more detail on this). He advocates ‘the decommodification of housing to ensure universal access and good conditions’. But this is not going to happen under capitalism, and what is needed is the ending of production for sale, not just for housing but for all goods and services, which is what socialism will mean.

Paul Bennett

The elderly – who cares? (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

I had driven past the old mill owner’s mansion a number of times. I hadn’t really paid any heed to it other than as the marker of an obscured lane I drove down to deliver my granddaughter to her destination. This time, though, an approaching vehicle had me pulling into the sweep of its gateway. I had a moment to look up. What had once been the domicile of a very obvious capitalist had become a care home. A plaque on the gate post gave its original name below a larger, more prominent, name board. I read, therefore, ‘Saint Mary’s Residential Home’ and only then ‘The Ashes’. There’s a statement of reality, I thought.

One of the undoubted benefits of capitalism has been a general prolongation of life, at least in its heartlands. It is undeniable that more people live to a greater age than ever they did even in fairly recent history. This is an unintentional consequence of the way society has developed due to the scientific and technological advances capitalism has made, had to make, to protect and advance profitability. A growing elderly population is itself a source of profit. Age brings with it a multitude of longer-term conditions and ailments that is an expanding market for the pharmaceutical industry. And when the point is reached that medicine itself cannot sustain those with failing health, then there is another market, social care.

Capitalism is an exemplary system in providing commodities to meet people’s needs. However, there is a caveat. All commodities are available to all, just as long as they are paid for. This is not callousness, but the very essence of capitalism.

Care as a commodity

There are basically two types of social care; external, carers coming to the person’s own home, and internal, with the person accommodated in a care home. On average, external care costs between £20 and £25 an hour. Internal home care averages at £1,000 plus per week.

Care as a commodity must realise both the monetary value of those actually giving the care, care workers, and surplus value for the providers. The providers own the means for care-giving, the actual buildings and all the paraphernalia required to adequately cater for their residents’ needs. Once these expenditures have been met by the care providers – who may be individual business owners or, increasingly, care providing companies – whatever monies remain constitute the profits. This model is classical capitalism. Therefore there is always the tension between the cost of labour and the requirements for material expenditure and financial returns for owners/shareholders. Careworkers are skilled labour and yet their salaries hardly reflect this, often being on or close to the minimum wage.

The minimum wage has become the determining factor for these salaries. When that rises to accommodate cost of living increases, so do the salaries. This is, therefore, an increased cost to the providers. Also, a cost of living increase will affect other elements vital for the care of residents, food, energy and such like. These costs could be taken away from financial returns, but an increasingly less profitable business loses viability, perhaps even ends in bankruptcy.

The alternative is to increase fees, so the plus part of the aforementioned £1,000 per week gets ever larger, moving towards £2,000 per week. This becomes a growing drain on individual means to pay, more rapidly diminishing whatever assets were accumulated throughout a working life. This may lead to families contributing to elderly relatives’ care, which then becomes a strain on those families’ financial resources at a time when living costs are rising. A need to increase those family resources becomes pressing, so higher remuneration is sought. In this way some of the care costs are shifted, indirectly, to other sectors of the capitalist economy.

State funding

Perhaps the state, either directly or through local authorities, takes up the shortfall. This may be done directly through funding in part or whole, an individual’s care needs, following assessment via means testing. Further expenditure will then be incurred through the requirement to employ administrators to carry out the assessments. As the state and local authorities do not have any income other than what is raised through direct or indirect taxation, taking on a significant extra financial responsibility requires extra funding. Any subsequent tax increase, direct or indirect, initially reduces the incomes of workers who pay it.

This has a political consequence for the party imposing the tax increase. Vitriolic elements of the media will make great play of the avaricious state picking the pockets of hard-working families. Come an election, local or national, and the ‘low-tax’ party wins the vote. However, once in power, that administration is immediately faced with the same financial dilemma. The closure of underfunded care homes, with residents put out into the streets, is not a vote winner. Demanding greater contributions from individual assets would also be unpopular as prospective inheritances are reduced.

If the administrating party manages to survive the tax rises, workers whose salaries have been reduced actively seek salary increases, or perhaps reduce spending, or both. The result is the tax increase is ultimately transferred, yet again, to other sectors of the capitalist economy.

Not a drain

When a person retires from employment they do not retire from capitalism. Those, the majority, not requiring care, though receiving pensions, do not constitute a drain on the economy because they are not economically idle. They are providers of unpaid childcare. All the financial factors set out above for social care of the elderly, apply to the care of children to enable their parent(s) to work. Capitalism depends on a constant supply of labour power, so provision of childcare is crucial.

Then there is volunteering. The argument often levelled against socialists that people would not work unpaid is given the lie by the ‘retired’. An often-voiced trope amongst those no longer in paid employment is they don’t know now how they ever had time enough to go to work.

Those who take advantage of out-of-season holidays are redirecting some of their assets to businesses whose commodity is leisure. Pensions being deferred parts of wages/salaries are being spent in much the same way as parts of wages previously saved in bank accounts and such like.

Capitalism has evolved to become a highly complex organism in which each part affects other parts. The elderly requiring care, the retired, like the very young, are as much a part of that organism as any other. However, the avaricious nature of capitalism, ever trying to reduce its costs, can lead to a perception of some members of society being almost parasitic. Only a society not obsessed with money and costs can truly fully value all its citizens and willingly strive to meet their needs, whatever they are. In a word, socialism.

Dave Alton

Is kindness enough? (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Various publications have come into being in recent times focusing on the idea that we humans are a fundamentally kind and considerate species. I myself subscribe to a quarterly magazine called Positive News, which aims to produce ‘constructive journalism’ and stories ‘about what’s going right’. The current issue carries well-produced and illustrated articles on, for example, a ‘safe house’ in Ghana that rescues and rehabilitates trafficked child slaves, a community energy project in South-East London, and a holiday company that offers ‘sustainable walking holidays at a reasonable price’. It also has a 15-page section of short what it calls ‘energising’ pieces of ‘good news’.

Then in the city I live in, you can pick up The Swansea Positive free of charge, with the stated purpose of highlighting ‘the very many positive and encouraging activities that are happening in Swansea’s diverse communities’. It describes its contents as ‘good news stories which are not printed in currently available media and so go unnoticed’, providing, it says, ‘a healthy alternative to the many negative and depressing headlines’. Its most recent editions have carried articles on topics and events such as a local community farm, the Swansea Chinese community, an Air Ambulance fundraiser and the regular Saturday morning park run.

It’s certainly true that what’s most likely to ‘make news’ more widely are negative, uncooperative and, especially, violent forms of behaviour, while caring, cooperative activities tend to get taken for granted and often go unmentioned. And this can reinforce in many people’s eyes the common idea that human beings are by nature selfish, uncooperative and even cruel and violent, and so any attempt at establishing a world of social harmony and free of conflict is doomed to failure.

This is an idea that has been expressed or implied in much that has been said and written over the years, both in commentary on human behaviour and in writings of fiction. As far back as the sixteenth century, Machiavelli in The Prince insisted that ‘all men are evil’, an idea taken up again in the following century by Thomas Hobbes who argued in his Leviathan that human beings are greedy by nature and human life is ‘a condition of war of all against all’, and then by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, where private interest or ‘self-love’ is seen as the primary mover of human action. This view of humanity was later echoed in the twentieth century by writers with more ‘scientific’ pretentions such as Robert Ardrey (The Territorial Imperative), Konrad Lorenz (On Aggression) and Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape). And it seemed to receive confirmation in widely read works of fiction such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and, according to how you interpret it, George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

However, in more recent times the tide does seem to have turned. Opinions have moved far more towards support for Albert Einstein’s statement of over 80 years ago that ‘human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate’. This has been reinforced since by a slew of studies with titles like A Cooperative Species. Human Reciprocity and its Evolution, Survival of the Friendliest, Team Human and Ultrasocial. The Evolution of Human Nature and the Quest for a Sustainable Future. These have drawn the conclusion that not only are human beings capable of manifesting peaceful and cooperative behaviour rather than being hostile and competitive with one another but are overwhelmingly likely to behave in that way if conditions allow it. According to these findings humans are eminently flexible beings who will prefer to make common cause with their fellow creatures unless they are driven into doing otherwise by conditioning or situation. And they will behave in a cooperative way both because it is likely to benefit them in a practical way (ie, one good turn is likely to deserve another) and also because it is natural for human beings to derive satisfaction out of being of assistance to others and to enjoy the approbation this is likely to bring from their fellow creatures.

A survey via online questionnaires called The Kindness Test, commissioned in 2021-22 by the BBC in conjunction with psychology researchers from the University of Sussex, came up with similar findings. It concluded that human beings are a kind species generally prepared to cooperate with and help one another in their daily lives and activities and that, if we consider all the interactions we have with other people on a regular basis and over a period of time, the vast majority are likely to be of a kind and collaborative nature, even if we do not necessarily notice this or register them as such.

More recently the Vegetarian Society magazine, The Pod, carried a feature entitled ‘How to Live Kindfully’, an interview with ‘wellbeing expert’ Anna Black about her book A Year of Living Kindfully. She quoted an Oxford University study which found that ‘seven days of kindness activities significantly boosted people’s levels of happiness’ and then went on to suggest 10 ways of being kind in your everyday life. These included being less judgmental of others, cleaning up litter outside your home, volunteering in the community, listening closely to others and being ‘kind to the environment’.

It’s easy of course to be critical of attempts to encourage ideas on behaviour and activities which are socially and humanly desirable. It might be said that, in the context of the massive problems the society we live in throws up such as inequality, insecurity, war, poverty and racial prejudice, such steps are surely no more than small beer, which can’t even touch the edges of those problems. On the other hand they do at least help to spread the idea – well attested as it is now – that humans are a species capable of cooperating with and helping one another in their daily lives and activities and generally prepared to do so.

Of course, publications like Positive News and A Year of Living Kindfully don’t (and can’t) override the ‘bad news’ that we hear about every day and that many experience in their daily lives. But what they do illustrate is that, despite the overwhelmingly powerful pressures the society we live in puts on people to get the better of others and so not be ‘kind’ to them, in so many of the actions and interactions of our daily lives, and even in some of the ‘competitive’ situations that are created for us, we can still manage to be kind to others and to cooperate with them.

The question that naturally arises from this is why is it that the society we live in (ie, capitalism) militates against people being ‘positive’ and ‘kind’ to one another all the time? The simple answer is that capitalism is, by its nature, a competitive society with an ethic that runs directly contrary to the human tendency to help and cooperate with others. It encourages people to compete with one another, to try to get the better of them and to do them down if that seems necessary. It does this in various ways, but in particular by tempting people with the lure of gain or reward, often financial, and so pushing them to behave in ways that divide them from their fellow humans, often making the ‘success’ of one into the ‘failure’ of others.

Another aspect of this is society’s basic division into two classes, with one of them (the owning class) exploiting the other (the working class) for wealth and profit. So, given that an inbuilt feature of the capitalist system we all live in is that we are constantly driven to compete with others in a variety of ways, as long as that system continues such divisions are bound to continue. So while those who wish to encourage us to be ‘positive’ and ‘kind’ can only be applauded for their efforts, they are in a sense – sadly – on a hiding to nothing if they leave the whole system unquestioned.

But how do you question the system? It can only come through the majority of wage and salary earners – who we call the working class – using democratic political action to establish a society organised in an entirely different way from the current one. In such a society – which we call socialism – people will be able to operate in the harmonious and cooperative way that we know to be most fundamental to humans and beneficial to the species. In such a society, one of common ownership, free access to all goods and services and democratic organisation, the human tendency to share and cooperate will truly come into its own. People will be free to express their talents and creativity in ways that will vastly outstrip the limitations laid upon them today by the need to conform to the rules of a society with the overriding preoccupation of promoting competition between all humans as a way of realising profit for the few.

Howard Moss

Proper Gander: Looking into Black Mirror (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

While the stories in Netflix’s Black Mirror tend to be set in the near future, its roots are set squarely in the past. When the series debuted on Channel 4 in 2011, it revived the long-neglected format of a drama anthology, and has carried on the tradition of science fiction enabling us to explore the consequences of technological advances for people and society, especially before they arrive.

The tales in Black Mirror’s latest series (its seventh) share some themes, discussion of which below will reveal plot details. Creating virtual worlds (the computer games in the episodes ‘Plaything’ and ‘USS Callister: Into Infinity’, and the immersive media in ‘Eulogy’ and ‘Hotel Reverie’) is a recurring motif, as is a digital avatar of someone, inhabiting either those alternative realities or interacting with the outside world. Their use is linked to recreating the past in all these episodes, underlining the bleak view of the future throughout the series. Showrunner Charlie Brooker’s outlook tends to be pessimistic not with technology itself, but rather with how it is used by institutions or by damaged people. The bitter, alienated IT expert is Black Mirror’s version of the mad scientist trope. Misfit computer geeks using their know-how to get power over those they have learned to resent drives the plots of ‘Bête Noire’, ‘Plaything’ and ‘USS Callister’, the 2017 episode which has gained a sequel in this series.

The use of tech to exploit and control other people runs through Black Mirror like words in a stick of rock. In some episodes, the technological innovation offers more positive experiences. In ‘Eulogy’, AI allows people to virtually inhabit old photographs, while ‘Hotel Reverie’ ups the ante to entering old films and interacting with their characters. While this technology remains science fiction, AI is already blurring our understanding of what’s real, and Black Mirror is as much a thought experiment as a drama. From a more grounded perspective, ‘Hotel Reverie’ gets some digs in at the entertainment industry, being set in a cynical production studio churning out another reboot of a classic film as an anticipated source of revenue.

The episode with the largest helping of satire about the relationship between commerce and technology is ‘Common People’. Its premise is that a woman in a coma is able to have a new treatment to replace the damaged part of her brain with a digital backup, restoring her consciousness with the promise of living a normal life again. Rivermind, the new treatment, comes as a subscription package, and she and her husband learn that she is on a basic tariff with a restricted coverage area, making her shut down when she travels out of the signal’s range. When she involuntarily starts speaking adverts ‘designed to be contextually relevant to the situation you are in’, they decide to switch to the more expensive and expansive ad-free Rivermind Plus package. To afford this, the husband resorts to performing humiliating acts for money on a livestreaming platform. The couple struggles further to maintain a decent lifestyle when the Plus tariff gets superseded by the premium Lux tariff, and their hoped-for pregnancy would incur additional fees now out of their reach.

Despite its sci-fi and dystopian trappings, the scenario is more realistic than it might first appear. The adverts which the woman spouts out aren’t much different to those which some podcasters and vloggers interrupt their spiel with as if that’s a natural part of discussion. And the ‘trash streaming’ site featured unfortunately has real-world counterparts, particularly in Russia apparently. Rivermind is also realistic to the extent that it uses ‘platform decay’ as a strategy to maintain its customers. This is when the quality of an online service or product deliberately declines over time. Punters are initially drawn in by an attractive offer, which then gets superseded by a supposedly improved, pricier upgrade, degrading the original deal. The customer is then tempted to pay more to get the updated version. One service which has been subject to ‘platform decay’ is Netflix, and hopefully Brooker slipped in this critique intentionally. Once the brand became a market leader among streaming sites, it discontinued its cheapest advert-free tariff, effectively raising prices even though its number of subscribers already ensured a hefty income.

Netflix’s accountants wouldn’t be too bothered if the bulk of its customers remained on tariffs which include adverts, though, as this means a wide audience as a basis to charge a high amount when selling advert space. The company’s dominance in the market means that it has created loyal customers who remain so despite some ‘platform decay’, and who also provide plenty of behavioural data to be used to exploit their preferences. As always in capitalism, how a service is run and delivered is shaped by what maximises profits, rather than by what works best for all those involved. In ‘Common People’, when the fictional Rivermind applies the commercial prerogatives of a subscription package to someone’s life, it’s an extrapolation of what’s already familiar. The sub-plot of the trash streaming site is another amplification to show the extremes of what people can be forced to do to make ends meet. As an illustration of how the money system rules how we live, ‘Common People’ presents the argument in a stronger way than most documentaries.

Mike Foster

Members Only (2025)

Book Review from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind Closed Doors. By Seth Alexander Thevoz. Robinson. Paperback Edition 2024. £12.99

This is subtitled ‘The Secret Life of London Private Members’ Clubs’ and is an entertaining and well-written account of this phenomenon, from the early beginnings of private clubs in the very late seventeenth century until the present day. Thevoz has previously been librarian of one of the biggest old clubs and also writes for Private Eye, so for the purposes of this book he usefully has an eye for both social connection and gossip.

These somewhat exclusive clubs have been largely centred historically around St James’s and Piccadilly in London, though have spread their tentacles not just to some other upmarket areas of London over the years but internationally as well – including in the heydays of the British Empire, to India, South Africa and so on. Thevoz has included interesting chapters too on women’s clubs, clubs and race and also the rise of working men’s clubs (which were in some ways designed to mimic some of the features of their older and more ruling-class forebears).

Many clubs developed political affiliations – most notably the Carlton Club with the Tory Party and the National Liberal and Reform clubs with the Liberals. For much of the post-war period many of these clubs were in decline though alongside the empire, with crumbling grand buildings and ageing memberships, and literally scores shut before there was a renaissance from the 1980s onwards.

There were two reasons for the uptick – one was the expansion of ‘new money’ and the arriviste estate agents and hedge fund managers who thrived from Thatcher onwards and who saw joining traditional London members’ clubs as a way to aid their networking and also as a sign of acceptance (even if the more longer-term and elderly members didn’t always welcome the presence of these brash interlopers). The other reason was that slowly from the 1960s – starting with Peter Cook’s famous Establishment club – the club model came to be followed by rather different groups of people, typically as a way of circumventing strict licensing laws for alcohol. Arguably the most infamous was the Colony Room Club in Soho but over time others emerged aimed at newer social elites that found the old-fashioned fustiness of White’s or Boodle’s unattractive – and who gravitated towards successful celebrity hangouts instead like the Groucho Club.

Since the turn of the century, in particular, there has been a proliferation of new clubs charging significant membership fees and often aimed at particular types of business professionals, though their presence has sometimes been surprisingly transient. Just before and then since Covid some newer ones have now shut including fashionable clubs like Milk and Honey and the Hospital Club (aimed at those working in the creative industries), clubs which appeared to enter the colour supplements and come into fashion – and then go out of it – with quite some speed.

Others have thrived as businesses and have established multiple locations both in London and internationally – the most well-known being Soho House. Some still thrive on exclusivity, new money and ruling class connections – the most obvious in recent years being 5 Hertford Street in Mayfair, which is where, Thevoz argues, key Brexit plots were hatched and deals were done rather than in the venerable old clubs of Pall Mall.

It seems that the older clubs no longer have quite the appeal they once did for the ruling elite. That they may not be so good for a politician’s image, in particular, is summed up by two events in recent years. One was the infamous Chris Pincher groping incidents at the Carlton Club that led to the departure from office of PM Boris Johnson. Then soon after, and lesser-known, was ambitious current Tory leader Kemi Badenoch turning up at the Carlton Club for a grand dinner only to be driven off when she saw all the press outside as she was mindful of the likely negative association of her being pictured there.

Perhaps these days with Britain’s ruling elites it’s a case of not so much ‘seen but not heard’ as ‘heard but not seen’?

DAP

Halo, Halo! (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commiserations to you job-seekers out there who fancied themselves as Chief Executive Officer of the international corporation RCC Inc. The position has been filled. There were 135 internal candidates vying to fulfil it with an external individual, Trump, suggesting that he should get the job because he was already running America and as the job involved a one-day week, Sundays, it would be a doddle to do. Note, it was not made clear in the job spec whether megalomania was an essential prerequisite.

What can the new CEO look forward to? According to RSVPLive the job pays a salary of £228,000 a year. Throw in the benefits that go with the position and you’re looking at a cushty little number. The Mirror reported that the last holder ‘had a jaw-dropping net worth of £12million due to the assets associated with his papal office. These include five cars, an apartment and clothing’. The job also includes a ‘top-floor palatial penthouse apartment – which boasts more than 12 rooms, quarters for staff, a terrace and extensive views across Rome’. Throw in lots of free international travel and lots of sitting on a throne whilst ‘authoritative’ visitors including politicians, celebrities, royalty and billionaires come to you from all over the world to bow and scrape and make you feel very important. On reflection, having to be pleasant to these sorts of people may qualify as one of the negatives.

There is unlikely to be any interference from the Chairman of the company, a very reclusive person, a bit like Howard Hughes, whom no one has heard from in aeons. Although do be aware that if sufficiently peed off he might rain down plagues, pestilence, floods and other unpleasantness. The job requires celibacy which given the Chairman’s pettishness means at least you won’t have to worry too much about the life survival likelihood of your first born.

Note that the temper tantrums are taken from that book of fiction which has served as a playbook which, the present post’s predecessors have used to impose, or try to impose, a monopoly of religion and power over the world’s population for two millennium. This includes the use of stick and carrot techniques with the promise both of ‘pie in the sky’ and ‘eternal torment’: see James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which includes a harrowing passage detailing a sermon by a catholic priest on the torture awaiting disbelievers in hell.

The new CEO is American-born Robert Prevost who has decided to adopt the alias of Leo the fourteenth. In 1878 the ‘thirteenth’ issued an encyclical against the ‘sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists’. In 1891, another encyclical appeared sympathetic to the plight of the working class but actually defended the rights of the property-owning class to the hilt. God given rights, doncha know.

Some new boss, same old boss.

DC

Canada versus Trump (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Socialist Party of Canada’s monthly newsletter.

Canada versus Trump

You are all aware of the declaration of trade war Trump imposed on the rest of the world on April 2. In Canada there was a sigh of relief that it wasn’t as bad as many feared. Nevertheless, he kept the existing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium and will maintain tariffs on Canadian goods that don’t comply with the North American trade deal that sets rules about limiting foreign content.

Though Canada hasn’t been hit with tariffs as hard as some countries, nevertheless its effects are still felt. A survey conducted by the city of Toronto showed that Toronto businesses are bracing for job cuts and cost increases. Of the 513 businesses that responded, one third said they were implementing hiring freezes, while another third were expecting job cuts. Three quarters were anticipating rising costs, which was the most common concern, while about half are expecting major disruptions to their operations. The city promised to allow companies who can show they’ve suffered because of tariffs, a six-month property tax reprieve.

American companies will not get contracts from the city. Other cities across Ontario are also bracing for the impact; at a conference of city mayors on April 3, they asked the provincial and federal governments for a portion of ‘any stimulus package’, especially for infrastructure funding. Most Canadians are hoping for the federal government, elected on April 28, to be able to deal with the worst aspects of tariffs.

Canada is hitting back at Trump’s tariffs with import taxes as much as 25 percent on vehicles assembled in the U.S. Ford, GM and Stellantis are the automakers with the biggest share of Canadian sales that rely on imports from the U.S. For all three companies a majority of the products they sell in Canada are made in the U.S. Under Canada’s new rules, the amount of tariffs on a vehicle will depend on its components, though Mexican parts are exempt. If a car is assembled in the U.S. with 80 percent U.S. parts and 20 percent Mexican or Canadian components, the 25 percent levy will apply to the U.S. content, resulting in a total tariff rate of 20 percent. One thing about capitalism, life under it gets more complicated every day.

One positive thing about the stupid trade war is the fact that thousands of American physicians want to come to Canada. John Philpott, CEO of CanAm Physician Recruiting Inc., a Canadian company which specializes in bringing international medical personnel to Canada, said since Trump took office there has been a 63 percent increase in registrations from American doctors wanting to work in Canada. Philpott said, ‘My phone’s been ringing off the hook.’ The surge in interest comes as the U.S. faces health care funding cuts, mass layoffs and hiring freezes, including at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which has lost 2,400 jobs. Before Trump was elected many Canadian doctors went to the U.S. for more money; Trump quickly and surely changed that. Of course this can only be beneficial to Canada’s shaky health system, but it’s just an improvement within capitalism which we as socialists work to abolish.

We of the SPC as individuals are against Canada becoming the 51st. state, but politically we will not work against Trump’s mad intention. Whether Canada remains Canada or becomes part of the U.S. it still means exploitation of the working class.

Federal election

The Liberals under Mark Carney won 169 seats at the federal election on April 28. This was 3 seats short of the majority they needed; the Progressive Conservatives (PC) winning 144. The leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) won 7, the Bloc Quebecois 22 and the Greens won one. Most people thought it would be a tight race which it was. Both Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh lost their seats, which must’ve been humiliating. In Poilievre’s case it may well have been his smart-ass personality and his constant personal attacks on his opponents which done-him-in. With Singh, whose party lost 7 seats, it was probably because so many would-be N.D.P. voters voted Liberal, not wanting to split its vote, thinking Carney would do a better job of standing up to Trump than Poilievre, which was the main election issue.

The Toronto Star endorsed the PCs in the election on April 28. Its main points were that Canadians should support a government that is for free enterprise, eliminates barriers such as cutting red tape, restores fiscal discipline, reforms the tax system and develops ‘our’ natural resources and ‘That is why we are supporting Pierre Poilivere and the Conservative Party of Canada’. Since its founding in 1892, the Star’s main mantra has been to this effect, ‘Hey listen up folks, capitalism isn’t the economic piece of junk Marxists would have you think it is. No Siree, it’ll work just fine if you smooth away its rough edges’. You might think that with their crusading and reforming zeal they would support an openly reformist party like the NDP or its predecessor the CCF, but no, they go for a blatantly ‘screw the working class party’.

Of all the provincial Premiers, Alberta’s Danielle Smith seems the likeliest to make a deal with Trump. This is probably because Alberta does a lot of business with the United States selling oil and energy. Recently Smith showed some of her conservative friends she had painted her toenails red to show her support for Canada which fooled few, if any. A Leger poll conducted in March showed that 15 percent of Albertans would like to be part of the 51st state, as 9 percent of the population as a whole. This amazed me as every Canadian I’ve spoken to and of those I’ve read in print are dead against it. Smith has given Carney a list of energy-related demands which includes scrapping a federal tax on oil and gas emissions, eliminating an electrical vehicle mandate and ending prohibitions on single-use plastics. That sounds tough, but some of those issues apply to other provinces.

Carney now has to form a coalition of sorts to get legislation through. Besides taking on Trump’s junk, Carney will have to deal with a possible postal strike, a health system in near chaos, crime which is out of control, housing problems galore including homelessness and a soaring cost-of-living, especially grocery prices; like, ‘Good Luck Mate’. For the working class in Canada, life would be slightly better if Canada did not become state 51, but nevertheless exploitation is exploitation and whether one is exploited as an American or a Canadian it sucks and not a one of the recently elected MPs will take a stand against it.