Voice From the Back: A Society of contrasts (2008)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Society of contrasts

Everywhere you look today the contradictions of capitalism become more and more obvious. Great wealth alongside great poverty, starvation amidst plenty and a technology that makes space travel possible yet is unable to stop the destruction of war. Two recent examples of the obscenity of capitalism leapt from the pages of the media recently. “Caviar House & Prunier, on Piccadilly, has taken delivery of the Almas, a rare golden caviar once reserved for the Tsars of Russia. Despite the price – £920 for limited edition 50g tins – the shop claims a four-year waiting list.” (Times, 19 August) “The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday. With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.” (Yahoo News, 27 August) Does this system not disgust you? We must abolish it.

Marx and modernity

Away back in 1867 Karl Marx in Das Capital explained how the so-called primitive accumulation of capital was based on robbery and murder. In Peru today a similar process is taking place. In Britain we had the highland clearances and the enclosure acts, in Peru it is the expulsion of the indigenous population. “Peru is considering sending in the army to break up protests by Amazonian Indians who claim the government is preparing a massive land grab in the country’s remote jungles. … The government has responded to an appeal for talks by declaring a state of emergency in three states and threatening protesters with military action. “Indigenous people are defending themselves against government aggression,” said an Amazon Indian rights campaigner, Alberto Pizango. “This is not an ordinary or everyday demonstration. The Indians have told us they are not afraid. If the government declares a state of emergency they prefer to die there and show that this government violates human rights.” Relations between indigenous groups and the President Alan Garcia have become increasingly hostile as the government has sought to exploit what are thought to be rich oil and gas deposits in lands owned by Amazon Indians. Energy companies have pushed deep into supposedly protected areas in the past year, leading to clashes with some of the most remote tribal peoples left in the world.” (Independent, 21 August)

US gap widens

Socialists often meet with the argument that while capitalism may have been a terrible system in the past, with the awful gap between rich and poor, today we are gradually improving things and such inequalities no longer exists. So what do the anti-socialists make of these recent statistics? “The rich-poor gap also widened with the nation’s top one percent now collecting 23 percent of total income, the biggest disparity since 1928, according to the Economic Policy Institute. One side statistic supplied by the IRS: there are now 47,000 Americans worth $20 million or more, an all-time high.” (San Francisco Chronicle, 2 September) Eighty years of reform and now the gap is even wider.

Behind the rhetoric

Capitalist statesmen often speak of high ideals like freedom and democracy but behind the high-sounding rhetoric there is usually a harsh reality. A recent example was the US vice-president’s speech in Georgia. “Speaking in Georgia on Thursday, Cheney slammed Russia’s “illegitimate, unilateral attempt” to redraw the country’s borders and promised ongoing support for Georgia’s efforts to join NATO. The Vice President’s trip was accompanied by a $1 billion aid package announced in Washington Wednesday, for the purpose of rebuilding Georgia’s shattered economy and infrastructure. Upon arriving in Azerbaijan on Wednesday, Cheney told the people of that country and their neighbors in Georgia and Ukraine that “the United States has a deep and abiding interest in your well-being and security”.” Fine words indeed, but behind them was a more sordid reason than concern for the well-being of the Georgian citizens. “Vice President Dick Cheney, on a tour of former Soviet Republics, was working to shore up U.S. alliances in the wake of Russia’s military humiliation of Georgia – a mission whose outcome could have profound consequences for Washington’s efforts to maintain and expand the flow of oil and natural gas to the West while bypassing Russia. ” (Time, 4 September)

The Indian Rupee trick 

Many Asian countries are depicted as “third-world” where an undeveloped economy leaves millions starving, but here is an example of an Indian capitalist who has learned the trick of exploiting workers to make a fortune.” Vijay Mallya, the founder and chairman of fast-growing Kingfisher Airlines, launched his first international route yesterday linking Heathrow with India’s IT capital Bangalore – a daily service that puts the carrier in head-to-head competition with BA. …The father-of-three, ranked 476th in Fortune’s list of the world’s wealthiest people, has 26 homes around the world and 260 vintage cars. He made his fortune as chairman of Indian drinks group United Breweries, the Kingfisher-beer owner that last year acquired Scotch whisky maker Whyte & Mackay for £595m.” (Daily Telegraph, 5 September)

Hungry for Socialism (2008)

Book Review from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hunger. By Raymond Tallis. Acumen, 2008.

Raymond Tallis, a physician turned philosopher, has delivered a thoughtful if slightly anarchic book in The Art Of Living series. In 164 pages he discusses several different concepts and manifestations of hunger. Starting with the nature and evolution of biological hunger in animals and humans, he goes on to trace how the pleasure of meeting nutritional needs has spawned for humans a multitude of other pleasures.

The author looks at how the hunger for food develops into what he calls hunger for others. There comes, for at least some people, the hunger for meaning and significance. Tallis’s final chapter “asks how we might manage our individual and collective hungers better so that we shall be less possessed by them and more concerned with the suffering of those to whom even subsistence is denied”.

The author makes several references to Marx, mainly on the fetishism of commodities and humans producing their own means of subsistence, but he nowhere expresses a hunger for revolutionary change. He does, however, take issue with another philosopher, John Gray, for whom planet earth has been doomed by the arrogance of human beings (“Homo rapiens”). Tallis points out that when humans regard their species as no more than animals they are inclined to treat one another even worse than hitherto.

As the author notes, the world we live in demands that we consume many things beyond our bodily needs. It is “a world where many have little or nothing to eat while many more are eating far too much and are in hot pursuit of a multitude of secondary and elective hungers”. Tallis doesn’t talk about a socialist future but he does say a few words about utopia: “The central presupposition of utopian [is] that our hungers will somehow serve our fellow men and not set one against another, that there are fundamental desires that will drive us to work for the common good.”

We drink to that!

Stan Parker

New Pamphlet: An Inconvenient Question. Socialism and the Environment (2008)

Party News from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years the environment has become a major political issue. And rightly so, because a serious environmental crisis really does exist. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat have all become contaminated to a greater or lesser extent. Ecology - the branch of biology that studies the relationships of living organisms to their environment - is important, as it is concerned with explaining exactly what has been happening and what is likely to happen if present trends continue.

Since the publication of our Ecology and Socialism pamphlet in 1990 environmental problems facing the planet have got much worse. We said then that attempts to solve those problems within capitalism would meet with failure, and that is precisely what has happened. Recent research on increasing environmental degradation has painted an alarming picture of the likely future if the profit system continues to hold sway. Voices claiming that the proper use of market forces will solve the problem can still be heard, but as time goes on the emerging facts of what is happening serve only to contradict those voices.

In this pamphlet we begin with a brief review of the development of Earth and of humankind’s progress on it so far. We then examine the mounting evidence that the planet is now under threat of a worsening, dangerous environment for human and other forms of life. The motor of capitalism is profit for the minority capitalist class to add to their capital, or capital accumulation. Environmental concerns, if considered at all, always come a poor second. The waste of human and other resources used in the market system is prodigious, adding to the problems and standing in the way of their solution.

Earth Summits over the last few decades show a consistent record of failure - unjustifiably high hopes and pitifully poor results sum them up. The Green Party and other environmental bodies propose reforms of capitalism that haven’t worked or have made very little real difference in the past. Socialists can see no reason why it should be any different in the future. Finally we discuss the need, with respect to the ecology of the planet, for a revolution that is both based on socialist principles of common ownership and production solely for needs, and environmental principles of conserving — not destroying — the wealth and amenities of the planet.

Contents

Introduction

What is ecology?

Earth under threat

Profit wins, the environment also ran The waste of capitalism

Earth Summits - a record of failure Green reformism

Socialism - an inconvenient question?

To get a copy by post send a cheque or postal order for £2.50 (made out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”) to: The Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN.

The pamphlet will be launched at a public meeting: Saturday 25 October, 6pm

SOCIALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT 

Speakers: Brian Morris (guest speaker) and Adam Buick (Socialist Party)

Chair: Gwynn Thomas (Socialist Party)

Forum followed by discussion.

Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).

Socialist Party Merchandise (2008)

Advert from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letter: Olympic Retrospect (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Olympic Retrospect

I started watching the Olympics and at first was just taken by how well the participants excelled in their particular activities. Then an unease about the whole show leaked through. The elitism, the flag waving and the full-on nationalism made me switch off. Better the athletes, etc had competed in the name of their multinational sponsors or pharmaceutical company than this hideous exhibition of national identity. Backed up by officials and commentators winding up the patriotic fervour, even that stupid chump Adrian Chiles and other media prostitutes, screaming for “their” country. Doubtless the same was happening in all the other countries’ media. I expect the 1936 Olympics was much like this.

Stuart Gibson,

Bournemouth

Letter: Not Standard terminology? (2008)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not Standard terminology?

I have long been impressed by the range and quality of writing in the Socialist Standard, but in “The Irish No” (September) Declan Ganley is described as a ‘self-made millionaire’ and reference is made to ‘former Communist countries’. Unqualified use of such terms, repeated ad nauseam in the capitalist media, is surely something to be avoided in a socialist journal..

Robert Stafford,

Norway

Reply: 

You’re right of course. No millionaire is “self-made” as they get rich by exploiting workers. And the so-called “Communist” countries were not communist but state-capitalist. Apologies for the missing inverted commas.– Editors