Wage share falls (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists do not enjoy being the bringer of bad tidings, though it is a familiar enough role to us, especially during times of economic or social crisis. But facts are facts, and when they act as a further indictment of the capitalist system, we certainly do not shirk from saying so. The most recent dose of bad news for the working class has been hidden away by the newspapers, or more often simply ignored completely. It is that according to data released by the Central Statistical Office, wages have fallen to their smallest share of die British Gross Domestic Product since records began—forty years ago. Capital is king it seems, but it wouldn’t do for the capitalists to gloat in public in case the working class took offence.

The working class, as is so often the case, have something to be angry about. In the second quarter of 1995 statistics show that income from employment accounted for just 62.1 percent of GDP, down from about 72 percent in the mid-1970s after the “Barber boom", when trade union membership was nearing record levels. If wages had remained at this level of GDP, the gross income of the working class from employment would have been over £60 billion higher than it currently is. This amounts to an average of £50 a week for every worker lost to the capitalist class.

Officials acting for the Central Statistical Office explain this fall in the share of wages and salaries in GDP (a share which was still as high as 66.3 percent in 1992) by saying that the mini-recovery from the slump has led to company profits rising faster than wages, with this exacerbated by economisation on labour. Their recent report states that “companies are producing more from fewer staff. We are thus working for proportionately less per person". However, bad though the situation is, there are other factors at work too. One is that income from “self-employment” has carried on increasing in recent years, with a formal changing in the tax and benefit status of some wage workers as firms “contract out" jobs. Also, tens of thousands of unemployed workers have been encouraged to set up their own businesses by the Department of Employment providing services that real capitalists find unprofitable These workers existing often on the equivalent of poverty-line wages, topped up with Family Credit. There are now more window-cleaners and mobile hairdressers than ever, and if their average income is anything to go by, their lot is not a happy one. What their presence does do, though, is make the share of wages from employment lower than it would otherwise be, as they are not officially classified as wage workers at all.

That the fall in the share of wages over the last twenty years according to these figures had been bad—though not as catastrophic as first appears to be the case—is the silver lining. The real position of the working class is in actual fact worse than that presented by the official statistics. This is because the current figure of 62.1 percent as the share of wages in GDP is a gross sum which includes taxation paid by the workers. But wages—the cost of producing and reproducing workers’ energies—are a real amount intended to provide workers with enough purchasing power to keep themselves and their families in a fit condition for their jobs, given their skills, education, standard of training and so on. They are the real amount received for this purpose, not a “gross” hypothetical sum. A gross wage may be £15,000 per annum, but a large proportion of this is taken out in taxes, some of which—like income tax—the worker doesn’t really receive in the first place. When direct and indirect taxation are taken into account, the real wage income of the £15,000-a-year worker will be found to be substantially less—and by thousands not hundreds.

As was realised by economists as diverse as Adam Smith, Ricardo and Marx, taxation is in reality a burden on the capitalist class and not the workers—if it was abolished overnight the real consuming power of the workers would not increase at all. When this point is grasped it can be seen that the real share of the working class in British GDP is much less than 62.1 percent, even if we include the self- employed. And it should be remembered that these taxes which are nominally “paid” by the working class are higher now than ever before in the peace-time history of Britain. Real income from employment in Britain is now almost certainly well below the 50 percent mark.

The price to pay

The latest data on prices and incomes show that the position of the working class with regard to capital is worsening. The Retail Price Index, helped along by a continuing dose of currency inflation which has outweighed downward pressure on prices from the slump, is currently registering an annual rise of 3.6 percent, a figure which is slowly moving up. Average earnings meanwhile, are increasing by only 3.25 percent annually, with the majority of workers getting much less than this. Real wages, therefore, are currently falling.

While in Britain the workers’ share of the wealth they produce has been declining, in other countries the situation is worse still. In the United States, for example, many sections of the working class (like car workers and steel workers) receive lower real wages now than they did twenty years ago, let alone a smaller share of the product. Whether Britain and similar countries will go the same way is difficult to tell. Certainly, Britain’s comparatively high level of trade union membership will help mitigate against this, but the same forces unleashed by capital in America to maximise accumulation at the expense of the consumption of the workers are finding expression here: shift-work, union-busting, market deregulation and short-term contracts to name but the most obvious.

Workers must unite in the face of this onslaught from capital to protect their interests—the battle of wage labour against capital must be fought vigorously, and workers must democratically organise on the economic front to fight their corner. This struggle must be fought on a wider front than the economic battleground within capitalism, however. The market economy is based on an unfair and antagonistic system of income distribution which causes industrial disputes, economic crises and vast wealth amidst poverty as a matter of course. It tramples on the working class with impunity and continues to laugh in the face of the reformers. If the workers are really to have any lasting victory over King Capital worth speaking of, the whole system of wage labour most go, and the sooner the better.

Dave Perrin

World View: "Mankind's most toxic pollution" (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

On his return from the Inhumane Weapons Convention in Vienna in early October, the British delegate and Foreign Office minister, David Davis, announced that “landmines remain an effective defensive weapon", and that it would not "be right to deny other responsible countries the right to have landmines" (Guardian, 3 October).

The above raises questions. A convention called to debate "inhumane weapons” suggests some weapons are considered "humane", which is absurd—they all kill. Again, what is a "responsible" country? According to David Davis it would include those who ratified the original IWC protocol some fifteen years ago and so including countries like the former Yugoslavia and Guatemala. Can any country, for that matter, which plants landmines, be classed as "responsible"?

Thanks to such "responsible” countries the world is now littered with 100 million landmines. The UN. though, put this figure closer to 200 million! At the top of the landmine league is Africa with 20 million, 10 million of which are buried beneath Angola's soil. Elsewhere in Africa you can step on landmines in Mozambique. Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Djibouti, Rwanda, Morocco, Western Sahara and Chad. Most of Libya’s 5 million landmines are still active more than fifty years after they were planted. Meanwhile, Mozambique boats the widest variety of mines—32, manufactured in 15 different countries.

Other countries with a high concentration of landmines are Afghanistan, Cambodia, Iraq and the former Yugoslavia. Together they have 33 million mines and a combined population of 57 million— more than one mine per family.

Despite the work done by anti-landmine organisation, some 2 million continue to be planted each year—a figure that flies in the face of UN de-mining programmes that clear only 85,000 landmines per year at the cost of $75 million. The beaches of Kuwait alone have cost $80 million to de-mine and it is estimated that a further $57 billion would be needed to clear every mine in the world.

Mine clearing has become so dangerous, expensive and time-consuming that Britain has now abandoned its operation in the Falklands, preferring simply to cordon off land that contains 20,000 mines. The hills and forests that surround Dubrovnik are so which with mines that experts believe it would take 8 years to clear them.

The UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs recently reported that "if the proliferation of landmines was stopped in 1996, at current rates of funding and clearance it would still take almost 1,100 years to rid the world of all the landmines in the ground" (New Statesman. 4 August).

In the past four years. Britain has donated £16 million towards mine clearance projects, and has "officially” (stop laughing) not exported landmines for 10 years. Mines, however, with the "made in Britain" logo, have been unearthed in Croatia. Bosnia. Afghanistan, Vietnam, Somalia and Mozambique. While the British government does not sanction the selling of landmines it does have a preference for a special type of mine—the "smart” mine, for which David Davis recently commented there lay a "safer future" (Guardian, 3 October).

Not so smart

"Smart" mines are supposed to be able to self-destruct after a number of years and are said to be able to be deactivated from a distance. Critics, however, point out that the failure rate for "smart” mines is between 10 and 25 percent. Furthermore, in Laos people are still being killed by US mines that were supposed to have self-destructed 25 years ago.

Mines have great patience. They recognise no cease-fire and can’t distinguish between a bazooka-laden soldier and a child carrying firewood. This is why they kill and maim 500 people each week. In Poland, as late as 1977, mines laid during World War II were killing up to 40 people per year, and mines planted during that same conflict continue to kill and maim in France, Germany, Belgium, Russia and the Netherlands.

Mines take not only lives. They also wreak havoc on the societies infested with them. UN Secretary-general Boutros-Ghali stated several months ago that "by neutralising essential infrastructures. mines present a virtually insuperable obstacle to post-conflict peace-building" (New African, May 1995).

Mines are often planted around key economic installations such as electricity generating plants, water treatment stations and port facilities, thus hampering their use. They lie buried beneath countless paddy fields and across millions of acres of arable land. In Afghanistan alone half of all land that could be cultivated is not for fear of explosions. Mines drain a community's resources, as victims who are maimed are made economically inactive and require intensive medical care.

As well as over-stretching medical resources, hundreds of thousands of people remain virtual prisoners in refugee camps because their passage home is not safe—putting a further strain on host countries.

It costs as little as $3 to lay a mine and up to $1,000 to remove it later on. All governments are aware of this fact and other mentioned. But the social system they rule over makes the challenge of addressing such contradictions impossible. The quest for profit—macro profit—comes first, and a few million wasted dollars is well worth the gamble for military and economic power.

Stuart Maslen of UNICEF cited a typical counter-argument put to the advocates of a ban on landmines: "If we give in to humanitarian organisations on landmines, they are going to come back and question the legitimacy of other weapons" (Guardian, 5 October).

The argument can be taken further. To campaign for a ban on landmines, presupposes that other weapons are not objected to, such has lasers, which David Davis believes "are vital for the armed forces" (Guardian, 3 October).

Socialists believe not only in the abolition of landmines, but in the abolition of all weapons. We realise, though, that this will only come about when we abolish the motive that necessitates their use—profit; when we make the motive for war— mineral wealth, resources—the common property of the world’s people, and free from private interests, trade routes, overseas markets and areas of influence. Only then can we get down to the task of allocating workers and resources to the clearance of mines, or what the US State Department has described as "Mankind’s most toxic pollution”!

John Bissett

World View: Spooks, crooks and the rape of Russia (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is beginning to dawn on the new rulers of Russia that the advice they have been receiving from transnational companies, Western politicians, businessmen, and "economics experts” is worse than useless. The dogmas and shibboleths that have been unsuccessful for Western capitalism will not succeed in the far less favourable conditions now prevailing in Russia.

Yeltsin and his consorts were swept into power on a wave of discontent following the grey years of Brezhnev and the hollow promises of Gorbachev. A new era was predicted by adopting the “Free Market" economy of Western capitalism. Those responsible for spreading this illusion will inevitably reap a bitter harvest.

A major factor in the decline of the Soviet Union was the ever-escalating arms race with the United States and the NATO powers. The amount of social labour necessary to achieve parity in means of murder left very little to produce better means of life. However when the means of life are scarce, such as in times of war, there is a tendency for black markets to arise. There was a flourishing black market in the Soviet Union for many years, run by criminal gangs in consort with corrupt officials. Goods produced for sale in the shops ended up in the hands of the racketeers, for the benefit of the criminal few and the detriment of the many.

When the Cold War was at its height the Soviet Union was able to recruit agents from the ranks of starry-eyed young intellectuals who accepted the myth that Communism rather than State Capitalism was being built there. The Western powers having no comparable source of naive idealists to exploit, had to rely on criminals and people they could bribe or blackmail into serving their ends.

In addition to bribing corrupt officials the CIA has a long chequered (well documented) history of using criminal organisations; in Cuba, Latin America, and the Far East, not to speak of the Mafia within the United States itself. There are numerous books and television documentaries which have exposed such dealings, so it is no surprise to find they successfully used similar tactics within the USSR and the Warsaw pact countries.

Mafias

The winter of 1990-91 saw increasing hardship, with a “free market" supposedly on its way food disappeared from shop shelves. An Italian TV crew filmed twenty heavily loaded trucks leaving Moscow's wholesale produce market, not one of which unloaded at a retail outlet The food existed but not in the shops. The dearth was artificially created to augment prices on the black market. Police were finding dumps of animal carcasses covered with earth all over the countryside.

The next winter saw $13 billions-worth of food disappear only some of which was sold by black marketeers. Trainloads from Western Europe were shunted into sidings in Moscow and left to rot, others ended up at obscure destinations in Siberia and other remote places. One-hundred-and-twenty tons of frozen meat from Britain was sidelined and labelled "infected with mad cow disease". The strangling of the country’s food supply was a colossal operation to force up prices and expand the range of the black market operators. It demonstrates the size and power of the Russian Mafias.

But when Boris Yeltsin complained to the West about “the Mafia that controls our markets and sabotages our industries" it was ignored and passed over as more babbling from boozy Boris. However, when Yeltsin made this statement there were twenty criminal gangs operating in Moscow, most of them at each others' throats, and people in any kind of business from restaurants to news-stands had to pay protection even if the gang supplied their goods.

In the four years since the demise of state capitalism in the Soviet Union, the country has been stripped of billions of dollars-worth of raw materials, which were exported by illegal means: titanium, timber, strontium, uranium, plutonium, petroleum, and more. The fall in the value of the rouble allowed whole industries, office blocks, department stores, hotels, shops, fleets of buses and trucks to be bought for a song. Military hardware, much of it state-of-the-art, has fallen into the hands of ruthless gangsters. No-one can be sure of the nuclear arsenal, especially since 2,000 tons of gold were spirited out of the Bank vaults in 1991.

Russia is now the main conduit for smuggling drugs into Europe, and the profits of the drug trade are being laundered through Russian banks. The rape of the Soviet Union, which was once the second most powerful country in the world, is almost complete. Its industries, public utilities, transport and real estate, are being systematically stripped of their assets. Criminal gangs control the major cities, often warring among themselves. Attorney-General Stepankov stated there were 18,000 murders in 1992 and there were 14,800 in the first six months of 1993 (Claire Sterling, Crime Without Frontiers, 1994, p. 235). Bankers and policemen are increasingly being gunned down. In the Far East Vladivostok has been taken over by a consortium of the Russian mafias, Chinese triads, and the Japanese Yakuza.

The capital amassed by the crime cartels is now available to be invested in stock markets, money markets and legitimate businesses around the world. In the five years since 1990 the mafias have become major players in the capitalist world. The grief, pain, anguish, and misery that is the lot of the workers of the world is deeper and more widespread than ever. Marx's prediction of the increasing misery of the working class is vindicated with each passing year which brings more war more uncertainty, unemployment, more crises and ecological disasters, more terror, more crime. Capitalism causes chaos.

JORIC

The Socialist Party — who we are and what we do (1995)

From the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is the text (slightly amended) of a leaflet that was recently distributed by our members in Edinburgh

The aim of the Socialist Party

The aim of the Socialist Party and the other parties which make up the World Socialist Movement is the sole objective of achieving Socialism. To us Socialism is a world without employers and employees and the poverty that is caused by this master-slave relationship. We want a classless, stateless, world society where everything that is produced is available free. No money — we take what we need and we make decisions about what is produced and what isn’t. In short, we seek the end of what is usually called Business and Commerce.

How do we achieve this?

If such a democratic community is to come about it must do so because the majority of people want it. It isn’t going to fall out of the sky or be brought about by leaders who are going to sneak such a society upon us pretty much without our knowledge. So the Socialist Party seeks to build support for the end of the Profit System and its replacement by World Socialism. We are prepared to use Parliament and other elected bodies to affect this change. We also believe that as socialist ideas grow there will be developments in the organisation of people at their places of work. Clearly, we don’t just have a parliamentary strategy. The main thing is that the majority are the only people who can bring this change about and sustain socialism.

Do we have leaders?

No. Leadership is undemocratic. It implies, as can be seen from the way virtually every other political party is organised, that certain members have more rights than others. Every member of the Socialist Party joins on an entirely equal footing with every other member.

Are we after Nationalisation?

No. Nationalisation, of key industries or all industries, just means that government bodies administer Business and workers continue to be exploited. Wc want the end of Business.

Do we Vote Labour or suggest that people should vote Labour?

No way. The Labour Party is in our view an anti-socialist party which now has no ideas at all. It is virtually identical to the Tories. Even when it claimed to have ideas these merely amounted to government bodies running business — nationalisation isn’t socialism.

Do we campaign for Reforms?

No. That isn’t to say that some reforms haven’t in the past benefited workers. Like the vote, elementary education, “free” health care. But, as people now know, even these reforms can be wrecked or they can be taken away all together. So we don’t campaign to house the homeless or for more funds for the Health Service — this isn’t because we don’t care - we reject this because campaigning for reforms hasn't worked. Instead we try to get people to look beyond the acceptance of a daily life of relative poverty.

Are we involved in “the day-to-day struggle"?

Yes. No worker can avoid being in the day-to-day struggle to look after ourselves and our families. Most of our members who work are involved in trades unions — and actively resist attempts by employers to worsen our working conditions, but we recognise that unions have many limitations. Our members are also involved in things like tenants’ associations and other community groups.

Russia and all that.

No! For 75 years we have been criticising the methods, tactics and the outcomes of events like the Bolshevik Revolution. The idea of a coup d’etat by a small minority in the name of the working class which then enacts nationalisation measures is totally at odds with trying to build a majority who want to bring into being a classless, moneyless world society. The notion that socialism means this was not in the game at all in Russia in 1917

What do we do?

We hold public meetings, debates, weekend conferences. We occasionally contest local, national and European elections. We produce leaflets for door-to-door distribution and for handing out on the streets or at demonstrations. We sell the Socialist Standard (it’s not compulsory) and in Edinburgh we have written and produced our own free paper/magazine called the International Times. We attend other organisations’ meetings and demonstrations to talk to people, give away leaflets and sell literature. And while we don’t join in demonstrations to demand reforms we are anti-war and anti-racist.

We also do things like organise “socials” which are just get-togethers in pubs with people performing. With more people we could do a whole lot more. One thing we never do, however, is set ourselves up as some kind of leadership of the working class — we leave that short of thing to the SWP, Labour and the like — or to any other conservative groupings who think that workers are sheep in need of leaders.

These Foolish Things . . . (1995)

The Scavenger column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

World domination

“Last year, there were only seven independent countries in the world in which we (America’s B2 stealth bombers) did not operate. Two do not have runways and one is run by a guy named Gadafy.” US Air Force chief of staff, General Ronald Fogleman.

The threat remains

“I have spent the last four years photographing deployed strategic nuclear weapons at sites throughout the United Stales . . . Consider these facts:

Three new Trident submarines are currently under construction. These underwater missile platforms have no ‘dual use’ or conventional role: Congress recently authorised $50 million for ‘long lead’ production of an additional 10-20 B2 ‘Stealth’ bombers at a cost of $1 billion to $2 billion apiece.

A $4.8 billion program is underway to extend the life of 500 Minutemen missiles until the year 2000.”

Paul Shambroom, Minneapolis, Photographer, Star Tribune, August 13 1995.

Economics defeats sense

Slate from northern Spain is being used to roof homes in North Wales even though the region is pock-marked with quarries which have produced high quality slate for more than 200 years. "But it makes no sense at all that material in bulk is transported thousands of miles and that it is still cheaper to put it on a roof here," (Said Bill Henderson, principal planning officer of Snowdonia National Park). Guardian, 17 August.

Slave trade threatened

The ruling that football transfer fees were illegal came from the European Court of Justice and, if it is upheld later this year, many small clubs could go out of business. It would mean players being able to leave clubs at the end of their contracts without the clubs receiving any fee.

The value of big clubs would be destroyed, with millions of pounds being wiped off their books, while smaller ones would be unable to survive without being able to sell talented youngsters. Evening Mail, 20 September.

First things first

The (I.G. Farbcn) combine which fuelled the Nazi war machine, employed an estimated 350,000 slave labourers during the second world war. At its most notorious factory at Monowitz or Auschwitz III, 30,000 people were worked to death. An I.G. Farbcn subsidiary produced the Zyklon-B tablets used to gas concentration camp inmates . . .

A group of critical shareholders have been trying to force I. G. Farbcn and three chemical concerns created from its break-up—BASF, Hoechst and Bayer—to do more to compensate the victims of the Holocaust. But Ernst Krienke, head of the supervisory board, said the company’s first duties were to its shareholders and creditors. Guardian, 10 August 1995.

The Scavenger

Suckers’ Luck (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is a year now and still I have not become a multi-millionaire. Something is clearly serious amiss here. Yes, it was a mere twelve months ago (19 November 1995, to be precise) that share options in mass gullibility were first floated on the open market and, with the descent to earth of the god of Mammon made flesh, we were all informed, in tones designed to elicit guilt from the average Catholic, that IT COULD BE YOU. A finger out of the sky pointed at us from beyond the TV screen: a sort of divine signal that the purchase of a lottery ticket was our pre-ordained path to prosperity if not righteousness.

Out we trotted, fools that we all were (and some still are), to hand over our puny little pound in exchange for the multi-million-pound public fantasy. Yes, I went. The queue was long in that final hour between W.H. Smith closing its doors to us luckless suckers and the balls being juggled before the nation’s wide-eyed mass regression to Christmas Morning aged Two. In front of me stood a grubby man wearing plimsolls with holes in them and a folded-up copy of the betting page from a newspaper with no news in it. There he stood, his life in poverty and his mind on the brink of unbounded affluence. But he was a thoughtful old twit, declaring half to himself and then to anyone who would listen that when he won he was damned if he was going to pay the top rate of income tax. Why should he waste his millions subsidising workshy layabouts with nothing to do all day but sit in the belting shop and complain about the price of pork scratchings? No, he would be moving his new-won riches to tax-free Guernsey, he explained, and let the impoverished wretches of this bomb-site called Britain fend for themselves.

Standing in the queue were others who were fending for themselves by entertaining the hopes of the most easily manipulated as they made their charitable donations to Eton school for parasites, the restoration of Royal palaces and other “worthy causes”. A statistic was later to appear suggesting that if a resident of London were to throw a pound down the toilet and flush it into the expansive urban sewage system they would stand more chance of it accidentally coming back to them through the water supply than being repaid as part of any lottery prize money.

The Labour leader, gifted as he is with the new thinking of an anaemic gnat, has promised that when . . . and if . . . and so on . . . his government will see to it that the lottery is run fairly, and certainly not by profiteers. The name of Richard Branson, a prophet of the fast buck to whom the word profit is like cream to a feral cat, has been mentioned as part of the Brave New Blair World. The suggestions that in future NHS beds will be allocated by an offshoot of Virgin Airlines, offering lucky tickets to cancer patients in return for a crisp new tenner, is merely rumour of the most malicious kind.

Not for Ken Southwell of York all of this faithless cynicism, for as the Northern Echo newspaper reported this January, he won £840,000 on the lottery and still intends to continue working. Contradicting every half-baked heckler at a socialist meeting since 1904, Southwell informed the newspaper that “The reality is you have to do something. You can’t just sit back and do nothing for the rest of your life.” The newspaper reports a Dr Peter Warr of the Institute of Work Psychology at Sheffield University who explains that people like working—it’s natural, for humans to want to expend energy. End of human nature myth, though we fear we might hear it again between now and the coming of a sane social order.

Speaking of which, a question presents itself. How often have we heard the cynics to slavery tell us that socialism is all well and good but it will never come in their lifetimes? Why waste energy on demanding the impossible? Might we have spotted one or two of these hard-headed realists standing in line at the lottery counter, hard-earned fiver clutched in sweaty palm, waiting for their chance to achieve the almost impossible? Given a choice between a massive old fraud of an avaricious fantasy and a serious bid for the people of the earth to take it themselves into their own hands which would you bet on?

Steve Coleman

Is David Icke serious? (1995)

Book Review from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is common—and polite—to describe David Icke’s views as being somewhat ‘eccentric’; a more honest way of describing them would be ‘absolute nonsense’.

Most people will regard David Icke as a nutter, an utter nutter in fact. Which is not surprising since in his talks and books he puts forward a fantastic proposition: that the planet Earth is in the grip of hostile extraterrestrials who are behind a group of humans, “the Global Elite”, plotting to establish a world government under which we would all have microchips implanted in us linked to a central computer; since these extraterrestrials feed off our negative feelings our only hope lies in changing ourselves through substituting Love for hatred, fear and guilt. It’s a peculiar combination of 1960s’ hippyism and far-right conspiracy theories.

Icke is not the only person to put forward such views but, as a former TV sports presenter and Green Party national speaker, he has been able to obtain a much wider hearing for them than they would otherwise get. Since Icke presents them as being literally true they are open to refutation—or confirmation—by the same standards as any other claim about what happens in the world of human experience.

Mind and Matter

Icke’s basic philosophical position is that mind has priority over matter and that in fact matter was created by a mind. As he puts it in his latest book And the Truth Shall Set You Free:

“Creation is the expression of one infinite mind and all life forms are aspects of that one mind what many people call God. We are all God, if you wish to use that term. At the heart of this mind is a consciousness I see as a blinding light— the Source Consciousness from which all has been brought into existence ” (p. xiv).

We don’t now how the universe came into being or indeed that it did “come into being” (it might always have been there), but what we do know about it is that forms of matter able to think arose at a later time than non-thinking matter and non-living (i.e. non-self-reproducing) matter generally, and in fact evolved out of it. So in this sense it is matter that has priority over mind—or rather, since mind is a form of matter, that non-thinking matter has priority over thinking matter—and not vice versa.

But we don’t need to pursue this point further since Icke’s brand of philosophical idealism does not deny that an external world of physical reality exists. It is a theory of how this world came into existence and accepts that it exists independently of our minds.

Icke also puts forward a theory of the nature of the self-conscious mind that humans have:

“Contrary to what medical science is obsessed with telling us, the physical body is not the whole human being. It is a fantastic physical shell through which the eternal us experiences this physical world. There is far more to us than a body . . . Our mental, emotional, and spiritual selves are a series of magnetic energy fields interacting with each other via vortices of energy known by the Hindu and Sanskrit word, ‘chakra’, which means wheel of light. These vortices are spirals of energy which intersect all levels of our being and pass energies between them . . . We are continually absorbing magnetic energy from the cosmos, mostly through the ‘base’ chakraat the base of the spine. After this life-force has passed through our levels of being and we have taken from it what we need, we broadcast our energy through the chakras back to the cosmos and the world around us ” (pp viii-ix).

Despite Icke’s basic philosophical idealism this is a materialist theory of the self-conscious mind since it posits that it has a physical existence. It is a claim that humans are a series of electromagnetic fields and that our bodies are receivers and transmitters of electromagnetic radiation. As it is a materialist theory it can be tested against the facts established so far about the nature of the human body and of electromagnetic radiation to see whether or not it is valid.

Energy and our bodies

The human body is indeed an absorber and transmitter of energy, including some radiation energy. Most of the energy we consume, however, is chemical energy, in the form of food which our bodies convert into, mainly, mechanical energy (to enable us to work and to keep our internal organs functioning) and heat energy (to maintain our body temperature) but also some electrical energy. The electromagnetic energy we absorb is mainly through heat and light but also some ultra-violet, X- and gamma rays, and cosmic rays (which normally don’t do us any good).

So Icke is right to the extent that our bodies do act as receivers of electromagnetic radiation, particularly light, but this is not done via the base of the spine (the Sun may shine in—and out—of Icke’s backside but most people absorb light through their eyes). Heat is another form of electromagnetic radiant energy and some will indeed be absorbed via the base of the spine but equally by the rest of the external surface of the body.

It is also the case that our bodies transmit radiation energy, overwhelmingly as heat but also as some electrical activity (such as that of our brains as measured by an encephalograph) and that to do this the body has to create and maintain magnetic fields.

It may well turn out that our “mental, emotional, and spiritual selves” are actually forms of radiant energy, as Icke claims. Or it may be that they are a form of chemical and mechanical energy that is generated by electrical and radiation energy or a combination of all four forms of energy. We don’t yet know. Icke, however, makes the additional claims that the electromagnetic fields which he believes our selves to be composed of could exist in the absence of our bodies.

This is basically a claim that an electromagnetic field can exist in the absence of atoms, molecules and subatomic particles. There is no evidence at all for this since, from what we know about magnetic fields, they can only be produced by particular movements of these forms of matter.

Changing frequency

To tell the truth Icke doesn’t really know all that much about what he calls “magnetic energy” since he writes of something that “it is like two magnets attracting each other” (p. 453) and that “under the law of like attracts like, this magnetic energy field . . . will attract to it compatible energy fields” (p. x). Actually, the whole theory of magnetism and electricity is based on like repelling like. He should try putting two magnets together and see what happens.

Despite his use of scientific terms such as magnetic fields, wavelengths and frequencies, Icke seems remarkably ignorant of what would be involved in for instance increasing the frequency of electromagnetic radiation. There are various different kinds of radiation energy and these are distinguished not only by their effects but also by their wavelengths and the time within which a wavelength is completed (their frequency). Basically, the shorter the wavelength the higher can be the frequency. But if you go on changing the wavelength and frequency you eventually change the nature of the radiation, from radio waves at the bottom with the longest wavelengths and the lowest frequencies through heat and light waves and on to ultra-violet and X-rays and beyond.

Icke claims that humans can voluntarily increase the frequencies of the electromagnetic radiation our bodies generate. In fact his whole theory of the future fate of the world depends on this (according to him this is what the power of Love will enable us to do, so defeating the evil extraterrestrials and their henchmen who’ve got us in their grip).

Suppose for the moment that this were true—and that we could voluntarily move the atoms and particles in the matter that makes up our bodies in such a way as to increase the frequency of the radiation our bodies emit—what would be the effect? The main electromagnetic radiation we emit is heat. If we increased the frequency the first thing that would happen is that we would overheat and eventually burn up. After that, had our bodies not been destroyed, we would begin to emit light. Then we would become radioactive, in short, we would destroy our bodies. It is fortunate, then, that we cannot in fact change the frequency/wavelength of what electromagnetic radiation we do emit.

Not that Icke is particularly concerned that increasing the frequency of the radiation we emit would destroy our bodies since he believes that:

“at the moment we call death, our mind-emotion-spirit, everything that is the thinking, feeling us, withdraws from the body, the ‘genetic space suit’ as I call it. The eternal spirit moves on to another wavelength of reality, another ‘world’, to continue its evolution ” (p. ix).

But, on his theory of the nature of our ”mind-emotion-spirit” (“a person is a series of magnetic fields”), this cannot be. This is because without matter to be agitated an electromagnetic field cannot exist. Despite his attack on the science “which claims there is no afterlife of any kind and when this physical life is over, the lights go out forever” (p. 449) this is a corollary of the particular (materialist) theory of the nature of mind and consciousness that he has chosen to espouse. The body ceasing to exist or to function is precisely like turning out the light since switching off the current terminates the electromagnetic field on which the light depends.

We don’t yet know the exact physical nature of the human mind and consciousness but we do know that it can’t exist in the absence of a body that functions. This is our only life and only world. Which is why it is so important to concentrate all our efforts on working for a better world for humans to live in, instead of waiting for the Millennium, the Second Coming, the Age of Aquarius, the Appearance of the Maitreya or whatever.

Adam Buick

Letter: Still Trying to Ban the Bomb (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Still Trying to Ban the Bomb

Dear Editors,

We desperately need your help to stop further nuclear testing in the South Pacific by France which has been condemned world-wide, but with no effect. Economic pressure is the only way to persuade France to change its mind.

Please boycott all French products and don't go to France on holiday and ask your friends and colleagues to do the same. Fax your protest to President Chirac (Fax no. 00 33 I 47 42 24 65) informing him that you are boycotting French products and will continue to do so indefinitely if France continues with further tests. (These will be far more powerful than the first one!)

As Britain is one of France's main trading partners your action will make a difference and any pressure you can put on the Government will certainly help. 

Zerina Tata, 

Wembley, Middlesex

Reply:

While we are opposed to all wars and to all testing of nuclear weapons (which add to the level of radioactivity in the world) we do not engage in single-issue campaigns. Instead, we concentrate on working to achieve a world of common ownership and democratic control in which wars and armaments and armies—and nuclear tests—won't exist.

As long as capitalism and its drive for profits exists, then so will states to further the interests of the various national groups of capitalists. And states, in the jockeying for position with other states, must be armed with the most up-to-date and destructive weapons they can afford. These include weapons of mass-destruction such as nuclear weapons. This is why it is the case that as long as capitalism continues so will nuclear weapons and their testing from time-to-time. Protests and boycotts can’t stop this. The only solution is to get rid of global capitalism and replace it with world socialism.

Editors.

Letter: Simply misheard (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Simply misheard

Dear Editors,

One thing I especially enjoy about the Socialist Party is your rationality. I find it frustrating that your solid arguments are so often simply misheard rather than disagreed with.

You doggedly put forward the proposition that what we need is a world society in which we all take what we each decide we need, from the common store of goods which we all co-operate together to produce. There would be no money, no coercion, and nobody would use anybody else.

Not only that, but you are clear that if this is to come about, it can only be as a result of the majority of the world's population grasping the situation, understanding how things are and what’s needed. You are emphatic that any idea of leadership is totally out of place in this thinking.

There is a whole movement afoot which is wholly with this understanding. I have in mind people like roads protesters, who are amazingly brave, creative and committed. Greens, people into DIY publishing and music, those into the newly-emerging Land Issue a la Winstanley. who was against money, and many others, the DIY underground, travellers and so forth. They share a great deal of your language, and they all more or less reject exploitation and favour a person-centred culture where the individual and the community are not artificially at odds as they are now.

And yet there seems to be no connection.

It seems to me that, for the alternative culture at least, there are two big obstacles to embracing what you call "Socialism":

Firstly, everyone assumes that some form of exchange has to remain in place. The idea of really sharing and trusting people not to take liberties is literally unthinkable.

Secondly, any attempt to say "we’ve thought about this, and this is what we think", any clarity on what's wrong and what’s needed is regarded with fear and hatred. People are very relativistic these days, seeing the only alternative to “nothing can be known" as “This is the truth, agree or else!"

In the meantime, of course, there's nothing relativistic about capitalism. We have to like it or lump it.

So that's why I value the Socialist Party so much. For holding onto the possibility that we can live all as sisters and brothers to one another, no matter how unfashionable and impossible that might look to our tired and fearful age—and for arguing that that's going to involve getting rid of exchange and so on.

It is all right to have an opinion about this. When you’re in a dark place people who genuinely look for a way out are a resource not a threat. Of course you could be wrong, but it looks reasonable to me. and indeed. I came to this understanding before I ever heard of the Socialist Party. To entertain these possibilities has nothing to do with trying to be a leader or a fanatic, it’s to do with trying to escape all that rubbish but still respect your intellect.

I really wish that I came across similar thinking more often amongst people you’d expect to be open to it.

Peter Rigg, 

Nelson, Lancs

Blogger's Note:

As many readers of the blog will know, Peter Rigg was a very valuable contributor to the Socialist Standard. His best known work was his Free Lunch cartoon strip, which appeared on the back page of the Standard from 2001 until 2020.

Is there a (spin) Doctor in the House? (1995)

Labour Party Conference 1995

TV Review from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conference season saw a renewed bout of political spin-doctoring designed to influence, persuade and mollify the media. Nowhere was this more evident than with the Labour conference in Brighton, where Labour had a team of no less than ten spin-doctors beavering away on behalf of Tony Blair’s media image. Chief among them was Alistair Campbell, former boot-boy for Robert Maxwell on the Daily Mirror before he jumped ship for Murdoch's now left-leaning Today, from where he ascended (if that is the right word) to head Tony Blair's press office.

On the day of the Leader's speech, Campbell and his fellow spin-doctors had a difficulty to overcome. The problem was that O.J. Simpson's trial verdict was likely to eclipse coverage of Blair’s peroration to the Labour conference, normally a guaranteed news-headline grabber. ITN’s tabloid-style early evening news led with O.J. Simpson and Campbell was furious that his man had been relegated to the status of a news also-ran on his big day. So what did Campbell do? He sent fax-after-fax to the BBC newsroom making sure they did not make the same mistake. And what faxes some of them were. Anyone under the illusion that the Labour Party has a higher moral purpose than the Tories, and are less likely to bully third parties into submission, should read the text of one of them in particular. It went as follows: 

"Old BBC, bad BBC. Bad BBC, no licence fee. New BBC, good BBC. New BBC, new Charter . . . from New Labour."

What a nice bunch of cuddly politicians they really are! If threats and blackmail are to be the style of New Labour’s media manipulation when in opposition, then goodness only knows what they will be like when they get a taste of real power.

Turn to the right . . .

Meanwhile, Guardian hack Francis Wheen has been identifying BBC TV reporters who have been less than scrupulous themselves. BBC Political Correspondent Steve Richards, for instance, has been writing in the Tory Party’s house magazine the Spectator that the Labour Party refuses to enter into an "honest debate" about its policies. and that Blair's brand of populism is "a masterful illusion". All quite correct of course, though why he chose the Spectator to say it is somewhat more of a mystery. Then there was Lord Callaghan's son-in-law Peter Jay, the BBC's Economics Editor, writing on the Daily Mail's leader page that Labour economic policy is “moonshine . . . like demanding six impossible things before breakfast ". Again, this is the truth, but since when has the truth been the concern of the BBC and its correspondents? Good stories yes. a quiet life, yes. but the truth?

Finally there is the example of Michael Gove another BBC Political Correspondent, moonlighting by writing a hagiography of Michael Portillo. Gove variously describes this greasy right-wing xenophobe as "supremely civilised" and a man who "feels deeply about his country". Now that is more like it. The British Bullshit Corporation in full flow, prostituting itself for an easy time from the rich and powerful, with a bit of cash on the side just to smooth things along.

There can be no doubt that political reporting in Britain is currently beset by a bout of infighting. intrigue, posturing and above all, moonlighting. While the BBC and ITN attempt to steer an unsteady course between the contending power-mongers, desperate not to upset either side, the hacks are scrambling around for any advantage they can glean from the next government (and just as there are many willing to criticise Blair, there are even more lining up behind him). Numerous political correspondents harbour political ambitions of their own, or—what is more understandable—higher pay checks.

The list of political commentators who have had careers or dalliances with the major capitalist political parties is a long one, with Robin Day, Brian Walden and Matthew Parris being the most obvious examples. Few can probably claim to be genuinely impartial, for to be impartial is not to have an opinion.and rarely does a political correspondent, interviewer or TV newsreader come into that category.

The pity about it all is that they are posturing over nothing of substance. While there are differences (just) between Tory and Labour, their differences are nothing compared to that which unites them—their support for the market economy. As the socialist movement grows the mettle of these TV pundits will really be tested, and so will that of the news corporations. Will the BBC still be able to refer to "Marxist” states in Africa and Central America? Will it carry on (mis-)using words like "socialism", “communism" and "democracy" with such reckless abandon? When socialists are more numerous than we are today, it is doubtful that they will, for although there will be no socialist government to threaten the BBC over its charter, there will be journalists, broadcasters, writers, secretaries and studio operators who will not want to put out such crap any longer. Force of argument and numbers will replace attempted blackmail by power-mongers, and posturing for a few more crumbs off the plates of the bosses will have lost its attraction and purpose. The workers run society—including the media—from top to bottom and the socialist movement for working-class emancipation will have no need or desire to tell lies about itself or the world it wishes to inherit. 

Dave Perrin

50 Years Ago: A call to bolster capitalism (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Before the election Sir Stafford Cripps stated, for the Labour Party, "the comfort of the people is the A.1 priority." Now he intends to set up a triple alliance — Trade Unions Employers and Government. — who will plan to bring "British competitive industries to the highest pitch of efficiency."—Daily Herald, September 10th, 1945. For "comfort”? No, the priority is the export trade. In his speech outlining the plan Cripps suggested that it will be difficult for people to realise that by going short now "they are in fact making sure of better and far more stable standards for the future.” What a stale feeble doctrine.' We will paraphrase it, "Put up with your poverty a little longer and shortly. —The Kingdom of Heaven." Really, Sir Stafford ought to be ashamed of himself. Isn’t he able to do better than this? Of course, this ruse has been used very successfully for decades. In 1931 the National Government used it and they obtained 14,000,000 votes. A slight variation in Germany was known as “guns before butter.' How amazing that a famous Labour leader should formulate "markets before butter,” or, what amounts to the same thing.

[From the front page article, 'A call to bolster capitalism: Cripps appeals to the workers ', Socialist Standard, November 1945.]

University Challenge Meetings (1995)

Party News from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1995)

Party News from the November 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

News in Review: Labour at Scarborough (1963)

The News in Review column from the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

POLITICS

Labour at Scarborough

The last time the Labour Party went to Scarborough for its Annual Conference, the unilateralists won the day and the delegates went home amid the bitter recriminations provoked by Gaitskell’s promise to fight, fight and fight again.

This year, under Wilson’s surer, craftier hand, Labour has had a happier time of it. According to the Daily Telegraph, the party leadership regard their 1963 Conference as exhilarating. A more accurate word for it would be nauseating.

Because, apart from anything else which was evident at the Conference, the Labour Party has so obviously dropped almost everything that it ever stood for. Nationalisation of the land has been quietly replaced under the carpet, until some other member who mistakenly thinks that he belongs to a party of principle brings it out again. A Labour government will keep the public schools in existence—not an unexpected decision, especially as so many of the Labour leadership went to such schools themselves. The earnings rule for old age pensioners, which cuts their pension if they earn a bit of money on the side, is to stay in force; after all, no government could ever be accused of wanting to make the life of a retired worker too easy. Wage restraint will be the policy of a Labour government, dignified now by the new, Frank Cousins euphemism of a ”planned growth of wages.”

Now the Labour Party, even in the days when it stood openly and proudly for wholesale nationalisation, abolition of the Monarchy, higher wages and all sorts of other pet Left Wing schemes, was not a Socialist Party, for the simple reason that none of these things have anything to do with Socialism. But at least in those days they seemed to stand for something a little different from their opponents and in that belief many people joined the party and worked for what they thought was going to be a brave new world.

And now? The Labour Party today stands for only one thing; to win as many votes as possible. All their policies, all their statements, even the contributions at the Conference, were overshadowed by the coming election which they hope so confidently to win. Any hint of a quarrel which-“would have made copy for the Tory-press was squashed. (Wilson is a master at sorting out these disputes without a public row, yet getting what he wants.) Some subjects, like foreign policy, were not allowed on the agenda because they had caused such an uproar in past years. The Conference did its best to avoid any mention of the Denning Report, with its undertones of “immoral Toryism”; only that dreadful fellow Ted Hill was uncouth enough to break this rule.

The big scheme to provide more scientists, and more opportunities for their work, is regarded as a potential vote winner. Writing in The Guardian on October 4th, Richard Crossman told how Wilson had first mentioned the matter to him, just after Gaitskell had died:

“I know that most of them (the scientists) voted for us in 1945,” I said, “but by 1959 four fifths of them had become anti-working class and anti-Labour.” “Well, the only way to win them back is to make Labour the party of science . . .” (said Wilson).

This is the end of an inevitable process, foreseen by Socialists when the Labour Party first came into existence. A party which aims for power within capitalism must appeal to the ignorance of the working class whom it wants to vote for it. And the end of that is a shameless chasing after votes, with every pronouncement intended as a lasso to rope in the floating voter.

Today, more obviously than ever, the Labour Party is an alternative administration for British capitalism. It is, in fact, another Conservative Party, even if it is one which is trying to shake off the uncomfortable memories of a history strewn with discredited theories and what passed at one time for political principles.

AT HOME

The Denning Report

Lord Denning’s famous report must have been a bitter disappointment to those workers who had looked forward to brightening their dull lives with a judicially worded account of which minister had been sleeping with which model and using whose car to run her about in. Even the bizarre figure of the naked waiter had the sting taken out of him by the simple fact that Denning interviewed the man. This may be the end of the Profumo affair. No more is the press obviously seething with suppressed rumours, as it was last spring. The Daily Mirror hastily dropped the matter, in favour of pointing up the new Labour image as an energetic, forward looking party of the scientific future.

Before the scandal finally dies, then, perhaps we may be allowed our say. Profumo’s supposed sin was that he lied to the House of Commons; but if every politician who had done that were forced to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds . . . Capitalism is full of lies; it cannot, indeed, exist without its representatives continually trying to mislead people, sometimes under the excuse of military security, sometimes on the grounds of commercial interests, sometimes not even on these justifications.

And the morals of capitalist politicians should not be a concern of the working class. There have been plenty of “moral” political leaders, as well as many who have led a more interesting, if more complicated, private life. They have all administered capitalism in roughly the same way, which is never pleasant for the people who work, and vote, for capitalism. The real scandal is that millions of people are exploited, degraded and suppressed by capitalism yet continue to support it. Beside that monstrous fact, Profumo and the seamy world in which he moved is put into its proper historical insignificance.

Fall Out

While we are on the subject of lies, we should comment on one of the most recent examples of capitalism’s trying to mislead us.

For years, we have been assured by the politicians and by the military men that fall out from bomb tests was nothing to get worried about. Only the neurotic, they said, would get worked up over the latest multi-megaton blast off and such people, after all, are not the stiff-backed, firm-jawed specimens that a military nation needs. (Some of this propaganda was almost like Feiffer’s famous cartoon in The Observer some years ago, which had the government stick up massive posters which told the population that Black Spots Are Good For You.)

Now some of the facts about the recent levels of fall out are coming to light and they are enough to make the most placid person sit up and take notice. The latest annual report of the Radiobiological Laboratory of the Agricultural Research Council tells us that 1962 was the worst year on record for fall out. The level of the deadly strontium in our diet was higher last year than at any time since detailed records were first opened in 1958. For 1963 the picture promises to be even blacker.

Sir John Cockcroft, who was once the Director of the Atomic Research Establishment at Harwell, has revealed that at least once during the last two years consideration had to be given to stopping the supply of fresh milk to children, because of the fears about the high radioactive contamination of it. And there were other indications of the threat to life which the atomic age means to us.

The fact that the official lies about fall out have been nailed will not, of course, prevent similar lies being told in the future. Nor, if the past is any guide, does it mean that the working class will indignantly reject the lies and all that goes with them. Nevertheless, we shall continue to point out that capitalism lives by its terror and its destructive forces and that it bolsters these up with lies. Yet it claims to be a “moral” system of society, in which truth and honesty are respected. Perhaps that is its biggest lie of all.

Morals at Benenden

No hint of immorality, at least of one kind, down at Benenden School in Kent, where Princess Anne is continuing to learn how to be an upper-crust young lady.

Going down to the local church of a Sunday, the princess heard the vicar tell her:

“Don’t be obsessed with sex, the newspapers, radio etc., can deal with nothing else. Forget it, it is only a trifle compared with the search for the Kingdom . . . Some of you girls may one day find yourselves working in a big office and you will find it an awful rat race . . . Do not be involved in this sort of thing . . . You should not worry about it . . . It is no good trying to ‘keep up ‘ for the sake of ‘keeping up’”.

Nice sentiments—for the Benenden girls, at any rate. They are rich enough to be able to avoid the nastier economic consequences of sexual promiscuity, anyway. Those consequences are reserved for the working class. So is the worry about the results of more “acceptable” sexual activity, which often lands a working class man and wife with a child which they cannot afford and therefore do not welcome. The ruling class avoid these problems for the simple reason that they have enough money to do so. For them, sex, in any shape or form, may easily be a trifle.

Did the princess and her chums have a good giggle at the bit about ending up in the rat race in a big office? This again is something reserved for the daughters of the working class. They are the people who get involved in “that sort of thing,” they are the people who try to “keep up,” they are the people who do the worrying about whether they are making the grade.

The text of the sermon was “Do not worry, put your trust in God,” And, of course, in the dividend cheques.

ABROAD

Ben Bella takes over

Ben Bella, President of the Algerian Republic, has now taken over full dictatorial powers and has had these confirmed by an extraordinary session of the Algerian National Assembly.

This has followed an internal struggle in the Algerian government, in which Ben Bella has ousted his rivals one by one and has gradually strengthened his hold on the country in the process.

There are a number of ironies in this situation.

The “full powers” which the Assembly gave to Ben Bella are not clear in their scope. This was a dodge frequently resorted to by French governments in the days of the Fourth Republic. Such measures usually meant some attack upon whatever democracy existed in France at the time. In the war in which the F.L.N. was then engaged against the French government, the Algerian Nationalists used the promise of liberty freely in their propaganda. Anyone who has learned anything of recent history will not be surprised to hear that one of the first casualties of the successful nationalist revolution is the democracy which they claimed to be fighting for.

It is ironical, too, that Ben Bella should have resorted to a measure which his opponents of yesterday found so useful. The French government used every trick in the game in the war against the F.L.N. and the Algerian propagandists were not slow to make capital out of the fact. Are they silent, now that their leader has shown that he is willing to learn from everyone—even his former enemies?

And what about those Algerians who fought so long and so bloodily against French rule? Are they satisfied, now that one form of oppression has been replaced by another? And those do-gooders who are forever seeking out nationalist movements, preferably on the African continent, to support? Will they realise that such movements seek only to impose an indigenous capitalist class upon a country and that in the end this can turn out as bad, or worse, for the people of that country as the foreign rule they were persuaded to take arms against?

Surplus in the States

In America they are still battling with the problem of their surplus grain. Some of it they have given away (under strictly controlled conditions, of course), some of it they have stored in ships and in silos. Some of it has never been grown, by the simple process of paying farmers not to cultivate their land. But the stuff keeps piling up; there is now about 1,200 million bushels of it.

The latest solution to be offered to this problem has come from two United States Senators. They want the grain burnt for conversion into alcohol, backed up by legislation to ensure that all petrol sold in the States contains a certain percentage of the grain alcohol.

This is at least something of a variation on the old idea of simply burning the stuff, which was so popular in the Thirties. Ironically, one of the Senators has pointed out that the conversion idea was put forward then, but was killed by the oil companies, who did not want anyone muscling in on their markets. Nobody cared that there were millions of unemployed, in America and elsewhere, who would rather have seen the grain turned into food which they could get their hands on. it was a more economical idea to burn it.

In the same way, it is now more economical to store the grain than to upset the world market by releasing the stuff so that it can help to relieve the monstrous problem of malnutrition and hunger which afflicts so large a part of the world’s population.

In humane terms, the problem is simpler. It would be a matter of moving the grain from one part of the world, where there was a surplus, to another part, where there was a shortage. A sane social system would do just that. But capitalism has to satisfy its profit motive before anything else and that leads it to all manner of tortuous shadow wrestling rather than tackle a problem direct.

If the Americans choose to burn their grain to make petrol for their cars instead of to feed the world’s hungry (there is, of course, no shortage of petrol in the States anyway!), they may seem to some people to be guilty of a reckless waste of the world’s resources. But by the standards which capitalism imposes on these things they will be doing something like the right thing.

Oil in the Congo

The Italian State Oil Company, ENI, has obtained a virtual monopoly of oil refining in the Belgian Congo. The foundation stone of their refinery, at Moanda on the Congo estuary, has been laid and building has started.

This has come after a certain amount of dirty work behind the scenes. A four country consortium, consisting of British and Dutch (Shell) U.S.A. (Texaco and Mobiloil) and Belgian (Petrocongo) interests, was bidding for a contract to build another refinery on the estuary, at a cost lower than the Italians are charging. It has now been revealed, after months of delaying tactics by the Congo government, that ENI had the thing sewn up a long time ago by a secret clause in the agreement which they signed with the government.

The consortium are annoyed about this. But, as the history of the Middle East has shown, oil companies could hardly exist profitably unless they signed secret agreements with foreign governments and did not pull an occasional double cross on their opponents.

Another squeal from the consortium was that the decision to let the Italians build amounted to granting a monopoly of oil refining in the Congo. Yet the four companies can hardly complain on this score, for what else was their consortium but an attempt to eliminate competitive bidding for the refining rights? And if the consortium had won a contract which excluded other oil companies, would they have then complained about monopolies? On the contrary, they would have put their public relations men to work, to point out the supposed benefits which their monopoly brought to everyone.

At such times, it is common for capitalist concerns to talk about the “rights” and the “wrongs” of a situation. But really capitalism knows not such concepts; “profitable” and “non-profitable” are its standards of judgment. When companies try to introduce their own style of morals into the jungle of capitalist interests, which they do when it suits them, they are trying to ride two horses which are travelling in exactly opposite directions.

BUSINESS

About the Chunnel

The recent report of the French and British working group did very little to clear up the confusion over the “Bridge or Tunnel”‘ Channel controversy.

This controversy, of course, has been raging for a long time and whenever there has been a threat of any sort of progress towards a solution, it has always been baulked. The reasons are drearily familiar. Not enough capital available. Not profitable enough. Opposition from other interests which have sunk money into the more established methods of getting across the Channel.

In this way, what may be one of the good ideas of the Twentieth Century has been persistently obstructed. There is nothing remarkable in this the need to conform to capitalism’s profit motive has killed countless schemes in the past, even if some of them have been good ideas from the point of view of human comfort and convenience.

Meanwhile, travellers to the Continent have been affected by the controversy. Last August, when British Railways applied for permission to close its Southampton/Le Havre ferry route, and to convert the ships into car carriers for use elsewhere, they made it plain that their application had been delayed for some time because of the uncertainty over the Tunnel. The conversion of the ships is planned as a temporary measure, to tide BR over the period before a possible Tunnel may be operating. If the Tunnel is not built, the Railways may decide that it will, pay them to buy some modern steamers. At the moment, it is not an economic risk for BR to invest in new ships which a Tunnel would make obsolete before they had paid their way. In the meantime, their passengers must continue to suffer the cattle-truck conditions which exist during the holiday season on the older cross-Channel steamers.

British Railways cannot be blamed for trying to conform to capitalism’s order of priority. This is common to all manner of businesses. It certainly applies to the Tunnel. The working group, after all, preferred, a Tunnel because a bridge would cost twice as much and would be less likely to bring a “reasonable economic return” while a Tunnel would “show an overall net profit.”

The Kitchen Front

One of the hottest commercial wars in this country at the moment is raging over who is going to sell the housewife a washing machine and whether she will buy it at a shop or on her doorstep.

On one side is young, brash Mr. John Bloom, who has presided over the growth of his company from a dying safety razor firm into a £9¾ million boom baby which now commands twenty-five per cent. of the home market in washing machines. Mt. Bloom has thrived on the direct selling technique, with its “cut out the middle man” line of sales talk

On the other side are the giants of the domestic electrical industry, among them Hoover Limited, a £24 million company which heads the washing machine league with 28 to 30 per cent. of the home market. Hoover’s profits are now climbing out of the relative doldrums of a few years ago, when they declined to some £5 million—this year they should be nearer £12 million. Hoover, and the other firms which deal through the retail trade, condemn direct selling as the dubious gimmick of the parvenu. Hoover are now the respectable aristocrats of the industry, although before the war they were the upstarts, whose door-to-door salesmen earned themselves a reputation for foot-in-the-door malpractices.

Not content with his slice of the English market, Mr. Bloom is now challenging Hoover’s dominance in the export field. He has already announced that he is thinking of going into the market in the United States. Rumour has it that he is due to open up in the Far East. And talks have started with the American Studebaker Corporation with the object of setting up a joint company to sell domestic appliances on the Continent.

Some time ago Rolls Razor began to include a vacuum cleaner with every washing machine they sold; two machines, they claimed, for the price of one. With the approach of winter they have replaced the “give away” cleaner with a tangential fan heater. This is a direct slap at Hoover, who only recently brought out their own fan heater, at a retail price of fourteen guineas. Mr. Bloom has said that he feels that this winter may ‘be as bad as last—with his new offer, he probably hopes that it will be as bad.

All this promises to hot up even more, with all the techniques of doubtful publicity brought into play. Whichever company wins this war, it can have little in it for the working class, reverently referred to by the admen as “the housewife” or “the consumer.”

They have, after all, gained nothing from the previous battles of this kind. And there have been enough of them; Hoover, for one, has seen off several rivals since the war. But Bloom’s Rolls Razor is the most serious threat yet. As the Sunday Telegraph put it, Mr. Bloom “. . . is no stranger to cut-throat competition.” Indeed.

Conservative Party: Profit before human need (1963)

From the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Conservatives have been in power for twelve years now. Somehow they have managed to create the impression that they are the party of prosperity. A condition for this prosperity, we are told, is national unity. The Conservative Party accordingly claims to stand for the interests of the nation as a whole and calls upon all to rally behind them. Business efficiency and social reform will bring about “One Nation at home”—indeed, it is already supposed to have done this.

But is this true? Is there a classless democracy in Britain today? Can we sensibly talk of “the nation” as a whole? Consider the facts. The economic editor of one of the well-known Sunday newspapers who is certainly not a Socialist has written of “the fantastically unequal distribution of wealth” and has estimated that nearly one-half of the total personal wealth in this country is owned by 2 per cent. of the adult population. This inequality of ownership is at the heart of the capitalist system. The propertied minority who own all the means of living (land, factories, railways, etc.) live off the unpaid labour of the majority, the working class. This is not an old-fashioned dogma. It is a fact—one which the Conservatives are extremely anxious to gloss over with their talk of “national unity” and “One Nation.” This is because the Conservative Party is a party of the owners, of the propertied minority who live off the workers. They thus represent the interests of the class to whose interests those of the working class are diametrically opposed.

The Conservative Party also likes to portray itself as the party of the so-called little man, the small farmer, the small shopkeeper and the homeowner. They talk of property-owning and share-owning democracies. Today this claim is challenged by the Liberal Party and with some success as by-election results have shown. More than ever before, the Conservative Party is a party of Big Business, of the giant combines and semi-monopolies. The so-called Beeching Doctrine (the doctrine of efficiency) has become party policy. This policy has been well described by Enoch Powell, the late Minister of Health.

“Does it pay? is the question which, quite unashamedly, we have to ask today of all our economic and commercial doings. Does this railway line pay—that coal-mine, this shipping route? Does that industry in that place pay?” (The Observer, 13/5/62).

However, as the Times explained almost a year later, the adoption of such a policy is bound, sooner or later, to affect the little man:

“Sooner or later, for instance, even Conservative leaders are going to be driven away from agricultural policies that they certainly know are designed to preserve small, under-capitalized farming units which impair rather than encourage efficiency. They will also one day be driven to act, as they would long ago have liked to act, to get rid of price resale arrangements to which thousands of small local shopkeepers cling for protection."

The triumph of the Big Business elements within the Conservative Party may or may not drive the so-called little man into the arms of the Liberals. But one thing is certain. The workers have nothing to gain by supporting drives for efficiency. Capitalism, under which production is only undertaken in accordance with the principle enunciated by Mr. Powell, has nothing to offer them. Nor, therefore, has the Conservative Party, an avowed party of Capitalism and of production for profit.

We can see well the consequences of production for profit. Basic human needs are neglected because it is not profitable to satisfy them. Housing is a good example. It is more profitable to build office blocks, luxury flats and cathedrals than housing for the workers. Again, production is only carried on if what is produced can be sold at a profit. When this is not the case factories lie idle and unemployment appears. Say, for example, that “industry in that place” doesn’t pay? Then it closes down and sacks its workers. Let us take a concrete example. This month the factory of John Webb & Co., brass founders, at Nantyglo in Monmouthshire, is to close down. The valves which the factory produces will in future be made in Birmingham. Explained the company secretary:

“It has been decided that production of water and steam fittings produced by the Delta Metal group of companies must be consolidated to enable them to be fully competitive. A number of steps in this direction were taken at other works in the group earlier this year. Competition has continued to increase both in this country and from Germany, Italy and Japan and the time has now come when our production must be streamlined.” (South Wales Argus, 26/8/63.)

This is what “efficiency” means. To be sure, some of the 200 workers are to be offered jobs in Birmingham. This is what “mobility” means. For in Conservative Party thinking the producers are considered not as people but as productive resources, no different from the machinery and raw materials they use. If a manufacturer finds it more profitable to establish his factory near the coast or to concentrate his production in Birmingham then workers must be prepared to be mobile if they want work. This is everyday experience.

The Conservatives admit that their emphasis on mobility involves hardship for some. They could not very well deny it since this, too, is everyday experience. But, we are assured, these difficulties are necessary evils which we—the workers, not the capitalists, of course—must be prepared to put up with in a “dynamic” economy. And, after all, they are but a small price to pay for “the economy of abundance” which the “proper” allocation of resources brings! This is what efficiency means. For what is efficiency but the ruthless ignoring of human needs to make a profit?

It is difficult to understand how so many of those who suffer most from Capitalism can find reasons to support the Conservative Party which openly proclaims that profit must come before human needs. Clearly the workers have nothing to expect from the Conservatives but what they get—unemployment, bad housing, pay restraint, insecurity and other examples of what the Conservatives call private, family and personal difficulties.

Production for profit, which Mr. Powell praises, does not lead to One Prosperous Nation, but rather to one prosperous capitalist class and to degradation and insecurity for the working class.

Adam Buick