Voice From the Back: Chinese Hypocrisy (2014)

The Voice From the Back column from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Chinese Hypocrisy                                                             

Wealthy Chinese tourists are splashing out up to £100,000 on hunting trips to Scotland, so they can feel like Downton Abbey’s Earl of Grantham. Inspired by the ITV series, hunting parties from China are hiring out castles with butlers and staff included so they can try their hand at bagging some of the biggest game roaming the countryside. ‘Among those visiting is Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men. He recently hired out Aldourie Castle near Loch Ness for £36,000. Mr Ma spent a week with 11 friends on the 500 acre estate, also hiring staff including a butler and cook’ (Daily Mail, 11 August). Mr Ma is reckoned to have a fortune of over £6 billion. Oh, by the way the Chinese government claims they have communism in China!

Class Contempt                                                 

It is always interesting to know what the owning class think about the working class and Michael O’Leary the outspoken CEO of Ryanair makes no secret of his contempt. ‘MBA students come out with “My staff is my most important asset”. Bullshit. Staff is usually your biggest cost. We all employ some lazy bastards who need a kick up the backside’ (Times, 16 August). This contempt is staggering when all the owning class’s profits including Mr O’Leary’s are the result of the exploitation of the working class.

Getting Away With It                                           

Britain’s top executives are now paid 143 times the wages of an average employee, according to a study. Executive salaries have increased dramatically in relation to most workers, said the High Pay Centre. ‘The think tank has called on the Government to act after it found that in 1998 the average chief executive of a FTSE 100 was paid 47 times the pay of their average employee. The Centre’s director Deborah Hargreaves said: ’Britain’s executives have not got so much better over the past two decades. The only reason why their pay has increased so rapidly compared to their employees is that they are able to get away with it’ (Daily Express, 18 August). So much for the notion that there is some sort of morality behind the jungle warfare of the wages and profit system.

Recovery For Whom?                                        

The press and TV are lauding the government for what they are describing as an economic recovery, but what has been a period of boom for the capitalist class has seen a worsening of conditions for many wage earners. ‘The cost of borrowing will increase before workers benefit from a real rise in their wages, the governor of the Bank of England said yesterday. Mark Carney said that interest rates were likely to rise from their record low of 0.5 per cent in the  spring of next year, possibly before the general election in May’ (Times, 10 September). He went on to say to the TUC in Liverpool that inflation-proof wage increases would not arrive until the following summer, indicating a financial squeeze on homeowners with mortgages.

The Drive For Profits                                          

All sorts of well-meaning organisations exist in efforts to stop the deforestation of the Amazon basis, the melting of the Arctic region and other examples of how capitalism worsens the environment. Alas they are doomed to failure. ‘The rate of destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil has increased for a second year running. Brazilian government figures show deforestation was up by 29% in the 12 months up to the end of July 2013. Satellite data showed that almost 6,000 sq km (2,315 sq miles) of forest were cleared during that period’ (BBC News, 11 September). In its ruthless drive for profit capitalism cares little about the environment.

A Crazy System                                                 

It was just a short article in the daily press but it sums up what a crazy system capitalism really is. ‘A treasure trove of art, jewellery and other valuables from the estate of the reclusive heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon will go on sale at auction following  her death earlier this year at the age of 103.  Experts invited to assess her collection at her country home of Oak Spring Farms, in Upperville, Virginia, were stunned at the scale of the riches she had amassed, including little-seen Picassos and Van Goghs, personalised Chanel handbags and even a vintage 1950s fire engine’ (Sunday Telegraph, 14 September). Mellon never worked for this fortune, she inherited her vast wealth from her grandfather. It is estimated that her fortune is probably worth about $100 million although countless hard-working people are trying to survive on less than $2 a day.

The New Home Help (2018)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Hey Google! What was 2017’s must-have gadget?”

Answer, in bland but maternal voice: “Last year’s must-have gadget was me, the Google Assistant, or you could try the Amazon Alexa, or if you’re rich and really patient, the Apple Homepod, which hasn’t come out yet.”

“Hey Google! What can you actually do that I can’t do for myself?”

“I can tell you a joke.”

The concept of a digital home assistant has probably not invaded your world to any great degree yet, despite massive promotion by the above companies. If you’re out of the loop or behind the curve then don’t feel too bad, because Apple have also failed so far to bring their pricey Homepod to shops, meaning that it is definitely bringing up the rear in the dash for dominance over the smart home hub market.

People have been talking about the ‘internet of things’ for years. This is the idea that all your work and domestic appliances, tools and systems are chipped and wired so that you can control them remotely by phone or timer program. There is no doubt in the minds of manufacturers that 'You Definitely Want This', even if you might be entertaining some doubts about what happens to your house appliances when little Herbert the Hard-Core Hacker gets his cyber-mitts on their IP addresses. Here is capitalism operating at its most magnificent, creating a product line and then attempting to create a demand for it. You as the idea consumer must be unable to resist the lure of a smart tin-opener you can operate from Arizona, and a fridge that knows you just used the last tomato and reorders it for you.

With so much smart around you, you are going to need a hub controller to coordinate it all, so that you can tell your house to turn down the lights, turn up the heating, draw the curtains, audit the fridge, switch on BBC iPlayer, start the laundry and run your bath. Imagine the bliss. It’s like having your own team of digital slaves. What worker doesn’t want to be waited on hand and foot like the lord of the manor and the king of the castle? You could almost forget that you’re a real wage slave, at least until the next time you go to work.

The problem at the moment though is that most of those smart things are still on capitalism’s drawing board, so the home hubs which have rushed to market don’t really do anything very useful. But that’s ok, because they’re fun anyway, right? Here’s what you can do with a starter Home Mini, for the modest price of £50. You can ask it for recipes, in case you don’t have a recipe book. You can get it to compile a shopping list and send it to your phone, in case you can’t write. You can ask it a history or geography question, or get it to read the news headlines. You can listen to music, if you’ve got a paid Spotify account. You can text people and check the weather without looking out of your window. And yes, it even tells jokes.

Of course, apart from the jokes, you can do all these things anyway, assuming you have an ordinary broadband computer. And the starter hub is only the start of a relentless upselling campaign in which you are offered add-ons, extras and upgrades that give you even more functionality, as if the sheer pointlessness of it all is an irresistible spur to further spending. Perhaps this stuff will be useful one day, like smart watches aren’t, but it doesn’t really matter. In capitalism things aren’t made and sold because they’re useful, but because people are made to think they want them. So much money, time, energy and resources so that you can talk to your curtains like a god of small things.

Here is a question you can ask: “Hey Google! How do you self-destruct?” Here is what it will answer: “Self-destructing in three… two… one… Only joking!”

Good thing we’ve all got a sense of humour.

It’s Wicked!

If you answer Wikipedia’s periodic cries for help by agreeing to donate £2 a month for something you might use six times a day, you get an effusively grateful email from them every month telling you what a grand job you’re doing in keeping the flame alight.

An interesting and possibly unique thing about Wikipedia, and its related Wiki services, is that if there was a socialist revolution in 2018, it would make the transition into socialism completely unscathed and in exactly the same form. It’s hard to think of any other service, free or otherwise, that you could say that about. It doesn’t carry adverts and its contributors work for free, simply for the sake of the common good. Indeed it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Wikipedia is a piece of virtual socialism, embedded right inside capitalism. When people say ‘Oh socialism wouldn’t work because people won’t work for nothing’, just point them at Wikipedia and say ‘Explain that then’. Before Wikipedia existed, nobody would have believed that a global free encyclopaedia was possible. Now we know it is possible, but in capitalism there are of course maintenance and server costs to take into account, hence the frequent call for donations. Unlike charities which aim to ameliorate the worst of capitalism instead of changing it, Wikipedia has established a radical precedent which socialists ought to celebrate, and perhaps assist if they can. As the internet aims to expand into an internet of things, socialism could be described as an expansion of the same idea, a Wikipedia of things, freely given according to ability, freely consumed according to need.

It ought to be worth two quid of anybody’s money to stop this island of socialism from sinking beneath the commercial waves.

PJS

The Curse of Xawara (1998)

From the June 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy being enacted in Northern Brazil appears to be moving towards its last act. It is a tragedy that has been enacted throughout the history of private property.

The fate of indigenous people invaded by a more economically developed society makes a sorrowful catalogue of human misery. The Native Americans slaughtered in the United States in the last century, the butchery of the Aborigines in Australia and now the destruction of the Yanomami people in Brazil.

It has been estimated that there were over 100,000 Yanomami roaming the watershed of the Rio Branco and Orinoco rivers in the Northern Amazon basis when the Spanish colonises reached the New World. It is reckoned that they have lived in these tropical rain forests for something like 40,000 years but it is now though that only 22,000 of them survive, 9,400 in Brazil and the rest in Venezuela.

Unlike many other tribal groups, the Yanomami have managed to resist integration with modern capitalism. Portuguese exploiters, who attracted indigenous people into their settlements and into slavery, failed to lure the Yanomami from their traditional communal culture. Likewise, early missionaries failed to convert them to their guilt-ridden religious opium. The Yanomami preferred inhaling the Yakuna (a hallucinogenic tree extract) and practising their traditional rites and ceremonies. Modern anthropologists consider them to be one of the last remaining societies on earth that still live in kinship groups and inhabit "malocas" (communal huts). They exist on a staple diet of cassava gathered from their manioc plantations and game from the jungle, such as monkeys and turtles. They live the semi-nomadic life that once was the norm for all of humankind. They are a living example of humanity's communal past. Tragically, they appear doomed. Modern capitalism will probably see to that.

Many of them were killed in the 1970s when the Brazilian military government, in an attempt to open up the amazon to gold speculators and cattle barons, built the first highway through the Yanomami's terrain. The road was never finished but thousands of the Yanomami were. They were killed by the infections, such as Yellow Fever, brought by the road builders. The 1990s were to see an increase in the encroachment of capitalism in their way of life. Their reservation of 9,000 square kilometres was reduced to 2,000 and the government allowed another 256 square kilometres of their land to be exploited for gold mining in 1990. Little attention is paid to "human rights" when capital becomes involved. Some 45,000 gold miners have poured into their land, polluting their rivers with mercury, blowing up villages, and shooting children (they call them "monkeys") out of the trees for sport.

The recent forest fires have devastated even more of their forests. Many of these fires were started deliberately to clear land for cattle. The Yanomami must have to forest to live, without it they must die. There are laws in Brazil that debar the exploitation of the shrinking rain forest area that the Yanomami inhabit, but these are largely ignored by a government desperate to advance the development of capitalism in Brazil.

These last remnants of a former stage of human society have at present little chance of survival. Neldo Campos, the state governor, voiced the insatiable voice of modern capitalism when he said; "There is too much land for the Indians, and the devastating economy of the state will make it inevitable that hungry colonisers will want to move in on the indigenous reserves."

The Yanomami language is a linguistically isolated one with many dialects, making anthropologists believe that they once occupied a much larger area than at present. Their word for disease and epidemics is "Xawara" which they see as an evil spirit that lives in the bottom of the world. They have the same word for gold. They see the "nabebe" (white men") as having an insane desire to bring disease and gold from the bottom of the world.

The working class of the so-called "civilised" world must establish World Socialism very soon, otherwise, the men, women and children of the Yanomami people have little hope of survival. After all, as workers, we also suffer from the curse of Xawara.

Richard Donnelly

At the mercy of global capitalism (1996)

From the January 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers in developing countries, even those with vast natural resources such as Brazil, face a future of insecurity, destitution and repression. There is simply no way out within the capitalist order. For them, the establishment of Socialism really is a matter of life and death.

Brazil originated as a slave society. The Portuguese who ruled it from the sixteenth century saw its natural resources—brazil wood, sugar and gold— as the basis for massive fortunes. But the native inhabitants, who mostly lived as hunter-gatherers, were unwilling to work for pitiful wages in appalling conditions. The solution was to enslave the native peoples, and slave-hunting itself became a profitable business. When even this failed to produce a large and reliable enough workforce, slaves were imported from Africa—they had the advantage of immunity to European diseases in addition to their working abilities. As many as three-and-a-half-million slaves were shipped from Africa to Brazil, making this an important, if often neglected, aspect of the slave trade.

By the time Brazil achieved independence from Portugal in 1822, coffee was becoming the biggest export. Independence served the interests of the Brazilian ruling class, who were no longer tied to trading through Portugal, but made little if any difference to the lives of ordinary people. As elsewhere, slavery ceased to be the best method for extracting surplus labour, and by 1888, when slavery was abolished in Brazil, Brazilian peasants and new immigrants from southern Europe were working as wage labourers. Besides coffee, there was a boom in rubber production in the north-cast of the country in the second half of the nineteenth century, but this ended when rubber plants were smuggled out to south-east Asia and vast rubber plantations set up there.

For the first few decades of the present century, Brazil continued to be run as an export economy, dependent on the lion's share of the world coffee market. Imports were mainly of consumer goods for the rich, and machines. Brazilian industry was inefficient, protected from competition behind high tariff barriers. But the slump of the 1930s drastically reduced the world demand for coffee, and produced a crisis in Brazil's economy. A series of dictatorships and military governments failed to make a success of the policy of import-substituting industrialisation introduced into Brazil, as into much of Latin America, after 1945.

In the 1960s and 1970s, however, Brazil experienced annual growth rates of 10 percent, making it now the world's eighth largest economy (in terms of GDP). Coffee remains the main export, but fruit and some industrial products are also important. For a handful of rich capitalists and land-owners, things have worked out very well, but for the mass of ordinary Brazilians all this economic “progress" is a myth.

The expansion of manufacturing has led to an enormous increase in urban population, and vast shanty towns (favelas) have grown up around the main Brazilian cities. These offer few facilities of any kind, and are massively overcrowded, with over a million people living in favelas in Sao Paulo alone. In the whole country, one-third of houses have no piped water, and according to one report 80 percent of those going to casualty departments in public hospitals are suffering from illnesses caused by poor sanitary conditions. Under-five mortality rates are getting worse, certainly in some areas. Over 30 million people (one-fifth of the population) suffer from chronic malnutrition, while the richest one percent get 14 percent of the national income.

Child labour

While the rich enjoy their exclusive beaches and Swiss bank accounts, the overwhelming majority of the population live in fear and squalor. Violence and terrorism abound, directed especially against street children in the big cities and favelas. Child labour is rife, and perhaps half-a-million girls and women are forced to work as prostitutes. And despite its formal abolition over a century ago, slavery still exists, with thousands of workers in debt to their bosses and unable to leave their jobs on pain of death. This is particularly common in the Amazon, where workers are transported to clear the forest and make way for multinational-owned plantations.

For centuries, in fact, Amazonia has been seen as ripe for exploitation, whether by the Portuguese colonists, the Brazilian rulers or capitalists from abroad. Earlier this century, Henry Ford spent millions in an unsuccessful attempt to start a giant rubber plantation there. Besides logging—thus helping to destroy the rainforest—one of the current preoccupations of the government is of the Amazon as a source of hydroelectric power, with vast dams under construction or on the drawing- board. This devastates the lives of those who dwell in the forest, including the few remaining Indian bands. Resistance is met by violence and repression—the murder of rubber-tapper Chico Mendes in 1988 is only the best-known example.

Brazil has always been at the mercy of global capitalism and the interests of those who run it, and no Brazilian government has been able to administer the system in the way that it wants. The foreign debt is now a staggering $150 billion; interest payments were suspended [in] 1982 when it was little more than half this amount. Attempts to gain some control over the country’s helter-skelter economy, with inflation sometimes beating 2,000 percent a year, have included two introductions of new currencies, the latest in 1994. But nothing helps. Earlier this year, import tariffs were hiked on a range of "luxury" goods, including cars and televisions, to try and reduce the trade deficit—not that this tariff increase affects the vast majority of the population, who are in no position to afford such items.

Of course such a system has not run without resistance. Many slaves escaped over the decades and created slave sanctuaries, while the great Cabanagem rebellion in the 1830s showed that the rulers could not have everything their own way. Exploitation of the Amazon has led to much resistance to loggers and dam-builders, while workers have struck in a number of industries after the latest currency reform led to lower wages. In May this year troops seized control of government oil refineries in a conflict with striking oil-workers. Cardoso, the new president, recently vetoed an increase in the minimum wage: at £58 a month, this remains well below what is needed to support a family. Cardoso tried to set a good example by taking a 25 percent wage cut himself, but then his own salary, at £7,000 a month, is a little higher than the minimum.

Paul Bennett

No Chief, No God (2009)

Book Review from the July 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Don’t Sleep, There are Snakes. By Daniel Everett. (Profile)

In 1977 Dan Everett travelled with his wife and their three young children to the midst of the Amazon jungle. They were going to live among the Pirahã people, where Everett was to learn their language in order to translate the new testament into it and so convert them to christianity (he was working for a missionary organisation). He learnt the language but failed to convert any of the Pirahã; rather, they and their culture had a profound influence on his own beliefs, about language, religion and how to live.

The Pirahã, who now number less than four hundred, are typical of pre-state societies. They depend on hunting, foraging and fishing, and a family can acquire enough food for a week by working at most twenty hours each (including the children), though fishing and so on are fun and don’t really count as work. They do not plan for the future, and do not preserve food. They have few possessions but no concept of poverty. There is a strong sense of community and of mutual responsibility: an elderly disabled man who could not fend for himself was given food as a matter of course. There are no chiefs, and ostracism and exclusion from food-sharing are the main means of ‘coercion’ used to control each other’s behaviour.
Spirit ‘voices’ can also influence the Pirahãs’ conduct, but they claim to see these spirits regularly and have no concept of a creator god. Their lives are very much in the here and now, and what they talk about is limited to what the speaker or someone they know has witnessed. Consequently, they were completely unreceptive to Everett’s religious message, based as it was on books produced by people he had never met. He translated Mark’s gospel into the Pirahã language, but they were only interested in hearing about the beheading of John the Baptist!

This led Everett to question his own faith in unseen things, and to a realisation that it was perfectly possible to be contented without believing in sin, hell and heaven. He kept his new-found atheism a secret for many years, and when he eventually came clean it resulted in the break-up of his family.

Everett describes the Pirahã as happy, patient and kind, certainly happier than any religious people he has encountered. It is important not to romanticise them and their way of life: they live in a dirty and dangerous environment, suffer high infant mortality and can be astonishingly violent to outsiders. But the Pirahãs “show no evidence of depression, chronic fatigue, extreme anxiety, panic attacks, or other psychological ailments common in many industrialized societies.”

This book shows clearly how life under capitalism is just one means of human organisation, not the consequence of ‘human nature’, and that life without money and mortgages and god has plenty of attractions.

Paul Bennett

Voice From The Back: Ten Wasted Years (2008)

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

TEN WASTED YEARS
Socialists have always stressed that supporting schemes of reforms will not fundamentally change the nature of capitalism and here comes an official capitalist institution whose findings back up that view. "There are 1.4 million children living below the poverty line in Britain, even though at least one of their parents has a job. Despite the changes to taxes and benefits, and the introduction of the national minimum wage, the number of poor children in working households is no lower than in 1997, a report by the Institute for Public Policy Research says." (London Times, 3 January)

NO IMMIGRATION PROBLEM
Politicians ever ready to seek the votes of little-Englanders often speak about the problem of immigrants from abroad coming to this country and causing problems such as housing, medical care and education. We imagine these politicians will completely ignore this type of immigration though. "Lev Leviev, who until a week ago was classified as the richest man in Israel, has joined the growing list of Israeli billionaires who have made their homes in London, where wealthy foreigners are not asked to pay tax on income earned overseas. This month, Mr Leviev officially moved into a bullet-proof house in Hampstead, which he bought for £35m. His near neighbours include several other mega-rich Israeli tycoons who prefer UK tax rates. In Israel, they are liable for tax on all their income, no matter where it is from. ...News of his departure has shocked the Israeli business community and created a political headache for its government, because of the drain of wealth from Tel Aviv to London. Among those who have made their homes in London are Zvi Meitar, the founder of one of Israel's biggest law firms; Benny Steinmitz, a diamond dealer and property tycoon; Yigal Zilka, head of Queenco Leisure International; and the real estate developer, Sammy Shimon." (Independent, 8 January)

THIS IS COMMUNISM?
Socialists have always maintained that countries like Russia and China that have claimed to be establishing socialism were in fact building up state capitalism, and now a pillar of US capitalism agrees with us that China has nothing to do with socialism. "The spending choices for China's rich are multiplying as quickly as the world's fastest-growing major economy can mint new tycoons.In the latest sign of China's rising upper crust and its growing appeal to international marketers, Robb Report, a self-declared catalogue of the best of the best for the richest of the rich, is making its pitch here with a Chinese-language edition. The 200-plus-page Chinese monthly, published under the name Robb Report Lifestyle, is packed with news, product placements and advertising that promotes elite brands such as Volkswagen AG's Bugatti sports cars and Lürssen yachts." (Wall Street Journal, 9 January)

CHINESE BOOMING DEATH RATE
"Accidents in China's notoriously dangerous coal mines killed nearly 3,800 people last year, state media reported Saturday – a toll that is a marked improvement from previous years, but still leaves China's mines the world's deadliest. A total of 3,786 were killed in mining accidents in 2007 – 20 percent lower than the 2006 toll, indicating the effectiveness of a safety campaign to shut small, illegal mining operations and reduce gas explosions, the Xinhua News Agency quoted the head of China's government safety watchdog as saying. Coal is the lifeblood of China's booming, energy-hungry economy. The mining industry's safety, which has never been good, has often suffered as mine owners push to dig up more coal to take advantage of higher prices." (Yahoo News, 12 January) The development of capitalism in China has led to more deaths amongst the working class. Surprise, surprise?

PROPHETS AND PROFITS
The future of global warming is a complex subject, but many experts believe the growth of carbon emissions could lead to disaster. One of the supporters of that notion is the World Bank with its various schemes to halt or lessen these emmissions, but their difficulty is that they also support the profit system so they are left in a contradictory position. "The World Bank has emerged as one of the key backers behind an explosion of cattle ranching in the Amazon, which new research has identified as the greatest threat to the survival of the rainforest. Ranching has grown by half in the last three years, driven by new industrial slaughterhouses which are being constructed in the Amazon basin with the help of the World Bank. The revelation flies in the face of claims from the bank that it is funding efforts to halt deforestation and reduce the massive greenhouse gas emissions it causes. Roberto Smeraldi, head of Friends of the Earth Brazil and lead author of the new report, obtained exclusively by The Independent on Sunday, said the bank's contradictory policy on forests was now clear: "On the one hand you try and save the forest, on the other you give incentives for its conversion." (Independent on Sunday, 13 January)

PROGRESSING BACKWARDS
In a sane society technological advances would be looked upon as a step forward for humanity, but we don't live in a sane society. We live in capitalism. Simon Caulkin the Management Editor of the Observer reveals some alarming outcomes of such technical progress. "More than half of all UK employees – 52 per cent – are now subject to computer surveillance at work, according to research from the Economic and Social Research Council's "Future of Work" programme. That's a remarkable figure, and it has lead to a sharp increase in strain among those being monitored – particularly white-collar administrative staff. ... Substantial pay rises for most managers contrast with static or even declining wages for low-end computer-monitored workers, who are working harder, and longer hours, into the bargain." (Observer, 13 January)

POOR AND DESPERATE
Men and women because of poverty are forced to work for wages. Inside Europe and North America they have to do as they are told by their masters, to turn up on time to be respectful and if asked to do so cringe, but it is even worse for our African comrades."Last year roughly 31,000 Africans tried to reach the Canary Islands, a prime transit point to Europe, in more than 900 boats. About 6,000 died or disappeared, according to one estimate cited by the United Nations." (New York Times, 14 January) Men and women of the working class are dying to be exploited. Let us get rid of this mad society. 6.000 died last year, how many this year?