Voice From The Back: The Terminator Terminated? (2010)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Terminator Terminated?

In the big budget movies of some years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger often played the all-action hero. Today he is the governor of California and is finding that in an economic downturn capitalism isn’t so easy to manage. One of the causes of that state’s economic deficit is the growing number of prisoners and the consequent growth of economic deficit in the state’s budget. “The fact that 9.5% of spending now goes to prisoners while only 5.7% goes to universities – 25 years ago, prisons got 4% and universities 11% – is indeed a harsh indication of California’s fall from grace.” (Time, 13 February) Schwarzenegger has proposed three different ideas lately to deal with the problem. One is to pay Mexico to build prisons and have US prisoners in them, another is to spend more of the state’s budget on prisons and finally he proposes to privatise prisons as a cheaper way of running things. Twist and turn as they may capitalism’s politicians are finding that capitalism throws up problems that are incapable of easy Hollywood solutions. Here is one though – Capitalism? Exterminate!

US Labour Pains

Barrack Obama’s election to the US presidency was supported by many American trade unionists, but as unemployment rises much of that support is evaporating. “Richard Trumka does not mince his words. The former miner now leads America’s largest union body, the AFL-CIO, describes George Bush’s language as: ‘stolen elections, ruinous tax cuts for the rich, dishonest wars, financial scandal, government sponsored torture, flooded cities and finally economic collapse.” Barrack Obama is a huge improvement, of course, but unemployment is close to 10% and the government must do something, reckons Mr Trumka.” (Time, 13 February)  Trumka like many supporters of capitalism thinks by government intervention of $400 billion of what he calls “immediate job-creating investment” the problem of rising unemployment can be solved. He is living in cloud cuckoo land. Capitalism has periodic slumps and booms and governments know that getting the capitalist class to invest during a slump is near impossible.

£23 Million and £1 a Day

We live in society full of inequalities. We see people starving and kids dying from lack of clean water, but surely the most hardhearted of us must scream at this news item when we realise that many members of the human race must survive on less than a £1 a day. “This is a bauble that even a banker with an intact bonus would struggle to buy – the 507.5 carat, flawless white-coloured Cullinan Heritage Diamond which was sold to a Chinese buyer yesterday for $35.3 million (£23 million)… The sale to Chow Tai Fok Jewellery in Hong Kong highlights the growing importance of China in the global diamond market.” (Times, 27 February) It also highlights the madness of a society that allows some useless bastard in China to consume the equivalent in wealth of millions of kids staying alive. Capitalism sucks.

Demonic Drivel

In order to keep those collection plates full religious groups have to appear modern and “with it”. The Roman Catholic Church is no exception to this rule and compared with some American fundamentalist Protestant churches with their opposition to evolution they may appear almost scientific. It is doubtful though if even those American bastions of superstitious nonsense could outdo the Vatican’s chief exorcist. “The growing clerical sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that the Devil is at work inside the Vatican according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist. Father Gabriele Amorth said that the Pope “fully believes in liberation from evil, because the Devil lodges in the Vatican.” (Times, 11 March) In case you imagine that this is just some crazy old priest who has been indulging in too much communion wine it should be pointed out that he has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years. One of his claims is that he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession. Like all supporters of private property society the religious zealots will go to any lengths to support the status quo even calling up demonic myths to explain social problems.

Voice From The Back: Homeless and Clueless (2009)

The Voice From The Back Column from the April 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Homeless and Clueless

Politicians of all the major political parties have “solutions” for what they call the “homeless problem”. In fact there is no homeless problem, what we have is a poverty problem. Here is a recent press story that shows that there are plenty of empty houses available if you have the money. “The number of properties in Britain lying empty is set to pass 1 million. New figures will show that Britain is on course for a record number of houses and flats lying empty. Some of the rise has been caused by home owners facing repossession. Other empty homes were bought by property developers who have since struggled to raise the money to renovate and furbish them for occupation.” (Daily Telegraph, 10 February) Inside this crazy social system fish are dumped back in to the sea, fruit is allowed to rot on the trees while millions of people starve, so it comes as no surprise to learn that people in Britain go homeless while 1 million homes lie empty.

The Terminator

In the movies Arnold Schwarzenegger often played the hero, but in real life he has had to bow to the realities of the capitalist system that has slumps and booms undreamed of in the Hollywood fantasy land. “Cash-strapped California is to start notifying 20,000 state workers that they may lose their jobs. A spokesman for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made the announcement after California lawmakers failed to approve a $40bn (£28.2bn) budget. California, the world’s eighth biggest economy, has been hit by the housing crisis, unemployment and falling consumer spending. ..California has already laid off state workers for two days a month, put 2,000 public projects on hold and delayed tax refunds.” (BBC News, 17 February) Inside the real world of capitalism Schwartzenegger has had to play the villain by terminating many workers means of earning a living.

Labour in Action

The World Bank recently estimated that 2.8 million children could die by 2015 if the global financial crisis is not checked. Commenting on this the Prime Minister Gordon Brown commented: “It is as if the entire population of Rome were to die in the next five years.” (Times, 21 February) This from the leader of the Labour Party who vigorously defend the killer society that is the buying and selling of capitalism. Hypocrisy cannot go further surely when Gordon Brown suspends parliament debate because of the death of the child of one of his opponents in a vote catching move. He will not of course suspend the running of capitalism or its parliament about the possible death of 2.8 million kids.

Capitalist priorities

Despite the economic crisis in the US the government recently announced an increase in its military budget. “The collision of modern American life with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has had some strange and unintended consequences. In Alpine, Utah, for example, a school has cancelled the entire 6th grade, with the teachers at Mountainville Academy dismissed just before Christmas and the 12-year-olds merged with the 7th grade.” (Times, 21 February) That is the priorities of capitalism – keep up military expenditure to protect the owning class’s markets and sources of raw materials, but sack teachers and worsen the education of workers children.

The Wasteful Society

In the most developed capitalist society on Earth we learn of this horror story. “The US jobless rate jumped in February to 8.1%, according to official figures from the Labor Department. The number of people out of work rose by 651,000 during the month. Both figures were bigger than expected. …President Obama said that the number of jobs lost so far in the recession was “astounding”. Speaking in Ohio, he added: “I don’t need to tell the people of this state what statistics like this mean,” saying that he had signed his economic stimulus package in order to save jobs. The extra 161,000 jobs added to December and January’s figures mean that almost two million jobs have been lost in the past three months.” (BBC News, 6 March) Think what this means, two million workers are being debarred from producing things that are necessary for human existence. Why? Because it isn’t profitable enough. Two million workers and their kids are being impoverished not because of some failing on their part but because of this awful society we all live in. Don’t you think it is time that those 2 million workers in the US thought of an alternative society? Shouldn’t you?  

Editorial: Total recall and true lies (2003)

Editorial from the November 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

So second-rate film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been elected Governor of California. A sad reflection of the abysmally low level of political understanding of that section of the California electorate who voted for someone, apparently on the basis of his screen image as an “action man”, in the belief that he would be able to solve the problems generated by capitalism in the same way that he always triumphs in his films. It might be thought that they would have learned their lesson after the failure of Hollywood screen cowboy, Ronald Reagan, to live up to his movie image. Apparently not.

But it is not so much this that we want to comment on as the right of recall. This – where voters have the right to recall from office someone they have elected, for not carrying out their wishes – is a key democratic principle. We don’t suppose there will be State Governors in Socialism but there will certainly be elected assemblies and perhaps some elected officials; in the socialist conception of democracy, such elected people should be subject to recall if, in the opinion of a majority of those who elected them, they have failed to carry out the mandate conferred on them. For, in socialism, all elected persons will be delegates chosen by the community to carry out some task on their behalf. It is therefore only normal that, if they fail to carry out this task properly, the people who elected them should have the power to revoke their mandate, i. e. to recall them and mandate someone else in their place.

Such a conception of democracy is alien to what has come to pass as “democracy” under capitalism. The right of recall exists in the constitution of the State of California and of a number of other US States only because at one time bourgeois democrats in America were more radical than they are today. But capitalism corrupts everything it touches and has been able to distort this basic democratic principle to fit into its conception of politics, where democracy is not a question of the community mandating delegates to carry out some task on its behalf – if only because as a class-divided society there is no community under capitalism – but that of choosing between two or more rival elites, a competition between rival gangs of professional politicians.

This reduces politics to choosing every few years which leader or leadership team is going to administer the political side of capitalism. Voters are not citizens participating in the self-administration of their common affairs, but are essentially only an audience whose role is limited – like that of the crowds in the Coliseum in Ancient Rome – to giving the thumbs up or the thumbs down to some outgoing leadership team seeking re-election.

This is not democracy, and it doesn’t work either in that the leaders never live up to their promises. Not necessarily because they are liars or tricksters or self-seekers (though many of them are of course) but because capitalism, despite their promises, just cannot be made to run without causing insoluble problems for the great majority of people, i.e for those who, with their dependants, rely to live on the wage or salary they are paid for the sale of their mental and physical energies.

They – we – make up the vast majority of the electorate but have not yet learned to use the vote in an intelligent way – not to elect capitalist politicians to govern capitalism in the only way it can be, as a system that has to put profits before people, but to send delegates into all elected assemblies mandated to put an end to capitalism. Of course, in keeping with the socialist conception of democracy as a participatory democracy, this assumes that people outside the elected bodies have also mobilised themselves and are ready to play their part in establishing socialism.

Last month’s recall election in California was not really an exercise in democracy, but rather a variation on the futile exercise of kicking out one leader and replacing them with another. But leaders can’t do anything for us. Changing leaders changes nothing. Only we can change things, by taking matters into our own hands and, as just stated, organising to send mandated socialist delegates to elected bodies instead of falling for the empty promises of capitalist politicians.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will fail to solve the problems wage and salary workers in California face just as much as the less charismatic ex-Governor Gray Davis did and all other politicians everywhere always do and always will. What is required is not a change of leaders but a change of society. Let’s terminate capitalism.