Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim stealth Socialist born in Kenya!!! (and other frightening tales) (2012)

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  With policy differences between Democrats and Republicans negligible, a good conspiracy theory comes in handy at election time.

If politics and policy were synonymous, the voters who loyally backed the Bush administration over eight years might as well support Barack Obama in the upcoming presidential election. His first four years in office have demonstrated that he can deliver the same basic policies as the Bush years (the military adventures overseas, the bailouts for investment banks, the cuts in social programs, the chipping away at constitutional rights, and so on), with the added benefit of no protesting peeps from liberals.

But politics is about more than policy, of course. For individual politicians, it all comes down to getting elected. This requires ‘brand differentiation’–setting oneself apart from the other guy. Politics may at times make for strange bedfellows, but more often it thwarts a loving embrace between those with much in common. And so Republicans must exaggerate their policy differences with the Obama administration for the sake of their election campaign.

But that’s not enough. Precisely because the difference in policy is so thin, the campaign must also be seasoned heavily with personal attacks. The task is to convince voters that Obama is a terrible menace to society, requiring an Internet-age whispering campaign in which conspiracy theory plays a prominent role.

Your lying eyes
Some Americans may need no more evidence than the colour of Obama’s skin to doubt his capacities. But outright racism is not exactly socially acceptable these days, at least in a public forum. What does still have wide currency, in Republican circles and beyond, is xenophobia. And this fear of the Other is a central theme of the imaginative efforts to personally discredit Obama.

Instead of reminding voters, with a wink and a nudge, that the president is black, conspiracy theorists are trying to build their anti-Obama case around the fact that he’s Barack –a ‘secret Muslim’ born in Kenya. If either half of the theory were true, the Republicans would have hit the jackpot, because Muslims remain an acceptable scapegoat among many Americans and only ‘natural-born citizens’ of the United States are eligible to run for president.

Rumours that Obama, the son of a Kenyan, was born outside the United States began to percolate during the presidential primaries in 2008, and the Hillary Clinton campaign was happy to benefit from the rumours or even help to spread them. The rising controversy led Obama that year to release a certified copy from the Hawaii Department of Health of the “short form”of his birth certificate.

But that only stirred up even more speculation among conspiracy theorists, who claimed it was a forgery. These ‘birthers’ continued to demand that Hawaii provide clearer proof that Obama had been born there. And some states even called for such proof in order for Obama to be eligible on their ballots. Bombarded by these requests, Hawaii in April 2011 decided to waive its policy of only issuing the short form and release a certified copy of the long-form Certificate of Live Birth.

This has quieted the controversy somewhat, but die-hard birthers remain unconvinced that the second document is based on actual fact. And not all of these skeptics are on the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party. As recently as May of this year, Donald Trump (who is a lunatic, but not on the fringe), said in a CNN interview, “A lot of people think [the birth certificate] is not authentic,”and he suggested that Obama’s parents may have filed a US birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers for his overseas birth. Trump made these comments on the very day he helped raise $2 million for the Romney campaign.

Romney does not endorse the birther conspiracy theory, but he can’t say too bluntly that supporters like Trump have crossed the line separating bullshit from batshit. Romney doesn’t want to alienate the Tea Party movement, where birthers and other conspiracy theorists are welcome.

Jihad over Jesus
The other conspiracy theory that Republicans politicians are wary to embrace too tightly, even though they benefit from it, is that ‘Obama is a secret Muslim.’ This rumour has spread mainly through e-mail. At the beginning of 2007, around the time the right-wing magazine Insight ‘broke’ the story, the following e-mail was widely forwarded among rank-and-file Republicans:

  “Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim . . . Lolo Soetoro, the second husband of Obama’s mother . . . introduced his stepson to Islam. Osama [sic!] was enrolled in a Wahabi school in Jakarta. Wahabism is the radical teaching that is followed by the Muslim terrorists who are now waging Jihad against the western world. Since it is politically expedient to be a Christian when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.”

This e-mail contains the crux of the claim that Obama is a secret Muslim. Other cute flourishes added to the theory include the rumour that he was sworn into the US Senate on the Koran rather than the Bible, and that he will not recite the pledge of allegiance or show reverence for the US flag.

Like any conspiracy theory, this one is concocted by mixing facts, speculation, and outrageous lies. It is true that Obama’s stepfather was, at least nominally, a Muslim. But the claim that “O[b]ama was enrolled in a Wahabi school”is a lie; in fact, he attended an ordinary Indonesian public school (and later a Catholic school).

What’s interesting about the theory is not its content but that millions of Republicans find it (at least somewhat) convincing. It attests to the paranoia and bigotry that runs through the ranks of the party, and the extent to which the party leaders must tap into this ignorance to get elected.

The company he keeps
Another horrible secret the president is keeping from the American people, say the Republicans in unison, is that he’s a socialist.

Of course, Republicans have been labelling opponents “socialists”since the 1990s, when it dawned on them that “liberal”had been worn too thin from overuse to serve as a choice insult. (How the limp creed of liberalism could have ever frightened anyone is a great mystery of American political life.)

The insult has changed but not the meaning: a socialist, like the once dreaded liberal, is someone who advocates “big government” (i.e. the modern welfare state, Keynesian economic policies, etc.). Socialism, under this commonly held view, is a society in which the “free market” is fettered –nota society where markets and money no longer exist.

But even when ‘socialist’ is just another word for liberal, and ‘socialism’ but a specific form of capitalism, Barack Obama still doesn’t stack up to much of a socialist. There are only a few examples of Obama’s “radical” (big government) policies that the Republicans can point to, such as the bailout of General Motors and support for the failed company Solyndra. And these have nothing to distinguish them from similar policies implemented by past administrations of either party. Even his health care reform, denounced as “socialized medicine” by Republicans, is premised on the continued existence of private insurance companies.

If Obama’s policies as president are socialistic, then every US president since FDR has dabbled in a bit of socialism. Republicans must know that the “Obama is a socialist”claim cannot be made on the basis of what he’s done in office. They have no choice but to turn from policy to conspiracy.

Having found so few juicy titbits from Obama’s first term in office, Republican conspiracy theorists have been sifting through his past, way back to his college days, looking for any sort of connection to radical individuals and organizations. Dozens of books have already appeared with the findings of this research, invariably published a few months before an election.

The authors all seem to conclude, regardless of their specific topic, that Obama is somehow alien to American political life, a sort of secret agent who has weaselled his way into the centre of power. The books are written to stoke readers’paranoia and have titles like, Barack Obama and the Enemies Within or The Secret Life of Barack Hussein Obama.

“HE ISN’T WHAT HE SEEMS”–warns the back cover of The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists; a book that promises to present “chilling findings”about “how dangerous Barack Obama really is.”These findings include: “Obama’s deep ties to anti-American fringe nexus [?] instrumental in building his political career”; the existence of “extremists . . . in the White House . . . including communist-linked Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod”; and Obama’s extensive “ties to terrorist Bill Ayers.”

Radical-in-Chief: The Untold Story of American Socialism, apparently one of the more respectable contributions to the genre, offers a similar list of revelations.  Along with the de rigueur obsessing about links to Bill Ayers, the book reveals, “Obama’s long association with an organizer training institute called the Midwest Academy –whose archives reveal it to be a classic socialist front group,”and recounts how “Obama’s life was changed forever when . . . he attended his first of many ‘Socialist Scholars Conferences’ in New York”where he “discovered community organizing and its stealth-socialist agenda.”(Quotes are taken from conservativebookclub.com.)

This might sound convincing to some readers, at least those who have never attended something like a Socialist Scholars Conference. But I wonder how many young people, after sitting through a left-wing academic presentation, would describe the experience as life-changing?

Apocalypse now (again)
“Armageddon is a triennial festival,” the critic Dwight MacDonald wrote in a 1960 essay. He was describing the hysteria that was arising before the US presidential election that year, which was no different from the frenzy in the run-up to other inconsequential elections, he recalled.

And now, more than fifty years and a dozen elections later, we face once again “the most important election in our lifetime.” The Republicans, for their part, fear that Obama, the stealth socialist, will finally implement his super-secret radical agenda. In a recent article on the New York Review of Books website, Garry Wills explains how Republicans are trying to scare people into voting for Romney:

  “Republican operatives describe this year’s presidential election in apocalyptic terms. It will determine our future. It will seal our national fate. . . . They tell Republican voters that President Obama, in a second term where he does not have to face re-election, will reveal and follow the full socialist agenda he has been trying to hide.”

But that article by Wills (‘Why 2012 Matters’) was written to scare people into voting for Obama! The line I took out in the middle of the passage quoted is: “Well, they are probably right, but not for the reason they give.”In other (less mealy-mouthed) words, Wills himself is describing the 2012 presidential in “apocalyptic terms”and saying it will (probably) “seal our national fate”–as he explains:

  “[T]his election year gives Republicans one of their last chances –perhaps the very last one –to put the seal on their plutocracy. They are in a race against time. A Democratic wave is rising fast, to wash away the plutocracy before it sets its features in concrete, with future help from the full (not just frequent) cooperation of the Supreme Court.”

There is a lot that can be said about this description, starting with whether the country actually has a politically cohesive “plutocracy”(the term itself certainly suggests rock-solid unity among capitalists), and if so, whether it truly fears drowning under a Democratic (not democratic) wave.

In any case, the simple point to make here is that Democratic ‘operatives’ (like Wills) rely on the same scare tactics as the Republicans, with plutocrats (or fascists) and Christian extremists serving as the bogeymen instead of socialists and Muslims. These operatives are now in a race against time . . . to finish their anti-Romney books before the November election.

No doubt, the untold story of Mitt Romney as plutocratic puppet with ties to grassroots Mormon-fascist organizations will be rolling off the presses soon.

Michael Schauerte

Like Turkeys Voting for Christmas (2012)

The Halo Halo! Column from the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the dust, the balloons and the glitzy confetti settled on the American presidential election, and Republican voters came to terms with the fact that the man who believes that God lives on a planet called Kolob would not be their new leader, a flood of tweets and website articles were unleashed consoling them and advising how to survive four more years under Obama.

‘The American people have decided that Barack Obama should have a second term’ lamented one on the Christian Post website. ‘And behind them, in the mystery of providence, God has decided that Barack Obama would be re-elected.’

So that’s how it works. Well, you can’t argue with God can you? We don’t have to understand the ‘mystery of providence’ to see the advantage in capitalism’s glorious future of God making all our decisions for us and people only needing to vote to rubber-stamp them. And the advantage of having an all-knowing god is that, because he is all-knowing, he’s known since the beginning of time what the result of any election will be. We may as well just ask him beforehand who our leaders should be and do away with voting altogether. Or, for example, our leaders could ask: ‘Dear God, we haven’t got enough control over the world’s oil supplies. Should we invade Afghanistan/Iraq/Iran? etc.’ Think of the bother that would save. Come to think of it, that’s more or less what Blair and Bush used to do, isn’t it?

Many of the religious right were not entirely happy with God’s choice of president though. Among comments posted at the end of the Christian Post article one warned, ‘I have received a prophecy that Obama is America’s Idi Amin.’ ‘The occult puts these people into power,’ advised another. And even before the election, a pastor at the First Baptist Church in Dallas announced that Obama’s re-election would lead to the reign of the antichrist. Donald Trump, too, went ballistic on Twitter. ‘We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty,’ he raged. And ‘This election is a total sham. We are not a democracy.’ Well, he got the last bit right. Even God can’t please everyone.

And in the race for Georgia’s 10th congressional district, Republican and creationist Paul Broun found he had more unofficial opposition than he had bargained for. Although he is a qualified doctor and a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, he informed his audience in a pre-election speech that the Earth was only 9,000 years old and that evolution and the big bang theory were ‘lies straight from the pit of hell’.

Although he was running unopposed, numerous write-in candidates were entered against him. They included ‘Anyone But Him’, ‘Anyone Else Living or Dead’, ‘A Bag of Rocks’, ‘Bart Simpson’, ‘A Burning Bag of Dog Shit’, ‘Jimmy Jack My Neighbours Cat’, ‘Luke Skywalker’, ‘Voldemort’ and, believe it or not, ‘Charles Darwin’.

In fact Darwin received over 4,000 write-in votes despite not being an American citizen and being dead. There’s hope for America yet. Over 4,000 people preferred a dead Darwin to a live right-wing religious fundamentalist.

NW

Voice From the Back: Political Posturing (2013)

The Voice From the Back column from the August 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Posturing
Politicians love making grandiose claims that have nothing to do with reality and the president of the USA came up with a wild notion recently. ‘President Obama used the backdrop of the Brandenburg Gate yesterday to urge Russia to leave the Cold War behind by agreeing to a one-third reduction in its nuclear arsenal’ (Times, 20 June). The USA has 7,700 nuclear warheads and Russia has 8,500, so a one-third reduction would still leave enough nuclear warheads to burn the world to a crisp. Do you still listen to politicians’ ideas or give them any credence?


A Bleak Future
The following grim findings emerged from a poll carried out for the Association of British Insurers. YouGov asked 2,506 employees questions relating to retirement and welfare. ‘One in five working people believe that they will never retire. According to a survey being published today, of those who believe they will stop working full-time, more than four out of ten reckon they will have to keep a part-time job. Two thirds of those polled said they would struggle to meet the cost of paying for long-term care as they became infirm’ (Times, 9 July). Having suffered a lifetime of exploitation workers cannot even see some relief in old age.


Child Labour
In the industrial revolution British capitalism made its fortune on the exploitation of child labour, but the advent of the trade union movement, after a long hard struggle, saw that exploitation ended. Ever ready to make profits the British capitalist class have shifted their source of child exploitation to Asia. The British sugar giant Tate & Lyle has imported large volumes of sugar from Cambodia through a supplier that is accused of using child labour. ‘Tate & Lyle – which is the EU’s largest cane producer and whose ingredients are used in a wide range of foods around the world – has used the Thai KSL group since 2011 for its supplies from Cambodia. However KSL is alleged to have been complicit along with the Cambodian government, in the eviction of people from the land, arson and theft. ….. Children as young as nine years of age work on Cambodian plantations run by KSL.’ (Guardian, 9 July)


The Uncaring Society
Carers are being forced to cut back on essentials such as food and electricity because of the so-called bedroom tax. ‘Despite Government promises to protect them from the under-occupancy charge, one in six carers forced to pay it are falling behind on their rent and face eviction, research by Carer UK shows. …. Ministers pledged £25m in discretionary payments to protect carers and disabled people when the policy was introduced in April, but campaigners warned it would be only enough to support around 40,000 of the 420,000 disabled people affected by the cuts’ (Independent, 9 July). Just one in ten cases are receiving these discretionary payments on an ongoing basis, this latest research shows. When it comes to cutting welfare payments capitalism is ruthless even if you are disabled.


A Society Of Debtors
Politicians love to paint a picture of steadily improving living standards, but it is a complete illusion as a recent newspaper article by Christian Guy, Director of the Centre for Social Justice has revealed. ‘Yesterday’s grim figures revealed that more than 800,000 households will soon spend more than half their income on debt repayments. We already know that 274 people are declared insolvent or bankrupt every day, 88 properties are repossessed and average household debt, including mortgages, is almost £55,000’ (Times, 12 July). Hardly ‘steadily improving living standards’ is it?


A Grim Choice
In the city of Asbest in Russia workers face a grim choice – work to produce asbestos, which will probably kill you or else move somewhere else. Valentin K. Zemskov, who worked in the asbestos factory and developed asbestosis, a respiratory illness caused by breathing in  asbestos fibres summed up the position of workers in Asbest. ‘Still he said the city had no other choice. ‘If we didn’t have the factory, how could we live?’ he said gasping for air as he talked in the yard of a retirement home. ‘We need to keep it open so we have jobs’ (New York Times, 13 July). Inside a socialist society no one would have to endure such a hellish dilemma.

Marxists Under the Bed (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone reading the Times over the end of the year period could be forgiven for thinking that the paper was waging a witch-hunt against 'Marxists'. An article by Philip Collins, once Tony Blair's speechwriter, on 16 December was headed 'Ministers must stand and fight RMT Marxists'. Another, on 3 January, by Melanie Philips, former Daily Mail columnist (and it shows), on Obama was subtitled 'The outgoing President is poised to return to his Marxist roots and lead opposition to Trump.'

What was the basis of these claims? Collins's argument was that the current series of strikes on Southern Rail was not an ordinary trade union dispute over workers' terms and conditions of employment but a political strike against the government. He cited talk by some of the union's officials about strikes to bring down the government, one of Arthur Scargill's illusions. Even if this was the union's official position (which it wasn't) this would not be 'Marxism' . The view that trade unions should take industrial action to overthrow the government is a syndicalist position, not one Marx held. He always stressed the need to win control of political power, via the ballot box if possible, as a preliminary to ending capitalism.

Collins also pointed to the fact that the RMT has supported TUSC, a Trotskyist front organisation. At least those behind TUSC do describe themselves as 'Marxists', even though they aren't. Trotskyism is a fundamental departure from Marx's own views and TUSC's policies are just Old Labour.

Melanie Phillips's case is even weaker. She can't even cite anybody who even claimed to be a Marxist. Her argument goes like this: Obama used to be a community activist; Saul Alinsky was a community activist; Alinsky was a Marxist; therefore Obama was a Marxist. The logical fallacy is glaring, but one of the premises is not even true. Alinsky never claimed to be a socialist, let alone a Marxist.

But what is a Marxist anyway? Marx himself of course once famously said that he wasn't a Marxist. The term originated in the dispute in the 1870s within the International Working Men's Association. Marx's opponents in the dispute dubbed those who took his side 'Marxists'. They retorted by calling them 'Bakuninists'. Some accepted the description 'Marxist', and, despite Marx, it stuck.

A Marxist is not a dogmatic follower of everything Marx wrote or did, but someone who shares his approach to history and economics and his insistence on the need to win political control before attempting to end capitalism and bring in communism (as Marx preferred to call socialism). In this sense, we would call ourselves Marxists, although our case rests on the facts, not on what Marx said, and stands irrespective of what Marx may or may not have said and even if he had never been born.

We wouldn't want to claim to be the only 'Marxists'. There are historians, such as Christopher Hill and Eric Hobsbawm, who have brilliantly applied the materialist conception of history, but only to history. When it came to applying the same method to contemporary society they had a blind spot, believing that Russia was socialist or had been on the way to socialism, whereas the exploitative, class-divided, state-capitalist society there had nothing in common with what Marx envisaged as the next stage beyond capitalism. But one thing is certain, neither the RMT leaders nor Obama are in any way Marxist.

The Last Trump? (2016)

From the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent competition to decide who is the best person to front the American capitalist system for the next four years has led to a lot of soul-searching in the newspapers. Articles have poured out to explain why Donald Trump won. The first point to make is that he didn’t actually win. Hilary Clinton got more votes than he did. They still haven’t finished adding it all up yet (the U.S. is a big country) but it’s certain that Clinton got more votes - very narrowly, true, but still more votes. They got over sixty million votes each, but the latest estimate is that Clinton could have over a million more than Trump. The Americans have a strange system: each state sends a varied number of members to an ‘electoral college’, which elects a new president. If one candidate in a state has one more vote from the public than anyone else, he or she automatically gets all that state’s electoral votes (except in Maine and Nebraska where the votes can be split). This means that one candidate can get more votes across the country, and still lose – or can get fewer popular votes, and still win. At the 2012 election, when it seemed at one point that the Republican candidate would lose out under this system, a certain Donald Trump denounced the system as being ‘a disaster for democracy’. Now that the same Donald Trump is gaining by this odd arrangement, it turns out that the system is just fine.

Executive power

The American president, to all outward appearance, is the most powerful man in the world. An article in the Washington Post (11 November) was full of foreboding about the man who is shortly going to be able to wield that power. ‘Trump will command not only a massive nuclear arsenal and the most robust military in history; but also the ability to wage numerous wars in secret and without congressional authorization; a ubiquitous system of electronic surveillance that can reach most forms of human communication and activity; and countless methods for shielding himself from judicial accountability, congressional oversight and the rule of law.’

This power has been built up steadily over recent years. The process was constantly and bitterly attacked by Barack Obama while George Bush was president. In 2007 Obama said: ‘This administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.’ But as soon as he became president, ‘Obama not only continued many of the most extreme executive-power policies he once condemned, but in many cases strengthened and extended them. His administration detained terrorism suspects without due process, proposed new frameworks to keep them locked up without trial, targeted thousands of individuals (including a U.S. citizen) for execution by drone, invoked secrecy doctrines to shield torture and eavesdropping programs from judicial review, and covertly expanded the nation’s mass electronic surveillance.’ It’s amazing how something which is evidently quite wrong when someone else is doing it becomes evidently quite right when you are doing it yourself.

Now this enormous power has been handed over to a man who boasts that he can assault women with impunity – which means that an individual who brags about committing criminal acts is now (ultimately) in charge of enforcing the criminal law. So someone who almost glories in the reputation of being a loose cannon is going to be in charge of the nuclear codes which could unleash American nuclear bombs upon some ‘enemy’ population. The man who has the power to start the third world war is on record as saying that if Japan had nuclear bombs, then in a showdown with North Korea ‘they’d probably wipe them out pretty quick’, ignoring the obvious corollary that such a nuclear clash would inevitably involve the rest of the world as well, almost certainly leading to the human race being wiped out ‘pretty quick’. Trump’s declared or evident positions on gun-control, on abortion, on torture (he favours re-introducing waterboarding), on race (he was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan), and on international politics (he has no objection to the blood-soaked dictator Assad of Syria, nor to Russia’s Putin – ‘so highly respected in his own country and beyond’) are enough to send shivers up the spines of those who believe that the capitalist system can be progressively ameliorated to the point where the workers will have nothing left to wish for. Then his fierce declared hostility to immigration (though his opinions veer wildly from day to day – e.g. he himself married an immigrant – in fact two immigrants) his declared hostility is a sad headache to those members of the capitalist class who rely on immigration (from lower-wage countries) to keep down US rates of pay.

Like some other prominent people who appear to be keen on wars as a general proposition, he was unfortunately not able to give the Vietnam War his personal attendance – he got four student deferments and then a medical deferment. And Trump has praised the usefulness of American bankruptcy laws. Half a dozen casino or hotel businesses of his went bankrupt between 1991 and 2009, but while others may have lost money, these regrettable episodes do not appear to have impacted upon Trump’s own prosperity (he has never been personally bankrupt). Altogether he is no stranger to the American courts. Apparently more than seventy lawsuits against him are pending, some connected with the so-called ‘Trump University’, some of whose students felt they had been short-changed.

Not so smart

Some members of the working class are so humbled by the capitalist system that they come to believe that the upper class are simply smarter than the rest of us. One theory is that if all the money in the world were shared out equally among everybody today, in six months the present upper class would have grabbed it all again. But others believe that the rich, so far from being smarter than everyone else, are in fact less smart. And if the two contenders for the job of the immensely powerful American president – Trump and Clinton – were anything to go by, that seems much more likely. When Clinton was in charge of American foreign affairs, she used a personal e-mail account to deal with some affairs of national importance. She apparently was oblivious to the danger – almost the certainty – that political opponents would leap gratefully upon such naivety. And there were other occasions when (to say the least) she did not maintain a clear division between important national affairs on the one hand and various Clinton funds on the other, despite the obvious fact that such dealings would later give valuable ammunition to her political opponents. As for Trump, foolishness must be his middle name. Even if you felt a personal pride in your ability to assault women, would you openly boast about it, in circumstances where (in these electronic days) your words might well be recorded for posterity? And where if you ever fulfilled your ambition of standing for the presidency, your words (no longer deniable) would probably antagonize more than half the voters? It is tempting to believe that members of the upper class have so many people working for them that they never have to undertake the planning, the decisions, the careful consideration which members of the working class have to exercise constantly merely in order to operate their daily lives.

Be that as it may, the thought of the immense powers shortly to be exercised by someone as unpredictable as Trump has caused deep cogitation even among those who most fervently support our present system. Recently the London Times, not the most revolutionary of newspapers, carried an article lamenting recent events in America, where, among other things, ‘the rich have got much, much richer’ (10 November). As for the ordinary people, ‘no one prioritized their loss and anguish until a billionaire channelled their voice. The system is rigged, Trump told them, and the truth is that it is, although not perhaps in the sense that he meant. Since the 1970s American society has grown radically more unequal, as union power has collapsed, competition increased and shareholders and managers awarded themselves the lion’s share of income. Workers’ pay has risen by eleven per cent in real terms in that time, while CEO’s pay has risen by almost 1000 percent. Workers no longer get the rewards from increased productivity. The top one per cent are taking 95 cents in every dollar, compared to 50 cents just twenty years ago.’

So the world waits, with bated breath, for the Trump presidency. But the almost meaningless slogan ‘Make America great again’ can only evoke the obvious retort that America has always been great – for those who own it.

Alwyn Edgar

Capitalism Goes into Space (2016)

The Cooking the Books Column from the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dutch Marxist, Anton Pannekoek, once wrote that because the Earth’s size was limited so would capitalism be, implying that when capitalism had extended to the whole of the globe it would come to an end. This conclusion might have been reassuring, but it was never a rigorous argument. The Earth’s size has nothing to do with the lifespan of capitalism. But, if it had, Pannekoek had overlooked the possibility of capitalism extending itself beyond the Earth; surprising since he was a professor of astronomy, but he was writing in 1942.

Fast forward to today and an online article on 25 November (tinyurl.com/nq9csxn) suggests that we too might be behind the times when we talk of ‘world’ socialism:

‘President Barrack Obama today put his signature on a law supporting the rights of space miners to extract, use and sell resources from asteroids, the moon, Mars and other celestial bodies.’

The US law exploits a loophole in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which banned weapons of mass destruction (but not other weapons) in space but which also laid down that ‘outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.’ This meant only that no state could claim territorial rights over parts of space but did not rule out corporations or individuals exercising private property rights over them.

The 1979 Moon Treaty did attempt to prevent this, declaring (Article 11) that ‘the Moon and its natural resources are the common heritage of mankind’ and banning any state, corporate or private individual ownership of them. Since this treaty was not signed by the US or by any other country likely to send a mission to the Moon this clause was without effect. Now the US has enacted a law permitting the exercise of private property rights there and beyond.

It was passed as a result of lobbying by capitalist corporations that are already investing in the possibility of exploiting the natural resources of the Moon and near-Earth asteroids.

They were over the moon about it. ‘This is the single greatest recognition of property rights in history,’ exaggerated Eric Anderson of Planetary Resources. ‘In the long view of history,’ enthused Rick Tumlinson of Deep Space Industries, ‘it is the sort of positive action that changes civilization’. It, added Hannah Kerner of the Space Frontier Foundation, ‘extends our free market values into space.’

Actually, in the long view of history, it is more likely to be seen as a disaster and a disgrace as extending into space private property rights and the production for profit that caused such havoc on Earth. There is nothing wrong with making use of the natural resources of the Moon, Mars and asteroids. It’s an exciting prospect and will be an advance in human civilisation, but it will only be done rationally and in the interest of humanity if carried out under conditions where these resources, together with those of the Earth, really are ‘the common heritage of mankind’.

These are conditions which Article 11 of the Moon Treaty could be adapted to describe:

‘Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the Earth, the Moon or other celestial bodies, nor any part thereof, shall be the property of any state, international intergovernmental or non-governmental organization, national organization or non-governmental entity or of any natural person.’

Fortunately, Pannekoek was wrong about capitalism having physical limits since space is so vast that, if he’d been right, capitalism would potentially be able to last forever.

Do the Gods Ever Change Their Mind? (2015)

The Halo Halo! column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Does a God who is all-knowing and all-wise ever need to change his mind?

Believers who pray for God to bring peace to the Middle East, for example, obviously assume he can be persuaded to take some course of action they fear he may not otherwise be planning. Or if they pray to him to cure Mrs Jones of her lumbago, how likely is he to say ‘OK, I’ve seen fit to let her to suffer for ten years, but as you asked nicely, I’ll cure her?’

Don’t they ever suspect that God isn’t there, or isn’t listening, or that maybe he just doesn’t give a sod about what’s going on down here?

Following the double disaster at the Islamic hajj this year, when 109 people were killed by a collapsing crane and then over 700 more in a stampede which, apparently, he could have prevented – if he’d wanted to – there was the usual hand-wringing and prayers for him to halt the carnage and have mercy on the victims. And let’s face it  – even without being all-knowing he should have seen this coming. Stampedes at the Hajj have caused many hundreds of deaths in recent years, often at the stoning of the devil ritual (and obviously, the devil is going to be a bit hacked off about that).

In Christianity, too, the logic is no better. Their all-knowing, all-merciful god is quite happy to allow the odd flood, earthquake or some other disaster to occur without lifting a finger to prevent it, but they then fall to their knees in prayer expecting him to suddenly feel remorse at what he, in his infinite wisdom and mercy has allowed to happen. And in spite of this indifference to human suffering there’s nothing like a mass shooting or some other disaster to get the believers on their knees.

‘My prayers are with everyone in Oregon. May the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, guard your hearts’ bleated one politician following the October mass shooting in America. And the Presidential candidates lined up, offering their thoughts and advice to God, and anyone else who was listening, as if they had some influence over the invisible man in the sky.

Part of Barack Obama’s statement was, though, perhaps unintentionally, more to the point: ‘Each time we see one of these mass shootings, our thoughts and our prayers are not enough. It does nothing to prevent this carnage being inflicted’.

Exactly. So what is the point? If we assume for a moment that a god who ‘transcends all understanding’ does exist and knows, more or less, what he is doing, isn’t it a bit optimistic to ask him to change his mind halfway through some divine act of carnage in his plans for the world which, of course, he is carrying out for our benefit anyway?

Religion must be the biggest fraud ever to have been carried out to keep the masses docile and in their place. As the French revolutionary Camille Desmoulins put it – ‘The Great only appear to us to be great because we are on our knees. Let us rise’.

NW

Not disillusioned enough (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is good that so many of Obama’s followers are disillusioned. But they are not half as disillusioned as they need to be.

The once fervent supporters of Barack Obama say that they are more and more “disillusioned” with his politics. And the word should be apt since so many of them were intoxicated by the illusion that one single politician could transform a rotten social system. It seems, though, that many of those who describe themselves as disillusioned are accusing Obama of breaking his promises, rather than blaming themselves for falling prey to a naïve illusion.
This seems a bit unfair to Obama, who made no secret during his campaign of his “moderate” political outlook. A central theme of his campaign, in fact, was the need for bipartisanism to counter the trend towards politics becoming too “ideological”. Those who now criticize Obama for being yet another spineless Democrat were not paying adequate attention to the statements he made during the campaign. Obama made no secret two years ago of his deeply-held principle of never sticking to any principle. He has never claimed to be anything but a “pragmatist”, which is a nicer way of saying “opportunist”.

There was, of course, that promise Obama made about bringing about some sort of change, but isn’t it a bit unfair to hold him to such a sweeping and vague promise? And things have changed – just not for the better. Over the past two years, millions of Americans have experienced the dramatic change of losing their job or home (or both).

Principled spinelessness
Those painful, negative changes might be easier for some to stomach if Obama had cracked down on Wall Street or ended the senseless wars in the Middle East. But instead he has left many Bush Administration policies intact; and even the few important policy changes that Obama has implemented have been tainted with his “principled spinelessness” (most notably, his healthcare reform that leaves the parasitic insurance companies in place and even presents them with opportunities for expansion).Yet here again Obama has more or less been true to the positions he held prior to the presidential election. Even if we go back a bit further, to his book The Audacity of Hope, published in 2006, we see that he proudly displayed his essentially “conservative” politics. Far from making promises to leftwing Democrats or posing as a progressive, Obama was careful to define himself as a political pragmatist, ready and willing to work with the Republicans.
Moreover, one of Obama’s traits, as the book reveals, is a concern to not be caught in outright lies. He rarely resorts to statements that directly invert the truth in the style of Bush’s “We don’t torture” or Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” Rather, Obama likes to underscore the complexity of reality and the need for pragmatic solutions.

Wishful thinking
The idea that President Obama has broken his promises can only seem valid to those who – against all the evidence he provided – fashioned an image of him as the country’s progressive saviour. These are the people who helped make The Audacity of Hope a bestseller, but one can’t help wondering if they got past the first few pages. Anyone who managed to at least read the prologue would have encountered the following passage, which might have given them pause for thought:

“I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views. As such, I am bound to disappoint some, if not all, of them.”

Had his readers reflected a bit on this insight, they might have questioned whether the “Obama as saviour” storyline was not simply a case of wishful thinking. But perhaps that is like asking someone in love to consider the possibility that the object of their love is not quite perfect.

Obama’s warning in the prologue might be easy to overlook, but it is followed by countless examples throughout the book where he lays out quite clearly his conservative credentials and deep-rooted affection for the capitalist system, including a prominent passage in that same prologue where he informs the reader that (contrary to what those at Fox News might have believed) not an ounce of “socialism” will be found in the subsequent pages:

“I believe in the free market, competition, and entrepreneurship, and think no small number of government programs don’t work as advertised…I think America has more often been a force for good than for ill in the world; I carry few illusions about our enemies, and revere the courage and competence of our military…I think much of what ails the inner city involves a breakdown in culture that will not be cured by money alone, and that our values and spiritual life matter at least as much as our GDP.”

Obama “thinks” a lot of things in the book, and surprisingly few of his thoughts are in harmony with the views of his leftwing supporters, who worked so hard to get him elected.

Boots on the ground
Take his views on foreign policy, for example. This is an area where the views of the “anti-war” candidate Obama were thought to differ sharply from the hawkish approach of Hillary Clinton (now his Secretary of State!), not to mention the belligerent policies of Bush and McCain. In fact, Obama made it perfectly clear in The Audacity of Hope that he would deploy US troops when necessary, because “like it or not, if we want to make American more secure, we are going to have to help make the world more secure”. Rather than rejecting Bush’s absurd and counter-productive “war on terrorism”, Obama wrote that “the challenge will involve putting boots on the ground in ungoverned hostile regions where terrorists thrive”. And lest the reader imagine that such military force would only be used in retaliation, Obama claims that “we have the right to take unilateral military action to eliminate an imminent threat to our security”. It is something of a mystery how Obama managed to convince so many that he was a foreign policy “dove” while at the same time publishing such views.
But the surprising gap between what Obama himself pledged to do and the sort of president many of his supporters hoped he would become is not limited to the realm of foreign policy. For domestic policies as well, the real Obama has turned out to bear almost no resemblance to the second coming of FDR that more than a few had predicted or expected. At this point, I suspect, many “disillusioned” Democrats would be satisfied with a pale imitation of LBJ.

Yet how can Obama be blamed for those false expectations? In his book, even while recognizing that FDR “saved capitalism from itself” through his New Deal reforms, Obama does not fundamentally criticize Reagan for setting about dismantling aspects of the welfare system. He even says that there is a “good deal of truth” in “Reagan’s central insight – that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic”. And Obama, not surprisingly, praises Clinton, who “put a progressive slant on some of Reagan’s goals,” for achieving “some equilibrium” by creating a “smaller government, but one that retained the social safety net FDR had first put into place”.

Hardly the stuff of “socialism”
Obama is not so forthright in explaining his own welfare policies, but he implies that welfare should be a bare minimum. We should be “guided throughout,” he writes, “by Lincoln’s simple maxim: that we will do collectively, through our government, only those things that we cannot do as well or at all individually and private,” leading to “a dynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility.” This is hardly the stuff of “socialism” – or even of West European social democracy.

But there were many, even self-described socialists, who thought that Obama, whatever his statements during the campaign, would be compelled by the economic crisis itself or a growing working class movement, to enact policies similar to the New Deal of the 1930s. This expectation allowed such leftists to adopt the stance of backing Obama in the election without explicitly supporting his politics – adopting the posture of “critical support” of which they are so fond. (I can’t help wondering, though, why such “socialists” can’t set a goal higher than once again “saving capitalism from itself”.)

Yet in the midst of the continuing Great Recession, Obama has not budged from his belief that the solutions to the problems plaguing the United States can be found lying in the middle of the political road, so to speak, just waiting to be picked up. This is the belief he wrote about back in 2006, and his policies in office have been based on it.

An anti-Bush without Bush
Still, it was understandable that so many were drawn to Obama, despite his relative honesty regarding his own conservatism. Millions were sick to their guts of Bush and the Republicans and it was indeed “time for a change”. The cautious, compromising attitude of Obama could even appear principled compared to the reckless pigheadedness of Bush. The charisma of Obama was based on his self-presentation as the anti-Bush. Clearly, Obama appeared at the opportune time, when much of the population was desperate to believe that the country could change for the better, after eight long years when everything Bush touched turned to shit. This was the basis for the foolish – or “audacious” – hope that Obama could, almost single-handedly, set things right.

Obama’s once overpowering charisma has faded away, however. Now that few can remember exactly what it felt like to loathe the neocons, he no longer glows in the reflected light of the burning rage against Bush. Obama without Bush is a far less compelling act – like a “straightman” in a comedy duo who decides to go solo.

So people went from the naïve view that Bush is the root of all evil to the equally simplistic idea that Obama could uproot that evil. And now we have a sense of disillusionment due to the persistence of deep-rooted problems despite the election of Obama. Yet the idea that Obama has betrayed us is based on the initial illusion that he could rescue us from problems that are deeply rooted in capitalism itself. This notion, in turn, is no different from the superficial idea that those problems arose from Bush’s stupidity or mendacity. It is pointless to transform Obama from a saviour into a new scapegoat.

It is good that so many of Obama’s followers are disillusioned. But they are not half as disillusioned as they need to be! Only when millions of people finally give up the illusion that capitalism can be fundamentally reformed to somehow create a more humane world will we be on the road to real social change.

Michael Schauerte

Pieces Together: Modern Britain (2010)

From the October 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern Britain
"Nearly 54,000 children living below the poverty line will be pushed farther down the scale by cuts to housing benefit, according to figures from the charity Shelter. Their families will be left with less than £100 a week once housing costs have been paid. Of these, 33,00 children will be in families trying to live on under £50 a week." ((London) Times, 7 September)


Hunger Amidst Plenty
"India's grain warehouses are bursting at the seams and sacks of rice and wheat lie rotting in the open for lack of storage space. These government-managed stocks are for offsetting a fall in agricultural production in the event of drought or floods, but are also meant for sale to the poorest segment of the population at subsidised prices. But because the public distribution system (PDS) is undermined by bureaucracy and corruption, 60m tonnes of grain is lying in warehouses or under plastic sheeting, and, according to the Hindustan Times, 11m tonnes of it has been destroyed by the monsoons. A committee of experts appointed by the supreme court has claimed that this is nothing short of "genocide", and last month the court ordered the free distribution of the grain to the poor rather than have it eaten by rats. Since the 1970s green revolution, agricultural production has continued to rise, but not to benefit the hungry. Half of India's children aged under five suffer from malnutrition, and the rate remained stable between 1999 and 2006 despite the economic growth in those years. India is the world's 11th largest economic power but still has more people in poverty." (Guardian, 7 September)


Loaded Politicians in USA
"The rest of the country is still struggling with high unemployment amid a sluggish-at-best economic recovery -- but the wealthiest members of Congress are in high cotton. Indeed, the top 50 wealthiest lawmakers saw their combined net worths increase last year, according to the Hill's annual analysis of financial disclosure documents. Combined, the 50 lawmakers were worth $1.4 billion in 2009 -- an $85.1 million increase over their 2008 total . ...The list of 50 lawmakers spans both parties (27 Democrats and 23 Republicans) and both chambers of Congress (30 House members, 20 senators), the Hill reports." (Yahoo News, 1 September)


The Failure Of Reform
"The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record on President Barack Obama's watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty. Census figures for 2009 the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat's presidency are to be released in the coming week, and demographers expect grim findings. It's unfortunate timing for Obama and his party just seven weeks before important elections when control of Congress is at stake. The anticipated increase from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power." (Yahoo News, 11 September)

Asteroid Wars

The Material World column from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

On April 15, in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, President Obama outlined plans for the U.S. space program. He rejected proposals to “return” to the moon in favour of a plan to develop by 2025 new spacecraft for manned missions into deep space. The first destination will be “an asteroid”, followed by Mars in the mid-2030s.

So perhaps I was wrong when I called the moon “the next capitalist frontier” (Socialist Standard, December 2008). Why is an asteroid landing being given top priority?

Near-earth asteroids

Obama was certainly referring to one of the “near-earth asteroids” (NEAs). These are asteroids that have been dislodged, usually by the gravitational pull of Jupiter, from the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter into orbits that approach or intersect the orbit of the earth. About 7,000 NEAs have been discovered so far. Some are known to be fantastically rich in valuable metals and other minerals. In fact, many metals now mined on earth originated in asteroids that rained down on our planet after the crust cooled.

Consider, for instance, the NEA known as 1986 DA. A mile-and-a-half in diameter, it is estimated to contain ten billion tons of iron, one billion tons of nickel, 100,000 tons of platinum and over 10,000 tons of gold. The platinum alone, at the current price of £35 per gram, is worth £3.5 trillion. True, the price would fall rapidly once exploitation was underway, but at first the profits would be truly astronomical.

Given the scale of expected revenues, costs are unlikely to be prohibitive. Mining asteroids may even be more competitive than mining on the moon. Thanks to the very low gravity, a round trip to an NEA passing nearby will require less energy than a round trip to the moon. Processing might be carried out on site and only processed materials brought back to earth. True, a way will have to be found to “tether” machinery to the asteroid so that it does not drift off into space.

Window of opportunity

Another problem with mining an NEA is that operations will have to be confined within a “window of opportunity” – that is, the few weeks or months when it is passing close enough to earth, for it may not return our way for many years to come (if ever).

However, there is a way around this problem. Because NEAs are at most 20 miles in diameter, nuclear explosions can be used to change their course. This might be done if one were on a collision course with earth. (The Russian Space Agency is considering an attempt to deflect the asteroid Apophis, which has a tiny probability of hitting earth in 2036 or 2068.) A resource-rich NEA could be “captured” – that is, transported into earth orbit, where mining could continue for as long as it remained profitable.

Recalling Murphy’s Law (“If anything can go wrong, it will”), I shudder at the thought of the calamities that may descend on us from above as a result of accident or miscalculation.

An asteroid war?

For a socialist world community, mining asteroids might be an attractive option. It would offer not a supplement but an alternative to mining on earth, with its attendant ecological and work-related costs (costs in the sense of consequences running counter to communal values, as opposed to financial costs). Of course, a socialist world would have no use for the gold. Under capitalism, however, the approach of a resource-rich NEA might well be an occasion for conflict between the U.S. and another space power (Russia, China or India), precisely because of the enormous profits at stake.

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent., positive audacity; 100 per cent. will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged”.(Marx quoting P.J. Dunning, Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 31)

The use of celestial bodies remains unregulated by international law. There is a treaty designed for this purpose (the Moon Treaty of 1979), but it has never come into force because only a few states – not one of them a space power – have ratified it. An attempt in 1980 to get the U.S. Senate to ratify the treaty was defeated following lobbying by activists of the L5 Society, which was formed in 1975 to promote space colonization and manufacturing on the basis of private enterprise.

The danger of war over a resource-rich asteroid may well be greater than the risk of war over lunar resources. First, the moon is large enough to accommodate rival mining, processing and transport operations, but a small asteroid may not be. Second, an NEA will have to be exploited while it is within easy reach, so there will be little time for manoeuvring, negotiations and the application of indirect pressure.

An asteroid war need not be waged openly. It is more likely to take the form of covert and deniable efforts to sabotage rival operations by various means (laser and other rays, radioelectronic warfare, etc.). Simultaneous attempts by different space/nuclear powers to capture an asteroid may have the unintended consequence of the asteroid hitting the earth.

Stefan

More pain ahead? (2010)

The Cooking The Books column from the April 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard
“The true engine of job creation will always be America’s businesses”, declared President Obama in his State of the Union message (London Times, 29 January). We don’t know about the “always” but will let him off because he presumably thinks that capitalism will always exist and, on this assumption, he is right. As long as capitalism lasts the engine of job creation will be business, not just in America but everywhere.
Not that the aim of businesses is to create jobs. That’s only incidental to their aim of making profits. Since profits arise out of the unpaid labour of those who actually provide wealth, making profits involves employing workers. In short, job creation is a by-product of profit-creation.
When business is booming, i.e. when good profits are being made, more jobs are created. But it works both ways. When business is not booming then jobs are destroyed and unemployment grows, as has been happening for the past couple of years. In recent months the economy (as measured by GDP) has begun to grow again slowly in the major capitalist countries, so employment should increase too. But will it? In America there’s talk of a ‘jobless recovery’:

“in which GDP growth is not matched by a larger workforce as employers extract more labour from their existing employees rather than take on new recruits.” (LondonTimes, 12 February)

That’s one way of describing increased exploitation for those with a job.
Obama went on “but government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers.” This in fact is the economic rôle of governments under modern capitalism: to try to create and maintain conditions for businesses to expand, i.e. to make more profits from which to accumulate more capital. It doesn’t always work and it brings governments into conflict with the majority wage and salary working class as it means giving priority to profit-making over meeting people’s needs. So, governments oppose strikes, urge (and sometimes impose) wage restraint, and cut back services to keep taxes down.
But can’t governments also “create jobs”? Yes. They can either directly by themselves taking on more workers or indirectly by increasing their spending on goods produced by businesses. This has eventually to be financed out of the wealth created in the business sector and so has its limits (if carried too far it reduces profit creation and so job creation too). In this sense government jobs are ultimately dependent on business activity.
In the present crisis the government has borrowed extensively to bail out the bankers. Sooner or later this borrowed money will have to be repaid. Given the limits as to how far taxes can be raised, this means the government cutting back on its spending. Already observers are suggesting that this could mean a ‘jobless recovery’ in Britain too, with GDP going up without unemployment going down. A report in February by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development “indicated a worsening outlook for workers and jobseekers, despite tentative growth in the economy”, and “said that there was more pain ahead for workers as savage cuts start in the public sector” (London Times, 15 February).

Pieces Together (2010)

From the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard
PEACE PRIZE ?
"President Obama is planning to increase spending on America's nuclear weapons stockpile just days after pledging to try to rid the world of them. In his budget to be announced on Monday, Mr Obama has allocated £4.3billion to maintain the U.S. arsenal - £370million more than George Bush spent on nuclear weapons in his final year. The Obama administration also plans to spend a further £3.1billion over the next five years on nuclear security. The announcement comes despite the American President declaring nuclear weapons were the ‘greatest danger’ to U.S. people during in his State of the Union address on Wednesday. And it flies in the face of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to him in October for ‘his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’." (Daily Mail, 29 January)
DEBT RIDDEN BRITAIN
"There has been a huge rise in the amount of money that banks are writing off as bad debts on their credit cards. Bank of England figures show that the total value of the write-offs doubled to £1.6bn in the third quarter of 2009. In each of the two preceding quarters, the figure had been about £800m. It totalled £3.2bn during 2008. The figures reflect the impact of the recession and are an acknowledgement by the banks that the money will never be repaid by defaulting borrowers. By contrast, the value of mortgages written off in 2008 was just £408m, and has averaged £260m in each of the first three quarters of 2009." (BBC News, 19 January)
THE GAP WIDENS
"The richest 10% of the UK population are now more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10%, according to the Anatomy of Economic Inequality. The study shows that by 2008 Britain had reached the highest level of income inequality since soon after the second world war. Household wealth (including cars and other possessions of the top 10% amounts to £853,000 or more, while the poorest 10% amass £8,800 or less." (Observer, 31 January)
"CARING" CAPITALISM
Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has compared giving people government assistance to "feeding stray animals." Bauer, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor (of South Carolina), made his remarks during a town hall meeting in Fountain Inn that included state lawmakers and about 115 residents. "My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said." (Greenville News, 23 January)

Obama - Whose President?

From the World Socialist Party of the United States website

Whose president is Barack Obama?

He would have us believe that he is president of “all Americans.” But how is that possible when there are such sharp conflicts of interest in American society? Does the business owner have the same interests as the workers he hires at or below the minimum wage? Or consider the health insurance company assessor whose pay and prospects depend on how many claims she denies. Does she have the same interests as those whose survival depends on her decisions?

Is Obama president of the millions of “black” Americans who voted for him with such pride in their hearts? He has not addressed the specific problems that face “black” people. True, he has raised their status simply by being president. By the same token, he provides a pretext for pretending that the issue of racism no longer exists. If he can make it, why can’t they?

Is Obama president of the millions of working people of all colors who voted for him because they hoped he would make their lives easier and more secure? Because they hoped he would stop layoffs, foreclosures, military adventures?

Look at the military budget. Look at Afghanistan. Look at the huge bank bailouts – with no relief for mortgage holders.

Obama’s bosses

This is not to say that nothing he does will be of any benefit to working people. But of one thing you can be sure. Obama’s bosses will not allow him to push through any far-reaching reform. That is, any reform that threatens important corporate interests.

Excuse me, what was that you just said? Obama’s bosses? Does the U.S. president have bosses? Isn’t he the boss?

Well, yes, formally he’s the boss. But – like every ambitious politician with his eye on the Oval Office – he went through a long process of vetting by potential wealthy sponsors. Without the backing of such individuals, he could not have got the money and media coverage he needed to run for president. (For a fuller explanation, see the article “Selecting a U.S. President: The Invisible Primaries” at http://wspus.org/2008/04/page/3/)

Even now he is beholden to his sponsors. In the (admittedly unlikely) event that they decide they have made a mistake, they have the means to undermine or even destroy him.

For example, one of Obama’s biggest backers was the commodity trader – that is, financial speculator – Paul Tudor Jones, whose fortune is estimated at $3.3 billion. He was instrumental in mobilizing the hedge fund business behind Obama.

Naturally, that has absolutely no connection with those unconditional bank bailouts.

Like all his predecessors, Obama is president of the U.S. capitalist class.

Are they all the same?

Does that mean that all American politicians are the same? That there is no significant difference between Democrats and Republicans, “liberals” and “conservatives”?

Not at all.

Different politicians rely on different sponsors. Each represents a specific mix of big business interests. In general, for instance, Republicans have closer connections with the oil corporations, Democrats with Wall Street.

Different politicians also use different kinds of rhetoric and have different approaches to government. Conservative Republicans ignore popular grievances and try to distract people by exploiting their fears (of “communism,” “socialism,” “radicalism,” terrorism, Islam, foreigners, etc.) and by waving the U.S. flag. Democrats, especially liberal Democrats, convey the impression that they understand and care deeply about the daily troubles of ordinary people – perhaps even deeply enough to do something about them (that’s where things start to get fuzzy). Some of them maintain links with trade unions. For them too, however, business connections are more important.

Escaping from the trap

Where does this leave us? It is tempting to support liberal Democrats because they seem to be – and to some small extent really may be – the lesser of two evils. But that offers us no hope of ever escaping from the trap. Politicians who promise change inevitably fail to deliver most of what they promise. Then their disappointed supporters relapse into apathy and the Republicans come back. And so on and on.

It makes more sense to work toward a fundamental change in the social system. To build up media and organizations independent of capitalist control, and eventually use our votes as part of a strategy to introduce the fuller democracy of socialism. It’s a long and uphill struggle. But what real alternative is there?

Stefan

Hunting in the morning (2009)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was a good idea. To take Marx's passing comment in the German Ideology that in a communist society (socialism) he could "hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic" and put it to the test. The trouble was that this was done by a free newspaper, handed out at London tube stations, aimed at twenty-somethings whose usual interest is the goings-on of celebrities.
According to Andy Jones who carried out the test:

"A mantra drawn from the teaching in Marx's 1867 book Das Kapital (but sexed up for the modern reader) tells how he predicted the working classes would increasingly buy expensive goods and houses until their debt became unbearable. And when all this went belly-up, the State would have to turn to communism as a way out. In the ensuing communist Utopia, Marx reckoned the average working man should be able to go fishing in the morning, work in a factory in the afternoon and read Plato in the evening". (The London Paper, 17 April)

Actually, this wasn't Marx's exact suggestion but it could have been and Jones seems to have enjoyed himself engaging in his three activities in a single day.

But where on Earth did he get his version of what Marx is supposed to have taught? Certainly not from Marx himself as it bears no resemblance to anything he wrote. What Marx actually wrote in Capital about how he thought the end of capitalism would eventually come was:

"Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralization of the means of production and socialization of labor at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. Thus integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” (Volume I, chapter 32).

Nothing here about workers getting more and more into debt by buying expensive goods and houses. Rather the opposite if anything.

We do in fact know the source of Jones's nonsense. It was this hoax email that did the rounds:

"Can you believe that this was said by Karl Marx 142 years ago (1867)!
What do you think, doesn't it apply today???!!! PRONTO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
'Owners of capital will stimulate the working class to buy more and more of expensive goods, houses and technology, pushing them to take more and more expensive credits, until their debt becomes unbearable. The unpaid debt will lead to bankruptcy of banks, which will have to be nationalised, and the State will have to take the road which will eventually lead to communism.' Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867" (see http://www.hoax-slayer.com/karl-marx-quote.shtml)

The suggestion is that this false quote was made up either as a joke or by someone opposed to the Bush/Obama policy of the state acquiring a majority stake in banks. Which of course was state capitalism and had nothing to do with communism (or socialism, the same thing).

Death Panels; Science Silenced; and the Twittering Classes (2009)

The Pathfinders column from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Euthanasia? Line on the left, one needle each...
It’s not often that nature obligingly weighs right into a political row to decide the matter within a month or so, but in the wake of the recent anti-NHS row across the Pond it might do just that. As you will recall, the usual internecine sniping between workers, managers and policy-makers within the British NHS was suspended as the country went into a collective fit of the conniptions over the defamation being perpetrated in the American press. According to the rabid opponents of Obama’s modest health-care reform bill, we in Britain have enforced euthanasia and face ‘death panels’ of officials who decide which of us get to live. You wouldn’t think even redneck republicans would buy this, but their own political bosses obviously think otherwise, and they’re the ones with their fingers on the arrested pulse of American political consciousness.

It’s not cricket, is it? We can slag off the Health Service all we like, after all it’s the national sport. But do it on American TV, as self-promoting neocon-licking uberturd Daniel Hannan MEP did, and out comes the Dunkirk spirit and a flurry of statistics to show why a), the NHS kicks America’s butt over every Key Performance Indicator, b), 47 million Americans with no health insurance would rather live over here and c), Daniel Hannan should present himself before the next available death panel.

Everybody, calm down. Just wait and see. Swine flu is back this month, so it won’t be long before we’ll have hard evidence about which health system copes best, or least worst. The word on the wards is not optimistic, though, judging from a recent poll of health experts of whom over half ‘seriously doubted that their health authorities would be able to cope’ if the virus became more virulent, as is widely expected (New Scientist editorial, 15 August). Half, too, had ‘stashed away their own antivirals’, even though Tamiflu and Relenza are not likely to do much good for adults and none at all in children under the age of twelve (New Scientist, p 4).

Not to be accused of pessimism, Pathfinders would like to offer its own handy list of flu-busting tips for worried readers everywhere. First, lay in a stock of food and don’t go out for five months. Alternatively, remove yourself to the Seychelles for the winter. Keep large reserves of water, wood, coal and gold for barter in case society breaks down altogether. Always have a large well-armed staff at your disposal to run errands and catch diseases on your behalf. And of course, have your own doctor, preferably married into the family, with access to the best private hospital your banker’s bonuses can buy.

Well, that’s the owning class taken care of, which is the main thing. For the rest of us, well, let’s keep things in perspective. A big die-off will create a labour shortage and that will raise wages and foster strength and unity among what’s left of the unions. No more worries about unemployment and recession – or euthanasia.

Meanwhile Daniel Hannan has been ‘rebuked’ by David Cameron, and many are expecting the disloyal swine to be flushed down the Tory Party’s private Swine Flue for being so off-message. Of course, Hannan was only saying what many in the Gentlemen’s Gestapo privately believe, which is that the Health Service is a giant drain on corporate profits at a time when workers are ten a penny. The American ruling class also know this, which is why they’re keen to tell the American proles that the British euthanise all their old people by leaving them out for the vultures, and pack their sick babies into Soylent Green factories.

Bang goes the science media
Ben Goldacre at the Guardian must be wondering if his Bad Science column is turning into Bad Business, when science journos are being laid off from papers all round the globe as part of a ‘dumb down and ditch it’ campaign to cut staff costs and gloss up the lowest common denominator sections that require the least thinking. Newspapers are in terminal decline due to the internet, and in the Balloon game that editors are playing, the boffin-hacks are getting tipped over the side first. Of course, they all go online and start blogs, but then they’re in competition with a million other blogs touting all brands of ‘science’ from creationism to alien telepathy – and losing. In the ‘Best Science Blog’ section of the 2008 Weblog Awards, Pharyngula, an anti-religion sceptic’s site, lost first place to a climate-change denial blog (‘Unpopular science’, The Nation, 29 July).

Is science really so unpopular? The BBC seems to think so. Its new science programme, Bang Goes the Theory, tries ever-so-hard to be cool, with three young presenters prowling a loud CBeebies-like studio set and conducting experiments carefully selected for their ‘wow’ factor. The breathless pace effectively rules out any real depth, and the hook appears to be not the science itself, as in Horizon or dear old long-lamented Tomorrow’s World, but whether the presenter is going to get seriously injured. If you’re in your teens you’ll feel too old for this show.

Meanwhile in recognition of the fact that many scientific breakthroughs have initially been knocked back, a new open-source academic journal called Rejecta Mathematica has gone online, consisting of papers rejected by peer-review (‘Huddled Maths’, Economist, 29 July). Let us be the first to recommend to the BBC their next piece of prime-time fluff: Science – The Out-Takes.

Competition for the Twittering Classes
The latest fad for micro-blogging is coming under fire, with a study showing that 40 percent of ‘tweets’ are ‘pointless babble’ and only 8.7 percent pass along ‘news of interest’(BBC Online, 17 August). Considering the gargantua of garbage which is the printed book output, this is not a bad batting average. However, keen as ever to raise the bar of public discourse, Pathfinders proposes a competition for the best expression of the Party Case in 140 characters or less. Brief reflection offers: ‘World for the Workers, not the Rich W**kers’ however you are sure to do better than that. Emails or letters to our Clapham office. Closing date 10 November, for our December issue, and best ideas will be printed. First Prize will be, of course, comradely adulation, as we socialists are trying to move away from material remuneration systems.

PJS

Is Obama a socialist?

Those scaremongering stories about Obama as a secret socialist just won't go away.

The Guardian reports on the latest guerilla campaign from the right directed against Obama personally and against his administration. It sounds ridiculous but it appears that if a smear is repeated often enough it will eventually gain some traction.

But it has to be said that it's not just Obama's who's being misrepresented here: Socialism is also getting a raw deal.

In light of this, I thought it was an opportune moment to repost the piece, 'Is Obama a socialist?, which originally appeared on the World Socialist Party of United States website in September of last year, and which explains that, though Obama is many things, he isn't a socialist.

Is Obama a socialist?

We got a an e-mail recently from some right-wing blogger for the New York Times who asked if we considered Barak Obama a socialist and if we supported his tax plans. blah, blah, blah. We won’t pass judgement on an article which may or may not see the light of day. But most likely this was another piece attempting to get someone calling themselves socialist to endorse Obama or one of his policies. Once that confession is procured, it will be widely touted as proof of Obama being a socialist, an elitist, etc.

But is Obama a socialist? OMFno-G no.

Obama isn’t anymore a socialist than McCain is a fascist, a leprechaun or sincere. Sure, Obama wants more government control of economic matters. But as even Obama said if you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig. Capitalism administered by the state is still capitalism. Duh.

No one’s calling Bush a socialist because he nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because it’s not socialism. So why call Obama a sociaiist?

This election is all about two factions of capitalism competing for power with each-other.

The methods each faction uses to mobilize the working class to support them says much about the lack of class-consciousness in the US today.

The Democratic faction uses appeals for “justice” and “equality”, for tax breaks for workers even though most workers don’t “pay” enough taxes to make the breaks more than pavlovian whistles. Sure “equality” sounds nice, but it cannot happen in class society. The vast majority of people are workers for a reason - to create wealth for new rounds of capital growth. Those who benefit from that capital growth can be individual capitalists or state functionaries, but it’s workers who do the physical labor which creates the wealth. there can be no equality or justice in capitalism. Even if the capitalist class has now opened it’s membership roles to non-whites and females.

For being so slavish to Christian zealots, one would think the Republicans would “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. But being able to pay for such things as public infrastructure - ie highways, electric system, etc. takes a backseat to the accumulation of capital for massive investment in China, Mexico and India. So like the Democratic faction, they seek to slash public spending and taxes. Of course, underscoring their religious hypocracy, the Republicans have spent more than any other administration building US federal debts to record highs. It is fortunate that US federal bonds which pay for all that debt are held by those whose taxes were cut - the capitalists. Kaching! profit on both transactions!