50 Years Ago: Death in the Mines (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lancaster Pit of the Universal Colliery at Senghenydd was again the scene of a fearful explosion, in which 435 of our fellow workers have perished—sacrificed to the greed of that butcher, King Capital. Although on the occasion of the last disaster (1901) in this mine, the coroner’s jury found that the mine was not sufficiently watered, and Professor Galloway, the Government Inspector of Mines, reported that the necessary precautions in watering the roadways had not been attended to, yet the mine owners allow conditions to prevail that send to their doom 435 miners.

Every time coal dust has caused a mine explosion the warning has been given, but it has passed unheeded. When the toilers were entombed at West Stanley in 1909, the Government investigators reported that “unless the grave danger which exists at many collieries owing to the pressure of dust is attacked with much greater earnestness than it has been in the past, disasters of a similar nature will occur from time to time.” At Whitehaven in 1910 the inspector proclaimed that “the precautions against the accumulation of coal dust were of a haphazard and unsystematic character,” and he also stated that “the ventilation of the working face was inadequate for the needs of the mine having in view the gassy nature of the coal.” Following upon this the same inspector made this sinister statement to a Press Agency representative :

“Practically every risk which exists could be eliminated if cost were no object.”

These burning words could be backed up by plenty of other quotations from leading agents of capitalism, but let these suffice. The plain fact emerges from every disaster that the toilers’ lives are sacrificed to dividends and interest. Mines Acts arc passed, as that of 1911, with special provisions excluding mines which do not “pay” well from adopting precautions. As for the others, the owners please themselves. The Mines Inspectors are so few, and their powers so meagre, that the regulations are broken with impunity. Last August a fire occurred at the Carron Co’s. pit at Cadder, and 22 miners who went down to earn their pittance on Sunday perished. And notwithstanding that the Mines Act of two years previous enjoins every mine to have complete rescue apparatus, the rescue men had to travel forty miles to obtain life-saving apparatus!

[In 1913 the number killed at work was 1,753 out of a total of 1,100,000 miners. In 1962 the number who lost their lives was 256, out of 706,000 employed.]

[From the editorial, King Capital, The Butcher,  Socialist Standard, November, 1913.]

A colliery accident—and profits (1938)

From the November 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The News Chronicle of September 30th contains an informative little paragraph regarding the explosion which took place last May in the Markham Colliery, near Chesterfield.

At this explosion seventy-nine miners lost their lives, and many of their bodies were unrecognizable when recovered.

The colliery is now about to be opened again, and the News Chronicle states that the Staveley Coal & Iron Company, who own it, made a gross profit of nearly three-quarters of a million pounds (£723,725 to be precise) for the year 1937-8, and that from this amount a sum of £225,156 has been deducted for depreciation and directors’ fees. A tax-free dividend of 11 per cent. for the year has been declared.

In the light of these figures, it seems curious that it should have been necessary to have opened a “public fund” for the relief of the dependents of the victims—with all the sanctimonious hypocrisy that usually accompanies such funds—the capitalist his cheque, and the poor widow “her last ten shillings.” It is, however, merely symptomatic of the callous selfishness with which the capitalist class generally treat those who make their profits for them.

R. M.

Your wages are a problem (1962)

From the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do wage increase put up prices?

One of capitalism’s toughest problems is the size of the wage which is paid to the working people who keep the system operating.

Basically, it is a problem of almost mathematical simplicity. The working class produce values which are higher than their wages. They produce a surplus value which goes to their employers. If the workers can force their wages up, there is less of the surplus left for their employers. On the other hand, if the employers can force wages down, more of the surplus will go to them. This must hold good, however the productivity of the worker may be altered by changes in natural conditions or in the intensity of his labour.

It is inevitable that capitalism’s governments should concern themselves in this dispute which, by the way, is known as a “class struggle” by Socialists, who have an uncomfortable habit of calling a capitalist spade a spade. Governments do their governing in the interests of the employing, owning class of capitalism. It is, therefore, equally inevitable that when they concern themselves with the class struggle over wages, governments should take the side of the capitalist class.

Thirty or forty years ago there was no great need for the government’s intervention to be especially vigorous. With capitalism in the doldrums, with never less than one million unemployed in this country, the working class were badly placed to push home any demand for better wages. If they did push any such demands the government had only to stand aside and watch the workers starve themselves onto their knees in a strike or a lock-out.

Since the war, conditions have been rather different. Wage rises must now be restrained by government action and appeals, rather than by the old method of both sides beating their heads together. Sometimes, indeed, conditions have defeated even the appeals and the government itself has surrendered, offering wage increases rather than face a strike. This has happened more than once over the railwaymen, much to the annoyance of newspapers like The Economist, which irritably demands at such times to know whether the government is serious in its desire to stop wages going up.

An essential part of the official campaign on wages has been the thinking up of responsible-sounding excuses for refusing the workers’ demands. These excuses must be epitomised in a snappy name for the refusals. This time last year it was the pay pause which, it seems clear, was designed to hold wages in check for a few months. There are signs that the pause was at least as successful as the government could have hoped. Apart from the rises which were denied to government employees, the engineers themselves forebore to press a wage claim last autumn. The engineering employers have now conceded a three per cent. rise, but in the opinion of at least one newspaper, this would have come earlier but for the pay pause.

Now the “guiding light” on wage increases has replaced the pause, although it is being somewhat buffeted by the arbitration tribunals.

It is safe to forecast that, for those who are willing to do a little research and remembering, the events of capitalism will expose the government’s excuses for what they are. Just after the war, for example, the Attlee government launched a great campaign on wages. There was a propaganda drive to convince everybody that rises were inadmissible because, among other things, Britain’s international balance of payments was in jeopardy. Ministers lost no chance of parading statistics which showed how the British capitalist class were spending more on their imports than they were receiving from their exports. We heard many homely analogies about the difficulties of families which spent more than their income and we were invited to regard ourselves as members of a big, British, capitalist family.

A lot has happened since then. The international trading situation of Britain has varied considerably over the years. Once before—during 1959—the British capitalist class actually had a favourable balance of payments. Now it has happened again. The Treasury has announced that the first quarter of this year yielded a payments surplus in Britain’s international trade of £21 millions. The terms of trade—the ratio of import to export prices—are set fair for British capitalism and have been so for some time. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has suggested that over the year the surplus in payments might come to something like £150 millions.

At the same time another of the difficulties which faced the Labour government has gone, to be replaced by its opposite. There is no longer a desperate need to rush into a gaping wide world market, a market waiting to be filled with any substandard commodities which could be produced fast enough to pump into it. Coal, for example, was one of the big needs of the post war years. But so much has the demand for coal decreased that the National Coal Board has closed many of its pits and intends to close still more.

The dilemma

NCB chairman Lord Robens, speaking at the last annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers, put his finger on British capitalism’s present dilemma:

“This is not an era of coal at any price—that ended in 1957; we are in the era of hard selling based on price, quality and service, and in this situation the fundamental need is to be able to produce the right produce at the right price.”

Conditions, then, have decidedly changed since the 1945 Labour government and in doing so have wiped out the excuses which were used to justify the wage freeze and the other restrictions of Crippsian austerity. The government itself has changed. But government policy on wage increases remains unaltered. All that has happened is that the old excuses have been replaced by the new. The catch-phrases of the late forties have given way to those of the early sixties. A pay pause may sound different from a wage freeze, but in fact it means almost exactly the same.

In one respect the government has not been caught napping by the changes of the past seventeen years. They have not run out of excuses. Now, we are told that wage rises are inflationary. The argument which goes with this assertion has almost become part of the mystique of modern capitalism.

When wages rise, runs the argument, the costs of production go up and the employers automatically increase their prices to recoup this. Higher prices mean that any unit of currency is able to buy less than before, which means that more currency units are needed to circulate the same amount of commodities. Thus wages are supposed to be going up closely followed by prices which, as they rise, nullify the wage increases and cut the purchasing power of the pound. This, say the pundits, is inflation.

This argument ignores several basic facts of capitalist life. Wages are the price of the commodity labour power and generally will fluctuate in accordance with the state of the labour market. But a market for one commodity can be buoyant at the same time as for another it is depressed. Although the coal mines are having difficulty in selling their product it is still possible for miners to get rises because at the moment most of them could get another job without great difficulty. The prices of many of the commodities which will for ever be associated with the so-called Affluent Society—television sets, refrigerators, washing machines—have tumbled over the past few years. But, as we have seen, the wages of the electricians and the engineers who make these goods have increased.

Karl Marx made the point over a century ago and it is still valid today. Highly paid workers can produce cheap commodities, and vice versa. A wage rise need not, therefore, be followed by a price rise.

The Guardian recently challenged the starting point of the inflation theory. In an editorial published on June 25, they said: This is the same mode of thinking as the one that regards success in enforcing a pay pause as the overriding test of present British economic policy. But in fact labour costs in the United States have risen sharply in periods of falling production and have actually declined in periods of recovery in spite of bigger increases in wages. . . . There is much evidence that the same is true of Britain.

Where, now are the protestations of The Guardian—and of other papers—that wage increases must put up labour costs? Are they buried, along with the other stale excuses? If so, we may be sure that they will return, even if in reincarnation.

Yes, wages are a problem and like most problems they are fertile in paradoxes. Perhaps the biggest paradox of all is that the problem will not be solved by putting wages up, or down, but by getting rid of them altogether.

Ivan

The story behind Powell Duffryn (1965)

From the October 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

In Regent Street, in the posh shopping area of London, is a shop called POWELL DUFFRYN. Now that nationalisation is once again a political issue it is not out of place to tell the story behind this name.

It begins in South Wales, where Powell Duffryn used to be one of the hated coal combines owning pits in the Red Rhondda valleys. Between the wars these coal combines, by their persistent attempts to worsen wages and working conditions and by their union-busting, aroused deep resentment among miners, many of whom devoted their time to campaigning for the nationalisation of the mines. And on January 1st, 1947 their aim was achieved. The mines were handed over to the National Coal Board; the NCB flag was raised amidst cheering and the singing of traditional Labour songs. Powell Duffryn was dead. Or was it?

As a side-line to mining, Powell Duffryn was also engaged in the making of heating equipment, boilers and radiators. This side of the business was not nationalised. In the years that followed, while the NCB languished, Powell Duffryn used its compensation and flourished. Today it has its shop in Regent Street; it co-operates closely with the nationalised fuel industries—the Gas Board and the NCB. Not long ago the papers carried a joint Powell Duffryn-NCB advert. All of this is a mockery of the devoted, if misguided, struggles of the miners to nationalise such outfits, and yet another monument to the futility of reformism.

It is worth spending some time looking into the concept of nationalisation a little more closely. In its modern sense, the term first appeared in 1869 when the telegraph system was nationalised, though for some time before the concept had gone under a different name. Some people had called for the nationalisation of land, and a clause in the 1844 Railway Act had allowed for the nationalisation of the railway system if necessary. The word itself—nationalisation—gives a clue as to its significance. The dominant theories, popular and philosophical, of capitalism hold that the interests of all those who make up the entity variously called the “nation” or the “public”, on the popular level, and “society” or “the community”, in the textbooks of political philosophy, are one and the same.

This is a fraud. Present-day society is composed of two mutually antagonistic classes, between which there is a conflict over the distribution of the product of labour. The interests of these two classes are completely opposed; they have no interests in common. Once this is realised, it can be understood that “nation” and “public” are often little more than polite words for the owning class.

When the apologists of capitalism wish to refer to the situation which exists after the State has taken over a section of industry in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, they sometimes call it “common ownership”. This is how the phrase is used in the famous Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution in its reference to the “common ownership . . . of the means of exchange” (i.e. financial institutions). To talk of the common ownership of financial institutions is a contradiction in terms, the purest nonsense. But to those who use “common ownership” in its capitalist sense it makes sense. As has been well said, the Labour Party stands for “socialism for the capitalist class”!

The capitalist class has been prepared to consider nationalisation as a solution when their interests as a whole have differed from those of a section. This was the position with land in the nineteenth century. The landowners, by virtue of their monopoly position, were able to extract a portion of the proceeds of working class exploitation from the capitalist class. A similar fear that the railway companies might exploit their monopoly position was responsible for the clause in the 1844 Act. In both cases nationalisation, or the assumption of ownership by the State on behalf of the rest of the ruling class, was considered. This had one drawback; it meant that the State had to assume the management of the estates or railways it might acquire.

Most capitalists were not prepared to put such power into the hands of their State officials. The institution of the public corporation was a solution to this problem. It removed the fear of the State becoming more and more powerful and eventually taking over other sections of industry as well. This fear was not groundless; there are historical examples of this happening, in Russia for instance. Here the capitalist class as well as the working class, such as they were, were subjected to a dictatorship of the State. The system remained capitalism however and it eventually evolved into a form of State capitalism.

Where such disputes break out between the capitalist class and usurping politicians or State officials, the workers are invited to take sides. But their interests are no more involved here than they were in the old landowner-capitalist struggle. Despite this, “Leftwingers” delight in backing the new usurpers against the capitalists; only to find that the usurpers end by establishing themselves as a new ruling class. So nationalisation without compensation is no more worthy of working class support that the more moderate means of nationalisation that have been applied in Britain.

With the public corporation the capitalist class felt less fear about nationalisation, so that in 1944 Herbert Morrison could declare that the Conservatives had introduced more “Socialism” than the Labour Party. The nationalisations of the post-war Labour Government however identified the Labour Party as the party of nationalisation.

Soon after 1945, a large section of the capitalist class were becoming dissatisfied with the efforts of the Labour Party on their behalf. They were becoming annoyed at having to pay taxes to prop up inefficient State-run industries. Not that they were completely opposed to all measures of State control; they just came round to the view that nationalisation was not a suitable means of such control. This is the crux of the argument about steel nationalisation.

The Iron and Steel industry has been subject to a substantial amount of State control since the 1930’s. In 1951 it was nationalised but in the succeeding years the Conservative governments sold most of it back to the former owners. Ironically they could find no-one to buy Richard Thomas and Baldwin’s which is still nationalised today. The plans recently announced by the Labour government provided for the sole shareholder of some 90 per cent of the industry to be a National Steel Corporation which can thus control the industry as it wants. The Conservatives and Liberals favour what they call a more competitive solution.

The compensation measures—since in Britain nationalisation amounts to a business deal in which the State buys out the old owners—have been described in avowedly capitalist papers as reasonable, fair and far better than expected. One referred to “jubilation in the City”. It seems that some £660 million will have to be paid out. In present at stock-market conditions much of the government stock which will be given as compensation could well be sold and the capital re-invested in more profitable fields.

This brings us back to Powell Duffryn. The same story will no doubt be repeated for the steel industry as for the coal industry and the others. We conclude by quoting from a recent survey of the State in industry in Britain:

“Nationalisation deprived many companies of their assets but left them with huge sums in cash and stock for re-investment after compensating the former shareholders, The colliery companies alone received nearly £300 million from this source. Some companies became investment trusts; others took over and developed existing businesses or established new enterprises in fields where they could use their technical and managerial skill. Typical examples are Cable and Wireless (Holdings) Ltd.—now quite unconnected with the nationalised concern, Cable and Wireless Ltd.—which has invested its free money to build an interest in about 850 different companies; and Thomas Tilling (Holdings) which continues to manage the interests of the old Tilling Group that were not acquired by the British Transport Commission, and has used its compensation to acquire holdings in some twenty-five companies in industries ranging from light engineering to glass and plastics and from insurance to book publishing” (Government and Industry in Britain, 1962, J. W. Grove, p. 250).

Adam Buick

Notes by the Way: What Mussolini did for Italy (1935)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Mussolini did for Italy

 

Here is a brief description of the lofty principles on which the Fascist Government has trained its boys and young men, under the guise of “education."

There minds have been saturated with bellicose sentiments. The word Fatherland has lost for them its meaning, apparently obsolete, of love for the native land and its inhabitants, and has come to signify a proud and pugnacious attitude to the foreigner. While they were still boys the rifle and the machine-gun were put into their hands. All their Sundays were spent in military exercises. In their elementary school they were taught from a State text-book in which the martial virtues were exalted as the best virtues of a citizen. Indeed, later on they were taught that the citizen in Italy is from 6 to 60 a soldier, and that Italy, in the words of the chief of Fascism, must be a “military, militaristic, and warlike nation." (Times, September 5th.)

* * *

 

Capitalist Crisis and Capitalist War

 

Sir George Paish, in a letter to the Press, recently drew attention to an aspect of the Abyssinian conflict which has received little notice, that is the similarity between the condition of Italy now and in 1896, when also war was waged on Abyssinia.

"At that time the world was suffering from a severe economic and financial crisis, and the distress of Italy caused her statesmen to seek relief in a policy of conquest. The world to-day is suffering from a crisis more severe than 40 years ago, and Italy is in even greater distress than she was then. In consequence, Italy desires a colony to give her a market for her products, to which her people can emigrate, and from which she can obtain food, raw material, and gold .... economic and financial distress is the real cause of the difficulty.” (Times, August 31st.)

Here we have from a world-famed economist, who hopes and believes that capitalism can and should be saved, a fairly frank admission that capitalism is at the root of modern wars.

* * *

 

The Rate of Increase of Output in Industry

 

The rash speculations of Douglasites and others about a supposed vast and rapid increase of output in industry, due to the introduction of improved machinery and processes, have received additional refutation in a survey of output in the Economic Journal (September, 1935), by Ely Devons, of the Economic Research Section, Victoria University of Manchester. Basing his survey on the census of production and other material, he finds that the increase of output per head of the workers in all manufacturing industry in this country increased by at least 14 per cent. in the six years from 1924 to 1930. He thinks the actual figure will be somewhat larger than 14 per cent. for reasons given in the article. Making a reasonable allowance for this, it will be seen that the increase per annum is rather less than 3 per cent.

Taking the smaller range of industries which are covered by the Board of Trade’s index of production he finds that the increase of output per head of the workers actually in work was 20 per cent., or a little more, in the nine years 1924—1933. This gain is well below 3 per cent. a year.

These estimates agree with others given in the Socialist Standard from time to time.

* * *

 

The Output in Mining and Iron and Steel

 

A writer in Forward (August 24th), who shares the misconception that productivity increases at a “tremendous” rate, gives figures relating to coal-mining, an industry in which a great deal of machinery has been introduced. He claims that after allowing for the big reduction in the total output of coal, for the decrease in the number of miners, and for the greater amount of short time, output per head has increased by 30.4 per cent. in the ten years 1923—1933. Even if this were the whole story the increase each year would still be less than 3 per cent. of the previous year's output. Actually, however, it leaves out of account any additional labour used up in the manufacture and maintenance, etc., of the machines, also the fact that, the output per head in 1923 represented a big decrease, as compared with 1913 (from 260 tons a year to 229 tons).

 

On the other hand, miners’ hours of work are shorter than before the War.

 

If these modifications are allowed for it will be seen that miners’ output per head now as compared with that in 1913 has increased at the outside by not much more than 2 per cent. a year. The rate of increase in recent years may have been somewhat larger, but much of this has merely made up for the previous decline in output due, among other causes, to the fact that coal becomes more difficult to get at as the mines become more worked out.

 

An estimate of the increase of productivity in engineering, shipbuilding and iron and steel, based on the index of output published by the Royal Economic Society, and on the number of workers actually at work in these trades, shows that output per head between 1924 and 1930 increased by about 3 per cent. a year.

 

* * *

 

Major Douglas puts his Cards on the Table

There is certainly one thing for which Major Douglas deserves praise, that is for his very definite statement of his attitude towards the Alberta Social Credit Government. He might, had he wished, have expressed vague and qualified approval without committing himself to anything definite. Instead, in an article in the Sunday Express, he stated in plain language exactly what he believes the Alberta experiment will produce. As we know that the application of the Douglas theories will fail to achieve the results Major Douglas anticipates, it is a suitable occasion to place on record what he wrote in the Sunday Express on September 1st, 1935. The following passages are extracted from the article in question:

Mr. Aberhart, the new Prime Minister, is a man of magnetic personality and a magnificent orator. In the heat of the election he went rather beyond any proposals that I have made, but it is entirely false to say that I am in disagreement with him, I admire him greatly (Italics ours.)

He promised during the election to pay every Albertan five pounds a month. I hope and believe that once his plans are in full operation that figure will be substantially increased.

If the credit of a rich province is made fully available to its people without artificial restrictions of any kind, there will be no poverty. Everyone will have enough to eat, a decent home, opportunities for recreation and adequate leisure.

That, I believe, will happen in Alberta if the new Government sticks to its policy. It will probably take fifteen months before the plan is in full operation, and that fifteen months will be a period of great difficulty and bitter strife. The vested interests of the bankers and financiers will not relinquish their monopoly without a hard struggle.

In 15 months from now, I believe that Alberta will be a blessed land. Unemployment will no longer be a menace to its citizens. No wheat will rot in its elevators. Fine new roads will enable tourists to appreciate its magnificent scenery and bring further wealth to its people.

It will become one of the show places of the world.

 

* * *

 

Capitalism and Superior Brains

 

Ousted from one position after another, defenders of capitalism finally fell back on the “superior brains." The capitalist, we are told, provides all the brain-power, the ideas, the organising skill and directive ability. His was the creative genius, without which the wage and salary earners would be floundering about in muddle and chaos.

The creative geniuses of capitalism finally produced the world war and the world crisis and, in passing, they turned whole counties of Great Britain into distressed areas, where idle men and idle mills rotted together. And what about the "superior brains" meanwhile? Having produced the chaotic conditions, are they setting to work to produce a remedy? By no means. Instead, the Chairman of the Whitehead Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., of Newport, Monmouth, is offering a prize of £1,000, with additional prizes of £200 for practical suggestions for “permanently and substantially reducing existing distress in South Wales and Monmouthshire (Daily Telegraph, August 31st).

You send your answers to the Industrial Development Council of South Wales. We know the answer, but we fear nobody will receive a prize for sending it in.

 

* * *

 

"200 Companies Own Half U.S."

 

Under the above heading the Star (August 3rd) publishes a report from Reuter's Agency, stating that, according to the American Bar Association, about 200 Corporations, managed by approximately 1,000 directors, own one-half of the wealth of the United States. These 200 corporations do not include banks.

“A small number of corporations exercise a dominant influence over price control and trade practices, and virtually control the production and distribution of the country,"  a report by the Association states.

Edgar Hardcastle

Humour most foul (1947)

From the September 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these hard times of restrictions in nearly everything that makes life worth living humour is a precious relief from work and worry. We are, therefore, greatly indebted to the Labour Party for contributing a gleam of gaiety to the times. It has produced a large four-page sheet, printed on nice paper, entitled The Labour News Special, complete with jokes and pictures and selling for the modest sum of one penny. The following extracts from this sheet may provide our readers with a relish for their unappetising meals; they are taken from an article entitled “Nationalisation to the Rescue—The Epic Story of the Mines” :

“The Labour Government’s Socialist policy has been proved right. For years the enemies of progress have pilloried the word ‘ Socialism,’ held it up to ridicule, abused it, distorted it into unrecognisable forms in order to fend off the day when the common people should take their affairs into their own hands.

“That day has at last come, and now it is possible to know the truth about Socialism.

“Here is the truth.

“The first heavy industry to be socialised was coal-mining. On 1st January, 1947, the coal mines became the nation’s property.

“From that date the tempo of coal production began to increase with amazing swiftness and men began to flock back to the mines.”

After a reference to other basic industries in which “these same socialist principles apply,” such as the Bank of England, Civil Aviation, Cable and Wireless, etc., the article concludes :

“With control of these basic industries the nation will stand four-square to all the storms and uncertainties of present-day conditions and will be able to plan its economy for the good of all the people.”

Well! Well! Well! But what is the meaning of Mr. Attlee’s repeated doleful forecasts if impending economic disaster; Mr. Strachey’s forecasts of yet more severe food restrictions, and the vicious official outbursts on slacking and absenteeism in the mines for which severe penalties are threatened? But perhaps after all this is only another joke, maybe in rather bad taste !

“O Sweet Content, O Sweet, O Sweet Content.”

Gilmac.

 

Footnote

Inset into the article referred to above is a picture of a coal cutting machine, under which is the following information:

“This is the miracle machine—The Meco-Moore coal cutter and loader at work on the coal face. Fourteen men operating it can take 300 tons at a shift, the output of 30 men working by hand. One of Labour’s first jobs is the introduction of more of these machines into suitable mines and the modernisation of many old and neglected pits.”

It must be heartening to those invited and forced into the mining industry to know that some day they may be displaced by machines !

Gilmac.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres says that 800 million people around the world are living in extreme poverty… [He] had previously stated that nearly three billion people are living in inadequate housing conditions.

[8am media]

In Shanxi, the province that sits at the heart of China’s coal-mining industry, there’s long been a saying: ‘Only go down a coal pit when you have no other way out’. For decades, life in these pits was intertwined with tragedy. It became so common that it gave rise to other sayings: about how miners were ‘exchanging their lives for money’ or ‘staking their lives for tomorrow’ when they ventured into underground tunnels where they died from gas explosions, flooding and shaft collapses. Over the past decade, safety reforms steadily erased the industry’s deadly reputation, and those days were thought to be behind China – until 22 May, when a blast at the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi killed 82 people and injured more than 120 others.

[BBC]

A leading Nicaraguan indigenous leader has died after being detained by the ruling authoritarian regime for nearly three years. Brooklyn Rivera, who founded the central American nation’s indigenous movement Yatama, died due to ‘physical and neurological deterioration’ linked to a Covid-19 infection, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health stated on Sunday. The government, headed by President Daniel Ortega, took 15 hours to confirm the death and are refusing to release the 73-year-old’s body to his family, opposition media report. The Nicaraguan government is routinely accused of political oppression, and Rivera is one of a growing number of dissidents to die in custody. 

[BBC]

Greta Thunberg… has said little publicly about the recent protests in Iran. Similar criticisms have been directed at a number of prominent left-wing intellectuals and activists in Europe and North America, including Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Alain Badiou, Richard Falk, and others. The pattern extends beyond silence. Judith Butler, the American philosopher and feminist theorist, has previously expressed support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, describing them as progressive social movements that form part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle.

[International Policy Digest]

An elderly man spent days on the floor of his HMO while maggots infested wounds in his legs before he was discovered and later died, a report has found. The 69-year-old from Oldham, named ‘John’ in a safeguarding review, was discharged from hospital just two weeks before the fall that led to his death … The recently published report found the local authority and medical professionals at Royal Oldham Hospital ‘missed opportunities’ to support John. Prior to his death, John was treated for severe malnourishment and an acute kidney injury. At the time, he shared with staff that he ‘did not feel safe in his home’, as he lived in a HMO with five other people, all of whom had serious alcohol and substance abuse issues.

[Oldham Evening Chronicle]

 

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Nine days that didn’t shake the world (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 11.59 pm on 3 May 1926 the General Strike began, called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in solidarity with much put-upon miners in the coal industry. The intention was to force the British government to act on behalf of over one million locked-out colliers.

The coal industry was in decline. It had reached its peak annual production, of 292 million tonnes, in 1913. Seven years later output had fallen to 233 million tonnes. The First World War (1914-18) had made such demands on the industry that many of the better coal seams had been depleted.

The same period had seen the expansion of coal production in other countries such as Poland, Germany and the USA. After 1918, as coal working became more difficult in British mines, and therefore more expensive to produce, cheaper imported coal became an increasing challenge.

The Dawes Plan of 1924 enabled Germany to once again export coal, ‘free coal’ as it became known, as part of war reparations. The effect was to reduce the price of coal on the international market. A year later the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, placed Britain back on the gold standard.

This strengthening of the pound sterling made exports more expensive which, along with raised interest rates, led to economic instability in some sectors and a quest for cost cutting in Britain. Coal mine owners subsequently found themselves faced with falling profits.

The reaction was, as usual, to make the workforce bear the cost. There began a sustained process of increasing working hours and reducing rates of pay. Miners, unsurprisingly, reacted against this assault on their living and working conditions.

The response of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain was, in the words of AJ Cook, the Federation’s leader, ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day’. As to action, Cook had made his position clear in 1924, ‘I believe in strikes. They are the only weapon.’

Unrest in the mines echoed through many a steel mill and loco shed, through industries also having straitened times. This resulted in widespread sympathy for the hard-pressed colliers, organised workers expressing solidarity.

Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the Conservative government, introduced a nine-month subsidy of miners’ wages along with a Royal Commission under Sir Herbert Samuel to investigate the industry.

Its main recommendations, in March 1926, were nationalised royalties, national (rather than local or regional) pay and employment agreements, along with the withdrawal of the government subsidy and a reduction in miners’ wages of 13.5 percent.

Emboldened by the Commission’s report, mine owners proposed new employment terms of a longer working day with reductions in pay packets. The Miners’ Federation rejected these proposals, exposing the supposed neutrality of governments in such matters.

Following failed negotiations on 1 May, the General Council of the TUC announced that a general strike would commence at a minute to midnight two days later.

Despite there being up to 3 million workers on strike, mainly but not exclusively in heavy industries, there was no clear strategy as to how to conduct or progress the campaign. The government, however, was organised and responsive.

The Labour Party, not wishing to be associated with disruptive and possibly revolutionary action, adopted a sympathetic but distanced attitude. A legal ruling under the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, declared that union funds during a general strike were not protected. This enabled employers to sequestrate union assets.

On 12 May, the TUC called the general strike off. The miners were left to fight on largely alone until the extremes of poverty forced their return to work under even more stringent conditions. Capitalism’s prioritising of profits over the needs of workers had been blatantly demonstrated.

Although the strike garnered mass support, the majority of workers were not directly involved. There were some though prepared to physically confront any who were actively working to mitigate or undermine the strike.

For example, in Leeds, on 5 May, a crowd of over a thousand gathered by the Corn Exchange. They were determined to prevent the continued, somewhat reduced, running of the tram and bus services.

To make their point obvious, coal was taken from a delivery lorry and used to pelt a tram on Duncan Street, smashing its windows, thereby forcing it to stop. Next day more trams and buses were forced out of service the same way.

Such small victories may seem significant in the moment, but they serve only to provoke a predictable response from the forces of the state. The police responded with horses, truncheons and arrests. What occurred at Orgreave six decades later was not unprecedented.

The week after this event the General Strike ignominiously collapsed when the TUC’s General Council went to Downing Street and surrendered. This was always the most likely outcome as was the defeat of the miners’ strike later that year.

Limitations of trade union action

Trade unions have served a positive and useful purpose as a collective response by workers to the depredations inflicted on them by capitalism. Indeed, they have played an important part in tempering some of the worst features of capitalism, fighting to improve wages and working conditions for their members.

They eventually gave workers a voice in parliament by founding their own political organisation, the Labour Party. However, ameliorating the excesses of capitalism was, and is, the extent of their power.

The slogan ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ gives voice to union and Labour Party aspirations. It leaves capitalism free to determine to its own advantage the definition of the word ‘fair’. Also, the word pay indicates no sense of looking beyond capitalist relations; employers who take profits while employees depend on wages/salaries. A relationship defined in terms of money.

Unions and their political party can only, at best, reform elements of the capitalist system. Miners, in the twentieth century, exemplify this. In the 1920s their parlous state motivated a collective, if limited, response by their fellow workers. Ultimately defeated.

1 January 1947 was Vesting Day, when the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of the previous year came into force. There were many who welcomed this as a ‘socialist’ measure, along with the NHS a year later, by the reforming Labour government.

Just 25 years later, in 1972, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was taking strike action against the employers, the National Coal Board (NCB). Had coal mining been truly socialist those miners would, effectively, have been striking against themselves.

Mining could not, of course, be a socialist enclave within a capitalist economy, just as there cannot be a single socialist country in a capitalist world. The NCB ran the mines on behalf of the state that itself runs society of behalf of capitalism. Coal mines were reformed, but not socialist.

It has been estimated that 253 coal mines closed during periods of Labour governments between 1964-70 and 1974-76 with the loss of over 200,000 jobs. Prior to 1964 coal was in long-term decline. The economic problems of mining coal in Britain that so adversely affected mining in the 1920s, difficulties in extraction and cheaper imports, along with newer competition from other fuels, oil and natural gas, resulted in falling profitability.

Even the success of flying pickets and a second strike in 1974 could do little to divert capitalist economic logic. By 1984-5, any illusion as to the socialist nature of coal mining was surely dispelled by the Thatcher Conservative government.

No matter how great the solidarity of workers in dispute, or subsequent reforms enacted in response, ultimately capitalism, through its state, will organise matters to its own requirements. Reforms granted are readily withdrawn when increased profitability demands.

Strikes are essential to our lives as wage-slaves, yet their very existence is a mark of the failure, to date, to confront the reality of capitalism and the necessity of replacing it with socialism.

Dave Alton

General Strike (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Union branches will be passing resolutions and holding events to commemorate the centenary of the General Strike that ran in the United Kingdom from 3 May to 12 May 1926.

As an event, it is a Rorschach test: people see what they want to see in it. For Trotskyists, it was a failure of leadership at a revolutionary moment. For the Labour left, another example of betrayal. For the Labour right, a foolhardy adventure, which proves that sensible electoral politics is the way forward.

The background was declining productivity of British coal: around one and a half million men worked in the mines. Output per man was falling, and it was facing competition on the international markets (particularly from the return of German coal). This was compounded by Chancellor Winston Churchill’s attempts to return to the gold standard (effectively over-valuing the pound, making British exports expensive).

The mine owners reacted by wanting to cut wages to restore their profits. The response of the mine workers was ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’. They sought an assurance of support from the TUC that other unions would back up the mine workers in their dispute, which was agreed.

The Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin intervened: simultaneously buying time by engaging a commission to examine the coal industry and agreeing a temporary coal subsidy, whilst also preparing to meet a widespread strike organisationally. The commission was headed by Herbert Samuels, a former liberal Home Secretary (and recently returned Governor of Palestine). He had, whilst an MP, represented iron mining districts in North Yorkshire.

The report noted that ‘the dominant fact is that, in the last quarter of 1925, if subsidy be excluded, 73 percent of coal was produced at a loss’. It recommended that the state take ownership of the coal in the ground, with compensation for active mines; that mines be amalgamated; that coal mining work more closely with other industries; that research in coal technologies be intensified; that more integration of distribution be carried out; and while the mining day remain at 7.5 hours, working time should be cut from 6 days to 5.

This was a substantial pay cut. Baldwin was happy to accept these proposals, but the miners’ union, obviously, rejected it (along with rejecting compensation for the nationalised mine owners). Without agreement, the government ended the subsidy, and on 30th April the mine owners locked the men out.

The dispute was placed in the hands of the General Council of the TUC, which, according to Miners’ Union General Secretary A.J. Cook’s account, took the dispute out of the hands of miners. As a TUC account of events has it:

‘The only principal unions initially called out in support of the miners were those of the railwaymen, the transport workers, the builders, the iron and steel workers – and the printers, engineers and shipyard workers were called out after the first week.’

As they note, the unions preferred to refer to it as a national strike, rather than a general strike. The strike was enthusiastically supported (better than had been expected by any party).

The government swung into action, and began to call for volunteers to help keep the railways and other services running. They tried to take the high ground. They represented the print workers’ refusal to print the Daily Mail (because its editorials attacked the strikers) as an attack on free speech. They laboured their democratic mandate as the constitutional government. Although police and troops were called out to protect scabs and break picket lines, Baldwin refused Churchill’s call to use armed force against strikers.

The nascent BBC found itself in the firing line: Baldwin was able to broadcast to the nation, but Ramsay MacDonald and the strike leaders were not permitted a voice. Lord Reith did, however, rebuff Churchill’s call for the nominally independent company to be put entirely at the service of the government.

The time won by the subsidy for organisation was put to good use.

As Baldwin said in Parliament:

‘I do not think all the leaders when they assented to ordering a general strike fully realised that they were threatening the basis of ordered government, and going nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have been for centuries past. They laboured—that is, many of them—with the utmost zeal for peace up to the very end. Perhaps they thought that there was nothing more at stake than bringing a certain amount of spectacular pressure to bear, which might suffice to persuade the Government to capitulate without serious damage to the liberties of the nation. But they have created a machine which they cannot control.’

MacDonald’s contribution was ‘With the discussion of general strikes and Bolshevism and all that kind of thing, I have nothing to do at all. I respect the Constitution’, plus a call for ‘co-ordination’ in the industry, which was, after all, the entirety of what he aspired to and called ‘socialism’.

The leaders of the TUC had not intended to overthrow the government, but to win an industrial dispute. The unions and strikers did not represent the whole of the working class (for example, there were as many domestic servants as there were miners). Faced with a resolute government, the TUC backed down and asked for no reprisals (which the government would not commit to). Cook believed that had the TUC held out a few more days, the government would have backed down – and the miners continued their action.

Although a defeat, which led to laws banning sympathy and general strikes, the action was not a disaster. The unions had brought the government to the negotiating table; they had shown the strength of union organisation and feeling. They also survived with their organisation intact. In the end, the reality of coal mining productivity prevailed and world markets asserted themselves. The working class demonstrated resolve and solidarity, but could not overcome the organised power of the state without a clear plan and resolve to that end.

Pik Smeet

The Common Market Special Survey: 2. The Industrial Power (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

An investment of £2,000 million was the figure recently suggested as necessary for the setting up of an international scientific research centre in Berlin. In the same newspaper the British Electricity Council announced its intention to spend £947 million on generating stations in the next four years. The British Motor Corporation spent £10 million in launching one model—the Austin 7/Miniminor.

In themselves, these three examples have no direct connection with the emergence of the “Common Market.” They are, however, pointers to the scale of modern capitalism. Huge investment and massive production plants are the order of the day. A small sheet steel mill would be economically and technically ridiculous in 1962. Modern plastics, too, such as polythene or nylon, must be produced in vast automatic plants. It is the same story with petrol refining, aircraft production, coal mining, chemicals, shipbuilding, rocket research, and so on; and this matter of size is the real force that has brought the European Economic Community into existence.

E.E.C. is a perfect demonstration of Marx’s statement that capitalism is neither a stable nor a permanent social system. It is driven to expand under the compulsion of inexorable economic laws, gearing up science and engineering to the ever-increasing demands of capital, and forcing human and social relationships into new and arbitrary patterns.

In Europe, particularly, the pressure on national boundaries and sovereignties has been intensifying since the first World War, when Europe started to fall behind America in the race for industrial production and exports. The retention of national units seriously weakened the European capitalists in their struggle for a share of the world’s trade; and since the second World War, which can be seen from one point of view as a German attempt to unite Europe under its rule, it has become obvious that, individually, the European nations are puny and backward by comparison with the American and Russian federations.

E.E.C. is, in fact, very far from being a “good idea ” formulated by European politicians; it is a belated and reluctant acknowledgment of the expanding scale of investment, production and trade.

Steel

Significantly, the first step in the industrial unification of Europe was the setting up of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. Coal is still by far the most important industrial fuel, and steel the overwhelmingly dominant metal. Furthermore, the holdings in both industries were already concentrated in a few large blocks, making negotiations relatively simple.

The occupying Allies had limited German steel output to 11m. tons a year. When the restriction was lifted, W. German production rose rapidly to reach 34m. tons in 1960, bringing the total for the Community to 73m. tons. Their exports are co-ordinated in a cartel known as the Brussels Entente handling two-thirds of the world’s steel exports— formidable competition for the British Steel Federation!

Nevertheless, in these boom years for steel, British exports have doubled in the past ten years, and the industry has gone ahead with large development plans at Corby and Margam and Llanwern. A large fraction of this increased capacity is for sheet steel in anticipation of a continued increase in demand from the motor industry. These “strip” mills are barely an economic proposition at under a capacity of a million tons a year. Building a new one is therefore a big step, but unless it strides at this rate the British industry must fall out of the race. The real testing time will come when the boom is over. Then the weight of the Brussels Entente will be decisive.

Unless the British Iron and Steel Federation can break into the European group it can be out-produced and out-priced. Even if it does, the proposed merger between Phoenix and Thyssen in Germany would dominate the group. Indeed, the British steel industry might even be prepared to submit to re-nationalisation in order to wield sufficient power.

Coal

It is a starker version of the same picture with regard to the older and less efficient coal industry. Already a number of Belgian coal mines have been closed down as being uneconomic in competition with German coal. In this country the average rate of profit from coal mining was so low that there was never any real alternative to nationalisation. The National Coal Board, like the true capitalist concern that it is, is to close 15 Scottish pits, involving 5,000 men, next year as part of the attempt to wipe out its £21 million deficit for 1960. It has closed a large number of pits which are unprofitable by modern standards, and the total deficit for Scottish mines is now estimated to have reached £100 million. Contrary to popular belief, the Coal Board does not exist to produce coal, but to produce profits; and so it must cut its losses.

It must do more than this: until now it has been protected from serious foreign competition (even the Steel Company of Wales was prevented from importing cheap American coal); it must reverse the steady shrinkage of exports if it is to survive. They dropped from £61 million in 1950 to £28 million in 1960, largely through uncompetitive prices. By cutting the labour force (by 20,000 in 1961) and by a costly programme of capital investment (£97 million in 1961-2) productivity has been raised from 3-2 tons per manshift in 1950 to over 4-1 tons last year. The National Coal Board claims that it is introducing automatic machinery faster than is being done anywhere else in the world, and that real automation, in the form of robot coal-cutting machinery which seeks out the coal for itself, will be operating in a British mine before the end of 1962. In a Commons debate on the coal industry on October 24th, 1961, the Minister of Power, Mr. Wood, said that: “It was too early for him to forecast the precise effect of membership of the Iron and Steel Community, but it was felt that it would benefit both the NCB and the consumer. This would automatically confer benefit to those working in the industry.” (The Guardian, 25/10/61.)

The attitude of British coal miners towards this statement is not easily available; but, since their numbers have dropped from over 1,000,000 in the 1920’s to 560,000 in 1961, it is doubtful whether they feel so optimistic about Britain’s entry into the “Common Market,” because, whatever else it involves, it certainly means more ruthless exploitation of every man.

Gas

On November 7th, 1961, the Financial Times published a four-page supplement on the Gas Industry, showing that like the National Coal Board its production and sales had risen while its labour force had been cut by 20,000 in ten years. The Chairman of the Gas Council, Sir Henry Jones, wrote of “gas established again as a growth industry” in spite of the fact that the number of gasworks has been cut from 1,050 in 1949 to 378. During this period gas production has remained fairly constant at about 2,200 million therms per annum, which means that the whole industry has been made considerably more profitable under nationalisation.

The fact is that many new possibilities have opened up for the gas industry in recent years. It has maintained its strong links with the coal industry, especially with the introduction of the Lurgi process of complete gasification of coal without leaving coke. In addition, however, it is becoming more and more tightly wedded to the oil companies. Apart from the gasification of heavy fuel oil, such as is being carried out by the South Eastern Gas Board at the Isle of Grain works, American oil companies are offering shipments of cheap liquified petroleum gas and of naptha. The British Gas industry, however, has at present concentrated on its decision to import shipments of natural methane from the Sahara. This touches the question of E.E.C. very closely because the French are reported to be undertaking the construction of a pipeline from Algeria across the Mediterranean to provide gas for a grid-system throughout the E.E.C.

For the British industry one of the main advantages of being linked to such a system would be the ironing out of fluctuations in demand during the day and, to some extent, during the year. France and Germany already have large underground storage facilities for manufactured gas so that summer production may be saved for heavy winter consumption. In one way or another it looks as though the capital invested in the British gas industry could show considerably greater profit and expansion by being linked with Europe.

Electricity

The British Electricity Authority is the most profitable of all the nationalised industries, having made a gross profit of £18 million in 1960-61; but there is further profit to be made by linking itself with the continent to meet future increased demand.

Apart from its own considerable expansion and storage schemes, the Annual Report of the Electricity Council mentioned the fact that “. . . the cross-channel link with Electricité de France would be coming into commission soon. Because of the difference in the incidence of peak demand in the two countries, 160MW of load could be transferred in either direction with savings to both parties.” This is an arrangement which has been carried through independently of negotiations among politicians about E.E.C. and demonstrates that, however British hearts may feel about loss of national sovereignty and all that, the industrial ties with Europe are strengthening every day.

Ample proof of this last point is given in a report from Turin by Gordon Wilkins in The Observer, November 5th, 1961:

“More British cars may have Italian built bodies as a result of discussions held here this week. One leading British body designer told me it may even prove economical to import Italian-made bodyshells into England, especially if Britain joins the Common Market . . . Pininfarina are making the convertible bodies for the new French Peugeot 404. Bertone are sending coupe bodies to Germany for N.S.U. and B.M.W. Vignale, who have been building a Triumph TR3 body for the Italian market, are planning a TR4 coupe for export. The agreement between Rootes and Carrozzeria Touring for assembly of their cars in Italy may be the forerunner of others. . . . Ghia are doing bodies for the Austin-Healey Sprite, and the latest registration figures show how much the British Motor Corporation have gained by having the A40 built under licence by Innocenti.”

In the same way, Alfa Romeo build the Renault Dauphine under licence, while “Italy’s enormous Fiat interests have car-assembly plants in Belgium and Germany, and expansion plans amounting to hundreds of millions of pounds will put them in all six nations” (Readers’ Digest, July, 1961).

In the metal-using industries motor car manufacture today makes by far the greatest use of mass production and costly automation. It is true that a few small specialist firms still persist among the giants; but million-pound firms like Standard have been shown to be too small to remain independent in the mass market amongst the large federations. Their average rate of profit is too low. Only ruthless standardisation and wider and wider markets can make profitable the immense outlay of constant capital. Now, in Europe national tariffs are preventing the giants from coming properly to grips with one another, as they must, for the dividing up of the market; and so they add their weight to the breaking down of these barriers.

A Crisis

Commentators on the emergence of E.E.C. have said repeatedly that industrial companies will have to “think big” to meet the new situation. Like most of the talk in the press and broadcasting, this masks the real picture. They imply that E.E.C. offers new opportunities for expansion. The truth is much more sombre. Certainly, the Common Market began while Europe was still booming; but if there had been unlimited markets for all there would have been no need for a Common Market.

The truth is that the average rate of profit has been steadily falling, owing to the enormous rate of capital accumulation (these huge investments in production plants that have been mentioned); and the European Common Market is not a fraternal gathering but a battle ground. The survivors in this new phase of European capitalism, therefore, will be the ones who are already big.

In the fields dealt with, however—coal, steel, gas, electricity and motor cars— the majority of small competitors have already been ousted in each European country: they are not available to be sacrificed when the competition becomes merciless. As early as October, 1961, the Daily Express, which has always put out propaganda for Empire and against Britain’s overtures to E.E.C., began to make great play of the fact that the current boom in Europe was falling off, insisting that therefore Britain should not join.

But these are precisely the conditions under which Britain will be forced to join, in order to give its giant capitalist undertakings chance to survive by overpowering weaker giants in Europe. Of course, there is no certainty that British capital will come out of it less bruised than its competitors, and this is the reason for all the uncertainty and haggling. The greatest giants of all, the major oil companies and the largest of the steel and chemical firms, can only gain in the long run. But, of course, they are already international organisations. The emergence of the European Economic Community is the political admission of the economic fact that a sufficiently great change in quantity has become a change in quality.

The icy winds of competition occasionally referred to are spoken of lustily as though they are to be a tonic for our health. Members of the working class hearing such windy talk on television ”reports” may even be persuaded that it will be a ”good thing” if some of the industrial “inefficiency” is to be “weeded out.” They can only be thus tempted into forgetting their own position as workers as long as they persist in believing that all this production is carried on in capitalism for the purpose of supplying people’s needs.

The Socialist knows that it is not so. He also knows that whichever capitalists turn out to be the winners in the growing struggle, workers can only expect to suffer in the upheaval and to be more thoroughly exploited in the future, whether they call themselves Britons or “Europeans.”

S. Stafford

Common ownership: Our last chance (2006)

From Issue 20 of the World Socialist Review

A recent episode of the PBS program Now, broadcast nationwide in most states on 4/22/2005, announced gravely not only that “scientists are convinced our Earth is warming, and with scary consequences,” but also and even more gravely that “meanwhile industry funds a campaign to do nothing.” The program quoted Dr. Richard Alley, professor at Penn State University, a paleo-climatologist, one who studies the Earth utilizing data from glacier ice and ice sheets. According to Dr. Alley, our planet has on numerous occasions previously experienced a phenomenon known as “abrupt climate change.” His concern, and that of scientists whom the program referred to as “the best minds on the planet,” is that human society is so altering the atmosphere and the climate that it may trigger such an abrupt, indeed possibly catastrophic, transformation of the climate.

A visit to the "Web site of the environmental think-tank EcoBridge lists hefty references suggesting indisputable recent changes in our atmosphere, including increases in carbon dioxide and methane, more frequent extreme weather, disappearing glaciers, melting arctic sea ice, Greenland’s ice sheet melting, tropical diseases spreading, and oceans warming with accompanying coral bleaching and disintegration. Paralleling such dire developments are other examples of human society’s significant transformation of the planet from its condition even a century ago, including enormous deforestation rates (discussed in impressive detail in the article “Destroying the World’s Forests” on the Web site of the World Socialist Movement [WSM]) and the introduction of vast quantities of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are contributing to ozone layer depletion (also discussed on the WSM Web site in an article entitled “Profit Enhancing Chemicals”). Vast research-based evidence thus appeared to support the hypothesis that the planet is warming and becoming increasingly less hospitable for humans and other animal fife.

Does the future have a future?

What is presumably of greatest concern to those of us who work for a living is the total lack of apparent control that we may exert at present upon the corporations, media and governments whose practices exist to serve the interests of a small percentage of the population. The great historical question is going to be: are we just going to stand around amidst alternating storms of doomsday prophecies and media coverage minimizing the magnitude of the problem, and not take matters into our own hands, even at the risk that our and our children’s future may be horrendously bleak, even non-existent?

For example, according to the above mentioned Now television show, in Congress the House has just approved an energy bill which promises tax breaks and subsidies to coal, oil, and gas companies — the companies most responsible for the mess in the first place! Furthermore, those most opposed to theories of global warming are those such as Senator Inhofe who represent the economic interests of the magnates of his oil-producing Oklahoma. He is ironically the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the Committee’s biggest recipient of contributions from oil and gas companies. He says global warming is a hoax.

Ross Gelbspan, a former editor of the Boston Globe, was described in the Now program as having devoted many years to reporting the ways in which the energy industry has attempted to cover up the scientific warnings about global warming. For example, in 1989 the disinformation campaign began when representatives of the petroleum, automotive and other industries formed the Global Climate Coalition, and later the Information Council on the Environment, which was funded by the Western Fuels Association, mostly representing coal interests. The strategy for that campaign, according to Mr. Gelbspan, suggested their drawing on several prominent global warming skeptics, scientists who argue that global warming is mired in unknowns. Mr. Gelbspan found that energy industry leaders had paid those scientists hefty fees and compensations amounting to more than half a million dollars between 1991 and 1995. Some of these scientists, who had engaged the media in interviews to suggest global warming was an unsupported theory rather than a strongly supported hypothesis, reemerged some years later in videos distributed by yet another group, the Greening Earth Society, a group also supported by the coal industry.

In 1997 the Global Climate Coalition appeared in a multimillion dollar campaign to persuade the public that the science behind the international Kyoto agreement to reduce greenhouse gases was shaky. One of those ads stated: “Countries responsible for almost half the world’s emissions won’t have to cut back. Check it out for yourself, it’s not global and it won’t work.” Then President George Bush, former oil man himself, pulled the U.S. out of the Kyoto Treaty, claiming that “the targets themselves were arbitrary and not based upon science.” According to the Now program, a 2001 memo by Frank Luntz, a well-known Republican consultant, may have played its part in affecting Mr. Bush’s decision, when it advised the White House that the best way to “address the global warming” problem is to “continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate.”

The May/June 2005 edition of Mother Jones suggested that Exxon Mobil alone contributes to more than 40 policy groups that seek to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

Welcome to Hell

According to a citation in a January 13, 2000 CNN Web site article about scientific experts discussing the overwhelmingly strong evidence for global warming, a conference of the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC) comprising over 2,500 scientists, was quoted as having reached a near-unanimous conclusion that global warming was at least partially the result of human activity — primarily the burning of fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide, methane, and others gases into the atmosphere, forming a global “blanket” that traps heat near the Earths surface. The IPCC predicted an increase in global temperatures of between 2 and 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. The panel also predicted the expansion of warming oceans and calculated that the melting of land-based ice formations would combine to add between one and three feet to the existing sea level. The IPCC projected sharp increases in the frequency and intensity of storms and droughts, in the spread of tropical diseases, in coastal flooding and in accelerated waves of extinctions of plant and animal species which fail to adapt to the changing climate.

As suggested earlier in this article, large countries such as the United States may choose to put profits before people in refusing to cooperate with Kyoto Accord limits to greenhouse gas emissions, while other developing nations such as China, a coal-based economy, are likely to vastly surpass the greenhouse emissions of the United States by 2025.

Such is the anarchic nature of the capitalist system. It is comprised in part of vast corporations with vested economic interests to broadcast disinformation to the public and to influence governments to steer policy away from potential threats not to our well-being but to their profit-making. It is also made up of rival nation-states each attempting to care for the economic interests of their own internal capitalist class. Finally, it is characterized by billions of workers whose receipt of information is heavily influenced by the capitalist media over which they have no control.

In other words, even rational decisions by governments, such as those pronounced in the Kyoto Accords, may be thwarted and never realized because of the needs of the few rather than the needs of us many. While some or even many capitalists predictable phenomenon not caused by the negative side effects of industrial society, humans may still need to find a solution to keep themselves and future generations from destruction in droughts, floods, or plagues.

Such complex solutions are not likely to be effectively realized in an intrinsically competitive and undemocratic society, in which the resources we will desperately require are owned by the planets private owners or by rival nation-states. In such a preliminary social order as we presently live under, the economic costs of dollars and cents will likely play a major part of any such grandiose scheme, as there is only so much money to go around. Furthermore, in this hierarchical, class-based society, the major decisions will be made by those with power and privilege, and not by those of us who must work to live and who remain relatively powerless players in the machinations of national or global politics.

Good Decisions Will Require Common Ownership

Or we could decide to take matters into our own hands. By democratically taking over the means of production, to be thereafter considered subject to the common ownership of the whole human species, any drastic solutions that may need to be made by and in the interest of even the entire human race could more readily be achieved, as decision-making over the use of resources will be entirely ours. Whatever we decide, such decisions will be made in harmony with the findings of the scientific community, and we will be able to act upon our decisions immediately, without the endless walls of bureaucracy, finance, politics or power murderously standing in the way of our lives as they are at present with regards to an issue such as global warming that could potentially alter the course of human history.

At what point do humans decide that sustaining the interests of a small gang of owners — whom working-class humans have thus far decided have every right to own the planet and enjoy the fruits and luxuries that workers provide — is not worth the imminent threat of an Earth no longer able to sustain human fife? Scientists are warning us that the point of no return is close by or has already been passed. Do we pretend the problem is not really that bad? Do we passively resign ourselves to a pessimism that announces it is too late to act so why not just embrace a selfish consumerist individualism? Do we continue to trust our politicians to represent our interests even though they have always failed to do so since they are unable to alter and control the laws of the capitalist economy in the interests of us hard working folk?

The barrel of the gun is pointed right now between your eyes. What are you going to do?

— Dr. Who

50 Years Ago: The King and the Slums (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity given to the decline in unemployment and to increasing prosperity (measured in the capitalist mind chiefly by Stock Exchange prices) is somewhat offset by the conditions in the depressed areas, at the moment in the spot-light.

Dudley Barker, in the Evening Standard (November 16th, 1936), quotes an instance of a typical town in the coal-mining and steel area in South Wales which has 60.6 per cent. of its industrial insurable population unemployed. He instances a case, again typical, of a miner who, when employed, is 6s. a week better off than when unemployed. Similar examples could be given of towns in the coal and steel districts in Durham, Northumberland and Scotland. They have been referred to and described by nearly all the capitalist newspapers. The results of the chronic depression in these industries are appalling. Wide areas are derelict, bearing all the aspects of intense poverty, drabness and malnutrition. The Daily Herald (November 6th, 1936) reported a case of a shipbuilding worker who had not worked at his trade for 16 years. Innumerable cases have been reported of men in their twenties and some nearing their thirties who have never worked. Edward VIII, after his recent visit to the depressed areas in South Wales, said, “Something will be done.” The extent to which ”something will be done,” we prophesy, will not touch the fringe of the problem.

[From an article by H. Waite, Socialist Standard December 1936.]