Letter: Mr. Hodgson throws up the sponge. (1934)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Hodgson throws up the sponge.

We have received a letter from Mr. J. L. Hodgson referring to the article and reply to him published in the September Socialist Standard. Mr. Hodgson's letter is as follows : —

Eggington, Beds.

September 3rd, 1934.

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Dear Sir,

On page 6 of your issue of September 6th you say that my theory of constant nullification of rapidly increasing productivity demands evidence of rapidly increasing waste outside industry. In my book, and in the summarised list of communal wastes which I give in your August issue, I have indicated some of these rapidly increasing wastes for those who care to note them. I would add to the list previously given (1) many of the complex ways of doing quite simple things which the engineer is, under the existing system, continually compelled to devise, and (2) the increasing amount of time devoted to political controversy and its various reactions. , 

On page 7 you ask how I propose to distribute purchasing power (in goods) as a gift without taking it (goods) away from those who have it (them). Again I reply for the last time, “By reducing the leaks,” i.e., the communal wastes. When you feed fish, that would otherwise be thrown back into the sea, to starving people, you don't “take away” from those previously privileged to enjoy the fish that the present system allows to be distributed.

Yours faithfully,

John L. Hodgson

Reply.

While, in form, Mr. Hodgson’s letter is an attempt to answer the criticisms made of his arguments, its omissions indicate clearly enough that Mr. Hodgson is totally unable to provide the evidence to back up his claims.

He completely ignores the request that has now been repeated about half a dozen times for evidence of output per man increasing “ from 50 to 3,000 times,” and ignores the challenge for evidence of rapidly increasing waste. Instead, he offers us a simple list of items of waste, without the slightest attempt to evaluate them and show that they are, in fact, rapidly increasing. The list was published in the August Socialist Standard (page 185). It includes the following: mass unemployment, strikes, lack of zeal on the part of the workers, “ most advertising activities,” exports not paid for, “most ticket-collecting,” etc. Mr. Hodgson affects to believe that the mere mention of these forms of real or alleged waste is sufficient to prove his claim that waste is increasing with stupendous rapidity. (How stupendous can be gauged from Mr. Hodgson’s contentions that productivity has increased “from 50 to 3,000 times,” and that the increase of waste swallows up nine-tenths of the increase). The answer to Mr. Hodgson is that there is not the slightest reason to believe that these forms of waste, in the aggregate, are increasing at more than a very slow rate (if at all) in relation to the amount of wealth produced. Some of the most important items are known to be decreasing at the present time. The number of strikes and their duration have declined very substantially during the past 30 years. Ticket-collecting and advertising may be increasing, but any increase is trivial in relation to the alleged stupendous increase in output claimed by Mr. Hodgson. Exports not paid for may be waste from the point of view of the exporting capitalist, but that loss is offset by the gain to the foreign buyers who did not pay. Lastly, unemployment is not only less than it was a year ago, here and all over the world, but is less than it was at the peak of the crisis 12 years ago. And this is the kind of material Mr. Hodgson says is evidence of rapidly increasing waste! The only explanation is that Mr. Hodgson must have worked out his other estimates as he did his estimate of unemployment, by calmly adding in the ” temporarily stopped ” workers twice.

Mr. Hodgson now explains how he is going to distribute purchasing power without taking it away from those who have it. His explanation is that goods which would otherwise be destroyed will be given to the starving. The first point Mr. Hodgson overlooks is that goods destroyed by capitalists are their own private property. The second point is that they have a very real interest in destroying them as against giving them away.

The destruction of fish when the market is glutted prevents prices from being forced down. If the fish were given away to the unemployed, they would, of course, immediately stop spending any of the unemployment pay on buying fish, to the obvious detriment of the interests of the fish owners. The latter will therefore strenuously object to Mr. Hodgson's plan to deprive them of their property, for the reason we have previously given and which Mr. Hodgson has hitherto denied, i.e., that distributing purchasing power to those who lack it means taking it away from those who have it.

It may be useful, in conclusion, to summarise the major points of this controversy. Mr. Hodgson claims, but declines to give evidence of, a vast general increase of productivity per head. He also fails to give evidence either of a considerable increase in the total output of industry, or of a considerable decrease in the number of workers required to produce the former volume of output. Lastly, he asks us to take his word that there is a stupendous increase of waste, but here again he declines to produce evidence.

If Mr. Hodgson ever thinks he is able to produce evidence in support of any of these claims our columns are, of course, open to him.

Ed. Comm.

The C.O.S. and fish. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question of the price of foodstuffs, we are informed, was dealt with by the Council of the Charity Organisation Society in a discussion raised by the reading of a paper by the Rev. J. C. Pringle. It turned upon the effect on prices of a large supply of fish and the necessity of keeping prices up by destroying part of the catch.

When a Socialist agitator makes it a count in the indictment of capitalism that a portion of the wealth produced must be destroyed to keep up the price of what is left, he is accused of exaggeration—or worse. Yet the reverend gentleman takes the acceptance of his statement for granted.

“At present, part of any great catch was thrown into the sea to prevent a fall in prices. It was too great a risk to sell it as manure. Yet it was admitted that each fall in price brought out an army of customers, who could not, or would not, pay a high price. Social workers ought surely not to rest until they had satisfied themselves that everything had been tried which might obviate the necessity of throwing fine food into the sea within sight of hungry people.”

And there is no plainer or more direct condemnation of this ridiculous system called capitalism than this plain fact. Fish is most frequently the commodity dealt with in this way, but it is by no means the only one. Fruit and agricultural produce is similarly treated—fruit being allowed to drop and rot upon the ground when the market price is not high enough to pay for picking, packing, and marketing. And while the products of the land are so treated, we have alleged democratic agitations to get back to the land, and prominent statesmen drawing lurid word-pictures of the town-dwellers scrambling after smallholdings, and bits of dirt generally.

But while fruit is very nice in season, and dropped fruit may be tolerated sometimes, it cannot be accepted as a staple article of diet all the year round. The effect produced on the market by the multiplication of fruit growers, what time fruit won’t pay for marketing, may be imagined but cannot be described.

To return to our muttons—or our fish—the effect of this on the fish market would be similar.

“Applied science was coming to the aid of the fisheries, and some plaice recently transferred to the Dogger Bank multiplied several times as fast as they did in the place they came from. When it came to marketing it was difficult to believe that human ingenuity could not devise a means of giving the public the benefit of great catches without injury to the business people to whom the public owes it that it had fish at all.”

The difficulty is not that there is a shortage of fish, but that there is too much fish. Why, then, take the plaice from one place and place it in another place to make it grow quicker? It is only for manure or to be thrown into the sea at the finish. Human ingenuity within the limits of capitalism cannot devise a means of selling fish or anything else at a profit at a price that eliminates profit. And we are grateful to learn that it is to the business people we owe our supply of fish. The business people are, presumably, the manipulators of the market, the owners of the fleets, and the shopkeepers—the people who decide how much to market, how much to use for manure, and how much to put back in the sea. We should have thought in our simplicity, not belonging to the C.O.S., that we were indebted to the men who caught it—the men who, at great risk of life and limb, issue from every nook and cranny along the coast-line to catch fish—fish being a food, and men having been fishermen ever since they shed the simian tail and came down out of tree-tops.

The report of the discussion at the Council of the O.O.S. in the “Daily Telegraph” does not tell the conclusion that body came to on what it calls “a vexed question.” The disputants took two sides, one claiming that articles were sold cheaper to poor people, the other claiming that there was no selling at lower prices except to get rid of surplus stocks. It would seem in the face of it the latter must be more correct or there would be no necessity to destroy the surplus. There is no doubt plenty of demand—hungry stomach demand—for fish, fruit, and other foods ; but there is no “effective” demand—no £ s. d. demand beyond a certain limit. That limit is fixed by wages.

There is an argument that wages are rather to be measured by the use that is made of them than by their actual quantity. This argument reaches its zenith with the teetotaler who would say that if you spent nothing on beer you would be able to eat all the fish and none would have to be thrown away, Of course, that overlooks those who merely eat fish—well salted—as a necessary preparation for preventing any beer being thrown into the sea ! But the argument of the teetotaler shifts the question without solving it.

The argument has another phase, one shown during the discussion of the recent budget. The extract belongs to Mr. Masterman, presumably, but it has been cut out without the introduction being preserved. As it was received with great gusto and Ministerial cheers, it will not be repudiated :

                                      “COMMUNITY’S EXTRAVAGANCE.”

“He agreed that the evidence of the Budget provided facts for seriousness as well as satisfaction. There was evidence of amazing extravagance in all classes of the community. There was little evidence of laying up or even of anticipation of bad times that might succeed good times.”

All we can say about it is that, if the argument is taken too seriously, we shall have the C.O.S. discussing “vexed questions” affecting a great number of industries, and the working class will be in the position of the unfortunate donkey who, by a process of elimination, was to be reduced to one oat a day, and who, having been successfully got down within sight of the desired end, disappointed everyone concerned by inadvertently deceasing.

Obviously, when fish is produced for the feeding of the community, the contradiction of having hungry stomachs clamouring for food on the one side, and the business people to whom we are alleged to owe the fish we get throwing it away on the other, will be impossible. If production for a capitalist market necessitates such a state of affairs, so much the worse for capitalism. It is, perhaps, too much to expect the C.O.S. and its “social workers” to view “throwing fine food into the sea within sight of hungry people” as a necessary and inevitable result of capitalist production, to be remedied only by changing the entire method and producing fish—as everything else—for the enjoyment and the use of the community organised into the Co­-operative Commonwealth.

D. K.

Tiny Tips (2026)

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

In almost all regions of the world, the top 1% of the population is richer than the combined 90%. Wealth inequality increases further with each passing day, mostly due to the lack of political will to stop it.

[Popular Resistance]

In China, inequality remains high… The top 10% of earners capture about 43% of national income, while the bottom 50% receive just 14%. Wealth disparities are particularly large, with the richest 10% holding nearly 68% of total wealth and the top 1% about 30%. 

[World Inequality Report]

Nearly half of Kenyans live in extreme poverty, i.e., on less than KES 130 [£0.75] per day. Yet a few have amassed enormous wealth. The richest 125 Kenyans have more wealth than more than three-quarters of Kenyans, about 43 million people. 

[Oxfam]

We celebrate the ‘recovery’ of fish populations that are stabilized at 5% or 10% of their historical population, mistaking the management of ruins for conservation. To understand the magnitude of what has been stolen, we must look back before the industrial age. In the 17th century, the ocean was a different planet. When Christopher Columbus sailed through the Caribbean in the late 15th century, he described the seas near Cuba as being ‘thick with turtles’, so numerous that it seemed his ships would run aground on them… in numbers estimated between 33 and 39 million adults in the Caribbean alone. They were a biological dominance that defined the seascape. Today, those populations are a shadow of the ‘mother sea’ that once existed. This report is an autopsy of the decline. It is an investigation into the specific species that the fishing industry has sacrificed on the altar of commerce. 

[Sea Piracy]

As both the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) monitor and Reuters noted, Poland is among multiple state parties in the process of ditching the Mine Ban Treaty. Citing the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the news agency reported that “antipersonnel mine production could begin once the treaty’s six month withdrawal period is completed on February 20, 2026”. 

[Common Dreams]

Greenpeace is a strong example, having emerged from ecological protest movements in the 1970s and 1980s, but having eased into largely cooperating with capitalist corporations and governments over time and giving legitimacy to their propaganda about individual lifestyle choices being the way to solve climate change.

[Counterfire]

The Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, which has previously slammed vaccine skeptic Kennedy as a ‘paranoid kook’ whose ‘tinfoil hat is blocking out all sense’, tore into the Trump Cabinet member for his war on what it called ‘one of the biggest public health wins of the last century: the widespread use of disease-eradicating vaccines’. 

[HuffPost]

Therefore, we do not offer any support to wars waged by any capitalist state or any faction aimed at creating or strengthening a new state, whether aggressor or aggressed, whether or not they describe themselves as ‘socialist’ or ‘democratic’. 

[Internationalist Perspective]

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

Highland Fling (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brown beach and shaggy woods, romantic dells, Eigg on the starboard, Mull astern! and yet, and yet —

Current issues of the People's Journal (proudly claiming largest circulation north of the Forth) contain material sufficient to prevent a too hasty trek of the working class of Peckham and Hoxton to Dingwall, Inverness, or to the fast-dwindling collection of picturesque hovels dignified by the name of “villages.” Social inequality breeds similar social disease everywhere—aristocratic insolence, capitalist greed, working-class poverty.

The local authority for Corpach approached the Crown representative with a view to joint action in abolishing “abominable smells” in Crown “houses.” The Crown Minister, “all ’aughty-like,” promptly put the 'umble Councillors in their right place. “The Crown, and the Crown alone, was responsible for the sanitary condition of the houses in question” (June 12th). (“Sanitary" is not a misprint for “insanitary,” if you please. Mister Editor.) The People's Journal heads the article “Need for New Laws.” The Socialist Party of Great Britain avers the necessity for a New System of Society—Socialism.

A drive for a Highland “New Deal” is afoot. A cry is going up for more harbours, more power-stations. A pretty quarrel between industrial capital and landed gentrydom is a big factor against compounding of this particular pill to cure an economic earthquake . . .  an old tale, the Highlands must be “preserved” (not, of course, for people who live in smelly houses).

An historical reminder, culled from chapter 27 of Marx’s “Capital,” Vol. 1—read this chapter and previous two; there is nothing “difficult” here, the grim facts, absolutely unchallenged, gleaned from sober Blue Books and similar documents. . . . The Duchess of Sutherland evicted, from 1814 to 1820, practically all her tenancy (15,000) to make money on sheep. British soldiers assisted in eviction. One old woman was burnt to death refusing to leave her hut. The evicted tenants tried fish-catching in the fishing fiords and glittering lochs of the coast. But, alack!

The smell of the fish rose to the noses of the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the seashore to Billingsgate. For the second time the Gaels were hunted out.—(p.754, Kerr’s Edition; Everyman, vol. 2, p. 809.)

Fish comes into the picture to-day. Big combines are steadily crushing out smaller enterprise; a frantic cry is going up to keep out Norwegian labour on trawlers; plans are afoot to settle fisherfolk in Vancouver, and a strike is yet unsettled in Campbeltown.

It should be noted that clan land was in primitive times actually “clan” land, common property in the widest sense of the word. The gradual usurpation of common rights of ownership of land by “chiefs” is a world-wide social phenomenon known to all students of works such as Lewis Morgan’s “Ancient Society,” or the more accessible “Origin of the Family,” by Engels, not to mention numerous books by definitely non-Socialist writers. The fact is established. Dog-like devotion—older people who have read Scott in their youth will recall instances— was repaid by expropriation. Roderick Dhu’s contemptuous reference to “fellow-clansmen” as “wretched kerns” was blunter in form, but truer in intent than the sickening patronage and fluffy blah which masks modem approach to the position.

The Macleods had a big gathering in Dunvegan Castle—said castle being anything but common property. “Old-age pensioners and all the crofters of the clan marched up to the castle headed by the clan piper.” The sweet lady, “Flora Macleod of Macleod,” was “overcome with the warmth of the clan spirit.” Burns’

“ There’s some are fou' of love divine. 

There’s some are fou' of brandy” 

seems vaguely apposite here. At any rate, the dwellers in smelly crofts and dear old tartan-clad recipients of outdoor relief were “keenly interested” in seeing the ancient relics of their clan— Cockneys do at least get some opportunity of seeing their relics every day at the London Museum. One of the “relics” deserves “special mention ”: Flora MacDonald’s corset!!

Dingwall Town Council, according to the North Star, gave a “typically Highland welcome” recently to Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth on his return from honeymoon. Replying to an address, the young man recalled negotiations between the Council and the “estate” in connection with a new water-supply. He said he was “glad to think that now Dingwall had a first-class water-supply and that the estate had not suffered through granting this concession ” (March 13th). Is comment necessary? “Concession”!—and a splash heading of the Journal reads “Highlands need help for water supplies.” The situation is described “as little short of alarming.”

“Alarums and Excursions. Enter the Working Class.” Always “ alarums,” whether north or south of Forth for the working class—“excursions,” in the modern sense, sadly lacking, or of the cheap and nasty type.

Socialists (not reform-mongers, whether “charming” Maxtons, “fiery” McGoverns, or tin-pot Gallachers) still stand by “The World for the Workers.” This will include the humble, but highly-necessary water (without “concessions” from anyone).

MacReginald.

Finance and Industry: Enter the trading stamp (1963)

The Finance and Industry Column from the July 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Enter the trading stamp

In this present world of ours, goods are produced for sale. To enable things to be sold, a whole complicated network of distribution has grown up, involving wholesalers (first, second, and the rest), retailers, hire purchase companies, credit firms, discount houses, as well as sundry other middlemen and hangers-on. Each of these takes his cut, which naturally he tries to make as large as possible, from the process whereby the articles of life find their weary way from the factory to the consumer.

Now yet another group of middlemen are trying to muscle in the trading stamp companies. They are not, of course, entirety new to this country, but so far they have not played much of a role. In the United States, on the other hand, they have become big business and some of the American firms are now invading Britain.

Arguments are already heated about whether the consumer really gains anything from trading stamps. Some observers say that he does and that it is the retailer who does not give stamps who suffers by losing his trade to his competitor who does give them. Others say that American experience shows that the consumer may benefit slightly at the beginning but that later he will be no better off because more and more retailers will go over to the stamps and add their cost to their selling prices. They allege that this has already happened in the U.S., where the net result of the trading stamp boom has been to put up retail prices to the point where what the consumer gets back in stumps he pays for in higher prices.

But all this is really beside the point. Whether the consumer gets a small advantage at the expense of the retailer, or the latter makes it up by higher prices, it only serves to conceal that all that has happened is that yet another set of middlemen has managed to get into the act, getting a nice fat rake-off for doing something which is utterly useless from the point of view of actual production.

It really amazes us sometimes the way people will dismiss Socialism as utopian, but accept all the idiocies of capitalism as normal and reasonable. Not one ounce of extra wealth is produced from the activities of the trading stamp companies; the only result is to sharpen the struggle over the profit derived from what has actually been produced.

Competition goes supersonic

Things look like moving faster than ever in the air world. And we don’t mean only aeroplanes. The prospect of lots of extra supersonic bangs before long is going to disturb more than the sleep of those unfortunate to live too close to airports. Lots of airline operators, as well as politicians, are already reaching for the tranquillisers. Everything seems ready for yet a further round of waste, muddle, and stupidity in the international air industry.

Pan-American's decision to order six Anglo-French Concords took only 24 hours to squeeze an announcement from President Kennedy that the United States were going to build an even faster plane. The staggering sum of $750 million has been mentioned as a likely cost.

The Concord venture is being supported by the British and French Governments to the tune of £75 million from each. The final cost may well be more. All the purpose of all this vast expenditure of wealth? To enable a microscopic few of the world’s inhabitants to cross the Atlantic in three hours or get to Australia in half a day.

All this against a background of waste and absurdity in which the great majority of the airline companies are already losing money and where the pace of competition is so hot that large numbers of perfectly good aircraft are discarded with years of useful life in them. So fierce is the drive for speed that many of the world's airports are no longer really capable of coping with the planes. Now all the sorry story over jets seems likely to be repeated with supersonic aircraft.

Not all the experts are happy about the new development. Lord Brabazon is one. Instead of “promoting air transport for the peoples of the world,” he has said, “the airlines have simply helped the rich to travel vast distances at very higher speed and cost.” And, he added, “A big machine carrying 200 people in comparative comfort at up to 250 m.p.h., but landing at no more than 60 knots should be safe, welcome, and pay.”

But Lord Brabazon, more than most, should know that his appeal will go unheeded. Air transport and aircraft construction are no longer the concern of private capitalists, but have become wards of the state. In general, they now make no more sense, even from the capitalist economic viewpoint, than the vast industries that have grown up to throw rockets into space. They have become part and parcel of the struggle between national groups, in which the various governments are prepared to go into all sorts of projects, spend vast amounts of money, engage in ridiculous competition with each other. They are a supreme example of the tendency of the units of capitalism to get bigger; in the air it is no longer the private capitalists that fight each other, it is their national states. Behind every aircraft company there are state subsidies, government orders, and national military needs.

No, the Concord was not well-named. Discord would have been more appropriate.

Facts about fish

A recent report from F.A.O. reveals that 1961 saw the world's highest production of fish—just over 41 million tons. This shows an increase of 10 million tons, or 30 per cent., over the total catch in 1957, but the picture is really not as optimistic as it looks.

Most of the increase is the result of a phenomenal rise in Peruvian production —of small anchovies processed into animal feed. Apart from this and "a modest rise in the Chinese catch, world production has remained virtually static. Indeed, the alarms are already sounding of a likely decrease in production as the well-known fishing grounds become depleted. The boats get bigger, their engines more powerful, and their range ever-wider, but the catch tends to get smaller. Competition has led to overfishing.

But, as usual, the paradox of production under capitalism discloses that there are still many more fish in the sea than ever come out of it; of the sea’s possible production, 90 per cent. is still left untouched. And even under present conditions. F.A.O. reckons that the total world catch could be doubled without too much danger to stocks. Today, 80 per cent. of total production is caught north of the Equator; the southern seas are almost unfished.

Capitalism will itself see to it that the oceans of the world give up more of their riches. But progress will as usual be slow and wasteful. The trawlers of dozens of countries will continue to compete fiercely with each other; will set out to fish over the same grounds; will spend useless weeks at sea, some of them, before reaching fishing areas which the trawlers of other countries can reach in a quarter of the time. There will still be disputes over international rights; over 3 mile, 6 mile, 12 mile limits; prices will still be subject to catastrophic fluctuations. Over all will remain the constant threat of overfishing.

Even in this situation, F.A.O. tries to introduce a little order and co-operation, but competing self-interests foredoom its efforts to failure. What is required is the harmonious, organised and co-operative development of research and productive techniques to provide a steady, reliable, and efficient production of food from the sea.

But we shall not get that under capitalism.

Stan Hampson

News: Vauxhall closes at Luton, Fishing quotas (2001)

From the January 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vauxhall closes at Luton

General Motors’ plan to close its Vauxhall plant in Luton is a devastating blow to the workers involved. Many will be thrown on the scrap heap without hope of ever working again – poverty being their lot.

Despite all the howls of shock, surprise and indignation from certain sections of the bourgeois media, this did not just come out of the blue. It is part and parcel of GM’s rationalization programme to cut production capacity in Europe and North America by 10 percent in an industry which is suffering from chronic overcapacity, ie there is a glut of cars on the market. GM, of course, are not the only ones. We are all too familiar with the tales of woe from Rover (Longbridge), Ford (Dagenham) and South Korea’s Daewoo.

The overall context of all this is the current crisis of capitalism and the increasing concentration of capital into fewer and fewer hands. The last couple of years has seen a wave of mergers and ‘alliances’ in the automobile industry the result of which is that five companies (GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, Toyota and Volkswagen) account for more than two thirds of global car sales.

Such action has failed to prevent sagging profits. GM lost $l8lm in Europe in the third quarter, which is expected to double in the final three months of last year, according to the Economist.

The Economist also says that as such profit reports have damaged GM’s share price “by rolling together a bunch of radical announcements, GM hopes to show Wall Street that it is serious about bringing its problem children to heel”. The class struggle has not gone away.

Let’s not forget that the working class has also had to endure belt-tightening and ‘social partnership’ (‘we’re both on the same side now’). The workers at Vauxhall in Luton increased productivity and ditched militancy, and their reward was to be sacked for producing too many cars. In short, they have worked themselves out of a job!

The only way to make any sense of this madness is via Marxian economics. Overproduction is a natural part of capitalism’s accumulation cycle, not its antithesis as pro-capitalist economists like to argue. In their competitive search for profit and market share, capitalists over-invest, only to find later that the market is not as big as they first thought.

The bourgeois media hacks may refer to this phenomena, but they cannot place it in any coherent theoretical framework, which is why it is mentioned in the same breath as peripheral things such as fluctuating exchange rates and monetary/fiscal policy. No reformist solution can he found to the madness of capitalism, while the central contradicdon of capitalism remains ie that between socialised production and class monopoly of the means of production.

Fishing quotas

The “invisible Hand” of the market has proved its efficiency once again. On 15 December, EU ministers agreed to heavily reduce fishing quotas within European waters to combat over-fishing. This hasty action takes place after fishing stocks have steadily fallen since records began in 1963. There are reckoned to be 70,000 tonnes of cod in a sea where, in 1970, there were 250,000. The cuts represent the biggest reduction in the EU since the quota system began. The allowable catch of cod in the North Sea has been reduced by some 40 percent, down to 48,600 tonnes per year, and catch of hake has been reduced from 226,000 tonnes per year to just 42,000 tonnes.

Despite having reduced fish stocks to below half the level scientists reckon necessary to ensure recovery of the species, the partisans of business resent having to ease their exploitation of fish. Elliot Morley, British Fisheries Minister, boasted that he had managed to mitigate the scale of the cuts, saying he had saved “£20 million” worth of catch for British fishermen. Meanwhile, industry representatives complained that the cuts were too severe. Representatives of chippies maintain that old fashioned cod ‘n’ chips is not threatened.

So that’s all right then.

Another futile Earth Summit (2002)

From the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The findings of a survey carried out by YouGov in the wake of the recent Earth Summit and published in the Observer (8 September) revealed that seven out of ten people think that the Johannesburg Earth Summit has made almost no difference to the future of the planet. And only one in 500 believes that the controversial £40 million meeting attended by leaders from more than 100 countries, with 60,000 participants, will make the world ‘a lot better’. This, of course, came as no surprise. In the run-up to the Summit, activists the world over had expressed little or no confidence that it would be noted for achieving anything tangible. And if developments since the 1992 Rio Summit were anything to go by, few were holding out for anything worth celebrating.

As the Summit closed, the UN, the British government and many world-wide delegations articulated their surprise that non-governmental groups had come away from the Summit feeling angered and cheated. Oxfam, for instance, had commented that the Summit had been a triumph for greed and a tragedy for people. Friends of the Earth remarked: Do not believe government spin doctors who claim success for this Summit. It is by any objective test a failure. And Christian Aid said: The overall winner of this Summit has been big business. It has triumphed in its bid to avoid any legally-binding regulation on its behaviour.

Yet more empty promises

The final text of the Programme of Implementation agreed upon at Johannesburg after nine days of deliberations contained but two new and explicit targets. The summit agreed to halve the number of people without sanitation (about 1.2 billion) by 2015 and agreed to plans to provide clean water for half of those without it. In other words, even by 2015 there will still be millions of people without sanitation or clean water.

With growing concern now about the destruction wrought on of the Earth’s life-support system, the bumbling negotiations were billed as being to map out a plan for reducing poverty and protecting bio-diversity. All they could agree on was to aim to reduce the loss of biodiversity by 2010 and to increase funding and technical resources to developing countries as well as to strengthen forest law and to merely reduce not stop illegal logging. The Summit acknowledged that poverty and environmental degradation are linked and further adopted the aim of halving the 1.2 billion who exist on less that $1 per day. Another paragraph considered over-fishing, and thus the depletion of a main protein source for many living in coastal areas. Here the Summit only agreed to restore, where possible, the world’s fish stocks by 2015 and merely to urge attention on marine pollution and the establishment of protected areas by 2010.

Back in 1992 at the Rio Summit, the world’s wealthier countries pledged to greatly increase their development aid to poorer countries to 0.7 percent of GNP. This was never achieved. Indeed, prior to the Summit, across the industrialised world it stood at 0.22 percent. What did the Johannesburg Summit do? It promised to urge the developed countries . . . to make concrete efforts towards the target of 0.7 percent of GNP as official development assistance. This would appear a step back – a promise is suddenly demoted to a promise to urge – and is perhaps an admission by the promise-makers, and the urgers, that promises are there to be broken. The US delegation, in particular, blocked all proposals involving regulating multinational corporations or dedicating significant new funds to so-called sustainable development.

The only outcome of the negotiations on sustainable consumption – the Holy Grail of the summit – was agreement to develop an action programme within 10 years, to publish indicators that evaluate progress and to give shoppers instructive eco-labels. The Summit failed in its proclaimed mission of setting definite targets and a timetable for increasing the use of renewable energies. Paragraph 19(e) watered down the Kyoto Protocol to combat climatic change by promoting clean fossil fuels. This said, the Kyoto Protocol was given a little more legitimacy with Russia and Canada promising to ratify it.

So, there was little or nothing to applaud at this Summit. The world’s leaders – and there were many on show – simply recommitted themselves to agreements they had already committed themselves to elsewhere. It was an affirmation by the global executive of capitalism that the Programme of Implementation should have carried the subtitle: Sorry, but there’s profits to be had.

Big corporate interests

In the past ten years, the real change has been the even more prominent role in negotiations given to business, predominantly multinational corporations. As never before, corporations are centre stage, with governments backing their interests. It was just naïve of the NGOs to imagine that the Summit was ever going to decide on a regulatory framework to try to make that the activities of corporations serve the interests of those in greatest need.

Entirely predictably, all that happened was that, with the blessing of the UN, multi-nationals negotiated a number of partnership agreements – quite simply voluntary commitments by corporations to respect the environment and protect human rights. But in an increasingly globalised world, where there are mega-profits to be made, and wherever these profits will come into conflict with environmental and human rights issues, any directors not seen to have profits forefront in their minds will be shown the door pretty damned quick. Thus, such promises are in truth not worth the paper they are written on. Insane? Yes. But this is actually capitalism functioning efficiently.

The relevance of the meeting was perhaps best revealed by the absence of George W Bush who, despite massive international lobbying for him to attend, decided that a war with Iraq was more important. This was understandable considering the numerous oil giants and weapons manufacturers he is indebted to, and not least because his advisers were all too aware he would have been heading for the mother of all heckling bouts and would undoubtedly have proved an embarrassment to the US delegation. Moreover, as US Capitalism plc was aware, they were going to get their way anyway at Johannesburg, so why send Dubya who was more valuable at home beating the war drum?

The debating aside, this was a meeting at which US Secretary of State Colin Powell was booed and jeered by US environmental campaigners and by many delegates and at which Tony Blair was lambasted from the speaker’s platform by Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and the Namibian president Sam Nujoma as an interfering colonialist.

Were he not such an arrogant, murderous, hypocritical and corrupt agent of capital, Mugabe’s five minute bluster could have been applauded as sound socialist criticism. Apart from his much publicised anti-Blair broadside he angrily declared:

“The programme of action we set for ourselves at Rio has not only been unfulfilled but it has also been ignored, sidelined and replaced by a half-baked unilateral agenda of globalisation in the service of big corporate interests. The focus here is profit, not the poor; the process is globalisation, not sustainable development, while the objective is exploitation, not liberation.”

Mugabe was, for once, right.

Bearing in mind that previous world summits – and there have been several in recent years, all analysed in this journal – have been subordinated to the interests of big business and have consequently proved to be a waste of time in so far as addressing the problems of the planet was concerned, is it any wonder that not only NGOs, but the wider public have little faith in them? You would have to be very naïve to imagine that profit-driven corporations in a world subject to intense world market competitive pressures would, or could, be forced by the UN, take care of the planet in a responsible manner.

We can perhaps salvage one thing from Johannesburg that will serve the interests of humanity, and that is the fact – reinforced by this Summit – that capitalism cannot be trusted to run the world in the interests of humanity; that governments, including the UN which is made up of governments, serve the interests of profit first and that, if we are ever to take control of this planet and run it in the real interests of its inhabitants, then we must do so ourselves, without leaders and with a view to establishing a global system of society in which production is freed from the constraints of profit and in which each person will have free access to the benefits of civilisation.

John Bissett

Troubled waters (1983)

From the October 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

After ten years of intermittent discussion the Law of the Sea Conference finally came to a close last December when a Convention was signed by 117 states at an official ceremony at Montego Bay, Jamaica. Several key states, however — most notably the United States, Britain. West Germany and Japan — have refused to sign on the grounds that the proposed International Seabed Authority limits the freedom of their mining companies to exploit the resources of the seabed. The creation of an international organisation to manage seabed mining threatened the existence of the Conference throughout the last ten years and even now poses a threat to the workings of the new Law of the Sea. In fact the central issues which predominated during the conference were the thorny ones of ownership and control of resources. It could be said, however, that the aim of the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference was to establish the rules of the game for the use and abuse of the oceans. This proved necessary since there was an increase in the recoverable economic value of the seabed combined with a polarisation of interests between the industrialised states of the north and the developing states of the south — a factor promoted by the increase in the number of new sovereign states since the post-1945 de-colonisation. The interests of the south are articulated by the Group of 77, which in 1980 comprised 117 states. This coalition is determined to ensure that there will be no new colonialism in relation to the wealth of the seabed.

The Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) started in 1973. UNCLOS was divided into three main committees — for deep sea mining; traditional law of the sea problems such as navigation, continental shelf and fisheries; and marine research and pollution. These issues were not without controversy since disputes exist over national boundaries, rights within national boundaries, those over rights in the ocean beyond national jurisdiction and those arising from non-ocean sources. Around the world there are numerous contested zones, islands, archipelagos, not to mention rights over navigation. There are more than 100 strategically important straits such as the Malacca strait between Malaysia and Indonesia, through which the bulk of Japan’s oil supplies pass. There are disputes over fishing where the interests of the maritime states — the Soviet Union and Japan for example — with large distant water fishing fleets collide with those of the coastal states with large fishing grounds off their shores.

The establishment of an Exclusive Economic Zone — EEZ — would allow states to claim exclusive rights to the seabed out to 200 miles from the shore. There are, however, numerous islands whose ownership is hotly contested, the Falklands for instance. Although islands are defined as naturally formed areas of land surrounded by water at high tide and therefore entitled to an EEZ, this does not prevent states from demanding EEZ rights for rocks which cannot sustain human habitation or economic life on their own. The reason for this is simple: states commanding rocks in resource-rich areas can use them to claim the contiguous resources. In this respect the dispute between Britain. Ireland and Denmark over Rockall, a tiny rock about 400km west of the Hebrides, came into focus since it commands an area of 201,250kms of the continental shelf with potential oil reserves. It is not surprising then that Britain has consistently argued that existing international law makes no distinction between different types of island and that to do so is likely to result in ambiguities. The resolution of this particular squabble — ownership and whether such rocks are entitled to an EEZ — will set an important precedent as there are similar disputed “rocks" in the Pacific and Caribbean.

The Falklands war was not unrelated to the question of EEZs since the continental shelf contains oil reserves and the seas are rich in fish stocks. It is for this reason that seemingly insignificant islands as the Falklands Dependencies, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, assume strategic significance as they can be used to stake claims to the resources in the surrounding seas and on the seabed. Furthermore such islands are useful as a staging post to the Antarctic, another area potentially rich in untapped resources. Shortly after the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands Lord Shakleton was moved to remark:

What is at stake and what undoubtedly is in the minds of the Argentinians is not just the Falkland Islands but their claim to Antarctic territory. (3 April 1982 Hansard (Lords) vol. 448 col. 1585.)

Two supposedly allied NATO states, Greece and Turkey, were at one time more likely to go to war with one another than with the Soviet Union over the resources of the Aegean Sea. According to Barry Buzan, “The conflict of interest between Greece and Turkey arose, like many others, after discovery of oil by an American exploration company” (Adelphi Papers No. 143, A Sea of Troubles? Sources of Dispute in the New Ocean REGIME).

In the Far East. Japan, in addition to the long-running dispute with the Soviet Union over the Kurile Islands, contests the ownership of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea with both China and Taiwan. The significance of potentially large off-shore oil is not lost on states dependent on oil imports such as South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Moreover, the continental shelf and economic zone boundaries cannot be drawn until this dispute is resolved.

The Barents Sea and the conflict of interests between the Soviet Union and Norway is. perhaps, typical of many of the problems associated with delimitation. The contested area constitutes roughly 153,000 square kilometres of the continental shelf between Novaya Zemlaya and Spitsbergen. For the Norewegians substantial fish and seabed resources, principally oil, depend on how the boundary is drawn. This is particularly important for the Norwegians since oil is vital for their economy. The existence of indigenous oil reserves, as in the North Sea and possibly in the Barents Sea, allows Norway to avoid the vulnerabilities associated with dependence on Middle Eastern oil. It is for this reason that Norway is concerned about the activities of a Russian oil drilling ship, the Valentin Shashin (Guardian, 2 May 1983). Energy supplies, even for resource-rich Russia, may become critical in the next decade since Soviet oil and gas supplies may be insufficient to meet both domestic and growing Eastern European demands. Despite the disputed zone the Norwegians have recently signed a deal with the Russians which will, according to the Guardian (27 April 1983) permit the Norwegian Petroleum Consultants to evaluate exploration costs to decide where to drill and to frame the timetable of the operation. Offshore oil exploration is an area in which the Russians lack the technological expertise of Western states and are, therefore, heavily dependent on Western assistance. In fact, “the Norwegian offshore industry is keen to get in on the act, and the yards have been pressing the Government to be allowed to sell to the Soviets” (Guardian, 17 June 1983). Furthermore, the British and the French are keen to sell the Russians oil-exploration-related technology even though the American government would rather they did not. However, “this is not in the interests of West European industry and commerce” (Guardian, 27 April 1983).

In addition to the availability of oil and gas the Russians have a keen military interest in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea. The Russian Northern Fleet has bases at Pechanga, Murmansk and Severomorsk, all of which are situated on the Kola Peninsula in the Leningrad Military District. Moreover, one of the two Soviet ballistic missile submarine bases is at Polyarny at the Eastern end of the peninsula. However, as the British and Norwegians discovered, increased commercial traffic and oil exploration do not mix — as they had to transfer their joint manoeuvres from the North Sea to the Shetlands. UNCLOS allows for the concept of “innocent passage” whereby ships are entitled to passage provided it is not prejudicial to the “peace", "good order" or “security" of the coastal states. Warships and submarines, however, pose problems but all attempts to restrain their passage have been opposed by the major maritime states.

Perhaps the greatest controversy facing the Conference relates to deep sea mining. The resources at stake are large deposits of potato-shaped polymetallic nodules — “manganese nodules". They contain traces of vital “strategic metals" such as cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese. On average each nodule contains 30 per cent manganese, 1 per cent nickel and ¼ per cent cobalt. Cobalt, for instance, is an indispensable element in the manufacture of small high-powered magnets necessary for weapons guidance systems. In a uranium enrichment plant employing the gaseous diffusion method nickel plated steel is used since it is able to withstand the highly corrosive uranium hexathoride gas. However,

The nodules themselves have lost glamour to deposits of polymetallic sulphides containing copper and other metals in much higher concentrations, first encountered at volcanic vents in the Pacific rift near the Galapagos Islands and off the coasts of Oregon and Washington. Similar deposits are certain to be found elsewhere along the 40,000 mile world-gridling submarine rifted ridge. (“The Law of the Sea. Elisabeth M. Borgese, Scientific American, March 1983, Vol. 248. No. 3. p. 33.)

Hitherto such metals were only available from relatively few states which were either politically unstable or unfriendly to the West. Since the EEC’s import dependence for materials such as manganese is 99 per cent and copper 91 per cent, “The European Community's industrialised countries are keen to see that seabed mining for cobalt, copper, manganese and nickel begins as soon as possible and with as little restraint as possible” (Guardian, 23 November 1982). Japan is 95 per cent dependent on imports of manganese and 98 per cent on nickel. It is, therefore, not too difficult to appreciate the interests of Western states in the possibility of achieving independence in relation to the supply of industrial materials. This chiefly explains their opposition to the deep sea mining provisions of the Law of the Sea Convention. Britain and the US vigorously oppose the insistence of the developing states that an International Seabed Authority should regulate the market, transfer technology and ensure that the benefits accrue to the developing states. In short, the key problem is who will be permitted to exploit seabed nodules?

The Group of 77 argued that since the new resources of minerals threatened the economics of those states in the developing world dependent on the export of one or two minerals such states should be compensated for the loss of export earnings. Moreover, it urged that an ISA should have stronger powers; for example, to regulate production and to carry out mining operations and related activity in the name of the Authority. The United States however, largely at the behest of its multinational mining companies, opposed the treaty on the grounds that such an Authority would limit their commercial freedom, specifically by obliging them to pay taxes on earnings from mining to such an authority as well as to supply it with technology. Although the Group of 77 insisted that the establishment of an ISA is an integral component of a New International Economic Order and sees the ISA as very much a test case for future resource redistribution, the Group has been unable to maintain its unity. It has been dominated by coastal states, especially those with large coastlines and significant offshore resources. This has been achieved at the expense of the “geographically disadvantaged states” — landlocked states and those without large coastlines or significant offshore resources. Even though the industrialised states oppose the content of the ISA proposals, not all are in favour of unhindered access and exploitation since this would work to the unilateral advantage of American mining companies. Britain, West Germany and Italy share the American view, but Ireland, Denmark and Greece “recognise the advantages the treaty could provide for countries lacking the industrial base for seabed mining” (Guardian. 23 November 1982).

At the signing ceremony of the Convention the US representative, Thomas Clingan, stated unequivocally that:

The US has an extreme national interest in having access to strategic metals from the oceans . . . the Treaty just doesn’t meet our interests in terms of deep sea-bed mining provisions. (International Herald Tribune, 8 December 1982.)

And that, in the end, is what the Law of the Sea Conference is concerned with: the pursuit of the “national interest" — the owning minority. The resources of the seabed beyond the 200-mile EEZs are designated “the common heritage of mankind”; nothing could be further from the truth.

John Walker

News in Review: What do they stand for? (1963)

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

What do they stand for?

It is obviously time for somebody to remind the nuclear disarmament movement what they are supposed to stand for.

Remember the days when, they only inscribed upon their banners slogans about banning the bomb? When they appealed that everyone, regardless of their political views, could co-operate in the appeal to save us from nuclear destruction? When they trotted out tame Tories (in much the same way as the Tories trot out tame trade unionists) to try to prove this point?

You do remember? Well, forget it.

The recent demonstrations organised by the Committee of 100 against bad housing, and against the Greek government, show that the unilateralists are going the same way as the other reformist organisations which have sprung up full of fire, have had their day and have vanished.

This process has followed a familiar, wearisome pattern. As unilateralism has failed to have any impact upon that great mass of working class votes which so faithfully support capitalism, the movement has found itself confronted with a choice.

It could have stuck to its original purpose and declined quickly into the ranks of the organisations whose objects may sound very desirable, but have no relevance to the needs of capitalism. Or like any other reformist group, it could have looked out for fresh fields to exploit.

This is what the unilateralists have done, which is not to say that their new preoccupation with issues like democracy in Greece will win them any more support than they gained from advocating banning the bomb. Here, once again, is evidence that, even on their own terms, reformist organisations are seldom logical.

It was not from any notion of superiority, nor any wish to detach ourselves from the problems of capitalism (if that were possible) that we said from the beginning that the nuclear disarmament movement would go the same way as the rest. We have seen so much of this in the past. There is no satisfaction now in seeing our forecast proved correct.

Because as each reformist movement rises and dies, it absorbs the energies and the enthusiasm of the very people who should be working for the new social order which will settle the things they fear and dislike once and for all.

Rachman, a scapegoat

As a scapegoat, Peter Rachman had just about everything. Fat. Balding. Property speculator. Keeping women. Just the man, in fact, to vent a little spleen on if you have been kicked out of your house or if you envy somebody else’s ability to buy feminine favours.

And a scapegoat Rachman has been made, not least by the Labour Party in their transparently clever attempt to win votes by using what they know of Rachman's affairs to attack the Rent Act.

So perhaps a word or two to put Rachman in his place will not come amiss.

First of all, it is nonsense to suggest that it was the Rent Act which gave Rachman his chance. As the papers have pointed out, the heavy glove boys operated against precisely the people who were still protected under the Act.

What Rachman did was to exploit the loopholes in the housing laws and to hide his transactions in a maze of legal complications. This is something which will happen, provided it is profitable, whether there is a Rent Act or not.

Capitalism has always been interested in the cost of housing, because working class rents can have an explosive effect upon wages and upon an election. The shady operator knows that it can often be very remunerative to probe for the weak spots in the law and when he has found them to exploit them to the full.

If Rachman had not cast his shadow in the field of properly speculation he may well have made his pile in some other way. Or indeed, if Rachman had never lived there would have been somebody else to do exactly the same sort of unsavoury deal.

In any case, was not Rachman, in a way, one of capitalism’s heroes? A penniless refugee who became a self-made man of riches? Who is to say that, if his gamble on the oilfields in the North had come off, he may not have become a nationally respected man, his racketeering days forgotten, and ended his life with a title?

Why not? It has happened before.

If the Rachman story is sordid, if it shows up a sort of human behaviour which is unpleasant, if it evokes some of the most regrettable of human reactions—it is only typical of capitalist society itself.

Criminal waste

The trains which, packed to suffocation, are pulling out of the big cities, and the roads to the coast wedged tight with traffic, tell us that holiday time is here and with it one of capitalism’s silly seasons.

High summer is the time when all sorts of fruit and salad is liable to be produced in such abundance that the price falls to the point when it becomes economical for the farmers to plough the stuff back into the ground or leave it rotting on the trees.

But now here is another, even sillier, example of the waste which the profit motive brings with it—one which need not happen only at the height of summer.

The Times of July 31st last reported that Cerebos Ltd., of Hartlepool, plans to dump a hundred tons of meat and fish paste into the sea because they are changing the shapes of their jars.

Hartlepool is in the stricken North-East; perhaps some of the unemployed up there would not say no to a few free jars of fish paste. Or perhaps the stuff might help out with some of the underfed children of the world.

Never mind. Presumably some accountant somewhere has worked out that it will be cheaper for Cerebos to sink the pastes. Just like any other company, they have to keep a close eye on their balance sheet.

Silly is too mild a word to describe the social system which not only allows the criminal waste of the world’s resources but actually, at times, requires and encourages it.

Mail Train robbery

The two-and-a-half million pound mail train robbery was audacious and glamorous enough to have come from the pen of the most imaginative crime fiction writer.

In that, it was typical of a recent strengthening trend in crime. The big, well planned robbery is becoming increasingly profitable for the crooks and so more and more of a headache for the police.

This is hardly surprising. The existence of private property elevates money into the key to a secure life. The moneyed man is always the privileged man and he does his best to make sure that he keeps both the money and the privileges.

There are plenty of such privileged— and honoured—men whose wealth has been amassed from the exploitation of the other class in society. Or perhaps they inherited it from their ancestors’ historical equivalent of the Cheddington hold-up.

This sort of wealth is respectable—it has come from what has been well called legal robbery, which conforms to capitalism's needs and so its moralities.

Robbery, forgery, embezzlement, and so on, do not conform and the men who try to get rich by practising them are anything but honoured.

Be that as it may, crime is inevitable as long as capitalism lasts; offences against property make up die overwhelming majority of crimes today. Capitalism without crime, in fact, is simply impossible.

Ironically, it is capitalism itself which asks for some of its crime. Do not the armed forces, so essential to capitalism, encourage just the sort of knowledge and the mental attitudes which are useful in a desperate, quick-fire robbery?

The driver of the Cheddington train said that one of the gang advised him to keep quiet because there were some “right bastards” there. Well, it is the “right bastard” who makes an excellent Commando or bomber pilot.

All of this is not to justify nor to condone the criminal. Indeed, any one who tried to take away from the Cheddington gang any of the money they have stolen would soon find that, in their own unmistakeable way, they are as firm in their support of property rights as any bank boardroom.

Capitalism is an unpleasant social system and crime is only one of its many excrescences.

These Foolish Things: Nuclear capability—is power (1995)

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

Nuclear capability—is power

China has tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile, diplomats said yesterday, marking another crucial step towards superpower status for the country amid mounting American and Asian concern over its future geopolitical rôle. Coming two weeks after China’s May 15 nuclear test, the new missile is believed capable of reaching the US west coast, and most of Europe. China’s new 0.3 megaton nuclear warhead is expected to become operational next year, Pentagon sources said. (Guardian, 1 June.)

Don't you just love being in control?

Brian Mawhinney, the Transport Secretary, personally vetoed the publication of recent research which shows that children from low-income families and of ethnic origin are most likely to be involved in road accidents. The deaths and serious injuries of children are still rising in spite of an overall downward trend in deaths against an increase in traffic.

Surprise, surprise

“. . . the Labour Party has embraced the need for a ‘dynamic market economy’ in its new statement of values.

The question for voters when they next go to the polls is which of the main parties can oversee British capitalism most effectively.” Richard Thomas and Larry- Elliott (Finance Guardian, 1 April).

Ruling class priorities

“In 1913 Great Britain was at the height of her power and dominion. One-third of the surface of the globe—and three-quarters of all the ships that sailed the oceans—flew the Union Jack.

And the provision in the budget for the Royal navy was 11 times that for the social services.

Eighty years on, these figures are almost reversed. The Navy can draw on less than one-twelfth of the amount dispensed in ‘benefits’. . . we have got into a position where single mothers now get £5.29 billions (far more, in case anyone is interested, that the cost of Trident in the same year).”, Alan Clark, Mail on Sunday, 11 June).

Market forces

There will be no cod left in the North Sea within five years as a result of a political failure to deal with the problem of overfishing, Mark Tasker a British delegate to the North Sea Protection Conference, said yesterday, (Guardian, 8 June).

Class war casualties

The number of industrial accidents in the West Midlands has soared during the past year.

New figures released by the Health and Safety Executive show that the number of major accidents reported throughout the West Midlands jumped by more than 70 percent to 1,088 during the last year, {Evening Mail, 28 April).

Just an ordinary ruler

The Princess of Wales wants her son to be given as normal an upbringing as possible. She will be delighted, therefore, that Prince William has passed his entrance examination for Eton and, like every other normal boy in Britain, will soon be hurrying to his lessons in a black morning coat, white shirt and waistcoat. There will be ten pupils in most of his classes.

Economic oppression

More then 700,000 people have lost their homes since the repossession crisis began in 1990.

The Scavenger

Canned profits (1974)

From the Special 300th issue of The Western Socialist

Link to The Magic Checkbook

There Is one over-riding problem in capitalist production for the capitalists, the problem of profit production. Any attention to the intrinsic nature of the particular goods one processes or manufactures must be secondary. To Illustrate: a canner of fish may be proud of the high quality of his product, might even be able to envision the cans in his warehouse as containing food. But the records in his book-keeping department show that he does not become too involved with such an Image. Here one finds machines, ledgers and working people whose lives are largely dedicated to determining if their employer's enterprise is profitable and how much of his gross must go to the various governments for taxes, how much for labor, for plant and machinery replacement. This is the real stuff of life in capitalist society. He is in business, primarily, to produce profits, not canned fish.

True enough he must maintain certain standards of purity and cleanliness and be subject to occasional government inspection. There is always the chance that food poisoning might be traced to his product forcing him to recall and eventually even destroy hundreds and perhaps thousands of cases of his potential profits. And to this extent he certainly must see, in his mind's eye, food in those cans. But even in this case it is secondary. His prime concern is that those thousands of hermetically sealed cans contain profits, for if they don't the food value, even the high or less-than-high quality, which is most often the case, counts for nothing.

Now it goes without saying that he doesn't sell his commodity by labeling It “canned profits." The purchaser is not interested in that aspect. So he has an attractive label to show that it is fish and that it is appetizing, succulent and healthful. He may even attach a separate brochure that gives a tale, born in the imagination of a writer of advertising copy, that is calculated to tempt a hesitant soul into buying the item. And it is also quite likely that he sponsors advertising in the media that is aimed at causing one’s salivary glands to work. But here, too, the prime motive is profit because our processer is not interested in stirring the palates of any but those who have the money in their budgets to buy the product. Let conditions become such that processing costs become prohibitive and the product begins to disappear from the grocery shelves. There may be plenty of fish in the sea and a multitude of people who would like to eat it but the trick of getting them together, under capitalism, is not that simple.

Now how would socialists go about correcting this problem? The answer is that there is nothing that can be done about it under capitalism. The argument one hears so frequently from reformers of all sorts is that everybody has a right to eat but there is not one shred of truth to it. Certainly everybody has a need to eat but right, under capitalism, is a different matter. Just try to take some cans of fish or anything else from the grocery shelves and leave without paying! The fact that one has the need to eat cuts no ice. Have you got the cash? If so then it follows that you have the right to eat. And this is true in every area of life, under capitalism. With food, clothing, with housing, with all the things that make up a standard of living. There is no right without money.

But just what ls wrong with this? The trouble is that the majority of the population must live from wages or salaries and the money paid for labor power can never equal more, on the average, than the cost of the items one needs to continue to work, raise families, etc. And the problem becomes apparent when we realize that to maintain averages working people are always compelled to struggle against unemployment, inflation and unusual occurrences for which they are ill prepared. The nub of the problem ls the wages system, itself. Socialists advocate abolishing it and replacing it with a new. higher and human way of life, world socialism.

Link to Incentive and initiative

Man and the Sea. Resources for Society’s Future (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

In obtaining food from the sea, man is continuing a process begun in the hunting and gathering stages of his history, although modern technology has taken much of the element of “luck” from fishing.

It appears that the sea is a virtually untapped food source, especially of protein foods. Fishermen are now taking less than 50 million tons of fish a year, while the amount available has been calculated to run as high as 100,000 million tons a year.

As well as using new methods of fishing such as echo-sounding and sonar beams, new uses are being found for the fish. One apparently important one is fish flour, a solvent extraction of fish protein: FPC or fish-protein concentrates. This is being developed in a number of places, and the US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries has devised a process for obtaining FPC from hake. The concentrate, which contains 85 per cent, protein, is highly nutritious, and practically tasteless and odourless. The idea is not that FPCs should be used as food in their own right, but as additives to the traditional dishes in areas where diets do not contain sufficient protein.

Another idea is to make use of the kinds of fish not yet exploited commercially, such as coley, redfish and dogfish, and to serve them in different and novel ways. School and industrial canteens have been used as guinea-pigs and the fish was found to be “perfectly acceptable”. Apart from the obvious advantages, the use of new and unknown kinds of fish will lessen the pressure on the traditional fishing grounds.

New Kind of Harvest

Many scientists believe there is a far richer source of sea food in plankton — the microscopic plants and animals that swim in the water and form the basis of all animal life in the sea. The plankton is eaten by small fish which in turn are eaten by bigger fish, and anywhere along the line man steps in and catches some of the bigger species. A way of eliminating the middle man, so to speak, would be to harvest the plankton directly. In this food chain, it takes about 100 lbs. of plankton to create 10 lb. of herring which creates 0.1 lb. of tuna fish.

The whale, one of the few mammals living in the sea, has a diet which consists entirely of plankton, which it scoops up as it travels through the water, and by doing so has drastically shortened the food chain. An idea would be to have nuclear-powered man-made whales, ships that would pour a steady stream of plankton into their holds as they ply the oceans.

Herds for Food

Very little farming of the sea has been done as yet, that is, to consciously rear and harvest fish, etc. The cultivation of the yellowtail is quite exclusive to Japan, although this cannot be considered true “farming” because the fish are taken when young from out at sea and are then fattened in enclosed areas of the sheltered inland sea.

The real breakthrough for marine farming came with the recent developments in stocking marine fields with domestically hatched and reared marine animals. There are still many problems to be overcome, but this opens up the possibility of achieving the same kind of revolution as Robert Bakewell achieved in livestock breeding in England in the 18th century. The specially-bred animals would be reared in marine fields. One of the most successful such ventures has been the rearing of the Japanese prawn. Methods were devised for hatching eggs obtained from female prawns brought in by fishermen.

In this way two types of fishery could develop. On the high seas fleets could cull the wild fish populations — somewhat as some African countries “crop” the wild animals in their National Parks; and nearer home, the marine farmer would cultivate “domesticated livestock” in the inshore pastures of territorial waters.

Scientists are now also turning to the sea as a source of drugs, and it seems as though it is a practically untapped source of potentially useful medicines, especially of further antibiotics.

Fit to Drink

Water is said to be in short supply in relation to the domestic, agricultural and industrial needs for it. Under capitalism much water is wastefully used, but even so very little is taken directly from where most of it is: the sea. The oceans and seas hold about 97 per cent, of the world’s stock of water, and unlike most other natural resources the sea is self-renewing — all the water eventually ending up in the sea, in a series of events known as the water cycle.

Although work is being done to develop strains of crops which are resistant to salt water, most of the water used by man needs to be fresh. So to obtain water from the sea, all the dissolved minerals have to be removed — desalination. There are generally three different types of methods, of which distillation is the major and oldest process. Desalination plants are in use in a number of places over the world. In Israel, where present water supplies fall short of the potential demand by as much as 80 per cent., the impetus for developing methods of desalting the sea and brackish waters derives from the question of survival rather than commercial interest. The Israelis have carried out an extensive research programme which they hope will lead them eventually to emancipation from the threat of serious shortages of water, and already have several desalting installations in operation.

Power from the Tides

The oceans are a huge source of restless energy deriving from winds, waves, tides and currents. The effects of these are sometimes disastrous, as in January 1953 when serious flooding in eastern England and the Netherlands caused extensive damage and resulted in the deaths of 2,107 people. Fortunately the oceans do not always expend their energy in such destructive ways, and can be put to man’s use. As tides are relatively reliable they can be harnessed to turn turbines and produce electricity. A place with a high tidal range is obviously necessary for the location of a tidal power station and there are only about two dozen suitable places in the world, of which about ten have been seriously considered.

The major possibility in Britain is the Severn Estuary, and a power station from Cardiff to Western-super-Mare has been estimated as being able to supply one-twelfth of the United Kingdom’s power, and an additional road between Wales and England. The French were the first people to build a tidal power station. It straddles the Rance Estuary in NW France, and is designed to produce 240 megawatts of electricity, enough for a city of about 500,000 people. Receiving the direct force of the great Atlantic tidal wave this coast also has remarkably regular tides, and during the spring tides has a range of 42 feet. At the height of the spring tide flow, water comes rushing up the estuary at a rate of nearly 4 million gallons per second. Even so, the power station’s output is only a small proportion of the 180,000 megawatts of energy thought to flow from the Atlantic into the English Channel, and is almost insignificant beside that of world tides — 1.5 million megawatts.

Resources Galore

For every statistic prophesying doom for the world in terms of mineral resources, there is another to contradict it. The ecologists contend that we must use the resources of the world austerely, to make them last — at least until other substances can be found to take their place. However, commerce lives only for the day: in case the high-grade deposits on the land really are becoming exhausted, the mining companies have their eyes on (and pockets ready for) the mineral wealth in the sea and on the sea bed.

The beautiful thing about the sea is that minerals are being deposited there faster than man can hope to collect them. Every year rivers flowing from the land add about 3,300 million tons of material which eventually comes to settle on the ocean floor. Nearly 4 million tons of meteoric and other materials rain down from outer space. In fact the oceans form a global chemical plant, in which practically every chemical is being processed and finally stored: providing a renewable resource which will last beyond the foreseeable future.

Dr. John Mero has presented some astonishing estimates of the various minerals in one type of deposit, manganese nodules, found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. According to him, the nodules hold enough aluminium to supply man for about 20,000 years, cobalt for 200,000 years, copper for 6,000 years, manganese for 400,000 years and zirconium for 100,000 years. (The figures are based on 1960 rates of consumption.) In addition, these nodules are estimated to contain 207,000 million tons of iron, which is almost twice as much as the present land resources which are expected to last at least 250 years. There is also estimated to be nearly three times as much lead as the present land reserves which, we are told, could be exhausted by 1988. And the list goes on; but the store is hardly touched by man. Manganese nodules are not restricted to the Pacific. They are also found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. They were first dredged from Scottish lochs!

Extracting Minerals

The problem is that the average depth at which they are found, about 13,000 feet in the Pacific, makes conventional dredging out of the question. Dr. Mero suggests that giant dredgers controlled from the surface could sweep up the nodules from the ocean floor. But while land reserves are still sufficient there is as yet no real incentive to take these minerals from the oceans, especially as the cost would be in the order of some £12 million or more. A further problem quoted was that America might find herself in the “embarrassing situation of having a surplus of some minerals”.

Red clay sediments on the ocean floor contain enough copper and aluminium possibly for a million years, but again are difficult to obtain. However, small amounts of sand, gravel, shells, limestone, tin, gold and diamonds are all dredged from the sea in shallow coastal regions. In 1966 over 6 per cent, of this country’s gravel and sand came from the sea bed. Apart from their direct use in construction works, sand and gravel taken from the sea also play a part in land reclamation.

Only three dissolved chemicals are extracted from sea water on a commercial scale: salt, magnesium and bromine. Today as much as a third of the world’s production of salt comes from the sea, the heat of the sun being used to evaporate the water as it has been done for centuries. The production of salt in this way led to the extraction of magnesium from the sea in the nineteen-thirties, and today most of this metal comes from sea water or brines.

For the Future

Natural gas, oil and molten sulphur can be piped up from the underlying rocks of the sea bed, and some 200 drilling rigs are at this moment probing the continental shelves in various parts of the world in search of these minerals. It is very difficult to gather figures as to the estimated amount of oil under the sea.

So there we have, briefly, the potential of the minerals in the sea. Their use, as with everything else, depends today upon the capitalist economics of mining for profit and on international law and technology. In many cases the necessary equipment does not yet exist, although the knowledge of how it may be used does.

SUE.

The above article is from the notes of a lecture given to our Birmingham Branch last year.