Bird’s Eye View: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me (2023)

The Bird’s Eye View Column from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me

1865: ‘Instead of the conservative motto, A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, Abolition of the wage system’ (Value, Price, and Profit, Marx).

1928: ‘Earning a wage is a prison occupation’ (Wages, DH Lawrence).

1965: Workers still ‘…don’t realise that they can abolish the wages system’ (What are your wages?, Socialist Standard).

1 April 1999: Britain gets first legally binding minimum wage of £3 if 21 or under, £3.60 for those over.

1 April 2023: ‘Today’s minimum wage rise by the UK Government will still leave thousands of Scots in poverty, say opposition parties’ (Daily Record, tinyurl.com/ajapsnxh ).

Rich stay rich poor stay poor

‘For more than a dozen years now, Wall Street and corporate lobbyists have blocked both financial executive pay restrictions and a federal minimum wage increase. This speaks volumes about who has influence in Washington — and who does not’ (Common Dreams, 1 April).

Sarah Anderson is being quoted here. She directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, is a co-editor of Inequality.org, and champions several measures including a ban on stock options at Wall Street banks. These measures can only be considered revolutionary in that they represent yet another spin on the reformist misery-go-round. As Eugene Debs said in 1913 ‘What the poor need is that the rich shall get off their backs’ (The Oppressed Need Justice, Not Charity).

None so blind

Helen Keller, one year earlier (1912) in an essay titled How I Became a Socialist, wrote of the hypocrisy of self-styled philanthropic elites who assailed working-class radicalism: ‘I like newspapermen. I have known many, and two or three editors have been among my most intimate friends. Moreover, the newspapers have been of great assistance in the work which we have been trying to do for the blind. It costs them nothing to give their aid to work for the blind and to other superficial charities. But socialism — ah, that is a different matter ! That goes to the root of all poverty and all charity. The money power behind the newspapers is against socialism, and the editors, obedient to the hand that feeds them, will go to any length to put down socialism and undermine the influence of socialists’.

‘Who was Karl Marx and What is Communism? . . .'

"Let’s start with where it came from, because ’the roots’ are always connected to ’the fruits’. Communism grew out of the haunted life of Karl Marx (1813-1881), a German philosopher whose life seemed to be shadowed by something dark. Several of his children died before reaching adulthood, he had extremely poor hygiene, he was often covered in painful boils and he could barely keep a job. Marx lived on the generosity of his friend Friedrich Engels. Ironically, Engels got his money from the same capitalist factories that Marx came to criticise. Marx was also known for his infatuation with the prince of darkness himself. In many of his writings he openly expressed admiration for Satan. People around him sensed he was troubled. Even his own father-in-law, worried that the “demon” that pestered Marx would kill his own daughter" (The Stream, 1 April). 

This bad biographical sketch would have Marx spinning in his grave – two years before he died in 1883. And what follows is even worse! Our A to Z of Marxism is concise, fact-based and provides suggestions for further reading.

Pie in the sky

‘Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei earlier threatened to prosecute “without mercy” women who appear in public unveiled, Iranian media reported… Describing the veil as “one of the civilisational foundations of the Iranian nation” and “one of the practical principles of the Islamic Republic,” an Interior Ministry statement on Thursday said there would be no “retreat or tolerance” on the issue’ (Raisi says hijab is the law in Iran as unveiled women face ‘yoghurt attack,’ Yahoo. 1 April).

Religion is the badge of the mentally enslaved. It uses a cloak of mystification to reinforce its authority by promising a mythical afterlife as a reward for blind obedience and by making threats of eternal punishment, backed up by intimidation and persecution for those who do not submit. It has been a useful tool in the hands of the ruling classes to keep their subjects subservient.

Keller again:

‘This great republic is a mockery of freedom as long as you are doomed to dig and sweat to earn a miserable living while the masters enjoy the fruit of your toil. What have you to fight for? National independence? That means the masters’ independence. The laws that send you to jail when you demand better living conditions? The flag? Does it wave over a country where you are free and have a home, or does it rather symbolise a country that meets you with clenched fists when you strike for better wages and shorter hours? Will you fight for your masters’ religion which teaches you to obey them even when they tell you to kill one another? Why don’t you make a junk heap of your masters’ religion, his civilisation, his kings and his customs that tend to reduce a man to a brute and God to a monster? Let there go forth a clarion call for liberty. Let the workers form one great world-wide union, and let there be a globe-encircling revolt to gain for the workers true liberty and happiness’ (Menace of the Militarist Program).

Rear View: Glenn in Wonderland (2021)

The Rear View Column from the May 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glenn in Wonderland

”When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” A similar disdain for language would seem to be shared by Lewis Carroll’s character in Alice Through the Looking-Glass and Glenn Greenwald, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. Glenn ‘… went on to say that he ‘would describe a lot of people on the right as being socialists,’ such as former White House strategist Steve Bannon and ‘the 2016 iteration’ of former President Donald Trump as a candidate, ‘based on what he was saying.’ ‘I consider Tucker Carlson to be a socialist,’ Greenwald said of the Daily Caller co-founder. He then described an instance where Carlson and Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a self-identified socialist, agreed in their mutual opposition to Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanting ‘to give tens of millions of dollars to Amazon to bring an office to New York.”(dailycaller.com, 3 March). The word socialism, as originally used by the followers of Robert Owen, appeared for the first time in their Co-operative Magazine of November 1827 and meant common ownership (not nationalisation or state capitalism). The American Marxist Daniel De Leon understood this and saw socialism as a revolutionary change in society. He explained: ‘As a poodle may have his hair cut long or his hair cut short, as he may be trimmed with pink ribbons or with blue ribbons, yet he remains the same old poodle, so capitalism may be trimmed with factory laws, tenement laws, divorce laws and gambling laws, but it remains the same old capitalism. These ‘humanitarian parts’ are only trimming the poodle. Socialism, one and inseparable with its ‘anti-rent and anti-capital parts,’ means to get rid of the poodle’ (Daily People, 2 November, 1908).

Tweedledee and Tweedledum

Helen Keller said of democracy in the US: ‘Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.’ Will the Marxist Unity Slate save us? They say: ‘Thousands of DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] members are inspired by Marxist politics, and we want to unite them around a credible vision for an independent socialist movement in the United States. ‘Slate’ refers not to a slate of leadership candidates, but to our three-point lineup of (1) Constitutional amendment and (2) Resolutions. We believe our three-point slate will help DSA develop a strong ‘programmatic unity’: unity based not on theoretical dogma, but on common struggle and a shared political vision. WE NEED 100 SIGNATURES ON EACH ITEM TO PROCEED TO THE NEXT STAGE! With your support and signatures we can begin to build an ecumenical mass socialist party based on Marxist principles’ (undated, marxistunity.com). Wait! Here’s one that genuine socialists made earlier: the World Socialist Party of the United States. Since its formation in 1916 by 42 defecting members of Local Detroit of the Socialist Party of America (SPA), the WSP has consistently advocated a fully democratic society based upon co-operation and production for use, opposed every single war, participated in working-class struggles, and functioned as a democratic and leaderless organisation. Writing that same year, Keller noted: ‘I became an IWW because I found out that the Socialist party was too slow. It is sinking in the political bog. It is almost, if not quite, impossible for the party to keep its revolutionary character so long as it occupies a place under the government and seeks office under it. The government does not stand for interests the Socialist party is supposed to represent’ (from an interview written by Barbara Bindley published in the NewYork Tribune, 16 January, 1916).

The (Mad) Hatter

‘Deng Xiaoping is famous for the saying ‘it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white provided it catches mice.’ As I am an unashamed Dengite in economic theory the equivalent of this is that it is perfectly possible to understand China’s socialist economy in terms of either Western or Marxist economic theory…’ (undated, learningfromchina.net). The author John Ross is a Senior Fellow in Financial Studies at Renmin University, China. The socialism Marx envisaged involved ‘abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production’ (Communist Manifesto). Oh, the irony! In his Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan (1927), Mao admitted that the coming revolution would not be socialist: ‘To overthrow these feudal forces is the real objective of the revolution.’ Writing four years earlier Sylvia Pankhurst stated: ‘Socialism means plenty for all. We do not preach a gospel of want and scarcity, but of abundance. Our desire is not to make poor those who today are rich, in order to put the poor in the place where the rich now are. Our desire is not to pull down the present rulers to put other rulers in their places’ (Socialism, Workers’ Dreadnought, 28 July 1923). Does this sound familar? What follows is almost prophetic: ‘…We do not call for limitation of births…’! Socialism in a post-capitalist world of production for use and allocation according to self-defined need will make finance, including Marxian economics, redundant.

”If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.’

Socialism with Chinese characteristics is another dead end. Alice in Wonderland has been banned in multiple countries including China. ‘We are drawn back to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland because when we read it, we become the heretics, dreamers and rebels who would change the world’ (theconversation.com, 16 February).