Voice From The Back: Between $373 billion and $1.6 trillion (2000)

The Voice From The Back Column from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Between $373 billion and $1.6 trillion 

. . . is what it will cost to clean up the sites polluted with uranium in the USA, depending on how thoroughly the job is done. But there is a much cheaper way, according to Sandia national laboratories of Albuquerque, New Mexico—leave it to nature, which will neutralise the radioactivity—in time, a very long time. In other words, do nothing, as millions of other capitalist firms are doing with their pollution.

In Lewis Carroll’s madcap world, 

. . . Humpty Dumpty declares, “A word means what I say it means”. It seems that Brian Souter, the Scottish multi-millionaire and homophobic would agree with Humpty Dumpty: “His inspiration comes from the Church of the Nazarene, a fundamental American sect based in Kansas City. Although it takes a harsh line on all matters sexual, it allows him to get on with business. As he explained, the sect’s “ethics are not irrelevant but some are incompatible with what we do because capitalism is based upon greed. We call it dichotomy, not hypocrisy” (Observer, 14 May). In another book, even more fantastic than “Alice”, it states: “It will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” This has not scared off our Brian from accumulating a reported fortune of £300 million out of the exploitation of the working class. After all, such contradictions in the eyes of the deeply devout Souter, are a “dichotomy not hypocrisy”.

Freedom—as long as you pay 

. . . is the heading of a column in the Irish Independent earlier this year. Gene Kerrigan says, “It’s like there are at least two Irelands, side by side. In one Ireland, an Ireland where fantasies come true, entrepreneurs receive windfall profits of a kind that used to be built up over generations. In the other Ireland, an all-too-real Ireland, people lie for hours on hospital trolleys, untreated, because we have never made up for the health cutbacks of a dozen years ago. Is it unfair to suggest that there might be a cause-and-effect relationship between fantasy Ireland and real Ireland? Ireland is the sixth most “economically free” country in the world, says the Edmund Burke Institute, a ‘right-wing think tank . . .’ The woman in her 80s, who worked hard all her life, paid her taxes, and is now free to gasp her last on a trolley in an overworked hospital, would no doubt find the surveys interesting if she had the breath to comment.”

Sisters of mercy. 

In the 15 January edition of the Irish Independent, a review of an episode in a three-part television documentary, Stolen Lives, recounts the interview with Kathy Byrne who, as a child was placed in one of the industrial schools for girls: “A nun walked in and gave me a whack with her hand and said: ‘how dare you get ink on your dress.’ She was going mad at me and she said, ‘you’re coming with me.’ Kathy breaks into a sob at the memory: She took me to the little place called St Brigid’s and . . . she just beat me and beat me and beat me and beat me. She just beat me everywhere. I was crying for my mum. Please mum, please mum, help me. I missed her so much, I couldn’t believe where I was. And the nun said, ‘You can call your mother all you want. She’s dead.’

Amnesty International, 

. . . in a recently produced leaflet, are appealing for your financial support. On the face of it, it is a powerful appeal. There cannot be a human being worthy of the name, on reading some of the examples of tortures that occur inside modern world society, who is not profoundly moved: “Take the case of Nang Mai. Nang was seized by solders in June 1997, in her township in Myanmar—not for any particular offence, but simply belonging to an ethnic minority. She was repeatedly raped, covered with wood and burnt alive.” Every human being must feel repugnance at such brutal acts. The leaflet goes on to tell us about blowtorches being applied to a person’s face in Algiers. Such barbarities happen all the time inside capitalism. So what is Amnesty International’s solution to such horrors? Send a cheque for £250 or £10 or £other (please tick box). This will enable them to help future Nang Mais or blowtorch victims by “applying pressure to governments around the world”. Our solution? Get rid of the whole awful social system that causes such horrors. We don’t want to apply “pressure to governments”. We want to see an end to the rotten system of capitalism that is the basis for such unspeakable crimes.

Trotskyist tactics summarised 

One learns by failing. Silk Road, Chinese Fortune Cookie.

How RTS neglects need for democratic control (2000)

Reclaim the Streets’ spoof paper Maybe.
Who made the decisions?

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reclaim the Streets’ neglect of the need for democratic accountability just leads to the tyranny of structurelessness.

For the Mayday event in London, Reclaim the Streets, the shadowy group which organised it—shadowy because it doesn’t appear to be an open organisation with democratic structures—produced a spoof edition of the free daily paper Metro which they called Maybe. In it they set out their ideas. Some are not bad, others are mistaken and yet others are, frankly, pathetic (such as the ostensibly serious idea that “guerrilla gardening”, or clandestinely growing food in public parks and railway embankments, is somehow subversive of capitalism).

The front page article “KEN PULLS OUT” (reproduced here) is very clever. We’d have liked someone to have written it for us. There would not be too much we would disagree with in another article “Ecology and the Social City” which contrasts life in cities today under capitalism with what life in a “free city” could be like once the global market system and nation-states have been ended.

And we can go along with the following criticism of the passivity that capitalism encourages:

“We are forced to spectate by capitalism. We watch TV, movies, news, celebrities—the ‘other’ in the ‘other’s world’ in which we do not feel threatened or truly involved. We are encouraged to vote, be it for governments, councils or mayors, to ask them to represent us, to decide for us. We have no connection with the production of our daily needs, of our food, clothes. We have become so accustomed to assuming the position of spectator in our own lives, that active participation in events has become like a muscle atrophied through lack of use.”

And with the following assessment of the wasted 20th century:

“20th century history is a tragic lesson in the dangers of trusting ‘anti-capitalist’ politicians or of just being against one aspect of capitalism, like ‘globalisation’, rather than for a complete transformation of society.”

Obviously, we can’t be anything but pleased if such ideas are growing. But how does RTS see capitalism being ended? By what they call “direct action”. This is an anarchist catch-phrase but it means different things to different anarchists. To those anarchists who believe in organisation (and, contradictory as it may seem, some do, the anarcho-syndicalists for instance) it is meant to convey the idea that any action that any group of people take to try to improve their lot should be under their direct control. We don’t have any objection to this idea—in fact, it’s the form of organisation we have always urged workers to adopt for waging the struggle against employers for better wages and working conditions—only we call it “democratic self-organisation” (and, contrary to all anarchists, don’t see why it can’t, and shouldn’t, be extended to embrace organisation on the political field to win control of the state with a view to dismantling it).

RTS, however, are not in the tradition of anarchists who believe in organisation. They openly describe themselves as a “dis-organisation”:

“Reclaim the Streets is non-hierarchical, spontaneous and self-organised. We have no leaders, no committee, no board of directors, no spokespeople. There is no centralised unit for decision-making, strategic planning and production of ideology. There is no membership and no formalised commitment. There is no master-plan, and no predefined agenda.

The direct action movement is an organic network of people taking responsibility for their own lives, expressed through local interventions, chaotic global connections and friendships. Reclaim the Streets spontaneously and temporarily emerges from a shared dissatisfaction with the way our lives are run for us, with the rat-race and a society based on exclusion and enclosure, profit and control. As a dis-organisation, RTS is mobile and furtive. It is there when people decide to intervene in public spaces, evoking the utopia of a better society.”

For such anti-organisation anarchists, “direct action” means the supposedly spontaneous action of small groups acting on their own initiative without being answerable to anybody. Thus, when they use the word “self-organisation” they don’t mean the same thing as people like us, namely, structured, democratic organisation, certainly without leaders, but not without some central decision-making unit such as a conference of mandated delegates nor without elected committees to plan and co-ordinate particular spheres of activity. Nowhere in Maybe does the word “democratic” occur, neither in relation to how capitalism is to be ended, nor as to how anti-capitalists should organise today, nor even when describing the sort of society to replace capitalism. This is clearly deliberate and will reflect the fact that RTS rejects the idea of democratic control because this involves formal rules and permanent structures which they will see as bureaucratic restraints on the freedom of autonomous activists to act as they please.

Informal elites

This is the “ideology of structurelessness” so brilliantly dissected by the American feminist, Jo Freeman, in 1970 in her essay on The Tyranny of Structurelessness. In the Women’s Liberation movement of that time the same emphasis was placed “on what are called leaderless, structureless groups as the main focus of the movement” as RTS does today. Freeman showed that there was in fact no such thing as a structureless group, only formally and informally structured groups:

“Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time, for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion . . . This means that to strive for a structureless group is as useful and as deceptive, as to aim at an ‘objective’ news story, ‘value-free’ social science or a ‘free’ economy. A ‘laissez faire’ group is about as realistic as a ‘laissez faire’ society; the idea becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others. This hegemony can easily be established because the idea of structurelessness does not prevent the formation of informal structures, but only formal ones . . . Thus structurelessness becomes a way of masking power . . .

For everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit. The rules of decision making must be open and available to everyone and this can only happen if they are formalized . . . A structured group always has a formal structure, and may also have an informal one. An unstructured group always has an informal, or covert, structure. It is this informal structure, particularly in unstructured groups, which forms the basis for elites . . . When informal elites are combined with a myth of structurelessness, there can be no attempt to put limits on the use of power. It becomes capricious . . . [I]nformal structures have no obligation to be responsible to the group at large. Their power was not given to them; it cannot be taken away. Their influence is not based on what they do for the group; therefore they cannot be directly influenced by the group.”

This suggests some embarrassing questions for RTS. OK, perhaps it has “no committee”, “no centralised unit for decision-making”, but there must be some process by which decisions are made. Who decided that the theme of the Mayday event in London should be the joke idea of “guerrilla gardening”? Who decided to publish Maybe? Who organised its production? Who collected the money to pay for it? Who authorised its expenditure? Clearly, there must be individuals or a group of individuals who did make these decisions, but as there is no formal structure they are in practice answerable to no one. They will be an unaccountable, self-appointed group of activists. Whoever they are, they will be, as Freeman pointed out, an informal élite, de facto leaders making decisions, in RTS’s own word, in a “furtive” way.

In preaching that we don’t need formal decision-making rules and structures RTS are propagating a dangerous illusion, dangerous because it opens the door to groups of discontented people being manipulated by some self-appointed and non-accountable elite or vanguard. We insist that, on the contrary, “self-organisation” is only possible as democratic self-organisation, involving formal rules and structures, precisely to prevent the emergence of unaccountable elites.

We’re not talking about the sort of structures advocated and practised by Leninist organisations such as the SWP, where the rules and structures are designed to enshrine control by a self-perpetuating elite (in the SWP, as in other Leninist organisations, supreme decision-making power rests in the hands of a central committee which is self-perpetuating in that it is elected as a slate—whose composition is chosen by the outgoing committee).

We are talking about structures that place decision-making power in the hands of the group as a whole, along the lines of the seven “principles of democratic structuring” listed by Freeman: 

• Delegation of specific authority to specific individuals for specific tasks by democratic procedures.
• Requiring all those to whom authority has been delegated to be responsible to all those who selected them.
• Distribution of authority among as many people as reasonably possible.
• Rotation of tasks among individuals.
• Allocation of tasks along rational criteria.
• Diffusion of information to everyone as frequently as possible.
• Equal access to resources needed by the group.

This in fact is more or less the basis on which we, as a smallish revolutionary organisation, have always organised ourselves. It is also the basis on which we have always advocated that the mass movement to replace capitalism by (as the front page article in Maybe describes it) “a stateless, moneyless society where goods [are] produced not to make profits but simply because people needed them” should organise itself—a democratic self-organised mass movement of people who want and understand such a society (we call it socialism, but which people can call what they like). An anti-capitalist movement organised and co-ordinating its activities on this basis need have no fear, contrary to what all varieties of anarchist claim, of contesting elections to win control of political power from the supporters of capitalism who currently control it and who use it to maintain the economic power and privileges of the capitalist class.

In fact, the anarchists’ advocacy of either taking on the State head-on by “direct action” against it or by trying to ignore it and proceed as if it didn’t exist is foolish in the extreme. It increases the chances of violence. This is even more so when the anarchists concerned also reject, as RTS does, the idea even of organising on a permanent basis with decision-making conferences, accountable delegates, voting, reporting back and, yes, binding decisions.

A supposedly spontaneous, unorganised anti-capitalist revolution such as advocated by RTS would only end in disaster out of which either the present rulers would succeed in reasserting their control or a new set of rulers would profit from the chaos to seize power. If we are going to get rid of capitalism the majority is going to have to organise itself to do so—in a permanent organisation with a democratic structure.

Adam Buick

The Lying Game (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our rulers have a long and inglorious tradition of lying to stay in power. Our only defence against this is to understand the basis of this lie machine.

Just ask anyone, they’ll tell you. “Of course the press lie,” they’ll say, and whip out the latest tabloid, and show you proof incontrovertible that there are porky pies in the Currant Bun. It’s so obvious that the media are liars that one paper—the Daily Sport—can trade off on its pastiche of the press, telling blatant and obvious lies, wherein the pleasure for the reader lies precisely in spotting that it’s all false.

It is, though, precisely through reference to the blatancy and flippancy of the so-called “yellow press” that the power of media propaganda lies. That the tabloids’ allergy to accuracy is passed off as playfulness in the face of the grim-faced puritanism of the “serious” media and apparent attempts to impose any agenda on them, means that the reputation for honesty and accuracy of the broadsheet and broadcast media is maintained. Yet, it is precisely through the “serious” media that many of the lies that sustain the system are promulgated.

A simple examination of the modern media suffices to demonstrate that propaganda is the norm, not the exception. You just have to look at who the media are to begin to understand that they have a material interest in going out of their way to defend the current system. The media is composed of capitalist businesses, selling their news, dependent on the markets; and—more specifically—they are dependent upon selling advertising (i.e. getting money from other capitalists) in order to keep operating. A careful glance at, say, the Guardian would demonstrate just how much page space is given over to advertising in proportion to the space given over to reports. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press, and capitalists own the press, both individually through media firms and collectively through advertising. The threat to withdraw advertising income from firms that incur the displeasure of the capitalist class means that the media firms have a direct interest in avoiding certain controversies.

This situation pertains, even in the supposedly non-commercial BBC, since it exists in competition with the other news providers, and is subject to similar funding threats as well as political pressure, the ending of the licence fee, or the appointment of governors, for example. The model for government intervention in the culture industry is “the arm’s-length principle”, thus the BBC, and various arts boards are given grants and are nominally independent, but, they are capable of losing funding, or being otherwise pressured if they get too much out of control. This “arm’s-length principle” is in effect the way that the whole capitalist class relates to the media, preserving the appearance of neutrality and objectivity, whilst retaining ultimate control.

Researching and gathering information requires lots of time, patience and diligence, something which adds to a media firm’s overheads—thus cutting into profits. The pressure to lower costs, to churn out copy on time, means that media firms cannot waste much time independently searching out and verifying information. Thus they are heavily dependent upon publicists (like the ubiquitous Max Clifford) and public relations officers of both the state and other firms to provide them with newsworthy items. Capitalist institutions collectively spend billions of pounds per year on public relations and media management.

Selected news

The relationship to official sources can be seen in the build-up of the Zimbabwe story, which began with news stories reporting comments by Robin Cook and Peter Hain expressing their concerns about conditions in Zimbabwe. These comments, highlighted, no doubt, by so-called “spin doctors” meant these concerns became a top news item. In contradistinction, the fact the Cook did not give the story of the British government negotiating Foday Sanko into coalition with the Sierra Leonean government last year, meant it did not make the news. The same holds true of the collapse and invasion of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the bloodbath of the Eritrean-Ethiopian war: without being placed on the official agenda by the powers-that-be these stories have only been given footnote treatment in the British media. Even the collapse of liberal-democracy from the military coup in Pakistan has been consigned to acceptance.

Private Eye (2 June), in uncovering a significant aspect of the Sierra Leone story—that the Sierra Leonean army is equally as murderous as the RUF—makes a significant observation: when the embarrassing story came to light, the government reacted by “burying the story by ensuring the non-availability of official spokesmen or ministers”. Without official documentation, and without the opportunity for “balance” the news media did not run with the story. The power of the information providers to withhold both data and access provides a key strategy in their control of the news media.

These international stories help highlight the way in which the supposedly “free” press follows the line of their masters. Are media in France or Germany putting the Zimbabwe story as their lead news item? Undoubtedly not, because Zimbabwe is not an area of their concern, so they do not focus on it so intently. Hence while thousands die each year in Laos from bombs dropped by America in the 1970s, while thousands are slaughtered in Colombia—all without a single comment in the media. The murder or beating up of a single farmer in Zimbabwe is top of the six o’clock news, complete with tearful interviews from the victims and their families. Along with that, every news report of the killings in Zimbabwe lists the number of white-skinned farmers first, and then relegates the murdered black-skinned MDC supporters to a footnote on that figure.

This highlights a classic manoeuvre on behalf of the media—the selection of worthy and unworthy victims. Two months back, people facing starvation in Ethiopia were presented as, again, the worthy recipients of the West’s largesse and charitable concern, yet, when people starve and die in Iraq—as a direct consequence of the policy of the Western powers—their story does not make the news headlines. Acting to help worthy victims, and punish “bad guys” serves our masters’ ends in that it helps them justify and thus mobilise for their interventions.

A part of the response of the British media to the Zimbabwe story owes itself to older forms of class rule, in that the editors of the newspapers, or their staff, have friends or relations living in Zimbabwe who went over to administer colonialism. These personal relations give further impetus to placing the story up the news agenda.

Scare stories

The control of personnel is in fact another key factor in ensuring the capitalist control of the news agenda. A glaring example of this in practice was evidenced by the Mayday riots in London this year. Almost inexplicably the BBC sent along Nicholas Witchell, their “Royal” correspondent, to cover the events. Obviously, anyone who gets the “accolade” of being a royal correspondent is sufficiently tame to serve their masters’ interest with gusto, as indeed, Witchell did in his reportage of the day. The very fact that he was moved from his usual brief to cover what was, in effect, a small protest (with only 5,000 or so people present in Westminster) clearly indicates the propaganda intentions of his editors.

In the days leading up to the protest the media ran scare story after scare story, about the police being prepared for massive violence, about the army being on standby (and these stories were spread by the “respectable” media, such as Radio 4’s Today programme). It was clear that the agenda was worked out in advance, and carefully prepared.

The behaviour of reporters at the scene gives other indications how the media coverage was an a priori agenda. Camera folk were seen hunting out any grungy-appearing anarchist who’d overdone the drink and was being sick. The Channel Five reporter described largely peaceful events as “simmering all day”, in flagrant contradiction to the experience of the vast majority of people attending. Indeed, the media as much as possible pushed the line that the police were merely responding to the thuggery of the protesters; repeating time after time that the riot suits only came out after McDonald’s was trashed; whereas eye-witness reports from Trafalgar Square note that police there were waiting in riot gear, and could not have got changed after the vandalism began. It was clearly in our masters’ interests to maintain that the police response was a reluctant intervention, and that the blame lay on the protesters.

The disorganisation and the non-accountable actions of individuals in trashing the shop and vandalising the statues represented a gift to the media so they could ignore the point of the demonstration and push home their masters’ line and scare people into accepting more control. Spectacular dissent failed dramatically because the protesters had no means of controlling the social and political context into which the protest was placed by the propaganda system.

The mandarins of the state and their commissars in the media occasionally and inadvertently admit the importance of media structures. During the Kosovan war, they were forced into openly having to bully John Simpson for his reports from Serbia for falling out of step with the official line, while every other reporter placidly accepted the daily dole of information from Jamie Shea. Further, by attacking the Serbian broadcasting service, and claiming it as a legitimate target of war, the powers-that-be revealed their true and thorough understanding about the role of propaganda. The event was not without precedents, as NATO forces in Bosnia-Herzegovina seized a Bosnian-Serb television transmitter (see Socialist Standard, January 1997) because it was broadcasting “enemy” propaganda.

Our rulers have a long and inglorious tradition of lying to stay in power, and our only defence against this is to understand the basis of this lie machine, and to work to expose their lies as often as possible. They tell different lies in different circumstances, and set different agendas according to the intended news audience they anticipate. Our interest lies in exploiting the divisions between the divergent interests of different groups of capitalists, and showing the contradictions involved. Thus our best weapon against the lies of our masters, is to understand that we the workers of theworld have a common interest, and to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing information between ourselves, deliberately and consciously working for our liberation without borders.

Pik Smeet

Capitalism rips us off, NGOs soothe the pain (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

When governments and business have done with keeping us in line and exploiting us, NGOs step in to soothe us with left-overs

“Give us fish and you feed us for a day, Give us the fishing rod and you feed us for life”

Non-governmental organisations in general come in to assist where governments fail. Today however many of them claim they are now shifting their focus to the economic development of poor countries. But it is common knowledge, from the concrete situation on the ground, that the main thrust of NGO activity is still within the framework of alleviation and not eradication of poverty and want. And even in that regard, a cursory glance at their intervention reveals nothing but a catalogue of failures and deceit. But what else is expected of any organisation that tries to reform a system which is inherently evil and incorrigible? In this article three reasons are advanced to explain why NGOs are like the proverbial decorated donkey which is “still an ass”.

The unholy trinity

Even if NGOs were groups genuinely seeking, on humanitarian grounds, to reach out to the needy (as some may honestly do) they would still not escape being branded blind groups groping in the dark. But a closer scrutiny of the entire NGO set-up reveals almost a sinister plot against the wretched of the earth—those whose suffering they claim to be alleviating. This is easily understood when one considers the life and role of the NGO as being largely determined by a three-dimensional interplay of forces.

To begin with, it is evident that governments, big business and NGOs constitute the three sides of a triangle. The three are one and their efforts are complementary. Are we in the poor peripheral countries not constantly reminded, both in the print and electronic media, of some three “basic facts”?

(a) that government has no business doing business, that government only provides an “enabling environment” for free trade,

(b) that the business community, aka Foreign Direct Investment, aka private sector is the key to, and the engine of, our economic development,

(c) and that NGOs are partners in development, the third estate of African economic development.

In real terms what the three propositions mean is that whilst governments keep the people in check with their armies, police, prisons, the judiciary, etc, the capitalists rip us off through exploitation and retrenchment. The NGOs then intervene to soothe, console and cajole the victims with sweets and second-hand (discarded) materials.

Though this unholy collaboration is done in a discreetly Mafia-like style, it is not uncommon, once in a while, to see such back-scratching manifested openly. A case was seen in Ghana in the mid-1990s, when an NGO—The 31st December Women’s Movement—diverted huge sums of aid money to the ruling NDC government to foot its electioneering campaign bills. Another example of this government/NGO collaboration is the issue of World Vision International helping the Honduran government to track down and kill suspected dissidents (Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty, London, 1989). Where NGOs fail, to fulfil their part of the unwritten connivance, governments do not hesitate to take firm measures against such NGOs. In 1989, for instance, when Oxfam advocated sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa, it (Oxfam) was censured by the England and Wales Charity Commission for contravening UK charity law. Then in 1995 the Ghanaian government was bitterly confronted by the opposition for trying to impose an NGO Act on the people. The law was meant to boot out all NGOs which were not subservient to the government. In a similar vein, NGOs are known to be promoters of big business through the purchase of (sometimes expired) drugs and food and also obsolete or faulty machinery. It is on record for instance that Bob Geldof’s Band Aid wasted $4 million in purchasing eighty unusable lorries from a Kuwaiti business group and dumped the junk as aid to Sudan (Independent, 25 November 1987).

Fund raising

The second dimension to the three-pronged characteristics of the NGO system relates to their source of funds. It is an undeniable fact that individuals filled with fellow feeling donate to NGOs to assist the needy. However, large sums do come from owners of capital, corporate bodies and governments. The donations of these latter, like “aid” in a profit-oriented society, are not without ulterior motives and strings. Who pays the piper calls the tune and even since one does not bite the finger that feeds one, whatever well-meaning intentions that motivated the setting up of the NGO is sooner or later compromised in favour of having more funds. They would henceforth dance to the tune of “major” donors and benefactors.

Such tendencies reduce many an NGO to a complete business enterprise where “profit” now their major concern. This is expressed in the methods employed to attract funding. Advertising is an expression of an unwholesome competition in the quest for profits. NGOs spend huge sums on adverts. Sometimes this is done using typical capitalist fraudulent methods. A clear example is the famous “wire fraud” of World Vision International, on the Los Angeles-based relief agency Operation California. The latter had organised a fundraising concert for Kampuchea refugees which was televised by CBS. Unknown to the organisers WVI had managed to have its toll-free number flashed at regular intervals during the concert for potential donors to pay into that account (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, 21-27 December 1982).

Another dishonest method of ensuring a bumper harvest is the raising of false alarms through a gross exaggeration of the plight of “vulnerable groups”. In the NGO business the commodity is the misery of the downtrodden. So intense is this hunt for super-profits that the bugbear of unhealthy rivalry (typical of big business) often raises its ugly head within the NGO community. Part of the causes of the Somali famine in the late 1980s , for instance, was a result of the refusal by relief groups to heed Oxfam’s fully substantiated warning of imminent hunger. These agencies rejected the warning just so that Oxfam would not take the credit (Lords of Poverty).

The result of this business-oriented voluntarism is the tendency to accumulate. The recent imprisonment of Allan Boesak in South Africa for embezzling NGO funds is only the tip of the iceberg. There is also the case of International Christian Aid (ICA) a US-based NGO, which was accused, in 1985, by the UN and the US State Department of failing to send anything to Ethiopia though it had raised $18 million for famine there (Daily Mail, 14 January 1985). Many more monstrous cases of this nature are either not discovered or hushed up in the interests of the dubious capitalist fraternity. Thus set up to help the needy NGOs often only help themselves.

Activities

Needless to say, the work and assistance programmes of NGOs cannot be anything but a red herring. Having been brought into existence by the exploitative money-oriented system and being completely dependent on the same underhand methods of this unfeeling system for their survival what else can the activities of NGOs be if not messing about in trivialities? The main problem confronting humanity revolves around ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing (social) wealth. How many NGOs mount platforms to explain this simple truth to their target groups? How many NGOs ever distribute tracts about working people replacing this profit-oriented system with a higher social system based on collective and democratic ownership of the means and instruments of production?

It is not by accident therefore that NGO activities in poor southern countries never approach education, shelter, food, clothing, healthcare, etc with a view to finding a lasting solution to them. These areas are the exclusive lucrative business of private capital. A good lot of NGO programmes involve organisation of seminars and talk-shops on such superstructural issues such as female circumcision, the empowerment of women, prostitution, drug abuse, etc. Most of the relatively few projects end up as white elephants or never even get complete. No wonder then that as the number of NGOs keeps rising, ignorance, homelessness, hunger, poverty, disease, etc are getting out of control (instead of the other way round).

Of course poverty and want are necessary offshoots of the capitalist socio-economic formation. Trying to get rid of the former whilst leaving the latter intact amounts to putting the cart before the horse. The only genuine assistance the NGO community could lead to the suffering people of this capitalist world is to stop collaborating with the owners of capital and instead, join forces with socialists to get rid of this system based on money. NGOs could use their resources to help usher in a system where production is not for profits’ sake but for the satisfaction of needs. Under such a system nobody will have to run around begging for funds in order to help the needy—in fact there wouldn’t be any more needy people.

Suhuyini Nbang-Ba, 

Gambia

LETS not make the same mistake again (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alternative currencies are coming back into favour but, as a solution to the problems of capitalism, they have been tried before, more than once, and each time have been found wanting. This time will be no different.

According to David Boyle in his recent book Funny Money there are various local currencies currently in use in the USA: (1) “social money” (particularly involved with helping old people, reforming young offenders etc); (2) “labour money” (exchangeable scrip received for work done); and (3) “local currencies” (based on a fixed amount of a commodity – e.g. $10 of meals in a restaurant or a cord of wool!). Essentially these are all variations upon LETS.

In the old days poor folk used to do each other favours—a lift to town or some home-grown veg. Sadly this sort of social behaviour is disappearing and alienated individuals often need an intermediary to be brought together. This is what the local currencies can do. There is therefore some use for such self-help schemes within capitalism.

These kind of currency schemes are also useful to socialists in showing how people can co-operate—how human nature is not just all war and whacking off. In many cases (in particular the “Time Dollars” used in Washington) the system is little more than the able-bodied doing something for the old folk. Charity, if you want to sneer, but all the same a form of voluntary labour for the good of the community, surely the basis of work in socialism. As an addition one might add that in the Washington case the scrip is a useful way of indicating the extent of voluntary work done by an individual.

If these currency cranks stuck to giving lifts to old ladies and trading organic lentils between themselves nobody would be particularly interested. But they’ve got bigger plans. According to Boyle these local currencies are “revolutionary” and “will turn the world upside down”, poverty will be abolished and it is even predicted that “Funny Money” will solve the Northern Ireland conflict (this is reminiscent of the Pankhursts’ claim that female suffrage would abolish prostitution and VD).

Like all reformist schemes the problem lies not in these flabby and ineffectual palliatives themselves but in the hope attached to them by often desperate members of the working class. Alternative currencies, like experimental communities and a dozen other half-baked schemes, have been tried before, more than once, as a solution to the problems of capitalism and each time have been found wanting. Funny Money shows that even as palliative measures “alternative currencies” fall down. The Philadelphia scheme operating in a hell-hole called Camden (one in every thousand of its population murdered each year, 60 percent on welfare, probably the poorest place in America) collapsed before Boyle could get there. Since up to 85 percent of scrip can remain unused this outcome is hardly surprising. People actually do like to help each other. Formal something-for-something schemes can get in the way and are a waste of time so far as voluntary work goes. Meanwhile in Washington the alternative money scheme is being phased in to replace simple food handouts so that, as the “liberal” twerp running it said, the poor folk can make friends. The comment of one slum dweller “I don’t need no friends—just gimme the free food” just about sums it up.

What is worse is that such measures help to do the capitalist class’s dirty work. In Washington “Time Dollars” mean that old people can live at home rather than having to be lodged in old folks’ homes “at far greater expense to the public purse”. Similarly in Minneapolis it is hoped that “people will flood off welfare” to earn “Commonweal Service Dollars” (Jesus!). In other words, Boyle’s “revolutionary” schemes help lower taxes—a great boon to the capitalist class. And this of course is a good clue to why most of the “alternative currency” organisations in the US are backed by grants from the government.

Marx of course has to enter the arena at some point. Boyle thinks “the old monster” unworthy of consideration but one of his comrades holds that local currencies must be communist as they operate on the basis of “from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs”.

Boyle also finds time to sling mud at Morris. He wonders what a “medievalist” like Morris would think of credit cards, “invented” in Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Only the wilfully ignorant could read News from Nowhere and not know that it was a direct response to Bellamy’s statist nightmare.

Boyle also pours scorn at those who spend their Saturday mornings in “dull committee meetings trying to change the world” and says they would be better off joy-riding. Presumably he spends his Saturday mornings in dull LETS meetings trying to piss in the wind. Perhaps if he spent his Saturday mornings reading some decent stuff he might get his economics sorted out.

Boyle is clearly one of those blokes aware that “something is amiss in the state of Denmark” and who wishes to do something about it. His solution is local currency based on “something spiritual” inside us. But the real problem is the capitalist mode of production of which money (as wages) is an essential component. According to Boyle money is “too useful” to be abolished. So useful to the people of Camden, New Jersey and all the rat-holes of the earth. But people of Camden, New Jersey, just like the people of Camden, London and Camden anywhere else come to that, need currency, DIY or otherwise, like they need a boil on the bum.

Keith Scholey

Religious fanaticism kills in Uganda (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

The tragedy that befell Uganda in the month of March this year is worth analysing and talking about. This was in South Western Uganda in the village of Kanungu. Over 500 religious believers, belonging to a sect (cult) called The Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, set themselves ablaze and all perished in the inferno. Worse still, as police continue to search, mass graves of believers of the same cult were found in different places in the homes of the followers’ leaders and elsewhere.

The impact of religion on people especially in Africa is that of doom. The principles of religion are all similar and only differ on the surface. First, there is a belief in supernatural power. Second, there are prayers and rituals. And third, there is a belief in life after death.

The belief in supernatural powers, a god and a spirit world arose out of people’s lack of understanding of the universe and their own particular limited environment. This was coupled with their own curiosity, desires and needs. Humans have been the creator and inventor of God in their own image. In fact, it’s not a case of God creating Man but of Man creating God. God and all gods exist in people’s minds only.

The Kanungu incident is a case of religious fanatics whose leaders had predicted the end of the world come December 31 1999; they believed that there was not to be a year 2000 with the old generation but a new generation with they, believers of this cult, going to heaven. So they made their heaven.

Their mass graves at Kangunu, like any other graves, are an indication that there is no life after death. There is only death after life. Their testimony was based on biblical extracts. However, as usual, false testimony always testifies against itself. It is an easy thing to tell a lie but it’s difficult to support a lie after it has been told.

By extracting verses from the bible and relying on them in addition to trying to put them into practice, some religious groups have gone as far as destroying fruit trees, having free sex and not accepting family planning methods, refusing medical treatment, and selling their possessions.

Christians marching ‘the way of the cross’ in Uganda

The bible, which claims to be a holy creation and the foundation for christianity and several other religions, was of course a human creation and there is still a minority today who would accept it word for word. Yet it is inconsistent and self-contradicting. In fact it would stand no favour had it to face a court of law. It’s a book of lies. Today numbers of “educated” and “artistic” people are employed to blend truth and lies in whatever proportion they calculate is most effective in misleading the public. The big lie being that people should be contented with the life which the market system imposes on us while waiting for “a paradise life” after this life.

From childhood people are mentally conditioned into religious beliefs, superstitions and the like. And as people sense a lack of control in an increasingly complex and alienating world, they are more susceptible to beliefs in the supernatural whether religion, magic, dreams, creatures from other planets or whatever. People who have religious beliefs replace faith for reason and logic.

We live in a harsh, competitive society where everyone’s hand is turned against everyone else. Yet human beings need social contact and companionship. The harsher the reality the more fantastic the solace offered by religion. It is no accident that early christianity spread amongst the slaves of the Roman empire, nor that in Africa and Asia where poverty is so harsh, we have the devout religious zealots.

The religious view sees workers as incapable of solving the problems that confront them. The consolation they offer is one beyond the grave. They believe that human beings should adapt a slavish attitude, be humble, be grateful and not attempt to abolish the ills that afflict them.

We socialists see humans as an animal species that has succeeded in adapting the natural world to meet its needs. We view with wonder and astonishment its magnificent accomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, agriculture and advanced technology. We place our faith not in gods and supernatural forces, but in the intelligence and knowledge of the working class.

The transformation of society will not be brought about by the action of gods, but by real men and women determined to end capitalism and establish socialism.

Weijagye Justus 

(Uganda)

World View: New times for Syria? (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rarely are constitutions changed so quickly. On 10 June, the corpse of President Hafez al-Assad had hardly cooled when the powers that be in Syria changed the age at which ministers are allowed to hold office from 40 to 34, thus enabling his son Bashar to be named as perhaps the sole presidential candidate in a referendum to be held within 90 days.

As is the norm when a president dies, the condolences and tributes flow in. Whilst Israel newspaper Yedioth Abronoth could announce they were “not too sorry over Assad’s death . . . we are happy”, the Western line was that he had been “a great statesman”, and whilst Hafez al-Assad was remembered as “the Lion of Damascus”, the obstinate stance he maintained in the Middle East peace process and the missed opportunities he notched up over thirty years of autocratic rule were enough to earn himself the title “the Donkey of Damascus”.

All things considered, Hassad was no first-rate statesman. Never democratically elected, he came to power during a bloodless coup d’état in 1970, was the leader of a quasi-military dictatorship, with a corrupt Ba’athist political faction—religiously an Alawite minority elite who dominated all aspects of Syrian society—whilst overseeing a parlous command economy and a country noted for internal repression and scant civil rights.

In the perennial game of Middle Eastern politics, Hassad upset as many Arab states as he won friends, whilst siding with both superpowers as needs dictated. As well as Israel, neighbouring Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Turkey came to view Hassad’s Syria as a thorn in the side of Middle Eastern peace. His implacable position on the US brokered round of talks resulted in constant hold-ups with the present round of discussions having been on the back burner since January, with Syria demanding land at the foot of Golan and access to Lake Galilee. Whilst Israel might have contemplated such a move, it was widely viewed in Israel to be part of a wider Syrian game plan to get Israel to withdraw beyond the 1967 borders, and in this respect Israel could no more sell the idea of a Golan withdrawal to its people than Hassad could coerce the Alawite elite into accepting they had no hopes of retrieving this strategic gem.

What path Bashar heads down remains to be seen. Up until now he has held no official party post, though he has been delegated policy briefs such as Lebanon and the rooting out of high-ranking corruption. Whilst he can generally depend upon the support of the military, it is probable his anti-corruption drive against those in power—the chief culprits being those loyal to his father—will make him enemies. Studying ophthalmology in Britain before he was called back to Syria to begin his grooming for leadership, he is said to be “modest, considerate and intelligent”, keen on new technology and with ideas on reform and political change, such as more representative forms of government, that will undoubtedly sicken Syria’s old guard—an elite made up of the security services, the army and the Ba’athist party hierarchy.

And it remains to be seen just how much of his father’s baggage Bashar will inherit. Hafez was after all a staunch anti-zionist, still maintaining 35,000 troops in Lebanon—in which he held sway over the guerrilla movement Hizbullah—after the Israeli withdrawal, reluctant to concede Israel an inch, cautious about investing in new civil and military technology or to reform the country’s clannish hierarchy.

Bashar, though, comes with the full backing of British Foreign Minister Peter Hain—which perhaps amounts to little, bearing in mind Britain’s track record on giving its support to bloodstained dictators for 30 years—and with hopes in Washington that he can make some headway in the Middle East peace process and in time for the US Presidential elections in which the Clinton clique will be aiming to present some foreign policy success to US voters.

Waiting in the wings—though at a distance—is uncle Rifaat, younger brother to Hafez and the former vice-president; the same disgraced vice-president who once ordered the bombardment of the town of Hama (a Sunni Muslim Brotherhood haven) killing 40,000 inhabitants and who attempted a coup d’état when Hafez was ill in 1983. Presently in exile in France with an entourage of 30 bodyguards and threatened with arrest the moment he enters Syria with presidential ambitions, Rifaat has a fortune of $2—$4 billion, looks after 100 companies, controls two newspapers and is therefore more than capable of buying many strategically placed allies. Rifaat maintains that Bashar’s ascension to the throne of Syrian power will be “illegal” and many anticipate he will mount some challenge.

Safeguarding interests

The chances are, however, that Bashar will be the sole presidential candidate, if for no other reason than his father’s Alawite cronies will close ranks to ease his political ascendancy and safeguard their own interests. And whilst some equate his reformist ambitions with an Israeli/Syrian peace, it does seem unlikely that in the foreseeable future he will advocate the concessions that Middle Eastern peace is claimed to necessitate. If politics is difficult to predict in the West, then it is nigh on impossible to make any forecast as to how events will unfold in this part of the world, where the number of competing factions is only matched by the number of religions, where there are numerous strategic and mineral interests to be fought over and in which the West continue to manoeuvre their pawns as if playing on a gigantic chess board.

No leaders

Of course, as socialists, we side with no leaders or any Middle Eastern faction, taking no sides in their wars over territory; for we have the insight to see where disagreements over resources, such as oil and water, and artificial borders lead and in whose interests such conflicts are waged. Our thoughts lie with the exploited majority of the Middle East—the common folk—who continue to pay the price of power politics, and eagerly await the day when they have the chance, along with their counterparts the world over, to at last vote for themselves and, more, in their own interests, a world devoid of Assads, Saddams and Ayaltollahs and the misery their games bring.

John Bissett

World View: Bombs and poverty on an American island (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vieques is in the news. The United States, it seems, just can’t stop bombing it. It’s the best place in the world (maybe the Universe?) for bombing, says the chief of US naval operations, Admiral Jay Johnson. “Vieques is an irreplaceable asset,” he claims.

Vieques, which is a 20-mile-long island eight miles east of Puerto Rico, is administratively part of Puerto Rico, and its inhabitants, like the Puerto Ricans, are American citizens although they cannot vote in Presidential elections. In 1941, the US navy appropriated more than two-thirds of the island’s 52 square miles, forcing the 9,300 local population to live on a small central strip between the naval bases at the east and west of the island. For almost 60 years, the navy has used Vieques for bomb and bombardment exercises for up to 200 days a year. Up to 12 months ago, only one local civilian had been killed by a missile; and operations were then suspended as protesters occupied beaches on the firing ranges littered with unexploded munitions. Since then, more protesters moved on to other sealed-off bomb sites and beaches, and dared the US authorities to bomb them or arrest them. On Thursday, 4 May, about 160 protesters were removed from the beaches, but were not arrested.

According to the Guardian (5 May),

“The islanders blame the navy for a cancer rate that is 27 percent higher than on the Puerto Rican mainland, stunted economic development, damage to the environment and to fishing grounds which, other than tourism and service industries, provide the local employment opportunities.”

The unemployment rate is 50 percent.

President Clinton has suggested a compromise by which the navy would drop dummy bombs until 2003, and then leave Vieques, in return for US investment of $40 million in the local economy. However, a referendum which many of the islanders consider to be a bribe, has been mooted whereby $50 million of Federal money would be added if the islanders support a return to live bombing.

The United States took possession of Puerto Rico and Vieques in 1898. According to Josué de Castro (Geography of Hunger), “it found a population which, if not exactly swimming in wealth and abundance, was far from the misery and hunger that it suffers in our times” (1952). Until the United States’s occupation, 75 percent of the arable land comprised smallholdings of about 12 acres, devoted mainly to subsistence crops. Following the occupation, the United States Military Census Commission noted that “this general ownership of farms has unquestionably had a great influence in producing the contented condition of the people”. The main industry, sugar, flourished. But, as de Castro points out: “Profound changes were soon brought about” in Puerto Rico.

The small growers were driven out, and were replaced by great, American-owned plantations; and “through the agency of United States’s capital, the sugar industry fell under monopolistic control of a small but powerful group of absentee owners”. American corporations also developed tobacco and coffee production—all for export to the American mainland. The Puerto Ricans were no longer able to feed themselves. And the island had to import 60 percent of its food, all of which was expensive, from the United States. Not surprisingly, for decades during the last century, undernourishment was prevalent and living conditions deteriorated. By 1950, the population of Puerto Rico had doubled (people suffering from malnutrition and dietary deficiencies always have high birth-rates). Of course the Americans built roads—and even luxury hotels and the like. Denis Healey MP, recalled that when he was Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1977, “President Ford invited us all to Puerto Rico . . . we met in a millionaires’ holiday camp on a palm fringed beach, and stayed in luxurious bungalows, travelling from one to another in electric buggies” (The Time of My Life).

Meanwhile, between 1945 and 1965, one-third of Puerto Rico’s population emigrated to mainland United States; and by 1980, two million Puerto Rican workers lived in America, with around three million remaining on the island, where at least conditions had improved somewhat.

In the early part of the last century, the reformist American Socialist Party, both among Puerto Ricans in New York, where most Puerto Rican immigrants lived and on the island itself, had considerable influence. It popularised trade unionism and, in a somewhat general form, class-struggle politics. In the 1930s, with the decline of the Socialist Party, the political scene came to be dominated by nationalist and Labor parties, together with the leftist People’s Democratic Party, in both the mainland and on the island. Puerto Rican nationalists supported an uprising on the island in 1950, when an attempt on President Truman’s life was made by members of the Nationalist Party. In the late 1960s, radical groups similar to the Black Panthers emerged; and, later, a Maoist party, the Organisation of Puerto Rican Revolutionary Workers, was formed in Chicago and New York. On the island, another reformist and pro-nationalist Puerto Rican Socialist Party (PSP) was founded in 1971, which had a strong base in the trade union movement. Unfortunately, however, no party as yet has been formed by Puerto Rican workers with the sole object of establishing socialism and rejecting nationalist and reformist programmes.

They have embraced the cul-de-sac of nationalism, to a large extent, because of the repressive and exploitative actions of both American-based corporations and the American state. The use of Vieques Island as a base by the CIA in the 1960s to infiltrate Cuba, and the more recent use of the island for bomb practice, has only exacerbated the situation. As a postscript, it is worth noting that the US navy “often lends Vieques to its allies, including Britain, for bombing exercises” (Guardian, 3 May). How thoughtful!

The US navy resumed bombing on Vieques on 8 May, using non-explosive ordnance. By the middle of May, 225 protesters had been removed from the site.

Peter E. Newell

Letters: What’s utopian? (2000)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s utopian?

Dear Editors,

Your Party’s ideals are well meaning but quite unattainable in a world of big bucks, and human instinct of greed. Without money who would control how much material any one person or family needs? It’s as open to corruption as is capitalism. At least money gives spending power on choice, and freedom of such.

The utopian concept we need is redistribution of money via taxes and work availability at living wages. This can be achieved by the tax system being fairer, and an international convention on closure of offshore havens. And if everyone paid going-rate taxes, and “harmony” was practised with a fair progression system, how long do you think the Third World would take to be first (e.g. investment in African pipelines/canals)?

With money, everyone is a capitalist, like it or not e.g. the price of food and material contains an element of recovery of outlay, capital matters like land, property, stock, equipment. What doesn’t use them for production? In your system half the world’s luxuries would never be made.

A fairer world only comes from tax reality, consensus democracy agreement, and racial unity, allied to environmental facts about survival and either main party (or Jesus!) could deliver it. Or “3rd forces” in merger.

Tim Collier, 

Kettering, Northants

Reply: 

In a world dominated by big bucks, promoting real socialism certainly isn’t a doddle, but nor is it “unattainable”. All that influential money may have the world’s population in its grasp, but that grip is crushing and restrictive for billions of people—a potential revolutionary majority in fact. And greed comes not from “instinct”, but is a necessity for “succeeding” under today’s system. It is behaviour that occurs only because capitalism itself has greed at it roots. Because there is exclusive ownership of productive assets, resulting in excluded access to goods and services unless able to pay, rapacity, selfishness and envy permeate society, and become the norm.

By replacing minority asset ownership with collective possession by us all, artificial shortages of products then end, and “greedy” behaviour is no longer necessary. As for who then gets to “control” the freely available products, it is the individuals and families themselves, according to their own determined needs. Taking more than is required would simply not occur to people to do when all their work and organised living is then conducted in a co-operative moneyless environment, geared purely to fulfilling human needs. The “corruption” you envisage would be pointless. You can’t wheel a trolley-load of food out of a store today without paying since it is capitalist-owned, but when it’s collectively owned in the socialist future, the notion of grasping as many goods as you can carry before others beat you to it, and rushing them home, will be as senseless and laughable as it is criminal and punishable today.

Presently, money may bring limited choice and freedom to choose (for some of the world’s population), but socialism would not prohibit access to alternative products, and “luxuries”, if that’s what the new owners (all of us) want—a choice and a freedom which would then, however, extend to everyone.

As for money, taxes and waged employment, these are merely capitalist features intended to facilitate and maintain that system, not provide a “utopian” world for the many. So it is futile to expect and pursue monetary “redistribution”, “fair” levies and “living wages”. However, if it’s a “fairer world”, serious attention paid to “environmental facts” and global “democratic agreement” that you want, then it is real socialism that will deliver—not capitalism (or Jesus)—Editors.

Miserable old men?

Dear Editors,

I write as a supporter of the Socialist Party and as a friend, but I’m writing to say that I’m increasingly frustrated by the tone of the Socialist Standard. This is the shop window for the party and for your views and yet it comes across as the rantings of a group of elderly, cynical, miserable old men who are against . . . well . . . everything.

Of course, it’s easy to be against capitalism and very few of your readers would disagree with you there but you go much further and criticise the activities of everybody else who might be trying to do something about it. This wouldn’t be so bad except that you don’t really offer any constructive alternative—except the rather glib mantra of “it’ll be different under socialism, everything will be free and you can have as much of it as you want”.

Of course, it’s easy to be against capitalism and very few of your readers would disagree with you there but you go much further and criticise the activities of everybody else who might be trying to do something about it. This wouldn’t be so bad except that you don’t really offer any constructive alternative—except the rather glib mantra of “it’ll be different under socialism, everything will be free and you can have as much of it as you want”.

Also, there’s no discussion—debate about how socialism would work after a critical mass has been developed and the revolution successfully achieved—what are your policies on education? Do you, for example, support the continued mass incarceration of our children, or do you support some variant of the home schooling movement? Health—how do you assign priorities in the development of expensive life-support machinery against other health programmes and the other needs of society? Transport—are you in favour of an integrated transport policy and how might this work? And even the economy—where you would expect a socialist party to be strong—you have nothing really concrete to offer in debate—how, for example, would distribution be achieved, priorities assigned across a range of product needs and local demands, how would exchange be recorded and controlled to prevent abuse.

Let’s hear some positive ideas from you—let’s discuss them—let’s develop them into a programme that we can offer the electorate.

I won’t begin to talk about your marketing which doesn’t really exist—not even any car stickers or leaflets to hand out on a Saturday morning. How are people expected to know you even exist? Come on, wake up, you’ve had 100 years to think about these things. I realise you don’t have any money but even a little can be used to at least improve brand recognition.

P.S. I’d also like to see some photographs/pen pictures of the Socialist Standard journalists. Whilst none of us believes in the cult of personality, it helps if you can identify with the people concerned.

Andrew Stephenson, 

Newhaven, East Sussex

Reply: 

You seem to have misunderstood what we see the role of a socialist party as being. We don’t think a socialist party should seek passive support from people on the basis of what it would do for them if they voted for it. In fact you would seem to be more committed to the so-called “parliamentary road to socialism”—a majority of socialist MPs voting in socialism for a passive majority outside—than we would be. This is not how we see socialism coming about. Socialism is something people must do for themselves, organising themselves consciously and politically to establish it and actively participating in the movement. They alone can establish socialism using parliament with the socialist party merely an instrument to this end.

This is why we limit ourselves today to carrying out general agitation against capitalism and for socialism. We fully accept, however, that when the “critical mass” of socialists has been reached, people will be discussing all the issues you raise and working out detailed plans about how to tackle them once capitalism has been ended. But even then it won’t be a question of the socialist party presenting them with a programme for them to vote for, but of them democratically deciding for themselves, via the socialist party and other bodies such as trade unions, professional associations and neighbourhood committees, what the practicalities of establishing and running socialism in its first days should be.

Of course the relatively few of us who are socialists today do have our ideas on how education, transport, health services, etc might, and even should be, organised in a socialist society, but this is all they can be at the moment: ideas and suggestions. This is because the exact details will have to be decided by the people around at the time, most of whom are not yet socialists and who might, and probably will, have different ideas from us on the details of some of these issues.

We have, in fact, produced a pamphlet called Socialism As A Practical Alternative which does spell out some of the possibilities of socialism, particularly as regards possible institutions of democratic control and ways of organising the production and distribution (we prefer this word to “exchange” which has connotations of buying selling) of goods is a moneyless context. You should read it. We’ll be pleased to send you a copy for 80p (post paid).

As to leaflets, we’re sending you a selection. Please let us know which, and how many, you’d like. We’re also sending some stickers for your car.

The Socialist Standard is not written by professional journalists but by ordinary people like yourself who have a day job too. If we don’t publish our photos this is because the Socialist Party does indeed not believe in leaders or the cult of personality, but also because they are not just expressing personal views but are writing on behalf of the membership as a whole. But if we did you might be surprised to discover how many of us are not half as old as you have assumed.-Editors.

Greasy Pole: Two brains? (2000)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

When a prime minister takes over after winning an election victory, what are the jobs awaiting attention? There is the triumphant waving to the crowd, there is the speech saying how humbly proud they are to be given this sacred trust which they will keep by running a government of all the people. There are the ministerial jobs to be dished out, to award faithful acolytes on the one hand and to pay off old scores on the other. Then, very soon, there is the business of planning the next election. Because that must never be far from their mind. Alastair Campbell, the spin doctor supremo of this government, recently told the magazine Vanity Fair that every morning he and Tony Blair get up thinking “Right, how can we lose the election”. That may not be exactly true but it does illustrate the fact that any government must be persistently pre-occupied with pulling off at the next election the same kind of confidence trick which succeeded before.

As the election gets nearer the matter takes on a greater urgency. We are subjected to a kind of electoral auction, in which Tories and Labour make bids to buy off votes with extravagant promises to solve economic and social problems, as if it was all suddenly blindingly obvious and simple.

Criminals and Immigrants

An ever-popular subject of the electoral auction is crime, with each party bidding to outdo the other with schemes which are presented as the final, all-consuming remedy. No more drug addicts mugging old ladies for their pension. No more burglaries while we sleep in our beds at the dead of night. No more stolen cars. The inhabitants of inner city slums, of high rise housing estates, will learn to live with their misery without taking it all out in offending. The last Tory Home Secretary, Michael Howard, was a past master at thinking up such schemes and his Labour successor has carried on where he left off and beyond.

Since the Fifties immigration has been another item at the auction. From the first Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1962 both parties have rolled out laws to cut immigration which have had the effect of pandering to, or stimulating, some of the ugliest of racist prejudice. In the Nineties the immigrants have become asylum seekers, who are often characterised as “bogus” or “economic”. Ace auctioneer Jack Straw has been most active here, restricting the income of the asylum seekers and forcibly dispersing them around the country, often to places where they have no family or friends. Straw’s Tory rival, Ann Widdecombe, has tried to outbid him with her call to slap all asylum seekers into detention centres—a sort of “lock up first and ask questions afterwards” policy.

Pensioners

At one time it seemed that this government had written pensioners off as a significant source of votes so it didn’t really matter if they upset them, for example by upping the basic pension by the staggering sum of 75p a week. There had to be a re-assessment when it became clear that this miserly rise had provoked a lot of anger and then when the Tories saw that there were votes in the issue. Pensions, like most state benefits, are not simple. A pension starts at a basic sum which can be increased or reduced according to the pensioner’s circumstances. In addition there is an extra £10 a week at Christmas, which would not even buy a bottle of whisky and each winter £150 to pay for extra fuel. Anyone over 75 gets their TV free of a licence fee. Taking everything into account, it needs a mathematically alert brain and a calculator to work out exactly how much a pensioner should get.

The Tories put the matter into the auction with William Hague’s bid to raise the basic pension by between £5 and £10 a week—at once, if the Tories win the next election, which could mean next April. This may have sounded pretty tempting to anyone eking out a spartan existence on their pension but when Labour ministers had got their breath back they were able to show that Hague was not really offering a rise because his offer was intended to replace the £10 Christmas pay-out, the fuel payment, the free TV licence and a few other things. The Tory scheme was based on the argument that pensioners don’t like being forced to accept a bonus for Christmas, for winter fuel and so on and would prefer a straightforward increase to spend how they like. Anyone who thinks that people who struggle to get by on a state pension are able to spend their money how they like—blow it all on a luxury cruise instead of on food, perhaps—is seriously out of touch with reality.

How Many Brains Have You Got?

The person responsible for the Tory bid was not William Hague but his social security spokesman David Willetts, who is known as “Two Brains” Willetts because he is so much cleverer than normal people.

He went to Oxford, where they know when they are in the presence of a great mind so they gave him a first class degree. After Oxford he became one of John Major’s earliest gurus, which would mean a lot more were it not that Major was famous for making disastrous choices in the people he promoted. In the 1992 election Willetts was elected as MP for the safe Tory seat of Havant. His progress in penetrating into the world of the brash and brilliant was illustrated when he became a regular at Peregrine Worsthorne’s lunches at the Sunday Telegraph, where they may well have discussed clever ideas like raising pensions with one hand and lowering them with the other. Willetts was welcome at these exercises in pretentious futility until his overbearing conceit got on everyone’s nerves—which, since none of those present were short of self-esteem, is saying quite a lot. The crunch came when he put his feet on the lunch table and began lecturing Michael Howard on how to run his ministry—something which Howard, who was hated by his civil servants and a few million other people, did not need. “No further invitations,” recorded Worsthorne, “were forthcoming for Mr. Willetts.”

Dissembling

It took Willetts rather longer to reach serious fame when, as a junior Tory whip, he earned the severe displeasure of the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee. This committee, as its name implies, is supposed to watch over the standards of conduct of those people quaintly called Honourable Members, which means that anyone who deals with them is supposed to tell the truth. In October 1994 the committee were expecting to get a complaint about the conduct of Neil “Cash for Questions” Hamilton. It was an embarrassing episode for the government. It is at such times that whips, especially if they got a first at Oxford, come into their own. Putting both his brains to work at the same time, Willetts came up with a brilliant idea designed to obstruct the work of the committee and so get the government off the hook.

In a note to the Tory Chief Whip, he suggested that the committee should either set aside the complaint against Hamilton until the MP’s libel action against the Guardian had been settled—by which time much of the embarrassment should have subsided—or investigate the complaint as quickly as possible “…exploiting the good Tory majority at present”. Referring to the Tory chairman of the committee, Willetts wrote “He wants our advice”—in other words the chairman wanted to be told the best way of stopping the committee doing the job it had been set up to do.

Unluckily for Willetts the note was leaked and he was hauled up before the committee to explain himself, when he was stupid enough, instead of making a clean breast of the matter, to try to get away with the feeble excuse that his phrase “he wants our advice” really meant “he is in want of advice”. With the media hot on the trail, this attempt to wriggle out of the problem had no chance of succeeding. The chairman sensibly wanted none of it; he described Willetts version of the affair as “astonishing”. Left hanging in the wind, Willetts had to absorb the committee’s censure: “. . . very concerned . . . dissemble on his account . . . substantially aggravate the original offence”.

Comeback

For anyone with fewer brains—or with less arrogance—that might have been a crushing blow. But not so for Willetts, who came bouncing back and is now shadow spokesman for social security—which cannot be reassuring for anyone who depends on state benefits for their survival. But that is the reality of life under capitalism, for the millions of people who do all the useful work in society and whose lot is to be exploited in the interests of sustaining the system responsible for it all—and to be patronised by arrogant, conceited cynics into what might be called the bargain.

Ivan

Marx Museum (2000)

From the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you are touring the Moselle Valley in Germany this summer, a visit to Trier to see the Marx Museum there is well worth the detour. The Museum is situated at 10 Brückenstrasse in the centre of the city in the house were Marx was born in 1818. Because the so-called Communists never had anything to do with it, the exhibits in the museum give an honest as well as an interesting and informative picture of Marx’s life and times and of the development of his ideas.

Non-market socialism (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘The Market: Ethics, Knowledge and Politics’, by John O’Neill. (Routledge)

John O’Neill takes on all the arguments put forward by defenders of the market, not just extreme free-marketers such as Von Mises and Hayek but also by mainstream economics textbook writers (free consumer choice, efficient allocation of resources, rational economic calculation, etc) and demolishes them one by one. He argues for a “non-market economic order” in which goods will be produced directly for use and not for sale on a market and calculation concerning production done exclusively in kind. He also argues in favour of the abolition of the state and its replacement by an “association of associations”, i.e. by a co-ordinated network of neighbourhood councils and producer-controlled production units.

Unfortunately, the book is not an easy read as it is put together from articles previously published in academic journals and because O’Neill frequently employs the specialist terminology of “moral philosophy”, of which he is a professor. It is, however, an important addition to the growing library of books arguing the case for an (entirely) non-market socialism.

Adam Buick

Obituary: Trudy Mertons (2000)

Obituary from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Trudy Mertons who died in April at the age of 95, joined the Socialist Party in 1932. Her father, Tom King, was a founder member of the SPGB but Trudy joined in her own right.

She will not be well known to the younger members of the Party, but she was part of the loyal comrades, who kept the Manchester Branch alive during the Second World War. After the war when the Party was able to engage in wider political activities she was involved in the administration of Manchester Branch and was very supportive at party meetings, along with her husband, Arthur Mertons, who was a well-known speaker in the area. Across the years they both gave hospitality to numerous members whose party work took them to the Manchester area.

During her long illness she was still able to uphold her socialist principles and never forgot the Party.

Margaret Hopwood

A not very secret service (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

'MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations', by Stephen Dorril. (Fourth Estate, London 2000. 907 pages)

Even before this book had been put on sale in bookshops, review copies had given rise to considerable controversy. Towards the end of MI6 (p.722), Dorril asserts:

"Another MI6 catch was ANC leader Nelson Mandela. Whether Mandela was recruited in London before he was imprisoned in South Africa is not clear, but it is understood that on a recent trip to London he made a secret visit to MI6's training section to thank the Service for its help in foiling two assassination attempts directed against him soon after he became President."

No source is, however, given for the statement. According to the Guardian (23 March), Mandela "reacted angrily to a claim" that he had been recruited as a British "agent of influence"; and he added that "he had never visited the headquarters of any intelligence service". Christopher Andrew in his review of Dorril's book (Times, 30 March) also dismisses the claim that MI6 recruited Mandela. In a letter to the Guardian (24 March), Stephen Dorril's weak reply was "there is nothing implausible in the idea that someone such as Nelson Mandela might have been recruited", as he states in his book with regard to a number of African nationalist leaders.

There is, however, little in MI6 on Africa. As the author says in his Preface, "the prime focus is the European continent, and some areas of the Service's operations and intelligence-gathering, principally in South-East Asia and Africa, are not dealt with in any great detail". The author does detail areas of the Middle-East, as MI6 had the dubious task of subverting, and overthrowing governments and organisations who nationalised or threatened British-owned oil fields and supply routes. Furthermore, although the book describes "fifty years of special operations" by MI6, it largely concentrates on the period between the end of the Second World War, and about 1970, when technological surveillance began to take over from HUMIT (human spies).

Within a very short time following the Second World War, the "allies" fell out, the Soviet Union began to consolidate its control over eastern Europe, and the "Cold War" began. MI6 was more than ready to carry out orders to combat and "roll back" what was erroneously called "communism" in the area. It was soon sending spies and saboteurs into Poland, and particularly western Ukraine. Almost all of these, as Dorril demonstrates, were Ukrainian nationalists who had collaborated with, or fought for, Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union. Most were captured within days by the KGB. Both Conservative and Labour administrations were involved in such activities.

In Greece MI6, supported by Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, backed the right-wing Monarchists; and MI6, together with the CIA, sent scores of agents and saboteurs into Albania over a number of years. Few of them survived or returned to the West. Dorril recounts in considerable detail the, by now well-known, joint-MI6/CIA campaign to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq, the Iranian Prime Minister who nationalised the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. They were successful, but the United States was playing a double game. Anglo-Iranian which changed its name to British Petroleum (BP), was left with 40 percent, and the American corporations got the rest. Stephen Dorril's book also recounts in detail MI6's assassination attempts against Egypt's President Nasser, following his nationalisation of the Suez Canal in 1956. Such attempts were both sinister and bizarre. Some of MI6's "special operations" were successful; many were not, but all were carried out in the interests, not of democracy but of British capitalism.

With MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations containing almost 900 pages of reading matter, and being divided into seven sections, the reader gets about half-a-dozen books for the price of one. In the main, the book is well-sourced.

Dorril suggests that "given a work of this size", the reader might wish to "dip into a particular area of interest". A good idea. Inevitably, being the size it is, there are errors in MI6. It would be surprising if there were not.

Peter E. Newell