Life and Times: The World Unspun (2026)

The Life and Times column from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since I can remember I’ve had a subscription to the New Internationalist magazine. Its watchword, ‘The World Unspun’, marks it out as a campaigning publication which aims to present matters of both local and global importance in as direct and straightforward a way as possible. Its main focus has always been what used to be called the Third World, now more commonly known as the Global South, but it also ranges more widely across issues it sees as vital to humanity as a whole. Its stance is supportive of what it sees as ‘progressive’ movements reflecting a will to see humans across the globe live in a more peaceful and united fashion than at present.

Even if I don’t always necessarily share its analysis of situations and developments, I’ve never found it anything less than a refreshing read with a lively Letters page that’s ready to publish readers’ views, even if in disagreement with its own stance. Over the years some of these letters have come from members of the Socialist Party, including myself. Its 80-odd pages always range widely over a variety of themes, normally of a topical nature, with a layout, presentation and illustrations which are always of the very highest professional standard.

The current edition (Jan-Feb 2026) has as its ‘Big Story’ a series of articles on nuclear weapons and the arms trade, while several short pieces look at, for example, the effects of Hurricane Melissa in Haiti, Malaysia’s round-ups of Rohingya refugees, plans to reinstate the death penalty in Kyrgyzstan, and Trump’s deportation drive in the US. There are reports from Ethiopia, Venezuela, Iran, Peru and India, and its ‘View from Brazil’ is an example of how, while broadly supportive of the more liberal government that recently came to power there, it does not fail to analyse and be critical of how the authorities’ war on drug gangs has led to the deaths of many innocent and poverty-stricken people. Its longest single feature, entitled ‘Neocolonialism in Gaza’ refers to what is happening there as ‘repackaged neocolonialism’ and provides powerful and dramatic descriptions of a war that has not yet fully abated and where ‘365 square kilometers … has been subjected to the equivalent of six times the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima’ and ‘the bodies of thousands of slain Palestinian are yet to be recovered’. It warns chillingly of a future in which ‘a site of mass killing’ is turned into ‘a stage for profit’.

And there is much else. For example, an informative and extremely well-formulated and designed 4-page ‘cartoon history’ of Christopher Columbus depicts the horrors that the explorer’s ‘discoveries’ inflicted on countless indigenous people. And there are several pages of book, film and music reviews, and even an ‘Agony Uncle’ column, which, in the current issue, tries to answer in an entirely serious and balanced way a reader’s ‘ethical’ dilemma about cat ownership in the face of the mass killing of birds and other mammals by domestic cats. The regular two-page ‘country profile’ in this issue is on Iran and provides a highly informative and objective sweep of that country’s history and its current situation complemented by interesting and statistical analysis, none of which is complimentary to the current regime there. The magazine also contains a certain amount of advertising, mainly for ‘ethically’ produced goods and services, some of them coming from the New Internationalist cooperative itself.

While the overall thrust of the New Internationalist is what socialists would see as reformist in its support for political and social reforms and gradual improvements in economic conditions for the working majority, it does not seem entirely antagonistic towards the more ambitious objectives of the Socialist Party. This is as instanced by its willingness to publish letters our members have sometimes sent pointing towards a more profound, indeed revolutionary, kind of social change, where the current system of individual states and production for profit would be replaced by a united world society of common ownership, democratic control and free access to all goods and services.

Indeed, I am waiting to see whether a letter I myself have recently sent to the magazine will be published. In it I’ve replied to another reader’s letter which expressed dissatisfaction with the suggestion made in an article that governments throughout the world could be divided into two types: ‘authoritarian regimes’ and ‘liberal democracies’. The reader saw that division as over-simplistic and suggested rather that states should be divided not into two types but into seven according to their political complexion. What I have suggested in my response is that, although such distinctions might be useful for some purposes, what’s far more significant – at least for those of us looking forward to fundamental social change – is not what divides countries and nations according to type of regime but rather the overarching economic system they are all part of (ie capitalism), with its characteristics of wage labour, buying and selling, and tiny minorities owning or controlling the vast majority of the wealth. And this was the case, the letter goes on, whether countries are run along totalitarian lines, or as so-called liberal democracies, or anything in between. It concludes that it’s the economic system as a whole that needs to be got rid of via majority global consciousness and democratic political action and replaced by a society of common ownership, free access to all goods and services and production solely for need.

As I’ve said, the New Internationalist is pretty good at publishing letters that don’t align with their own preoccupations. Will they publish this one? Let’s see.

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the January 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

We may be much more entertained by charity now. But on account of the Band Aid format, we are now arguably less knowledgeable about why some people suffer terribly around the world – and in no better a position to put an end to it. 

(The Conversation)

Today, political scientists and pollsters use ‘the working class’ to describe members of the work force who do not have a college degree. By that definition, the number of working-class Americans has been declining as the country has grown wealthier and more educated. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 38 percent of Americans had at least a bachelor’s degree in 2022, up from just 17 percent in 1980. There’s a major exception to that common definition, however. Marxist scholars use “working class” quite differently—typically encompassing anyone who depends on wages to survive, regardless of their educational experience. 

(Reason)

In fact, the Democratic Party, the party of the slavocracy, of Jim Crow and of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Vietnam War, has never been a party of the working class. It has, and will always be, a capitalist party. Sanders’ political role…is to use his nominally ‘independent’ designation to provide the Democratic Party with a veneer of credibility in order to contain opposition to the whole capitalist system. 

(WSWS)

What happened during the pandemic especially, was a good tutorial about how to do things. First of all, what pandemic showed us was the Hollywood utopian, you know, imagination of the future of humanity is absolutely bullshit, because when crises happen, people tend to help each other and be in solidarity, and they become even more, even loving, you know, towards each other. So we have to imagine politics as a, you know, natural disaster or like a disaster, like a pandemic, and we have to act like that.

(New Internationalist)

Bregman believes we should be more positive about human potential. ‘We’re at a point in our history where we have such amazing opportunities to make the world a wildly better place’, he says. ‘Our best days are in the future’. 

(Prospect)

A ‘very rare’ 77-year-old slice of the cake served at Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip’s wedding sold for £2,200 ($2,800) this week, according to auction house Reeman Dansie. The cake, which no longer looks edible, survived for almost eight decades since the wedding day on November 20, 1947.

(CNN)

Yunus’ claims to be overseeing a transition to ‘true democracy’, aimed at realising ‘social justice’ after the increasingly authoritarian rule of Hasina, are belied by the brutal attacks on garment workers

(WSWS)

‘The Turkish police catch 100 to 150 migrants every night. They have no mercy on them. They break their arms and legs. 

(BBC)

I’m all for supporting a new and viable political group but let’s look at what we already have before trying to reinvent the wheel.

(Guardian)

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

Carbon trading or social change? (2006)

From the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

July brought two publications coincidentally including articles on the same subject. Couched in terms so, so soothing to the save-the-planet-sympathisers, Roughnews advises us that “we all need to limit our personal impact on global warming” and whilst supporting responsible tourism we should give thought to “how we can redress the environmental damage caused by travel – in particular flights, the fastest growing contributor to global warming”. Great! Excellent idea! This has to be good news. We can continue to fly, as often, as far as we choose and can also redress the environmental damage. And the solution? Offset your use of carbon taken from the ground by enabling a tree to be planted somewhere in the world – and on a short haul flight this “costs no more than the price of a drink”.

Rough Guides is also publishing a book in October, called Climate Change which, miracle of miracles, is actually a ‘climate neutral’ book meaning that “the amount of CO2 emitted in the book’s production and distribution, including everything from paper manufacture to the computers used by the author and editor and the estimated carbon footprint of the book’s physical distribution has been calculated” by the carbon offset company Climate Care. To what end? So that Rough Guides (through increased retail price of the book, presumably) will pay Climate Care to ‘offset’ the carbon emissions by planting some trees somewhere, or by installing energy-saving light bulbs somewhere else, or a similar scheme supposed to mop up the carbon released. Apparently Rough Guides offsets all its authors’ travel by paying Climate Care to take care of it. No mention of how Climate Care benefits from the arrangement. It seems one can ‘offset’ all manner of nasties now, from flying, car rental, to producing CDs, all the while feeling good about ‘putting something back’ and being lulled into believing you have repaired the damage done. (The World Bank estimated the global carbon market to be worth $11 billion at the end of 2005, 10 times the previous year’s value.)

However, the second July publication, New Internationalist, has a different story to tell. It reminds us that by unlocking the carbon in fossil fuels by mining it, burning it and releasing it as active carbon it disrupts the balance of carbon in air, soil and seas. What is needed to address the problem of too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to reduce the amount of carbon released. Oliver Rackham, a Cambridge University botanist and landscape historian is quoted thus, “Telling people to plant trees (to solve climate change) is like telling them to drink more water to keep down rising sea levels.” Adam Ma’anit, the author of the article, gets to grips with reality and shows offsetting for what it is – companies being formed to take advantage of the gullible consumer, established companies jumping on the bandwagon to increase their share of the market and the misinformed punter alleviating their guilt whilst doing nothing to actually cut carbon emissions. Adam Ma’anit: “Climate change is an issue we shouldn’t be ‘neutral’ on. Carbon offsets are at best a distraction and at worst a grandiose carbon laundering scheme.” And, “The solution to climate change is social change.” Any seconders?

Janet Surman

A Diverse World (2021)

From the December 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Big Butterfly Count takes place every year in the UK: volunteers record how many they see in a period of fifteen minutes. The numbers have been going down: an average of nine per count this year, compared to eleven last year and sixteen in 2019. Some species are unable to cope with a warmer climate, and other hazards include habitat loss and the use of pesticides. You may feel that this is a bit of a shame but of no great importance. It is, however, an everyday sign of the global reduction in biodiversity, which has major implications for the future of the planet and of humans.

Elizabeth Kolbert’s book The Sixth Extinction makes the point that there have been five great extinction events, starting with one 450 million years ago and including the wiping-out of dinosaurs in the Cretaceous period. Something along similar lines is already happening, resulting in a possible sixth extinction. A number of species have become extinct in relatively recent times, or rather been made extinct by human actions. For instance, the last examples of the great auk, a large flightless bird, were killed on an island off Iceland in 1844, after a mass slaughter had resulted in them being extirpated from North America by 1800. They were killed for their meat, for use as fish bait, or so that their feathers could be used for stuffing mattresses. The Chinese paddlefish was officially declared extinct at the start of last year, the result of over-fishing and dams blocking the route to its spawning grounds.

So there were five catastrophic events over several hundred million years, with seemingly another in progress right before our eyes. But the current one is very different, happening faster than previous ones and caused primarily by the actions of humans. ‘Almost half of Britain’s natural biodiversity has disappeared over the centuries, with farming and urban spread triggered by the industrial and agricultural revolutions being blamed as major factors for this loss’ (Guardian, 10 October).

Animal and plant life is of course essential to human survival and progress, and diversity is crucial, for a number of reasons. Soils need to be protected, nutrients stored, and in general ecosystems maintained. Species depend on each other: crop by-products feed cattle and cattle waste feeds the soil; bees fertilise plants; large carnivores prey on herbivores and so prevent them from grazing more and undermining the environment.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) maintains a Red List of Threatened Species, using categories such as Vulnerable, Endangered and Critically Endangered. According to their website, ‘Currently, there are more than 138,300 species on The IUCN Red List, with more than 38,500 species threatened with extinction, including 41% of amphibians, 37% of sharks and rays, 34% of conifers, 33% of reef building corals, 26% of mammals and 14% of birds.’

It is estimated that altogether around a million plant and animal species are at best insecure, around half of these being insects. The causes of all this include the loss of natural habitats, over-exploitation such as over-fishing, climate change, pollution, and the spread of invasive disease and other species. Humans rely on a relatively small number of food crops, and billions rely on just three (maize, rice and wheat); global heating may place these in a precarious position, with greater diversity one way to combat this. The loss of animal pollinators will reduce crop outputs. It is not just food, for many medicinal plants are under threat, and billions rely on them for combatting disease. Snowdrops have been used against headaches, and an alkaloid derived from them is used to treat Alzheimer’s. But over-harvesting has led to many snowdrop species, and others, being under threat. Penicillin is one of many medicines derived from natural sources.

Wasps may strike you as a bit of a nuisance, liable to sting you. But in fact they play a major role as pest controllers: they hunt caterpillars, locusts, spiders and flies. More generally, insects pollinate plants, recycle organic material, keep soil healthy, disperse seeds, and are a source of food for many larger creatures. Predators are an essential part of nature, limiting the numbers of animals lower down the food chain. Apex predators, such as wolves, can play an important role in reducing the impact of the animals they prey on, and of those that their own prey consume. Climate change can also have a major impact on biodiversity. Up to sixty percent of coral reefs are dying because of global warming, yet they support thousands of species and provide both food and medicines to humans.

Many efforts are being made to combat species loss, or at least to discuss how to approach it. In September a big biodiversity meeting was held in Marseille, organised by the IUCN and there will be a UN summit on the same topic next year in Kunming, China, following an online get-together this October.

Many countries have established national parks as one means of protecting wildlife and maintaining biodiversity, but these have not always been straightforward in their effects. In Africa, for instance, many national parks led to the eviction of local people, while in Peru the lives of indigenous people have been transformed in negative ways, such as being forced to use Spanish rather than their native languages and being cut off from their traditional sources of food and medicines. In the words of one Peruvian activist, ‘They are oppressed in the name of conservation’.

Many conservation projects have met with some modest success in enabling species to survive, albeit often encountering problems too. Whooping cranes in Canada and the US were down to just twenty-one birds by the mid-1940s, but a captive breeding programme that began in the 1960s has boosted this number to over eight hundred. The Sumatran rhino may have as few as thirty specimens in the wild, and even attempts at captive breeding have proved challenging. In Sicily the Zelkova tree has been subject to much research into how to raise new saplings, but getting them to acclimatise outdoors has so far proved difficult.

What are the implications of all this? The loss of species is not itself a bad thing, as it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years. But the current rate is, to say the least, very concerning. For the fact is that humans and other animals need a diverse planet to live and thrive on, and biodiversity loss is rendering the natural world less supportive of life, less able to feed and cure its population. It is clearly a major problem, of an order of magnitude comparable to global warming, which is itself a contributory factor. There is no simple criterion or goal such as net-zero carbon or being climate-positive, or a target of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees, but the idea of stopping or slowing biodiversity loss is clearly important. We cannot say that a socialist society would be immediately able to solve biodiversity problems, any more than that it would immediately solve climate change. But a society based on meeting human need and working in harmony with the environment is a far better place for tackling these problems than capitalism, which has been the major contributor to them and is concerned with profit rather than the wellbeing of the planet and its inhabitants.

Paul Bennett

Resources: New Internationalist January-February 2021; www.iucn.org.

Political Notes: The Poor and the Rich (1987)

The Political Notes Column from the May 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Poor and the Rich

Dismal news for the purveyors of the grand Tory concept of the share-owning democracy. Since the Trustee Savings Bank was privatised in October 1986. over 700,000 shareholders have sold their stake. The number of shareholders has fallen from 3.15 million to 2.45 million and there has been a sharp rise in the numbers of companies and institutions owning more than 10,000 shares; of these, 95 hold more than 500,000.

Two things are suggested by these figures. One is that a great many people who bought the shares did so in order to sell them again quickly, to bring in an immediate profit. They did this because they are members of the working class who went through with the deal on borrowed money to get a small, immediate gain. The other follows: TSB is substantially in the hands of the capitalist, investing class. Workers who were misled into thinking that sinking a few pounds into privatised concerns changed their class status should think again.

The capitalist class as a class do not invest capital in order to quickly relinquish their ownership. They accumulate capital, they exploit the workers and they live — very comfortably — off the proceeds of that. They do not depend on a wage for their living, jacked up with an occasional windfall like a pools win or cashing in a few shares.

Another piece of news illuminated how this class live, how they disburse some of the proceeds of worker exploitation and what standards of judgement they apply when they do this.

In Geneva a couple of weeks ago there was an auction of the jewellery which had been owned by the late Duchess of Windsor. Some readers will recall that she was married to the man who once declared that something must be done about the plight of unemployed miners in South Wales, although he never made it clear what he had in mind to be done. While he was expressing these newsworthy sentiments he was also filling up his future bride's jewel caskets with some impressive baubles — like a flamingo brooch of rubies, diamonds, emeralds and sapphires and a 31 carat diamond.

The sale was, said the Daily Telegraph, a High Society assault. Prominent among the moneyed storm troopers was Sam Moussaieff, who spent about £6 million. Asked how much he had spent, the amiable but forgetful Moussaieff replied that he thought it was £2 million ". . . but if it's much more that's a problem for my bank manager".

This rich and vulgar member of the ruling class might have some interesting things to say about workers who presume to count themselves among his class when the most they can afford is a brief but apparently heady fling into the TSB. And his bank manager would probably agree.

Making it Simple

There are plenty of people who believe it is a simple matter to pick off social problems, one after another, by projecting resources in their direction.

It certainly sounds simple. Hypothermia in the elderly? Increase pensions with a special Keeping Warm Grant. Penniless single parents? Introduce a new generous state benefit for unmarried mothers and fathers bringing up the kids on their own. Slums? Give massive government hand-outs to pay for the places to be renovated.

This would be more convincing were it not for the fact that these sorts of remedies have been tried before. Pressure groups who do a great job analysing particular aspects of poverty always come to the conclusion that the solution is for the government to spend the problem into oblivion. And of course in many cases the pressure groups made their point, so that the system of state benefits is a tangle of allowances and adjustments each one of which, when it was introduced, was supposed to mean the end of the difficulty.

However, the success or failure of these measures can be judged by the fact there is still seen to be a need for them. Hardly a week goes by without some organisation somewhere publishing a report which couples an analysis of some problem with a demand that extra resources should be allocated to solving it.

Among the most recent of these was the august British Medical Association, whose Board of Science concluded, according to the Guardian of 28 March, that unemployment, poverty and deprivation are all linked to ill- health. Just before that the Health Education Council had reached a similar conclusion.

Those who have been concerned about the effect of capitalism on human well-being will wonder why it needs an investigation, in 1987, to tell us about this. However, it is clear that in these reports there is at least the germ of enlightenment — the beginning of recognition that sickness is not an accident or a matter of individual failing but is influenced by which class a person belongs to. This can be developed and expanded; if sickness is class-related it follows that a lot of illness is preventable — but only by doing something about class society.

And what is involved in that? The only effective action is to abolish classes, to abolish the social system which gives rise to them. This is a radical, revolutionary measure which means fundamental social change to a completely different set of relationships, a completely different way of running the world. Its radical nature is probably the very thing which makes people wary of it; the majority prefer reform to revolution, opting for tinkering with social problems rather than abolishing them.

So we shall still, for a while, have to keep reading these reports. Until people decide to do it the simple, obvious way.

Excessive force

At the beginning of June last year a convoy of self-styled "travellers" attempted to get to Stonehenge with the intention of holding a pop festival. They were prevented from reaching their destination by a massive police operation involving police from a number of different forces and a series of road blocks. It resulted in vehicles belonging to the travellers being damaged and impounded, and 537 of them being arrested. There were many complaints about the violence of the police operation by the travellers themselves and from people who were appalled to see television pictures of police behaving violently to women and children, dragging people out of vehicles and smashing windows with their truncheons.

Nine months later the supposedly independent Police Complaints Authority has published its report in which they concede that some police officers did use excessive force against members of the travellers' convoy. But they conclude:

  In the act of making the arrests some officers clearly used excessive force, but it has not been possible to identify them amongst the 1.363 officers involved and therefore disciplinary proceedings which demand a clear identification of officers are impossible.

The difficulty of identifying police officers responsible for violent incidents is becoming a familiar story. It's strange how the police seem to have very little difficulty in identifying suspects from among crowds of rioters or football spectators or on a picket line? Of course, part of the problem might be that unlike their opponents, the police in the Stonehenge incident entered the fray wearing full riot gear including helmets with face visors which, it would seem, not only protect them from the sticks and stones which, it is always alleged, are thrown at them, but also from later identification when things get nasty.

But to focus on individuals responsible for using "excessive force" is to miss the point. For disciplinary action against a few "over-zealous" policemen would not stop the police from using violence. Because ultimately, despite all the rhetoric about "the rule of law" and "policing by consent", the police operate through the threat or actual use of force. The police are part of the coercive machinery of the capitalist state and as such have a right, given to them by the capitalist class, to use violence. The arguments can, therefore, only really be at the margins — about how much violence is reasonable in a given set of circumstances and what constitutes "excessive force". So long as the Police Complaints Authority are left to decide those questions nothing much is likely to change.

Be Unreasonable

Through the jungles of morality, the search goes on for the Reasonable Person. It is led by Tory MPs who want to bring back capital punishment for killings which a Reasonable Person would consider evil and to wipe out from broadcasting any matter which a Reasonable Person would find distasteful.

Many people might consider every person killed in a war, or who dies from hunger or avoidable disease, to have been subjected to an evil murder. Then again such people might think politicians and media operators who look for advantage in stirring up public hysteria to be extremely offensive and distasteful. But of course that sort of person is clearly unreasonable — not at all what the searchers are looking for.

As every Reasonable Person knows, a Reasonable Person believes that private property society has always existed and must therefore go on for ever. They think human beings are essentially greedy, deceitful and belligerent and can be kept under control only through savage punishment — which means that class society, in which a minority lives like parasites off the labours of the majority — is perfectly natural. They give obeisance to leaders, on the assumption that we are all so stupid that we need royalty, aristocrats and politicians to tell us how to run our lives — who must also tell us, because otherwise we wouldn't know, what is evil and what is virtuous. They are patriotic, with firm suspicions about the eccentric failings of all foreigners, who are fit only to be slaughtered in war. They believe that their bosses employ them as a favour and that they should in return do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.

Unreasonable persons question all of this. They are acutely aware that this social system which relies on the support of Reasonable Persons degrades, exploits, represses and murders millions of people. They know that almost every instance of human suffering in the modern world is not only unnecessary but could be substituted by freedom, security and happiness.

That is why they stand, unreasonably, for the free expression and exchange of ideas they know that in that way the case for a new society is most available for discussion. That is why they are in a movement which has no use for leaders to tell them what to do and what is good or bad for them — which applies especially to a bunch of pompous, dictatorial. self-righteous Tories.

A Look at China

The April issue of New Internationalist concentrated on China and the reforms there over the last ten years. For anyone wishing to learn some basic facts about China, it is well worth reading.

Perhaps the most interesting feature is the inclusion of a number of interviews with Chinese workers. An unemployed teenager rails at the posh hotels in his home town being barred to Chinese. He lives on his wits, selling jeans made in other parts of China at over twice their retail value by passing them off as foreign-made.

One article discusses the position of women. Though no longer confined to the home, they are still mostly subordinate to men, with household chores lumped on top of full-time jobs. Women's financial demands on would-be husbands show that the values of Chinese society are material rather than spiritual (as naive Maoists once claimed): a bicycle, TV, watch, sewing machine, and his own house. Prostitution and polygamy are also in evidence.

Another piece reveals graphically how the idealism of the "barefoot doctor" service has foundered on the realities of the Chinese economy. Not that the original idea, with barely-trained part-time doctors, was anywhere near a decent health service. Now state-run hospitals have increased their fees, and private doctors are becoming more numerous. Those who cannot afford to pay are left to suffer and preventive medicine loses all priority. The major cause of ill-health — poverty — remains, and explains why a majority of children in the countryside still suffer from rickets and worms.

As so often in New Internationalist, the weakest part is the editor's contribution, which contains the following remark:

  in a world where anything from Tito's Yugoslavia to Hawke's Australia. Hoxha's Albania to Wilson's Britain is routinely called "socialist", it is probably not very useful to argue over whether or not China merits the term.

But it is not so much useful as essential to realise that China bears no resemblance to a socialist society, and that the appropriate term for a class society based on wage labour and production for profit can only be capitalism.

Another world is possible (2002)

From the April 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year the New Internationalist asked its readers for “their own vision of a better world”. Under the titles of “Give Us Your Dreams” and “Another World Is Possible” shortened versions of twelve of the replies were published in the January-February issue of the magazine which supports the broad “anti-globalisation/anti-capitalist” movement. Three of these came from members of the World Socialist Movement.

Since the proportion of socialists amongst the “anti-capitalists” is nowhere near 25 percent (if only it were) this can be interpreted as a sign of a lack of vision, or interest in “grand schemes” for a better world, amongst those who are involved in the movement. They have yet to take on board our view that it is not enough just to be “anti”, but that to get anywhere you have to have a clear idea of where you want to go.

Having said this, two of the other replies chosen for publication also envisaged a world without money. One, from Minneapolis in the US, wrote: “I can imagine a global community with no private property beyond immediate possessions, no need for money, no racism or sexism, no enslavement of children, no profit motive to drive the oppression of working people, no battles over personal interpretations of spirituality, and no disrespect for the 'other'“. The other, from Canada, envisaged “a society where the concept of exchange is non-existent” but then went on to propose a system of consumer vouchers which would be issued to everybody in equal amounts and be cancelled on use.

Reformist

Of the other seven, one represented the reformist wing of the movement and proposed a list of “reforms that would be necessary as preliminary measures before more radical programs could be considered”. These included renegotiating trade agreements, a Tobin tax, changing company law, tax incentives to encourage co-operatives, ending nuclear power, etc, etc, etc.

This is the approach of the campaigning charities and non-governmental organisations such as OXFAM, Christian Aid and the others who are the most vocal section of the “anti-globalisation” movement, probably reflecting the views of most of those active in it. Not only does such a reformist approach lead to compromise with capitalism but the reforms proposed are piddling compared with what is needed to end world poverty, protect the biosphere and stop the waste of armaments. That it leads to compromise with capitalism can be seen by the number of activists who have switched sides and gone to work for government bodies and private corporations, believing that you can do more to get piddling mini-reforms from within the system than by pressure group politics from outside. No doubt such individuals are for the most part entirely sincere since they never really did think that there is any practical alternative to the profit-motivated market system. The history of Green Parties everywhere is another illustration of this point, where they have either joined capitalist governments or would if they got the chance.

As to the effectiveness of the reforms proposed, does anyone really think that tax reforms and legislative charges are going to be enough to bring about the massive increase in the production of food and other basic goods and services needed if there are not going to be more people, in absolute numbers, living without basic amenities in 2030 than there are today? Clearly “radical programs” not “preliminary measures” need to be considered right now, today. That makes trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon – or even a tablespoon – a waste of valuable time.

Pathetic

The other replies were, frankly, pathetic, indeed disheartening because they suggest that more people in the anti-globalisation movement entertain these kinds of views than envisage a global change in society, even by reformist means. Three advocated a return to the “simple life”. One looked forward to oil running out forcing people to “return to the land, working side by side with nature, in blissful harmony”. Another urged people to “buy locally and buy certified organic” and to “grow some of your own food” (why not, but as a solution to world problems?). A third wanted a “culture based on cottage industry and gardening”.

But the worst, and most disturbing, came from people expressing religious views. One claimed that “over history our collective subconscious has invented a basic code for humanity to live by, in the form of religion” and that this meant that humans had a “predisposition to co-operation, love, non-violence and selflessness”. This could be seen as harmless mysticism – there is no “collective subconscious”, how could there be, given what we know about biology and inheritance? – but at least this person's heart was in the right place. The same, however, cannot be said of the other two.

One put the more traditional religious view (which explains why these people put our backs up so much) that “no human system, no matter how carefully and idealistically crafted, will create a better world. All in the end are corrupted by self-interest or greed. Eliminating poverty is impossible . . . Only one thing works – the inner change for the better in individuals who have had some kind of illumination from a supernatural entity”. This view was echoed by the other, who wrote that “the ideal world, as it stands in our current understanding of the term, is simply unreachable” and proposed that “the alternative state of global perfection, and an eminently achievable one, consists of not having everything we want, but being totally satisfied with everything we have”.

Clearly, such views are quite incompatible with those of socialists – and not just of socialists but of reformists too. In fact the New Internationalist itself must have been disappointed to have had such replies, presumably more than the two they published. “Eliminating poverty is impossible” and “be totally satisfied with what you have” are what the rich, through the religious ideology that reflected their interests, have always told the poor throughout the ages. We have no choice but to be implacably opposed to such views and to combat them whenever we hear them.

No, eliminating poverty is not impossible and, no, the millions of people who go to bed hungry every night or who lack clean running water or who have no health care or education should not be happy with what they have (not) got. They should be bloody annoyed and upset about it and get together with the rest of us to work for a better world, here and now, down here.

Practical

Not that it is a question anyway of dreaming up a “perfect” or an “ideal” world. What is at issue is establishing a better world, where those problems that people face because of the way society is currently organised can be tackled with some hope of success. The starting point for this is not some idea of a perfect society but the world as it is today. It is rather a question of finding a practical solution to actually existing problems that have arisen at this particular moment in the history of humanity.

Over the past hundred or so years the world has developed the capacity to adequately feed, clothe and shelter every single man, woman and child on the planet. The resources, the technical knowledge and the skilled personnel exist to do this – the information on what to do is lying gathering dust in the archives of the Food and Agriculture Organisation in Rome and the World Health Organisation in Geneva – but it is not done because the world is currently organised on the basis of the minority class ownership of productive resources and the production of wealth with a view to profit.

It is this profit system that stands in the way of satisfying human needs. It only allows production to take place in response to needs that can be paid for and then only if a big enough profit can be made from doing so. It diverts resources into maintaining a whole superstructure of finance and commerce – banks, insurance, accounting, advertising, etc – that is only needed because there is production for the market. And it diverts yet more resources into armed forces and their weapons which every state is compelled to have in view of the competitive struggle for profits – which as a last resort involves war – that is built-in to the system.

Once this artificial scarcity and this built-in waste is eliminated, as it would be in a world where the Earth's resources had ceased to be the private property of states, national and multinational corporations and rich individuals, then these resources could be directed to turning out wealth to meet human needs. It may take some time to completely clear up the mess left by the capitalist profit system, but people dying of hunger could be stopped immediately. So could all problems arising from money worries.

This is the practical solution to the practical problems facing humanity at this particular stage of its historical development. Unless this basic change from class ownership to common ownership, permitting the change from production for profit to production to satisfy human needs, is made, then unnecessary human suffering and a generally unsatisfactory life for everybody except a privileged few will continue.

Yes, another world is possible, but it doesn't involve going back to basic agriculture, even less embracing pessimistic and do-nothing mysticism, but accepting that we already live in one world and going on from there. The solution is global in both senses of the word. Global in that it has to be world-wide, and global in the sense that the change-over has to be all-embracing and not piecemeal reform.

Adam Buick

Worse is better? (2015)

Book Review from the January 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things are Going to Get Worse and Why We Should be Glad.  By Michael Roscoe. New Internationalist. £9.99.

The basic assumption of this book is one we can share: ‘Real wealth creation requires real work, and real work must involve the transformation of nature’s raw materials into something of value to us humans. There is no other way to create wealth.’ This is, of course, the basis of all labour theories of value including Marx’s, even though wealth and value are not the same.

Roscoe argues that, as wealth can only be material, the service sector does not create any, but just consumes it, even if the service is useful and/or contributes indirectly to future material wealth production. Education, healthcare and various personal services do contribute to this by maintaining and improving the workforce that produces the actual wealth. Finance, on the other hand, says Roscoe, does not. It can play a useful role in channelling funds to the productive sector but most of its activities since the 1980s have just been shuffling money between speculators which doesn’t help wealth production at all.

The growth of the service sector reflects  the rise in productivity in the productive sector (agriculture, fishing, mining, manufacture and construction) over the years. The extra wealth produced has gone to maintain and expand the service sector, absorbing the workers displaced from the productive sector by rising productivity.  Why, according to Roscoe, ‘things are going to get worse’ is that this can no longer continue because the service sector is being automated  too (and oil is going to run out and the financial bubble is going to burst). As a result unemployment is going to grow until the system collapses. As ‘it is only in times of crises that real change can be brought about’, this is ‘why we should be glad’.  In other words, worse is better.

This may (or may not) be true, but Roscoe’s ‘real change’ turns out not to be one. He wants to retain capitalism but modify it by government action, a return to the ‘mixed economy’ of before Thatcher which he oxymoronically calls ‘market socialism.’ Actually, it’s not quite a return to those days as one of the things he wants governments to do is to slow down growth (as it’s using up the Earth’s resources) by slowing down the rise in productivity. Given capitalism, that’s like King Canute ordering the tide not to come in. It won’t work and can’t work because capitalism is a system of capital accumulation driven by competition between profit-seeking enterprises,  both private and state, which imposes rising productivity and growth on them as the price of staying in business.

A disappointing book, then, which starts off making a good point but which ends up advocating an impossible reform of capitalism.

Adam Buick

New Internationalist: Forty Years On (2013)

First issue of New Internationalist.

From the April 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The magazine, New Internationalist, was first published in March 1973. Since then it has presented a lot of interesting material on global development, inequality, powerlessness and so on, and has found space over the years to include a number of letters from Socialists.

The fortieth anniversary edition published an article from its founding editor Peter Adamson, dealing with what progress there had been over four decades and accompanied by a page of statistics comparing some aspects of society in 1970 and 2010. As he notes, the first issues of the magazine were suffused by ‘the spirit of the times … overwhelmingly one of optimism’. Living standards in the UK were rising, abortion had been legalised and homosexuality decriminalised. Furthermore, many former colonies had become independent, and ‘we expected the war on want to be won.'

Over the forty years surveyed, there were many changes for the better. Life expectancy had increased from 56 to 70 globally, and from 43 to 59 in the least developed countries. Mortality rates for under-fives had decreased from 139 per thousand live births globally in 1970 to 57 in 2010; in the least developed countries, the reduction had been from 240 to 110; and in the industrialised countries from 24 to just six per thousand.

Adamson notes that ‘a great leap forward has been made towards meeting basic human needs,’ yet ‘the very poorest have often been excluded from the great gains that have been made.' Thus in Sierra Leone, life expectancy had gone up from 34 to a mere 47, and in sub-Saharan Africa almost one child in eight still dies before their fifth birthday. And want has clearly not been conquered.

Fortieth Anniversary Issue.

Above all, though, it is inequality that has become more severe over time. Measuring this is difficult, but between 1976 and 2010 average income in low-income economies increased proportionally less than that in industrialised countries. Moreover, the share of the richest one per cent of the population is far greater now than back in the 1970s. Adamson suggests that ‘progress’ be measured by looking at the lives of the lowest quintile in a country (the poorest 20 per cent, also known as Q1).

So despite the valiant efforts of many sincere and committed people, global inequalities of wealth and power remain major problems. This is without mentioning the onslaught on the environment or the destruction caused by war. Our solution: not to improve the lives of Q1 but create a world where such notions are meaningless, where everyone shares in the wealth produced co-operatively and has equal control over their lives. This cannot be done overnight, but in a Socialist world it could be achieved very quickly.

Paul Bennett

World poverty: cause and effects (2010)

From the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

How should poverty be measured if at all?

Part of the measure of statistics is that, however well-meant the goal, there are bound to be flaws and weaknesses. Any individual's subjective assessment of their own poverty will likely be quite different from that of an objective report. Over the years different studies have listed different requirements to be included into what constitutes poverty, but how many of these have consulted with the subjects of the report as to their own assessment of their situation? If poverty is to be eliminated, how it is manifested in different parts of the world, how it impacts differently on people of different regions and particularly its causes need to be thoroughly understood.

“Our aim should be to set the poverty line at a level where people can actually have a standard of living which we would consider morally acceptable,” says David Woodward in a July/August New Internationalist article. The article, based on a report which he co-authored with Saamah Abdallah, (See here.) explains the pitfalls and openings for misinterpretation of such economic-based poverty lines as the well known dollar-a-day as used in measuring the Millennium Development Goals. At least, he says, the dollar-a-day approach put poverty on the agenda 20 years ago – but the discrepancies in interpretation are so wide as to be almost meaningless and could make huge differences in the numbers of people being either included or, worse, excluded. Woodward proposes instead a 'Rights Based Poverty Line' – not based on income but as a starting point for agreed indicators such as economic and social rights, health, education and nutrition. This aims to be a more far-reaching attempt to identify those in need (and to ameliorate their conditions?) – a worthy goal no doubt within the capitalist system and one which will gain the support of many altruistic (dare I add misguided?) folk as they learn of it.

The focus of any of these studies in general is measuring poverty – how many, how much, how little, how widespread? – with little, if any, reference to why it is as it is or how it could be dealt with. If income levels are the problem who's going to agree to raising wages to the necessary level on the scale the studies show to be necessary? If it's social services which are inadequate where is the money to be found to raise them to the required level? No figures are given but it's pretty obvious that any solution in the current structure of the world's order would have to be in monetary terms.

Address the cause or ameliorate the effects?
The question that socialists would wish to see addressed more widely is why should we be expected to declare a position on what is acceptable as a baseline; why should we be discussing minimum adequate shelter, required basic living standards, access to sufficient food, clean water, health care, education and a minimum daily wage? In a world of from each according to ability to each according to need, a world of voluntary work and free access there will be no need to set base lines to keep people from falling below, needs will be self-determined and self-fulfilled with no requirement for money. Yes, we recognise the intolerable level of poverty in the world, the huge numbers with little or no access to clean drinking water, widespread hunger, the appalling lack of health care, deaths from treatable diseases and the millions caught up in wars and occupation not of their making. We recognise all this and more and we recognise the huge numbers of people worldwide who work hard in the belief that they can improve some of the conditions for some of the people. We also recognise that with all the hard work, time and money injected into so many projects over so many years that whilst there may be some temporary amelioration conditions for the majority are actually deteriorating. Our position is clear. We must address the cause not the effects. This is the big discussion that fails to hit the headlines.

The effects
Statistics may not always be totally reliable, or be biased one way or another, intentionally or not – and they can also put you to sleep – but it sometimes helps to shock us back to reality when we see them presented in an unusual or unfamiliar way. Sometimes it's the seeming impossibility of juxtaposed figures that can bring us to question the accuracy and then recognise all over again the sheer iniquity of the capitalist system. The numbers vary between reports but reveal that 55 percent of India's population, 645 million people, are living in poverty (a new Oxford University study); 51 percent of the world's poor, 844 million, live in South Asia and 28 percent, 458 million, in Africa (the Multidimensional Poverty Index – MPI ); that poverty in eight Indian states exceeds that of the 26 poorest African countries combined; that contrary to the Congress Party-led government's claims that economic growth has been inclusive figures show extraordinarily high levels of poverty among India's castes and tribal peoples; that using the $2 a day household income benchmark India is home to 828 million (75.6 percent of their population) below the poverty line compared with 551 million (72.2 percent) in sub-Saharan Africa. These millions are all individual people – often the same people in different studies – but they add up to an awful lot of noughts and between them they have pretty well nothing to their names.

The cause
Now for the wealthy. The ones on the right side of the tracks. The year 2010 has so far recognised 49 US$ billionaires in India who between them have amassed nearly 31 percent of GDP, four times the global average, which adds up to a staggering $340,900,000,000 (Forbes magazine).

In summing up How Poor is Poor Woodward recognises that a global poverty line fixed in monetary terms “is too unwieldy and can give wildly inaccurate results” and goes on to state that no improvements in our understanding of measurements of poverty are of any use ”unless effective action is taken not merely for poverty reduction but for a permanent eradication of the blight of poverty in a meaningful sense”. However poverty is measured it is simply another set of statistics revealing effects not causes and is of little benefit to any impoverished persons. To return to my earlier point 'permanent eradication' can only come from the worldwide decision to eradicate the cause, the blight of capitalism. We do have that choice and for the world's vast majority the day can't come too soon.

Janet Surman

People before profits? (2010)

Book Review from the March 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

People First Economics. Ed. David Ransom and Vanessa Baird, New Internationalist Publications .2009.

Here is a book with contributions from twenty or so well-known writers, economists, politicians, activists and professors; inspiration for readers who seek to be part of a 'fairer world’. In one way or another all the contributors succeed in pointing out major flaws in the capitalist system and all have their ideas on how many things could be improved to work better for more people. Recurring themes include restructuring the tax system, transparency in the tax system, putting an end to corporate tax dodging, closing tax havens, prosecution of the guilty, cancellation of Third World debt, protection of the environment, reducing inequalities, investing in sustainability. I don't recall an example of a call for a non-capitalist alternative, just adjustments although some of them quite major.

A former derivatives trader possibly overcome by guilt or remorse reveals the predator/prey relationships in banks and finance companies. 'Replacing the interest-based money system is the critical struggle of our time. It is not a system we can reform. We must simply defeat it because if we don't it will defeat us.' How it will be possible to defeat the interest-based money system is left open to conjecture but as he reveals in his article no-one was interested in taking up his new 'debt-free' home finance product because debt expansion is more profitable than debt reduction. He is listed as a financial adviser.

Other suggestions are to regulate and control, to put social services back into the hands of communities, away from the market, to use local currencies, to expand the commons and to share the common wealth. The closest we get to a socialist alternative comes from Nicola Bullard, an Australian researcher, campaigner and writer with 'Focus on the Global South' who reminds us that Marxists (and some others) agree that capitalism destroys nature and alienates society but that the main objective of the G20 is to put it back on its feet again after the recent 'crisis’. Her way forward is three-fold: expand the common good by decommodifying goods and expanding open-source; cool the planet by using appropriate agricultural methods, and share the common wealth – meaning a fairer sharing of profit between labour and capital, tax reforms etc. She ends by proposing that it should be possible for all to live in a system of economic production and consumption where the commons is for all and wealth is shared by all but owned by none.The chapter 'Equality is better – for Everyone', written by Richard Wilkinson of the University of Nottingham Medical School and University College London and Kate Pickett of the University of York and the National Institute for Health Research and taken as an edited extract from their book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better is interesting in its focus on various measures of well-being. What they show is that the wider the difference in monetary terms between rich and poor in any society, the greater are the problems within those societies, from rates of mental illness, teenage birth rates, prison populations, distrust of others within society, life expectancy and murder rates, which confirms that socialism (a more equal society will not be found) should be hastened and welcomed by all.

The final three chapters focus on climate change but again largely promote regulation and reform and the final paragraph of the final chapter pretty much sums up the tone of the book, 'The current movement…is an opportunity to be ambitious, to challenge the central precepts of the capitalist system at its roots and replace it with a new set of economic power relations founded on principles of justice, redistribution and collaboration' – as if to say that money can be retained but a new system can be organised around it without the negative aspects that now abound.

There are plenty of optimistic suggestions but you would have to believe that those who currently have the power – corporations, the mega-wealthy and their media and puppets in governments – are actually seeking such a wide-ranging, inclusive solution for it to have any possible chance of success. If this were the case then they would surely have already been working towards it.

Janet Surman

Thirty-Five Billion (2006)

From the August 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

I've been toying with the figure $35 billion which I heard the other day - toying with it because I, like most folk I've spoken to about it since, couldn't grasp the sheer enormity of it. What did it actually represent?

So I decided to do my own in-home research using the New Internationalist World Guide latest edition's figures (UN statistics).

This is what I came up with: $35,000,000,000 is the equivalent of (GNI is gross national income):

1) 1 year's GNI of $35,000 for 1,000,000 people in USA

2) 1 year's GNI of $1,000 for 35,000,000 people in the Philippines

3) 1 year's GNI of $480 for 70,000,000 people in India

4a) 1 year's GNI of $240 for 140,000,000 people in Mali or

4b) 10 year's GNI for total population of 14 million in Mali

5a) 1 year's GNI of $100 for 350,000,000 people in Ethiopia or

5b) 5 year's GNI for total population of 74 million in Ethiopia.

Now, if just one person owned all that wealth they'd have to put it somewhere safe, in some kind of bank or shares or whatever where it would be safe and accumulate, e.g. a 1 percent return over 1 year would produce $350,000,000 in interest; a 5 percent return $1,750,000,000; 10 percent $3,500,000,000 and so on assume compound interest kicking in and you'll have to do your own figures or find an expert; however, you get the picture.

Of course when you've managed to accrue enough after a few years to be able to give away the lion's share without noticing any difference at all in your own life style people will applaud you and say what a wonderful, altruistic person you are.

What would you choose to do with your fortune? Beat malaria? Wipe out the debt of several Highly Impoverished Nations? Bring clean water to some of the millions without? Fund schools or hospitals in perpetuity from your foundation's coffers? The possibilities are endless.

But, surely, one person wouldn't actually have so much money! How would one person acquire enough in the first place to be able to put money to work to accrue more money? Simple, just use other people, lots and lots of people, to do the work for less than it's worth to produce the goods on your behalf and pocket the difference.

The less you manage to pay your workers and the more you're able to sell your goods for to other workers, the better the profit you'll make, enabling you to be the one to choose how to improve life on the planet for the unfortunate masses.

How can it be, however intelligent, hardworking, honest and/or altruistic, that one person's 'gift' can be equal to the income of all the people of Ethiopia, men, women and children, for 5 years?

How can it be that one person should be able to choose how to affect (or not to affect) such a multitude of people, albeit in a positive way? 

How can it be that so many people have so little choice in their own lives? 

It's the system, my friends, the system that puts profit above all else - how else could it work?

The system that uses and abuses people all around the world, the system that can't work with full employment, universal healthcare and satisfied bellies, but must rely on chasing profit around the globe whatever the consequences for the planet and its inhabitants.

Imagine 1,000,000 US citizens giving up their whole year's income. Imagine the entire population of Mali having no income at all for 10 years. Imagine one man having that much spare cash. I don't doubt that you know which particular man I'm writing about - the second richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, who's decided to donate not $35 billion but $37 billion to the charitable foundation of the richest man (Bill Gates).

But what's $2,000,000,000? Well, 3 years GNI for the Maldives . . . 

Am I knocking Bill Gates, Warren Buffet et al? No, I'm knocking the system which allows, nay encourages, a small minority to exploit the vast majority in an unequal relationship. The capitalist system cannot work with equal relationships. There have to be (a few) winners and (many) losers. 

Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the right to clean water, enough food, access to health care, a comfortable home, to raise one's children in a cooperative rather than a competitive society in a well-husbanded world environment in the knowledge that there is a sufficiency of all our basic needs and no good reason for anyone to go without.

This is the only fair system. If you're content with the status quo then carry on as before. However, if you've taken the time to read this far the chances are you're not content. If you're sick and tired of hearing the same old political fixes on offer and are looking for real answers then take a few more minutes to look at the only alternative. It could be the best thing you'll do this year.

Janet Surman