Moral stories (2026)

Book Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Moral Ambition. Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. By Rutger Bregman. Bloomsbury. 2025. 283pp.

‘Humans are social creatures through and through’ (Rutger Bregman)

This is the third of Dutch historian Rutger Bregman’s books to have garnered attention and praise from a wide range of quarters. His theme is, as before, the need for large-scale social change, and on a planetary scale. Described on the book’s dust cover as ‘the internationally bestselling author’, Bregman proposes morally founded activities that people can become involved in to ‘start making a difference’ and help bring about such change. One of the impressive endorsements by various writers and commentators in the book’s opening pages describes it as ‘packed with powerful insights, inspiring stories, and data to back it up’. Another refers to it as ‘a true bible of realistic idealism’. And it is definitely an invigorating and thought-provoking read.

It focuses in significant part on the work of a number of individuals who, by virtue of their dedication and determination to certain causes, have ‘made a difference’, either historically or more recently, to the lives of large numbers of people. Examples of such individuals, some of them little known, include:

• Thomas Clarkson, who, from the age of 24 in 1785, dedicated his life to campaigning against slavery at a time when, as the author points out, the very notion of abolishing slavery seemed unthinkable;
• Arnold Douwes, the Dutchman, who, in the Second World War and at enormous risk to himself, devoted himself to finding shelter for Jews who otherwise would have been transported to concentration camps;
• Ralph Nader, who over very many years campaigned indefatigably in the US against the advertising and sale of manifestly dangerous products and managed to recruit a whole ‘brigade of Davids’ who ‘combined moral indignation with laborious research’ and eventually become known as ‘Naders Raiders’;
• Rosa Parks, the black woman in Alabama who wouldn’t give up her seat to a white passenger on a bus and lit the spark for the civil rights movement;
• Rob Mather, the British business executive, who, in the early 2000s, inspired voluntary and charitable activity among thousands for the purpose of raising money to combat the world’s single largest killer of children, malaria, and up to the present day is estimated to have saved over 100,000 lives;
• and Joey Savoie, a Canadian would-be psychology student who instead dedicated himself to intensive charitable work and founded a school of ‘Charity Entrepreneurship’ whose graduates then set up projects such as Fortify Health that teaches local millers in India to enrich wheat flower with iron, folic acid and vitamin B2 as a way of reducing iron deficiency anaemia among millions there and protecting against congenital defects like spina bifida.

Bregman also gives space to philanthropists such as Katherine McCormick, whose sponsorship of research into female contraception resulted in the pill and so gave millions of women a new kind of control over their lives, and to campaigning scientists like Joseph Salk and Viktor Zhdanov whose dedication and determination brought crippling and deadly diseases like polio and smallpox under control. And he tells all sorts of other quite fascinating tales of people who have dedicated themselves to ‘making a difference’, some much against the odds of their upbringing, education and the society around them. He frames these with the consideration that ‘a small group of determined individuals can have enormous influence’.

Such stories make this a truly compelling book, as also does its manifest ambition to contribute to improving the lives of humans. So is there anything not to like? In the course of the recent Reith Lectures which its author delivered for the BBC on the subject of ‘moral revolution’, he described himself, on more than one occasion, as ‘an old-fashioned social democrat’. And the trouble is that, just like so many others who call themselves ‘social democrats’, he confines himself to seeking to solve or alleviate the world’s problems within the confines of the existing system, capitalism. His abiding focus is on how to make that system better.

With this book, therefore, he has produced a kind of guide to reformism, novel and very readable, but never seeking to peer outside of the constricting framework of existing society, based as it is on monetary exchange, buying and selling and production for profit. This means that, despite the fact that certain problems may be capable of alleviation or even solution through devoted campaigning or pressure on governments, in the final analysis the anti-human needs of the market and its profit imperative will never allow continuing and widespread scourges such as poverty, insecurity, oppression and unfulfilling work to be consigned to history, and tragedies such as wars and environmental degradation will ever lurk and sometimes pounce. In other words, while admirable in so many ways, this book fails to engage with the real reason that renders necessary all the campaigning and dedication its author records and recommends to others.

That is not to say that the kind of campaigning activity recommended by Bregman – radical, persistent and confident in its ideas – is not necessary. However, it needs to be focused not on ‘morality’ but on challenging the system at source and creating a society capable of offering to everyone a share of the potential wealth and abundance that capitalism – with its interconnected production across the globe, its robots, 3-D printing and digital media – has made possible. Currently all this is being held back by the artificial scarcity and oppression associated with the market, money and production for profit and will only be achievable on the basis of common ownership, the abolition of the market and free access to wealth.

Howard Moss

Voice From The Back: End of a dream (2009)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

End of a dream 

Ever since the publication of his Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965 Ralph Nader has been the darling of radical circles in the USA. Here was a man who dared to question the power of such capitalist concerns as General Motors. He went on to found scores of progressive non-profit organisations. He even ran as a Green Party and later an Independent candidate for the President of the USA. On one occasion he even polled almost 3 million votes. Capitalism however is a resilient social system and his attempt at reforming capitalism has ended up with him looking to the capitalists to solve the problems. He is on tour at present to promote his first fictional book entitled Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us. This has led some of his former supporters to doubt his reasoning. “There is a poignance in listening to Ralph Nader these days. Here is a man who, for the last 45 years, has hurled his body at the engine of corporate power. He’s dented it more than anyone else in America. But he knows it’s still chugging, even more strongly than ever. Nader understands that he’s losing. He understands that we’re losing—we who believe in democracy, we who care about justice. But if our only hope is with a handful of billionaires, we’re in a lot worse shape than I thought.” (The Progressive, 28 September)

How about socialism? 

As the social problems of capitalism mount up its administrators have to be seen to be doing something. The usual drill in the past has been for world leaders to meet together usually in some splendid hotel or other, make pious noises about “something has to be done”, pat each other on the back and fly home first class in a glow of self-satisfaction. The most recent crisis of world hunger has occasioned another useless backscratching summit. “With food prices remaining high in developing countries, the United Nations estimates that the number of hungry people around the world could increase by 100 million in 2009 and pass the one billion mark. A summit of world leaders in Rome scheduled for November will set an agenda for ways to reduce hunger and increase investment in agriculture development in poor countries. What will drive the next Green Revolution? Is genetically modified food an answer to world hunger? Are there other factors that will make a difference in food production?” (New York Times, 26 October) The one factor that they have not taken in to consideration is not yet another summit at a higher and higher level, but a sump level meeting of the world’s working class. Only by such a movement as the World Socialist Movement can men and women abolish for ever the madness of millions starving to keep a system of robbery and exploitation intact. The journalist asks the question “Are there other factors that will make a difference in food production?” Yes there is – world socialism and production solely for use! That is one issue that wont be discussed in Rome.

Capitalism is gangsterism 

Politicians and clergymen and even well-paid TV personalities will claim that the Middle East conflict has something to do with morality and justice and that it has nothing to do with crass consideration such as “making a couple of bucks” as Al Capone once famously said. “The British oil giant BP will today take control of Iraq’s biggest oilfield in the first important energy deal since the 2003 invasion. The move has created uproar among local politicians invoking resentful memories of their nation’s colonial past. The agreement to develop the Rumaila field, near the southern city of Basra, will potentially put Iraq on the path to rivalling the riches of Saudi Arabia within a decade — if the Government can fend off corrupt officials, continuing terrorist attacks on pipelines and political uncertainty.” (Times, 3 November) Hey, Iraq workers may continue to live in poverty, so what, we can make a couple of bucks. That is how capitalism works, isn’t it Al Capone?

The new gangsters 

It used to be popular for supporters of the so-called Communist Party to decry Imperialism. They would point out how Britain had exploited Africa and India during their colonial conquests. Later on they would concentrate on the role of the USA in Central and South America. Changed days now with China investing heavily in all sorts of corrupt regimes throughout Asia and Africa. “Barely a fortnight after soldiers loyal to Guinea’s military junta butchered at least 150 demonstrators calling for civilian rule, a deal for oil and mineral rights worth about $7 billion has been struck between China and Guinea. … It seems that China’s commercial march across Africa will continue unabated, however vile the human-rights record of the government it seeks to befriend.” (Economist, 17 October)

Quote . . . Unquote (1972)

From issue number 2 (1972) of The Western Socialist

We couldn't have said it better 

"Look at it this way. America is run largely by and for about 5.000 people who are actively supported by 50,000 beavers eager to take their places. I arrive at the round figure this way: maybe 2.500 megacorporation executives, 500 politicians, lobbyists and Congressional committee chairmen. 500 investment bankers, 500 commercial bankers, 500 partners in major accounting firms, 500 labor brokers. If you don't like my figures, make up your own. We won’t be far apart in the context of a country with 210-million people. The 5.000 appoint their own successors, are responsible to nobody. They treat this nation as an exclusive whorehouse especially designed for their comfort and kicks. The President of these United States, in their private view, is head towel boy. They prefer clever flunkies who. like most of the present White House gang, are so slippery they can enter a telephone booth and leave by the side door.

For most of us, the 210-million, the result is a tearing frustration. Frustration with unemployment, inequity, taxes and prices, to be sure, but under it all a rage at the giant, impregnable, impenetrable, anonymous, unaccountable. irresponsible,  immoveable bastions of power. And now, through the Naderites, through the blizzard of shredded documents at I.T.T., we get our noses rubbed in the whole sick operation of decadent power blocks.

The time has come to have dreams, hopes as tangible as an A.P. dateline and not far off." 

Robert Townsend in New York Times Book Review Section, April 30. 1972

The Passing Show: The Lady and the Tramp . . . and all that (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Lady and the Tramp . . . and all that

Ryde on the Isle of Wight on one of the many disappointingly wet and blustery days of an English summer. Holidaymakers sit disconsolately in the numerous Egg and Chip cafes, or gaze gloomily from the seedy seafront shelters at the unfriendly grey sky, bored stiff.

But there is one man who seems quite indifferent to the weather or to the unfriendly stares of some, who no doubt resent the smell that clings about him. He is a tramp, a caricature of a human being, with a mane of iron-grey hair and big blue eyes, whose battered clothes are secured about him with strips of tape and lumps of coarse string. There on a low wall he sits in the open, doggedly reading an old copy of The Times.

In a pub that evening, a brassy haired woman expresses her disgust at the mere existence of such people, and listening to the talk, you learn that this one is always on the island, wandering from place to place throughout the year. Unlike many tramps, though, he is by no means penniless because (or so the story goes) his family pay him enough money to keep him out of their way.

But what the lady in the pub overlooks is that there are a few thousand like him in Great Britain alone (and the number is growing) and she probably never stops to ask herself why this is so. Perhaps she feels that he is an affront to her meagre dignity, or perhaps he is an uncomfortable reminder of the loneliness that is always stalking in the background for all of us under capitalism, so that no one knows just when it will engulf him.

Tramps, it has been said, are what they are because they cannot face the harsh realities of everyday life in the modern world. So they take to the road and go on the run from it all, rarely staying long in one place, alone with their rags and their thoughts, objects of a mixed pity, fear and resentment from the population in general, and condescension from the “do gooders" in particular.

There’s certainly something to be said for such a theory, though of course it does not go far enough, and misses out a very important fact. Our man in Ryde notwithstanding, the mass of tramps are very poor—a lot of them from the very lowest income groups in the working class—and it is one of the big factors which makes them turn and run. For them, loneliness is not new by the time they start their wanderings, and in many cases it is a choice of near-destitutions, static or mobile. To sleep under a hedge with newspapers for bedclothes, or alone in a damp and dingy room with crumbling walls and vermin for company— and the worry of finding next week’s rent. The loneliness of their lives is theirs in ample measure, of course, but as one vagrant said to a survey interviewer, “it’s not so bail when you're out in the open . . . Four walls bring it home to you . . .” 

But don’t go making the mistake that loneliness is for tramps only. It is fast becoming a really big problem of the sixties. Armand Georgés in a little booklet Modern Loneliness has estimated that there are over four million lonely people in Britain and it is a terrible fact that it affects all age groups, from children to “senior citizens”.

This booklet is not a very satisfactory work and barely skims over the problem, but it does at least touch on the causes, such as: —

The uniformity of council house estates . . . the demands of work and economic difficulties produce a feeling of boredom and boredom is the first symptom of the the disease . . . 

Seventy years of age, he lived in digs. When he became ill he went into hospital, but although he recovered he still remains there because his landlady will not take him back. She has let his room . . .

Mr. Georgés admits that loneliness “cannot penetrate useful work and emotional stability" but further than this he doesn’t go, perhaps because he is vaguely aware of the difficulty of attaining these conditions in the world of today. So he contents himself with suggestions of more clubs, meeting places, etc., and a government “ministry for the aged".

So let us say what we think of the problem. Loneliness, boredom and emotional strains are a product of private property society, and modern capitalism has brought them to a terrifying pitch. It has been said that we are all on our own in capitalism and it is not difficult to see why. In such a set-up, we are all thrown into ceaseless competition with each other so that satisfactory contact between human beings is a rarity.

The problem is accentuated in the big towns, of course, where the narrow and unfulfilling lives of workers is so much in evidence, like the couple above. And for those who are lonely, the very bigness of the towns, crammed to capacity with other humans (mainly workers) though they are, restricts their chances of ever belonging anywhere. It is a poverty in human friendship and contact, a direct result of poverty in the means of life from which most or us suffer.

Sing something simple

An old copy of the Gibraltar Chronicle dropped out of a file the other day and promptly found its way into my pocket. It's dated Nov. 9th, 1949 and what do you think appears on the front page? Well, among other things is a bold headline: “T.U.C. leaders will fully support Govt’s policy". There follows a report of the T.U.C.’s decision in London “after seven weeks of anxious discussion” to “give full support to the Labour Government’s policy of greater production at less cost". This, by the way, was after the devaluation of Sterling—with its effect of price increases—yet still the T.U.C. was prepared to recommend an "even greater effort to keep demands for higher wages under restraint . . .”

Well, it's old news now. but it does us no harm to look back a few years and see the similarity between ideas then and now. The T.U.C. seems to have learned precious little in the past seventeen years, if a statement by their general secretary George Woodcock is any guide:

If in the early days you can emphasise increased productivity or prices or social justice as the main objectives, you are just kidding yourself. You can, as we are doing, get some degree of incomes restraint, rough and ready and unscientific though it is. You can expect to do that quickly. The other things will take time.

Did 1 say that little had been learnt? If a minus quantity, of knowledge were possible, Mr. Woodcock and the T.U.C. would certainly have it.

Bigger and better bedbugs

When we were kids my parents waged a long and largely futile battle against bedbugs in our poky terraced house in London. Fumigation, creosote, and even blow-lamps all had a temporary effect only, and there they were as thick as ever in a week or two. Wc got rid of them eventually because for some months during the blitz, we didn't use the bedrooms. I suppose they all died of starvation, or went looking elsewhere.

Now what do you think of a Guardian report of June 6th? The U.S. is planning to use bedbugs against the Vietcong. But these will be specially bred for the purpose and won’t be starved to death so easily. Just look at this revolting account.

". . . Plans are based on the fad that bedbugs scream with excitement at the prospect of feeding on human flesh. So what Mr. McNamara's whizz-kids are up to is trying to produce a sound amplification system which would enable the G.l. . . . to hear the anticipatory squeals of a captive bedbug as it detects the Vietcong lying in ambush ahead . . . A large and hungry bedbug will . . . register the presence of a man some 200 yards to its front or side while ignoring the person carrying it in a special capsule".

When we have pointed to the brutality and degradation of capitalism’s wars, understandably we have tended to stress the bigger horrors like nuclear bombs, but it is perhaps the so-called smaller things like this which illustrate the depths to which men sink their dignity in the cause of the profit motive.

Gaspers

Comrade Mao Tse Tung is the greatest genius of our lime. Rarely has history seen such a revolutionary leader as Mao Tse Tung . . . (Peking People's Daily 15.6.66). '

There is not and never was a man in the world of so varied, so rich, so fruitful and so omnipresent a genius . . . (Tribute to Stalin, by Moscow Radio. May Day 1951),

Mr. Robinson said . . . he would prefer a bigger building programme for the (hospital) service . . . but the amount of money available had to depend on the economic progress of the country. (Guardian 25.6.66).

The very idea of auto sales and auto profits has been built on a pile of corpses. (Ralph Nader, author of Unsafe At Any Speed, Guardian report 15.6.66).

In the foreseeable future, the only alternative future to an incomes policy is higher unemployment. (Guardian editorial 5.7.66).

I have never fell humiliated (T .U.C. General Secretary George Woodcock 5.7.66).

Eddie Critchfield

The Great US Presidential Election Show (2000)

From the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

US workers, who are getting poorer and working longer, settle in for another edition of the great US presidential election show

Like an over-extended series of sequels that have long outlived the originality and vitality of the original blockbuster, so comes the current edition of the US Presidential Election. When looking at the scripted positions of the extended cast of four candidates (yes four, count ’em) registering in national popularity polls an apt title for this sequel would be “Mission Impossible 2000”.

But first the plot as hyped by the current administration and fully supported by the media. It goes something like this. The United States of America is on a roll of the longest uninterrupted period of prosperity in its entire history. This unforeseen and unprecedented prosperity has positioned the United States in the prime spot to be the economic and political dynamo for the entire new century. The question is who is best to maintain this phenomenal convergence of conditions which America has carefully crafted and is benefiting from.

It sounds like an old story and it is. Like any tired sequel the plot gets weaker, more porous the closer one watches and actually thinks about the drama unfolding before one’s eyes.

The CNN.com web site on August 29 2000 featured a story based upon a Justice Department study that showed nearly 1.5 million children in America had a parent in prison in 1999. That is an increase of over 500,000 to be added to this unfortunate class from 1991. Children with mothers incarcerated rose a startling 98 percent over the past eight years. The prison population as a whole grew by 62 percent from 1991-1999. A rather peculiar trend to parallel the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth, one would think. President Clinton himself unwittingly let a cat out of the bag at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. He announced the findings of a study he commissioned on as to why voter participation was steadily declining. The finding was “Lack of time. People just don’t have enough time now to go and vote.”

We the audience can logically conclude that both of these trends are due to the population’s effort to make ends meet. Thus crimes are committed and jobs worked at for longer hours so increasing the extent of not being able to care for one’s own children or participate in the political process. A most flimsy and inconsistent plot indeed. When one looks at the stars and their dialogue this sequel takes a real nosedive.

Bore and Gush

Vice President Al Gore of the Democratic Party plays the role of the dashing lead actor. “I will fight for you!” is his signature line in this year’s political drama. With his book Earth in the Balance and anticipation of the elimination of the internal combustion petroleum engine in his lifetime, he brings a depth and insight not usually found in such a role.

At the 1988 Democratic Convention he gave a heart-wrenching speech about his sister dying of lung cancer after years of smoking cigarettes. It was later revealed that Al Gore himself was a generous recipient of blood money from the same evil interest that he railed against at that convention. His most infamous line, in a typicaly ridiculous hammy fashion of an overgrandiose actor on the political stage, is: “I took the initiative to invent the internet”.

He opposes the Republican Party plan of a $250 billion tax cut saying it would “benefit the rich”. He instead proposes to use the money for paying for prescription pills for the elderly. Now after the elderly have purchased $250 billion worth of prescription medicine guess who will pocket the money? Yep, the rich pharmacutical companies. The same with food stamps, subsidised housing, whatever, they are all about subsidies to the rich. His signature line should be: “I will fight for you to hand over all the money you created to the rich!” Then again this is political theater, not reality, so you will never hear an actor utter such a line in capitalist politics.

It is interesting to note that both lead actors represent a clash between contemporary political oligarchies. Al Gore picked up the mantel of political power from the same political district that his father held in the State of Tennessee. His arch-rival George W. Bush is the son of the recent American President of Gulf War fame.

As the Republican Party arch-rival in the cast, George W. Bush’s signature line is: “I am a uniter not a divider”. This has to be one of the most laughable and politically naive lines ever uttered by a capitalist politician, particularly coming from an actor who as Governor of the State of Texas, has presided over 300 executions in his state and has vigously defended each one of them, including the execution of a retired grandmother. The cold reality is we live in a class-divided society and, like his father, George W. Bush’s means of “uniting” involves being prepared to slaughter people who pose a “problem” for it, whether they be an Iraqi soldier or an American citizen. The Bush family oligarchy has shown a most sinister means of “uniting” people.

In college he was noted for cocaine use and once dancing nude atop a table at a frat party. That alone tells you what an absurd sequel this election has become. His signature line should be: “I am a death presider and class divider”. But alas, such real life preformaces will not be found in the theater of American politics.

Peculiar populist

It is significant that for the first time ever four different candidates are registering in a national poll on the eve of a US Presidential election. This is because two other parties are starting to gain national support, another indicative trend amidst eight years of so-called unprecedented, uninterrupted prosperity. The American voter is starting to look beyond the two major parties for political solutions.

“The two-party system has become a delusion. On foreign and trade policy, open-borders immigration and corporate influence, Republicans and Democrats are carbon copies of one another. Neither offers voters a real choice. Both parties backed the illegal war in Kosovo. ”

No, the above quote did not come from the World Socialist Party of the United States but was from an internet release by the Reform Party. What was once considered off-the-wall assertions are now gaining currency in the commonsense of American political thinking.

The Reform Party though trots out a most peculiar populist in former Republican lesser player Patrick Buchanan. He is a former speech writer for Presidents Richard Nixion and Ronald Reagan and now fancies himself a wannabe “Peoples President”. True, in the 1996 Republican primary he referred to Senator Bob Dole as “a bell hop for the business round table”. What with those dark suits Dole wore, it was an apt description.

Buchanan decries the loss of jobs in America to overseas factories, giving rise to his “America First” slogan. But, as a vigorous defender to this day of the Nixon administration, he seems to forget about a trade agreement signed under it that dumped cheap China cotton on the American market forcing the closing of dozens of textile factories in the south-eastern United States. But then those commercial interest were prone to donate money to the Democratic Party. And one can also suspect such motives in Al Gore’s crusade against the tobacco industry closely associated with key Republicans. Using state power to wreck the financial backers of one’s opposition party is an accepted scorched earth tactic in American politics. Thus one can see why such a man as Buchanan would strike fear in the two major parties should he attain the White House.

It is only in this context could he be seen as anything remotely resembling a “populist”. Otherwise, he has perfected divisiveness to an art form and generally strikes fear into most everyone else’s hearts as well. This odd populist opposes a woman’s right to an abortion and homosexuals in general. He is also an ardent defender of the 1950s racially-segregated Washington, DC, that he grew up in. To top it off, Patrick Buchanan has raised the alarm that America itself is becoming “balkanized”.

One can plainly see that, far from an alternative to the two major parties, he himself is just another supporter of capitalism having his doubts.

Saving capitalism

This brings us to another doubting supporter of capitalism, Ralph Nader and his Green Party. Unlike Buchanan who relies on cultural observations to express his doubts, Nader in his acceptance speech of his party’s’ nomination has facts to support his doubts. And plenty of them come from this professional “consumer advocate”:

• Consumer debt is at an all time high, totalling over $6 trillion.
• American workers are working an average of 163 more hours per year than 20 years ago.
• Over 20 percent of children were growing up in poverty over the last decade.
• A majority of workers are making less now, inflation adjusted, than in 1979.
• The top one percent of the wealthiest people have more financial wealth than the bottom 90 percent of Americans combined.

Nader correctly proclaims “we can have a democratic society or we can have great concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both“.

And what is his scheme to defend democracy?

“Pluralistic democracy has enlarged markets and created the middle class. Yet the short term, monetized, minds of corporatists are bent on weakening, defeating, diluting, diminishing, circumventing, coopting, or corrupting all traditional countervailing forces that have saved American corporate capitalism from itself.”

Ah! To save American corporate capitalism from itself! Why has not anyone else thought of that? Or is he really that naive as to the other parties political agendas?

Well, at least he knows his role in this madcap, absurd sequel. Ralph Nader, in his quest to save corporate America from itself, is himself the nadir of struggling actors in “Mission Impossible 2000”.

Hopefully this silly series will soon end to give way to another blockbuster like . . . World Socialist President. If the World Socialist Party of the United States at some point in the future were to run a candidate for President and won, their mission would be to abolish the very office they were elected to. A socialist society would have no need for the United States of America or any other nation for that matter. Much less of a head of state. Such an episode would be a sequel to the real hit watched all across America and the world: WORLD SOCIALIST REVOLUTION IN THE FORMER USA!

Wesley J Lawrimore

(World Socialist Party of the US)

Finance and Industry: Dollar Safety (1966)

The Finance and Industry Column from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dollar Safety

If you believe all that is said by the propagandists about the cold war between America and Russia then in the words of James Baldwin they have all the baddies and we have Gary Cooper. But where there is a threat to the profits of the capitalist class the facade sometimes slips and they are prepared to use any tactic, however dirty, to safeguard their position.

Consider the case of Ralph Nader, an American lawyer, who published a few months ago a book entitled Unsafe At Any Speed. The book showed, according to reports in various English newspapers, that the accent on car production in America was on rapid obsolescence; safety factors were ignored because they tended to interfere with yearly restyling and production costs. Not unnaturally in a country where the motor car is concerned in the death of 50,000 and in the injury of 5,000,000 people each year, the book became an immediate best seller. So great was the reaction that both the Senate and the House of Representatives had sub-committees considering the subject.

The king of private enterprise firms, General Motors, made a bad start when it had to admit having Mr. Nader investigated by private detectives to see if he could be discredited in any way. On the matter in hand it admitted that it had recalled 1,500,000 cars in the past month to remedy defects, at a cost of £2,000,000. Ford and other manufacturers also declared that they had recalled defective cars.

Despite this Henry Ford II was claiming on April 15th that if critics who didn't know what they were talking about, such as Mr. Nader and the Government, would only leave the motor industry alone they would get on with the job. On April 26th his vice-president, John Bugas, was telling the House of Representatives that the whole industry now favoured “effective and forceful Government machinery for setting vehicles safety standards without delay.”

Whether the American motor industry can make cars more safe and more profitable remains to be seen. But according to Governor Romney, a former president of American Motor Corporation, it was the motor car industry that pulled America out of the depression, and according to Mr. Ford it is the mainstay of the present economy. Perhaps there are some who will argue that the death of 50,000 people per year is a fair price to pay in a society which places the pursuit of profit above everything else.

Who’s grabbing?

In earlier years the Labour Party has made May Day the occasion for massive propaganda drives proclaiming what it called the just demands of the working class. Now that it is the Government, and has been for eight of the past 21 years, the tenor has changed.

The Observer of 1st May, 1966, reports on Prime Minister Wilson's May Day message in which he said “We are still in grave danger of paying ourselves much more than we are truly earning.” Minister of Labour Gunter, who recently had his salary raised from £5,000 to £8,500 per year, said we are living in the “age of grab” and later:—

  We are working on an average only half an hour a week less than we were in 1938. This means that it is not the shorter working week we really want but more uneconomic overtime at enhanced rates. I am told that this uneconomic overtime is brought about because basic rates are too low.

It is at least refreshing to know that a Minister is being given correct information. Workers will, and must, try to raise the price at which they sell their labour power when the conditions are conducive to obtaining increases. Until, that is, they eventually realise the futility of it all and do away with the wages system.

Overtime will become the eight-lettered word of 1966. The Prices and Incomes Board have made “Overtime equals inefficiency” their slogan. And a new journal, Management Today, says overtime is necessary because basic rates are not adequate to buy the goods and services workers consider are their due. Although like many generalisations this tends to over-simplify, it is generally true. But it must be remembered that not all jobs offer the advantage of overtime.

But surely this was the position for 13 years with the Conservative Governments and the then Labour opposition was claiming that they would correct all this. The first excuse was that the majority was too small, and now that has been rectified we must wait for the next excuse. The favourite at the moment appears to be the old, one —the lazy and ungrateful working class.

There are still ways of making a quick quid if you have the means to play the game; witness the “bond washers.” Bond washing was a complicated manoeuvre played on the Stock Exchange where a person sold and repurchased shares in different guises, before and after the payment of a dividend, and recouped the income tax on the dividend. You could be as lazy as you like, and no overtime was required. Only lots of money. The Guardian estimated that you needed £500,000 to make a profit of £1,000 and the Sunday Times estimated that the transactions totalled £300,000,000 to produce a profit of £3,500,000.

Ray Guy

Monopoly (1966)

Book Review from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Capitalism is the system under which profit-seeking is the main purpose of men's undertakings; self-interest is the motivating force that drives them. Each person seeks his own maximum gain in an unending struggle. Seller is pitted against seller in the eternal rivalry of the marketplace.
  Under this system men would rather see their fellow human beings, women and children, die, rather than forgo any profits. They will, knowingly, sell poison or lethal weapons—provided there is money to be made.
  Self-styled respectable businessmen use known gangsters in the struggle for survival. They throw away food in order to reap gold. They lie, cheat and bully with one end in view: profits.

It is rare that we Socialists can take such an indictment of capitalism from the writings of a politician who actively helped the capitalist world go round upon its bumpy axis; a member of the American House of Representatives for nine years, and after that a U.S. Senator; even, in 1956, the Democrats' candidate for Vice-President.

Yet from a book by the late Estes Kefauver, and with neither unfair quoting out of context nor exaggeration, the indictment of the first three paragraphs above has been taken. His analysis of monopoly power in America, In A Few Hands, has just been published here for the first time as a Pelican Original (price 6s.).

Kefauver, who died in 1963, learned his facts about American Big Business as chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Sub-committee on Antitrust and Monopoly. His book presents the essence of this committee’s extended hearings.

Evidence of the behaviour of the biggest drug firms is especially dramatic, for here we are dealing in human life. For instance, some years ago a drug called Orinase (its trademark) was invented, an oral anti-diabetic drug. Not only is this obviously easier to take than regular injections of insulin; it is also much easier and cheaper to make. But the manufacturer, Dr. E. Gifford Upjohn, kept the price of Orinase at 14 cents per tablet, the same price as insulin. That was his rival, so although the drug cost him 1.18 dollars to produce (for a month’s supply), the patient paid around 12.50 dollars per month. Dr. Upjohn shrugged this price difference off as “just a matter of pennies” before the Senate Sub-committee.

Doctors are constantly bombarded by American drug manufacturers with advertising and inducements to prescribe drugs by trade name, otherwise pharmacists may provide the much cheaper, possibly foreign-produced but equally effective, version. The detail men who visit doctor's surgeries to persuade them to use particular makes of drug were actually told of one drug, whose effects were known to be fatal in certain circumstances: ‘‘Chloromycetin’s toxicity should not be introduced unless the physician brings up the subject or unless you know that he has ceased prescribing the drug.”

It has been widely publicised of late, thanks to the efforts of Ralph Nader, that most American cars are death traps. Kefauver writes witheringly: “The dictates of the styling engineers take precedence over everything else. Even safety of operation—not to speak of fuel economies—is subordinated to the whim of the fashion experts.”

He is referring here to the “non-price” competition that takes place between America’s few giant car firms.

By contrast, in the bread industry what appears to be real price competition is in fact a rigorous campaign by big, nation-wide bakers to oust smaller local firms. The giants, four of whom already control 22 per cent of the market, will undercut wildly, even making a loss in one area, in order to force the small baker out of business. Other techniques include: acquiring detailed knowledge of the small firm while asserting a serious intention to buy it; using the two American unions notoriously run by gangsters, the Teamsters and the Bakery & Confectionery Workers, to give labour trouble; deliberately making piles of loaves, much of which can only be wasted, for if the small baker competes he faces heavy losses on returns of stale bread, and if he does compete his sales may decline anyway—housewives are attracted by big heaps of bread in the supermarkets.

The establishment of a giant in a town whose industry was formerly run by smaller, local capitalists revives the old story of company towns. Although these are less ugly, and perhaps less crudely run for the company's benefit than those of 30 and 50 years ago, they become worse places to live in nonetheless.

Local bankers, insurance companies, suppliers of all kinds, lawyers and accountants find themselves supplanted by the men at head office. The few studies of modem “company towns” that do exist show that areas dominated by a few absentee-owned firms suffer from worse housing, schools, and other civic projects. Councils attempting to raise local taxes are warned that the firm will close down, putting most of a community out of work.

Kefauver believes that the cure for monopoly is adverse publicity, government admonition, and keen competition among all capitalists.

Yet he also states: “Under a system of free enterprise it is basically illogical to expect businessmen to subdue the acquisitive urge of their undertakings. Profit-seeking is the accepted purpose of their undertakings.”

He could not see how it is the very nature of capitalism that brings about monopolies. One firm defeats its rivals, and swallows them. How would he stop this? By abolishing free enterprise capitalism? But that is exactly what he wants to see maintained.

A giant is indeed stalking the world today: the ogre of capitalism. Men like Estes Kefauver, who think they can run it are afraid of it. The majority of mankind. the workers, live in its shadow. Few indeed are even aware of this. But only when the workers of the world understand what lies behind their agonies, the cruelties and the wastefulness of capitalism, when they have determined democratically to establish Socialism, only then will the shadow be removed from all our lives.

A. Pottersman