Voice From The Back: Behind The Fine Words (2010)

The Voice From The Back Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Behind The Fine Words

Recently in a show of strength the USA and South Korea mounted an exercise in and around the Sea of Japan. It consisted of 20 ships, 200 aircraft and 8,000 military personnel and was supposedly a response to the sinking of a South Korean vessel by North Korea. Like all such military displays of power it was accompanied by fine words. They were “protecting the democratic South against the tyranny of the North”. China, an ally of North Korea viewed it as “an intrusion into an area not far from Chinese territorial waters”. It is much more likely that the correspondent Giles Whittell was much nearer the real economic truth behind the fine words when he reported – “The military display that may or may not have struck fear into the hermit dictatorship north of the 38th parallel has angered Beijing as it seeks to assert sovereignty over nearly 1.5 million square miles of the South China Sea, rich in oil and mineral deposits” (Times, 28 July). Behind the fine words, as usual, lurks the profit motive

Progressing Backwards

During the last ninety years or so the working class have been promised by reformist politicians that if only they were in power the working class would enjoy a better standard of living. Foolishly they have swallowed that piece of nonsense and have endured a world war, countless local wars, massive periods of economic slumps, poverty and unemployment. One of the major promises of the reformers was that of improved health care but what is the reality? “The gap between the health of rich and poor is greater now than at any time since modern records began, a study shows. Government initiatives have done little or nothing to close the gap between the life expectancy of poor people and those who are wealthy, researchers from universities in Sheffield and Bristol, writing in the British Medical Journal, said. They looked at deaths between 1921 and 2007” (Times, 23 July). Ninety years of progress according to the reformers – ninety years of futility is more like it!

Bargain Basement Exploitation

“One of Britain’s fiercest and most ostentatiously successful business men has been enlisted to spearhead the Government’s attack on public spending. Sir Philip Green, a man with a reputation for making brutally effective commercial reforms, has been asked by David Cameron to lead a no-holds barred examination of departmental budgets” (Times, 13 August). In his personal life Sir Philip is anything but frugal or economic. He spent £5 million on his 50th birthday party, £4 million on his son’s bar mitzvah and £30 million on his yacht. We imagine what impressed Cameron about Green was his ruthless exploitation of his workers. Here is an example of how fortunes are made in the retail business. “Indian workers are paid just 25p an hour and forced to work overtime in factories used by some of Britain’s best-known high street stores … Some of the biggest names on the British high street are at the centre of a major sweatshop scandal. An Observer investigation has found staff at their Indian suppliers working up to 16 hours a day. Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next have launched their own inquiries into abuses and pledged to end the practice of excessive overtime, which is a flagrant breach of the industry’s ethical trading (ETI) and Indian labour laws” (Observer, 8 August). It is estimated that Green has a fortune of over £4 billion made in such firms as BHS, Topshop, Evans, Miss Selfridge and Dorothy Perkins – that exploitation rather than his personal lifestyle is what has impressed the cost-cutting Cameron.

Half A Million Homeless

Politicians love nothing better than coming up with catchy phrases that they reckon will be taken up by the media. Over the years we have had “The war to end all wars”, “A land fit for heroes”, “You never had it so good”, and more recently Mrs Thatcher’s “A property owning democracy”. The war to end all wars led to an even bloodier conflict, a land fit for heroes turned out be a land where only a bloody hero could survive and Macmillan’s never had it so good only applied to the owning class. Thatcher’s property owning democracy seems particularly ironic when we learn of this prediction. “More than 500,000 people will be added to social housing waiting lists and nearly 300,000 jobs will go under proposals to cut the housing budget by up to 40 per cent, say campaigners. The National Housing Federation says ministers risk “shutting the door on an entire generation of low-income families” by cutting cash for affordable homes” (Times, 26 July). Empty political slogans don’t solve the problems of poverty, unemployment or homelessness – only workers understanding about socialism can do that.

“Humanitarian” Slaughter

Capitalism is a blood-thirsty rapacious society, so it is no accident that its supporters have had to invent euphemisms to cover up its carnage. In recent years we have heard of “collateral damage”. This is used when a school or a hospital is blown up. To cover up the madness that leads to troops killing their own numbers we have “friendly fire”. The Israeli government have sunk to a new level even for them with the following news item. “The Israeli military has imposed restrictions on the use of white phosphorous munitions, which led to civilian deaths and casualties in Gaza last year. Israel told the UN that it would deploy them only when approved by a “humanitarian affairs officer” (Times, 22 July). What would be the job description of a “humanitarian affairs officer”? Someone adept at describing burning to death from white phosphorous as a “pleasant, almost painless termination” perhaps?

The Growth Of Inequality

One of the great illusions of the 21st century is that only in the past had we this awful set-up where “robber barons” intent on grabbing more and more wealth out of the poor exploited masses had their existence. How 19th-century we are led to believe, because we do not live in such a society today. But do we ? “Many of the great fortunes of American history – those of the Rockefellers, Andrew Carnegie and the Fords – are now mighty foundations that have long outlasted their founders. Recent years have seen the greatest disparity of wealth in America since the Golden Age of the 1920s. A recent study found that the top one per cent of Americans now receive 15 per cent of the country’s total income – about double the rate of the 1960s and 1970s” (Times, 5 August). Capitalism was based on the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class in the days of Rockefeller and Carnegie – it still is.

Blogger's Note:

The 'Behind The Fine Words' piece was not in the print edition of the Standard but is included in the website edition of the Standard.

What future for the Beautiful Island? (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

A look at the 'other China'

Start with Hong Kong. A bouquet of modern capitalism. Concrete, glass, steel. Banks, hotels, skyscrapers. Streets bedecked with anti-pollution face masks. And residents who advise visitors come to marvel not to drink the water. Then escape to a leaf-shaped island of some 24 million population which became known to untroubled, disinterested people outside only because it was the country of origin of much of the cheap electrical equipment they bought from their local branch of Currys or Comet. Once reliant on the export of cheap textiles or consumer goods the island rose to be among the world’s leading manufacturers of computer software and hardware. Not to overlook bicycle parts, some of which are used at a London East End branch of the not-for-profit Social Enterprise to help train locals who are homeless, isolated or unemployed (or perhaps all three) to make a kind of living as bicycle mechanics.

Within the island’s demographic stew there are some half a million descendants of about a dozen aboriginal tribes, settled with others who came over from mainland China. Together they can claim to be now one of the most peaceful societies in Asia. So – welcome to the island of Taiwan, to Ilha Formosa (beautiful island), to the Republic of China – a misleadingly splendid name for a state which is no longer a member of the United Nations and is recognised by only the likes of Belize, Malawi, the Vatican… Welcome to the beautiful scenery, the mountains, the golden beaches. To the flyovers whisking you above the factories and past the driven schools. To the nation state which exists by, through and in with, one tough work-ethic.

Martial Law

Of the competing mercantile powers it was the Portugese who, about 1590, “discovered” Taiwan – and gave it the name Ilha Formosa. A long period of war, rebellion and murderous poverty while Taiwan was a “province” of China ended in 1895 when the Japanese occupied the island. This was supposedly “in perpetuity” but it came to an end in 1945, after a half century of martial law. Japanese rule was harsh – an estimated ten thousand people were killed – but not corrupt and it developed an educational system as well as roads, railways and industry. In 1943, as the Allied leaders were carving up the Far East in expectation of Japan’s defeat in World War Two, a “peace” conference in Cairo decided that, as a spoil of war, Taiwan would be “returned” to China under Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). United States Vice President Truman’s response described the island as “America’s unsinkable battleship”.

Towards the end of the war there was a subtle change in the vocabulary of the Allied powers’ intentions; Taiwan was to be “temporarily occupied” on their behalf by the KMT. But this was soon undermined when civil war broke out on mainland China between the KMT and Mao Tse Tung’s “communist” forces. Preoccupied by those more pressing events, Chiang left the running of Taiwan to his deputy Chen Yi, whose regime was barbaric enough to provoke many “liberated” Taiwanese to regret the end of Japanese rule. In 1947 a minor incident connected to the state monopoly of the tobacco trade inflamed a series of widespread protests which were crushed with mass arrests, torture and execution of up to 30,000 people. (The day when it started – 28 February – is now a national holiday in Taiwan and New Park in the capital city Taipei was re-named 2-28 Peace park). That horror was a foretaste of things to come

White Terror 

By 1949, as the KMT on the mainland were facing defeat Chiang Kai-shek took refuge in Taiwan, where he continued to insist that one day he would prevail. Meanwhile martial law returned under The White Terror, with mass arrests of those alleged to be “attempting to overthrow the government”. Over 90,000 were taken in this way and at least half of them were executed. The scene of much of this was Green Island Lodge – a prison on a volcanic island separated from Taiwan by a few miles of nausea-inducing Pacific Ocean. Here there is lush scenery, one of the world’s three seawater hot springs, golden beaches, pristine coral reefs and dazzling tropical fish. This is where many Taiwanese come to enjoy a short break – if they can ignore that close by are a museum and a human rights memorial in place of the notorious prison where so many victims of The White Terror suffered and perished.

Apart from his willingness to commit atrocities, the defeated Chiang Kai-shek became something of an embarrassment to the Americans. In 1971 President Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger offered an “opening” – a carefully chosen word of flexible interpretation – to China and, as if that was not enough, Taiwan lost its membership of the United Nations to China. During the following year the US and China met and agreed on a “communiqué” which, while not actually saying that Mao had won the civil war, “acknowledged” (more of those careful words) that the new China was a unified country of which Taiwan was a part. This betrayal of what was supposed to have been an unshakeable commitment was settled after the negotiators had been pleasured by an especially sumptuous meal, encouraging Nixon’s odious chief arm-twister, replete, to assure his hosts “After a dinner of moatal and Peking Duck I’ll sign anything”. Well, he was Henry Kissinger wasn’t he…

Elections

Chiang Kai-shek died in 1978 and his son Chiang Ching-kuo took over with an easier, less repressive hand. While martial law was still in operation it was possible in 1986 for the first official opposition – the Democratic Progressive Party – to be formed and to win a significant number of seats in the next election. In process with these changes in 1987 martial law was brought to an end; free elections are now an established part of political life on the island and the election of 2000 brought an end to KMT rule. It should be said that it is not unknown for elected members to try to sort out their differences through a punch-up in the Chamber and for political business to be obstructed through allegations of corruption. In 1991 the KMT claim to link Taiwan and the Chinese mainland was formally abandoned. Symbolic of the clearing away of a lot of the obstructive anachronisms imposed on the Taiwan of the 1940s, many of the statues of Chiang Kai-shek were vengefully torn down. It was symbolic too of Taiwan feeling its way into place as an independent competitor in global capitalism.

Part of this process is Taiwan’s promotion of itself as a tourist attraction to rival the best offered by the likes of Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia. “Where else” bellows a full page ad in a Sunday newspaper colour supplement “would you find time-honoured traditions that thrive in perfect harmony with the chic and the avant-garde”’. Apart from its “breathtaking scenery” the island’s vibrant ambition is testified to by “the city’s skyscrapers” – among them Taipei 101, the world’s second highest building, with the fastest elevator to whisk you from ground level to the top viewing spot in a matter of seconds so smoothly that you are unaware of moving. All of which demands that the Taiwanese people live by a patriotism manufactured as surely as those computer parts. And it all soaks down to the children, who devotedly learn the officially sanctioned Mandarin language – often along with English and Japanese – during an average 12 hour day in the classroom with extra tuition in Maths and Science at private cram schools on a Saturday.

Unemployment 

But hard work, to whatever degree, has not been able to insulate Taiwan from capitalism’s chaos. The present world recession has cruelly broken the dream of ever-flowing Taiwanese prosperity. Unemployment is an encroaching problem no longer confined to the poorer, under-educated families but now also affecting graduates. A government subsidy intended to persuade companies to take on graduates has had the effect of worsening poverty at large by forcing applicants to accept lower starting wages – at about half the national average. Many employers – as in England – have pressed their workers to take temporary unpaid leave, or have stopped taking on new staff altogether. And there remains a serious problem of youth unemployment, with the rate for 15-24 year olds about twice that for the workforce as a whole and looming over it all is the real prospect of them being sucked into the ranks of the long-term unemployed.

After a history of savage repression, Taiwan is struggling now for a place among the trend-setters of Twenty-First Century global capitalism. For example they are trying for admission to bodies such as the United Nations and there are missions working for unity with China. As one guide (Robert Kelly and Joshua Brown, Lonely Planet ) put it: “So is Taiwan at a crossroads, or a precipice?” And it may also be asked – what will this do to a beautiful island which has already suffered so grievously? Will it turn out to be a modern capitalist power as frantic, as restless and as abrasive as Hong Kong?

Ivan

For or Against Parliament? (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

People who come into contact with the Socialist Party and learn that we advocate revolution are often surprised that the revolution we urge is one that can be brought about by parliamentary means. They are used to associating revolution with the violent overthrow of governments, not with peaceful democratic elections. This is understandable given that, historically, revolutions of whatever kind have tended to be accompanied by bloodshed and violence and most organisations or political parties calling for revolution still envisage, whether explicitly or otherwise, violent means.

But the latest Socialist Party pamphlet, What’s Wrong With Using Parliament? The Cases For and Against the Revolutionary Use of Parliament, makes it clear that, for the establishment of the wageless, moneyless free access society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life that defines socialism, it is essential for the revolution to be brought about by a majority using democratic means. And since such means are available in most countries in the form of elections by universal suffrage, there is no reason why these should not be used in order for that majority to take control of governments and establish a worldwide socialist society.

While this is the basic premise of the pamphlet, most of it is actually taken up explaining why the common objections to the use of parliament to carry out revolutionary action do not hold water. These are objections often put by those such as anarchists who may broadly agree with the kind of society we want to establish but believe that any attempt to do so by parliamentary means is doomed to failure. There are two main arguments along these lines.

The first argument is that socialists elected to a capitalist parliament will not be able to withstand the ‘system’ and either will find that it forces them into complying with the status quo or will be seduced by being part of the ‘power structure’ and will voluntarily fall in with it ignoring their roots and the mandate on which they were elected.

The pamphlet answers this argument firstly by showing that the capitalist form of democracy, though seriously flawed, has in fact no formal means of preventing sufficiently determined individuals representing a politically conscious majority from using the political system it has developed in order to overthrow it. It deals with the ‘power corrupts’ idea by arguing that the delegates in question would be operating in a different social framework from the one that currently exists, one that would be shot through with the notion of participation and democratic accountability at all levels. It expresses the idea in the following way:

“With the spread of socialist ideas all organisations will change and take on a participatory democratic and socialist character, so that the majority’s organisation for socialism will not be just political and economic, but will also embrace schools and universities, television, film-making, plays and the like as well as inter-personal relationships. We’re talking about a radical social revolution involving all aspects of social life.”

A far more advanced form of democracy therefore than offered to us by capitalism today, where once every few years we are asked to put an X on a ballot paper to choose the best capitalist-management team from amongst competing groups of politicians, who then go away and take all the decisions that influence our lives without consulting us. Yet weak democracy is better then none and, as the pamphlet makes clear, it still provides a means for the majority to take political power once a socialist majority has emerged.

The second argument against the use of parliament is that the powers-that-be would never tolerate a democratic takeover by a socialist majority because of the loss of authority and privilege this would mean for them. They would therefore, if necessary, prevent it by force. There are many suppositions underlying such an argument but the main one is that there is somehow a power behind or beyond elected governments that in reality controls them (some kind of shadowy group or committee or boardroom that is really in control) and that, therefore, if its position is seriously threatened it has the means at its disposal to clamp down on those threatening it and will not hesitate to use violence to do so, perhaps in the form of a coup or a military takeover.

The pamphlet confronts this position by challenging the ‘conspiracy theorists’ to provide evidence that there is a conspiracy behind government and the way the system is organised and argues that, while capitalism with its inbuilt rivalries and vested interests may provide a fertile breeding ground for many individual conspiracies, no evidence exists or has ever been presented that there is an overall conspiracy running capitalism and its governments. That being the case, any attempt to use violence to prevent socialism being brought about by a majority in parliament with undisputed democratic legitimacy would have to be made not by people in the ‘background’ but by non-socialist politicians, yet how would they go about using violence against a majority that included workers from all walks of life and occupations, including the police and armed forces? Is it conceivable that they would obey orders from politicians to suppress the majority of their fellow-socialists and, even if there were enough elements from those quarters who would be prepared to take such action, would they not be overwhelmed by the majority who would oppose them in self-defence?

The essence of the socialist position on the use of parliament is summed up in the following way towards the end of the pamphlet: 

“Once there is an organised, determined majority, the success of the socialist revolution is assured, one way or the other. It is then a question of the best tactic to pursue to try to ensure that this takes place as rapidly and as smoothly as possible. In our view, the best way to proceed is to start by obtaining a democratic mandate via the ballot box for the changeover to socialism. The tactical advantage is that, when obtained, it deprives the supporters of capitalism of any legitimacy for the continuation of their rule.”

The other, related point made is that the organisation of the socialist majority that develops within capitalist society will reflect – will have to reflect – the essentially democratic nature of the future society it will establish. It will in fact have to prefigure that society and so be entirely democratic, and without a leadership which can impose decisions on the rest. All important decisions, in fact, will come from the majority via referendums or meetings of mandated, wholly accountable and recallable delegates. In this light, it is not surprising, as the pamphlet points out, that those groups who support left-wing, Leninist-style ‘revolution’, with its ideas of leadership and decision-taking by a vanguard, dismiss socialism by the ballot box as ‘utopian’. Not that the ‘socialism’ those groups say they stand for amounts to anything more than some form of tightly organised state control of capitalism. Not either that the ‘socialism’ they endorse is any closer to a society of free access and democratic control than the aims of supporters of established parties such as the Labour Party who wish to press their parties into somehow overcoming the economic realities of the profit system and bringing in reforms that will allow it to be governed more humanely.

So this pamphlet puts the case for a revolutionary use of the ballot box to establish socialism and in so doing provides powerful arguments against those who advocate a more benign form of capitalism via parliamentary reforms, against those who want to bring in forms of rigid state control over the capitalist system, if necessary by minority action, and, more specifically, against those who seem to share the socialist aims of a stateless, free access society but still think that parliament cannot be the route to achieve it because the ruling class will never give up power without the use of armed force.

Howard Moss

For a copy of What’s Wrong With Using Parliament? The Cases For and Against the Revolutionary Use of Parliament, send a cheque / money order for £1.50 payable to 

“The Socialist Party of Great Britain” to 52 Clapham High St, London SW4 7UN.

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to one organizer, a scrappy former bank teller named Wu Lijuan, there are at least 70,000 people seeking to regain their old jobs or receive monetary compensation, a sizeable wedge of the 400,000 who were laid off during a decade-long purge. Like many other state-owned companies, the banks slashed payrolls and restructured to raise profitability and make themselves more attractive to outside investors. “They tossed us out like garbage,” Ms. Wu, 44, said before a recent protest, scanning fellow restaurant patrons for potential eavesdroppers. “All we’re asking for is justice and maybe to serve as a model for others who have been wronged.” For a government determined to maintain social harmony, the protests and petitioning are vexing. Compared with farmers angry over seized land or retired soldiers seeking fatter pensions, the bank workers — educated, organized and knowledgeable about the Internet — are better equipped to outsmart the public security agents constantly on their trail.

[Link.]

“Women demand men have houses and cars, why can’t men demand women be virgins?” asked one man on the Tianya site. “So, greedy women, remember, you have to protect your hymens, because those are big dowries for you to exchange for money.” Some men who were interviewed agreed about the importance of finding a virgin. “I really care about virginity,” said Xia Yang, product manager for a technology company. “If you go to buy a cellphone, of course you’d want to buy a new cellphone. Who would spend the same amount of money to buy an old cellphone that’s been used for two years?” The virginity debate also underscores a contradiction in modern China: As the nation becomes more freewheeling, there remains a deeply conservative core.

[Link.]

The report listed numerous areas in which China’s military is on the march. China is deploying a new class of nuclear-powered submarines equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is pouring money into space warfare systems and cyber-warfare capabilities. It is developing a “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missile. China has “the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world,” the report said. Beijing “now possesses one of the largest” forces of surface-to-air missiles in the world, it added. And it has the “largest force of principal combatants, submarines, and amphibious warfare ships in Asia.”

[Link.]

Letter: Living wage or . . . (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Living wage or . . .

Dear Editors

I must declare from the outset that I am a fellow traveller with the SPGB in as much as seeking the abolition of the wage system, but in the Socialist Standard’s recent Cooking the Books column ‘What’s a “Living Wage”?’ (June), I was left disappointed by the way in which the living wage was represented.

The first problem with the article is where (discussing the Green Party’s flagship policy of raising the National Minimum Wage to £8.10/hour) it states that £16,848 pa. ‘hardly qualifies as an adequate “living wage”.’ This feels a little disingenuous.

Let’s be honest about this: of course £16.8k a year is not comfortable, and it is certainly not fair. It is still several thousand shy of the current national average, but it is also several thousand closer. However, the difference it would make (before we get onto potential wider economic repercussions of the wage rate) to those currently on NMW would be phenomenal.

This is a difference not only of nearly £5k a year but has a multitude of knock-on benefits the article neglects to mention, the most important and obvious being the positive impact on health (one of the key grounds for the living wage) due to reduced stress levels.

This leads me comfortably into my next point. As a seasoned London-based organiser around the London Living Wage, one of the most uncomfortable facts I’ve had to deal with in campaigning for the living wage is that paying the London Living Wage has been good for employers; it is good management of capitalism.

A better wage rate (albeit still suitably low) means fewer employee sick days taken and a much lower turnover in employee numbers. The former relates specifically to the aforementioned health benefits, the latter relates often to simple time-management.

So many NMW workers have to work multiple jobs to make up enough hours in order to gain enough money to cover rent and provide the cheapest meal for their families. Staff turnover can be high for NMW employers due to employees taking up work at sites marginally closer to home, etc. In many respects the living wage can be more about time rather than money.

The article states that the first effect of legal living wage rate would be that “some employers would go bankrupt.” Of course this is a definite possibility in the current economic crisis with many employers already teetering on the edge.

On the other hand, however, the kind of employers most likely to be adversely affected would (obviously) be those dependent on super-exploitation: I’m thinking especially of cleaning, security and catering agencies.

But the roles employers for these firms provide are those which are, broadly speaking, already exploited to saturation point, i.e. there is scarcely a surplus of workers (or at least not a surplus of work-hours – admittedly something different). These are by no means the only NMW job types, but they constitute a significant proportion and are (at our current level of technology) extremely difficult to substitute for any kind of improved machinery. We aren’t yet at the stage where robotic androids could perform all the tasks a security guard or cleaner does.

If these agencies – subcontractors, beneficiaries of privatisation – were to collapse under wage bills, this does not therefore necessarily mean mass unemployment (except possibly on a very temporary basis) as the roles require being re-hired for as immediately as they are lost.

In a lot of cases this would presumably take the form of these out-sourced services being brought back in-house to the sites on which they are employed. This can be and often is in fact cheaper for site-owners as it cuts out duplicate management posts between the site-company and the outsourced company (both of which are paid for by the site-owner).

In short, it can work out cheaper in more ways than one to pay workers more. It is not necessarily as straight-forward as the article suggests. A living wage can be as much ‘living’ for the employee as it is for the employer.

Finally, and in my eyes most importantly, the article ends that ‘workers should replace the green demand for a “Living Wage” by the revolutionary demand for the “Abolition of the Wages System”.’ As I mentioned, in principle I agree. However, this simple sentence does injustice to the value living wage struggles have.

For myself the main and most important benefit of the London Living Wage is that it lifts workers and their dependents not only out of the deeper throes of poverty (though not completely altogether) but that it also lifts them out of the harshest insecurity and psychological vulnerability imaginable.

It is not a coincidence that those on the NMW are among the least likely to be unionised. I’m certain the SPGB understands the mechanism used by bosses in holding workers down through the wage system. In London, living wage struggles have galvanised workers’ organisations (especially grassroots unionisation), and have recently begun to really politicise workers. It instils consciousness.

If the wage system can be represented by the image of a boss stamping on a worker’s face, then the living wage might be removing the boss’s foot from the worker’s neck. She’s still going to get stamped in the face, but she’s a little freer to start fighting back.

The demand to abolish wage-slavery is certainly the most important one. However, in our current situation it is only through living wage struggles that any kind of meaningful revolutionary discourse can exist. The living wage question is the first line in this discussion which, if followed to its natural conclusion, ends by agreeing to overthrow exploitation altogether.

An interesting question Cooking the Books should ask is where, if at all, in this discussion the ‘transitional demand’ for a National Maximum Salary might be.

Joseph Robertson, 

London

Reply: … abolition of the wages system?

Let’s get one thing clear from the start. We have nothing against workers struggling for and getting higher wages if they can. We favour this, even if we think that ideally this should be tied to struggling to abolish the wages system altogether. Our members, as workers, join trade unions. So, we hope your campaign to get London employers to pay some of their workers more succeeds, even if we don’t like the term “living wage” any more than “fair wage”. There’s nothing fair about the wages system and we’re against people having to work for a wage to live.

Wages (and their other name, salaries) are a price – the price of the labour power, or working skills, that workers sell to an employer. Most people are forced by economic necessity to do this to get a living, to obtain the money to buy the things they need to live.

The wages system implies the division of society into those who own and control the means for producing wealth and who need to employ people to operate them and those who, owning no means of production, have to sell their working skills to them. It implies a class divided society. But more. Employers are not philanthropists. They only employ workers if they think there’s a profit in it for them. The source of their profits is the difference between what they pay their workers as wages and what they receive from the sale of what their employees produce. So, the wages system also implies exploitation, the extraction of unpaid labour from the workforce. That’s why there is not, and cannot be, any such thing as a fair wage.

The abolition of the wages system involves abolishing the class division of society by making the means of production the common property of everybody under democratic control. Then nobody will be obliged to work for someone else for a wage. Instead, the principle “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs” will apply. People will co-operate to produce what is needed and then everybody will have free access to it to satisfy their needs, without having to pay. In fact money will have become redundant.

What we were criticising in the article was the proposal of a political party to increase the present legal minimum wage by over 40 percent and call the result a “living wage”. We pointed out that this was just another empty vote-catching promise which, even if implemented, wouldn’t have had the expected effects. We would have thought that it was generally accepted that higher wages do lead employers to introduce labour-saving machinery. An example of this in reverse would be how many garages have abandoned car washing machines as hand washing done by asylum seekers (probably getting less than the minimum wage) has become cheaper. You yourself concede that an imposed increase of the order proposed by the Green Party – by nearly £5k a year – could lead to an increase in unemployment for the lowest-paid, even if you think this would only be temporary.

We do not agree that “in our current situation it is only through living wage struggles that any kind of meaningful revolutionary discourse can exist.” These probably are producing an increased trade union consciousness among a section of the working class, but the struggle for higher wages and better working conditions (better conditions for the sale of labour-power) is not the same as socialist understanding of the need to get rid of the wages system altogether by bringing the means of production into the common ownership and democratic control of the whole population. That does not rise spontaneously out of the mere struggle for higher wages but requires the presence and activity of socialists to point this out directly.

Incidentally, for what it’s worth, Marx didn’t think much of such demands as “fixing the minimum wage by law”, which was one of the reform demands of the French Workers Party he had a hand in helping to set up in 1880. He wrote, referring to the proposer of this: “I told him: ‘If the French proletariat is still so childish as to require such bait, it is not worth while drawing up any program whatever.’” (Letter to Sorge, 5 November 1880, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/letters/80_11_05.htm)

As to the demand for a “National Maximum Salary”, we don’t think that this is something that those who want to abolish the wages system should get involved in. The bloated “salaries” received by many top business people and government officials are not really the price of their labour power but a disguised way of getting a share of the surplus value extracted from the unpaid labour of the workers.

Editors.

Letter: Imperialism (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Imperialism

Dear Editors

It was reported on Sunday 11 July 2010 that a boy of seven works a 98-hour week in Delhi to supply products to the British high street chain Poundland.

What is the SPGB position on the conception of imperialism through Lenin, Bukharin and Luxemburg and the idea of an aristocracy of labour?

Wirral Socialists 

(http://www.wirralsocialists.com)

Reply:

We have never accepted the view that a section of the working class in the developed capitalist countries – the so-called “aristocracy of labour” of skilled workers – shares in the proceeds of the exploitation of colonial and now ‘Third World’ countries, The wages paid to skilled workers here reflect the higher quality – due to more education, training and skill – of the labour power they have to sell.

It was only in 1920, in a preface to the French and German editions, of his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism that Lenin introduced the idea that a section of the working class in the imperialist countries shared in the booty extracted from capitalists, workers and peasants in the rest of the world. This was to try to secure the support of anti-colonial movements for his beleaguered regime in Russia. It was a political manoeuvre – “workers and colonial peoples unite” – that went against the basic principle of Marxian economics that wages represent the value of the labour-power a worker sells and contain no element of surplus value.

The original 1916 edition of the pamphlet did not contain this. It was a fairly run-of-the-mill analysis of imperialism and colonialism as put forward by Social Democrats of the time: that it was due to the higher profits to be made in the colonies and less developed countries than at home. The only real objection was to its subtitle of “the highest stage of capitalism” since capitalism had been “imperialist” in the 18th century too.

Rosa Luxemburg’s Accumulation of Capital (1912), however, was based on a faulty analysis of capitalism: that it suffered from a chronic shortage of home purchasing power that drove capitalist countries to seek markets outside capitalism, in the less developed parts of the world. Apart from its descriptive parts it is of little value.

The Bolshevik Bukharin’s Imperialism and the World Economy (1916) developed the idea of a single capitalist world economy and anticipated the role that the state was to play in supporting the overseas economic interests (markets, raw material resources, investment outlets, trade routes) of the capitalist firms established within its borders.

All three (and others) were trying to analyse the phenomenon of capitalism coming to dominate the whole world, as it did towards the end of the 19th century, to which the term “imperialism” was given. This was not the best term since imperialism is not something separate from capitalism and all capitalist countries, not just those normally labelled “imperialist”, are prepared to use force to further the vital economic interests of their capitalist class. – Editors.

Letter: Pete Seeger again (2010)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pete Seeger again

Dear Editors

For a nonagenarian, Pete Seeger sure possesses some staying power. First Roy Beat and now Stephen Shenfield (June and August issues) have gone into print, both missing the main thrust of the March article. Instead, they laser-in on my flippant swipe at the Left’s perennial practice of hijacking every convenient bandwaggon –”good cause” – to promote itself.

In no way was I “dismissing” or “belittling” the Civil Rights Movement as they suggest; merely noting its inbuilt shortcomings. A southern negro could, of course, be summarily lynched for much less than displaying revolutionary tendencies; a reluctance to step into the gutter or an admiring glance (“rape”) sufficing.

All of us abhor Capitalism’s myriad injustices and obscenities but recognise that the solution begins with a rational understanding of the root causes rather than an emotional piecemeal assault on their effects. Is this “Sectarian”? Having pored long and hard over my dictionary, I can only conclude that in commonsense everyday terms it’s nothing of the sort. Personally I’m happier with “Socialist”.

Andrew Armitage

Engels on Human Evolution (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Links to Part 1 and Part 2.

Engels followed the impact of Darwin’s ideas more closely than Marx. He may even have read Darwin's “The Descent of Man”.

Unlike Marx, Engels continued his interest in Darwin and things Darwinian beyond the initial general public furore created by the publication of Origin. Apart from references to Darwin in his correspondence with Marx and others, the first major piece of work Engels produced was the notes for the unfinished The Rôle of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man, written between May and June 1876, over five years after the publication of the Descent.

This speculative, but interesting, work which includes a strong element of Lamarckism (but even Darwin had to resort to a version of Lamarck), can be seen as a Marxian response to the “Man’s place in nature” debate in at least two important ways. First of all, it attempts to show in what way humans are different from other animals. Unlike Darwin, who was eager to point to the similarities across species, to indicate the origins of typical human behaviour in a simpler form in other species, and that humans were only quantitatively different from animals, Engels was adamant in showing both the difference and similarities between humans and other animals. Whilst speculating in how human labour activity had evolved from earlier forms along with the evolution of physical organisation, and therefore within the Darwinian explanatory framework, he was also wanted to show how human labour differed from that of lower animals. Following the same line of argument he and Marx had arrived at thirty years previously in The German Ideology, he wrote:

“Animals…change the environment by their activities in the same way, even if not to the same extent, as man does, and these changes, as we have seen, in turn react upon and change those who made them…But animals exert a lasting effect on their environment unintentionally and, as far as the animals themselves are concerned, accidentally. The further removed men are from animals, however, the more their effect on nature assumes the character of premeditated, planned action directed towards preconceived ends” (Marx and Engels Collected Works, volume 25, p.459).

“In short, the animal merely uses its environment, and brings about changes in it simply by its presence; man by his changes makes it serve his ends, masters it. This is the final, essential distinction between man and other animals, and once again it is labour that brings about this distinction” (ibid., p.460).

In addition to this evolutionary explanation of the difference between human and animal labour, Engels’s argument can also be seen as a materialist response to Wallace’s “unseen spirit” explanation of the difference between humans and animal. Furthermore, Engels also opposed the mental materialism of Darwin, who based the difference between humans and other animals in the more developed and complex mentality of humans; a form of idealism that had dominated Western philosophy since the rise of Christianity:

“All merit for the swift advance of civilisation was ascribed to the mind, to the brain. Man became accustomed to explain their actions as arising out of thought instead of their needs (which in any case are reflected and perceived in the mind); and so in the course of time there emerged that idealistic world outlook which, especially since the fall of the world of antiquity, has dominated men’s minds. It still rules them to such a degree that even the most materialistic natural scientists of the Darwinian school are still unable to form any clear idea of the origin of man, because under this ideological influence they do not recognize the part that has been played therein by labour.”

Did Engels Read The Descent?

Engels seems to have kept up with the Darwinian literature on human evolution, making reference to T.H. Huxley, Ernst Haeckel, John Lubbock Charles Lyell and Alfred Russel Wallace, although it is not always clear which of their works he is referring to. So it is somewhat surprising that there is no explicit reference to The Descent or to what Darwin wrote on the matter. But seeing that he had read all these other authors, who had made their contribution before 1871, and that Darwin was the most important figure in this group, it would seem unusual that Engels would not read The Descent. Also, he had five years to read him before he started work on The Rôle of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man in May 1876.

There is, however, some textual evidence that Engels did read The Descent. In the second paragraph of his pamphlet, Engels writes:

“Darwin has given us an approximate description of these ancestors of ours. They were completely covered with hair, they had beards and pointed ears, and they lived in bands in trees.”

This description attributed to Darwin comes in part from The Descent. In Chapter 6, “On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man,” Darwin writes:

“The early progenitors of man must have been once covered with hair, both sexes having beards; their ears were probably pointed, and capable of movement; and their bodies were provided with a tail, having proper muscles”

(Darwin The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871; Penguin edition 2004, p.188).

The reference to “they lived in bands in trees“ too seems to have come from The Descent, as Darwin writes:    

“We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy, tailed quadruped, probably arboreal in habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.” (p. 678)

Therefore, unless Engels got these from another author, these two separate references provide adequate justification for thinking that Engels did read The Descent.

From Darwin to Marx: From Biology to History

Human beings possess a dual character, as both biological and historical beings, in a radically different way from any other animal.

For non-human animals, the biological, structural determination of their activity is dominant. As they get more biologically complex, they acquire the capacity for their activity to be modified by previous interactions with the world, but they live in the “now”; their activity is concerned with adjusting to the immediate circumstances they are interacting with. They have a blind past, as a species and as individual organism, but not a history.

Only humans have history. Through their linguistic ability and social co-operation, human beings have over centuries achieved (it is not nature-given) a greater degree of purpose and agency than any other species. As a result, they not only have a history, but can make history. But making history requires that the impersonal, law-like relations of the capital relationship, of production for profit, be destroyed and replaced by a free association of producers who create a world in their own interests and their own purpose. Only then will humanity shift from a determined pre-history to a determining history.

Ed Blewitt

(concluded)

50 Years ago: Harry Pollitt (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

What a tragedy was the life of Harry Pollitt! Here was a man who, horrified by the conditions of the working class as he had known them in his youth, set out in a genuine attempt to improve those conditions. He conceived a personal dislike of “the bosses,” and was determined to “make them pay” for what the workers had had to suffer. Yet Harry Pollitt never gained a thorough understanding of the forces that mould modern society, in Russia as well as in Britain. As a result, his deeply-felt hostility to the ruling class in Britain simply resulted in his becoming, indirectly, an overseas ally of the Russian ruling class. It is not enough merely to oppose capitalism, as one has known it: one must be for its alternative, Socialism. Had Harry Pollitt succeeded in his efforts, he would merely have been instrumental in establishing state capitalism in Britain, in place of the variety we have at present. And that would have left the workers exactly where they  are  now.

[From “The Passing Show” by A.W.E., Socialist Standard, September 1960]

SPGB Meetings (2010)

Party News from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pathfinders: Taiga Taiga burning bright . . . (2010)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fires are nothing new in the Russian boreal or northern forest. In fact 20 to 35 thousand wildfires annually affect between 0.5 and 2.5 million hectares of Russian forest (LINK). However the fires this August have been severe enough to reduce entire villages to ash and melt car engines, due to the worst heatwave for decades, with temperatures reaching 42ºC. Deaths from the fires were reported at 30 but there were also 2000 deaths from drowning due to people trying to cool off in rivers LINK.

Although careless humans are thought to be directly responsible for most Russian forest fires, it may be that careless humanity is indirectly responsible for the rest. The cause of the Russian heatwave is also the reason why August was a washout in the UK but catastrophically so in Pakistan, while the Japanese baked: there is something funny going on with the polar jet stream.

 Jet streams are fast-moving wind layers a few hundred miles across but only a couple of miles thick, circumnavigating the globe in meandering loops at the tropopause, the region at around 6 – 9 miles high which separates the dense troposphere from the stratosphere. Airliners save time and fuel by riding these streams and reducing drag in the thin atmosphere, but the streams are unpredictable, splitting, combining and even going back on themselves, and causing potentially fatal clear air turbulence. When a loop meanders south, cold wet air rushes down into the loop from the north, which is when the UK gets drenched. Where it loops upwards, hot dry air reaches northerly climes, giving Muscovites an excuse to get out the sun-lounger. All this is well understood and the explanations, to do with orbital velocity ratios and temperature, are straightforward. What is not understood at all, and which results in the UK being flooded in summer and frozen last winter while Siberia is incinerated, is why these meandering loops suddenly, and for weeks on end, come to a dead stop. Something is obstructing it, and nobody knows what.

It would be a truism to say that climatology is not a well-understood science. This is what makes the climate change debate so lively. But what is particularly alarming at the moment, in view of this level of uncertainty, is the amount of serious talk around about geoengineering.

On the face of it, there is a case for this. Capitalist ruling elites are never going to cooperate to reduce carbon emissions, that much is becoming painfully obvious. Even if they stopped all emissions today, the effects of what is already up there will be felt for centuries. The first ‘tipping point’ in a cascade of tipping points may have already been reached. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Maybe it’s time to call in the engineers.

There are two approaches to this, as outlined in the 2009 report of the Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: science, governance and uncertainty (LINK). The first involves carbon dioxide removal (CDR). This covers everything from carbon sequestration to ocean fertilisation with iron filings to encourage plankton blooms. Though CDR is seen as the preferable alternative, the techniques are expensive, not proven, largely untested (or where tested don’t work – plankton just don’t take carbon to the grave with them as was believed), and above all slow. There may not be enough time for these techniques to make any difference.

The second approach is solar radiation management (SRM). This is a fancy phrase for fast-acting tricks to stop the sun’s rays getting through, but which do nothing about the long-term carbon problem. Techniques range from the cheap and frankly silly – painting house rooftops white – to the hi-tech Heath Robinson – erecting mirrors in space.. One feasible suggestion receiving a lot of attention is the idea of chucking between one and five million tons of sulphur annually into the stratosphere in order to create atmospheric haze or ‘global dimming’, an effect known from volcanic case studies and from 20th century post-war industrial pollution. The irony of polluting the planet in order to avoid the consequences of polluting the planet can hardly need elaboration. And here we meet the jet stream again, for at the tropopause convection currents are horizontal, not vertical, thus it is supposed that all this sulphur, once up there, will stay permanently on top of what amounts to a set of impermeable tinted window tiles. But here’s the rub: climatology is an uncertain business. As the Royal Society report admits: ‘Indeed there is a range of so far unexplored feedback processes, which could become important with a permanently engineered sulphate layer’.

Since volcanic sulphur emissions are associated with ozone depletion, and since ozone is thought to be instrumental in the lateral convection processes in the stratosphere, it does not seem beyond the bounds of possibility that a depletion in one could result in a collapse in the other. If all this sulphur ended up crashing through into the troposphere and the cloud layer, it would give us a global dose of sulphuric acid rain the like of which we have never seen. Then we would be fried whatever the weather.

Whether for CDR or SRM, most advocates of geoengineering emphasise that this is not an ‘instead of’ emissions reduction’ option, it’s an ‘as well as’, but opponents have pointed out that prominent advocates of this approach belong to those same conservative think-tanks which have all along been climate change deniers. The fear is that geoengineering is being touted as a cheap fix in order to avoid doing anything worthwhile (ie expensive) to solve the problem of carbon emissions. The deepest fear, of course, is not that geoengineering wouldn’t work, but that it would, and that it would do something catastrophic. It’s like setting about neurosurgery with a trowel and a lump hammer, while wearing a blindfold.

It is entirely of a piece with capitalism’s modus operandi that it sleepwalks into a problem and then guessworks its way out of it, while arguing bitterly about whose fault it is and who’s going to pick up the bill. But there is one other interesting fact about the jet stream which, if the world gets a lucky break and the bickering capitalists get booted off the planning committees, socialists may well be able to turn to good account: “According to one estimate, of the potential wind energy in the jet stream, only 1 percent would be needed to meet the world’s current energy needs. The required technology would reportedly take 10–20 years to develop” (Wikipedia). Now that would be one hell of a windmill.

Paddy Shannon

Cooking the Books: Labour and labour-power (2010)

The Cooking the Books Column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

In part two of his article “Is Marx’s analysis of capitalism still valid today?” (Freedom 31 July) Jonny Ball tackles Marx’s theory of surplus value which he correctly says is central to this analysis. This is how he presents it:

“Its basic premise is that in order to make a profit, the capitalist must pay the worker a sum lower than the amount the worker actually produces. The owners of the means of production, of Capital, will always try to keep costs, such as wages, to a minimum in order to extract the maximum amount of surplus value from their workforce, while those who do not own capital are obliged to sell their labour in order to live at a price that is determined not so much by the value they produce, but by the whims of an employer, who will receive the bulk of their workers' produce in the form of profit.”

No doubt Ball was trying to be sympathetic to Marx but, unfortunately, this is not a satisfactory depiction of Marx’s theory. Marx did see the source of surplus value as the unpaid labour of workers, but he never held the view that what workers were paid was determined “by the whims of an employer”.

Even when, in the 1840s, Marx spoke in terms of workers selling their “labour”, he argued the value of the commodity they sold was determined, as in the case of all other commodities, by the amount of labour-time required to produce and reproduce it and that its price fluctuated with supply and demand.

Later, in exile in Britain in the 1850s, when he had more time to study the workings of capitalism, Marx came to draw a distinction between “labour” and “labour-power”. Labour-power was the ability to work, the skill to produce something, while “labour” was the result of the exercise of these skills, the expenditure of labour-power. What workers sold to their employers was their “labour-power” not labour. Labour in fact couldn’t be bought and sold, only the commodities in which it was embodied could be.

So crucial was this distinction to Marx’s considered analysis of capitalism that when in 1891 Engels republished Marx’s 1849 article Wage Labour and Capital (still a basic introductory text to Marxian economics) he corrected the text on this point, explaining in his Introduction, “According to the original, the worker sells his labour to the capitalist for wages; according to the present text he sells his labour power” (Engels’s emphasis).

This distinction solved the problem of exactly how profit arose from the exploitation of workers. Workers were paid (generally and more or less) the full value of what they sold – their labour-power – yet were still exploited because the exercise of their labour-power produced a greater value than that of their labour-power. This “surplus value” was the source of their employer’s profit and of all capitalist property incomes.

Up until then pro-working-class thinkers and activists had tended to see profits as arising either from employers paying workers less than the value of what they sold (i.e. by cheating or swindling them) or from them selling what workers produced above its value (i.e. through profiteering or ripping off their customers).

Both these do go on under capitalism but Marx held that, as explanations of working class exploitation, they were unsatisfactory as they suggest that this has its origin in exchange not production and that it could be ended by “fair wages” or “fair trade” rather than by making the means of production the common property of all.

Profits first again (2010)

Book Review from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Agrofuels : Big Profits, Ruined Lives and Ecological Destruction. By François Houtart. Pluto Press

Whilst fundamentally an investigation into the pros and cons of agrofuels this book is, in large part, a critique of 'the dominant economic discourse' which repeatedly overlooks both ecological and social externalities – the negative effects of industrial and agricultural development etc. Throughout the chapters Houtart reveals the links which lay bare the logic of capitalism with example after example of how the profit motive gets in the way of social and environmental concerns; the incompatibility between taking care of the majority's needs and ensuring the most profitable returns; and which ensure that externalities will continue to be ignored until they impact on profits.

Early on he suggests that the 'socialist' countries of the 20th century in Europe and the USSR would have done well to heed Marx's warning that capitalism destroyed the two sources of its own wealth, nature and labour, implying that, as their model was supposed to be different from the one which dominated world economy, they should have avoided the terrible environmental degradation and social problems of which they, too, were guilty. As those regimes were just a different way of organising capitalism we really shouldn't be surprised that they performed no better.

Agrofuels are discussed in detail with impeccable references for each aspect. What they are, where they are grown, the main players, world views as to their potential for inclusion in the alternative fuel debate, ecological effects and effects on populations plus their place in the newest form of accumulation, the neo-colonialisation of land acquisition. The main argument throughout is that agrofuels are like any other commodities and that capitalism's logic requires that the needs of the North subsume the output of the South.

As far as any statistics are concerned the author reveals a catalogue of horrors of ecological devastation and social destruction all in the cause of profit. However, he goes on to expound that agrofuels could have only a minor role to play in a wholly different system anyway and that the information we are being given by the companies producing them is limited, biased, way too optimistic and ignores all externalities. The true story of agrofuels is mostly one of increased emissions of greenhouse gases compared with using fossil fuels, insufficient available land, huge quantities of nitrates creating dead zones around coasts and the forced removal of untold numbers of people.

An interesting discussion regarding externalities is the individualisation of responsibilities as a characteristic of neo-liberal thought and practice. The challenges that people face in getting to work, for instance. The time wasted using public transport or the decision to use personal transport is an individual choice and, therefore, an individual or socialised problem which can't be taken into account in the financial calculations, can't be factored into business profit margin calculations and the process of capital accumulation. Similarly migrations towards towns or foreign lands are attributed to personal decisions (unrelated to loss of land or livelihood in the case of monocrops for agrofuels or other purposes) – and the individualisation of the problem thus becomes a mechanism of externality.

The capitalist way forward would be to continue apace growing more crops for the rich world's fuel, with the knock-on effect of creating more hungry people and a further degraded planet. Insisting that no global solution will be found without challenging the contemporary development model and reiterating that agrofuels are aggravating and exacerbating ecological and social problems, he goes on to state that a new philosophy of the relationship between human beings and nature is required. Use value rather than exchange value; favouring human beings over capital; human needs becoming the motor of the economy; energy becoming a use value aimed at satisfying the real needs of humans and not to serve the accumulation of capital. 'Such a post-capitalist model, which some call the socialism of the 21st century, stresses values and the qualitative aspects of life, and democracy as a means.'

Pointing out accepted socialist values of true democracy – participation in decision-making, production for need, redistribution of wealth (which for us comes about from common ownership and the abolition of money), with human beings in balance with nature – it's like a handbook for socialists just needing the final chapter explaining that the fulfilment of the ideas to this point will be brought about not by any reforms of the current system and not by convincing capitalists to be kinder, fairer or more human-centric but by the democratic self- emancipation of the working class.

Janet Surman

A Socialist visits capitalist China (2010)

From the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

One evening in early July, the Air China plane took off from London on an eleven hour flight to Beijing, through seven time zones. This was to be my first visit to China.

With a knowledge of Russian, one fact about the flight which particularly interested me was that a very large part of the journey would be across the Russian Federation.

Over Russia
After some snoozing in a window seat, I awoke to see the lights of St. Petersburg, 38,000 feet below, with the Gulf of Finland, to the left and the immensity of Lake Ladoga, stretching north-eastwards, to the right. When covered with ice during World War 2, that lake had played a very important role in providing the inhabitants of Leningrad with a lifeline, during the siege of the city by the German Wehrmacht.

I snoozed a little more, occasionally waking up to see the enormity of the Russian taiga (forest), stretching for hundreds of miles, past the Urals and into Siberia. When I awoke again, it was daylight and a vast lake emerged below – Lake Baikal – the world’s largest freshwater lake by volume, looking quite different, from when I had visited it at ground level in 1989. A flight to Beijing really does give an idea about the size of Russia.

After crossing Mongolia with its mountains and the wilderness of the Gobi Desert, the plane gradually descended into Beijing.

Arrival in China
Thirty-nine degrees Centigrade, with very high humidity. Almost like a wall of heat! Those were the conditions on my arrival in Beijing. The taxi ride along the highway to my hotel was rather reminiscent of urban scenery in New York or Chicago, except that the advertising hoardings were overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, written in Mandarin Chinese characters. Just this one hour journey conveyed an immediate impression of China’s very significant capitalist economic development and modernisation, at least in the eastern part of the country.

Like in Russia and other developing countries, many young Chinese are keen to meet foreigners and to practise their English. All the same, as I had realised before my arrival, the proportion of the population with a significant knowledge of English was not large. Hardly surprising really, because of China’s only relatively recent increased communications with the West. Nevertheless, around the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, there was no shortage of young guides willing to accompany foreigners around, describing the sights. This was very worthwhile and an opportunity to find out more about the way of life.

Impressions of Beijing
Attractive, neatly kept parks such as Zhongshan, with ornate, colourfully painted pagodas, gates and red Chinese lanterns. Tiananmen Square, despite its sinister connection with the events of 1989, is very impressive, particularly when the buildings are floodlit at night.

Pollution. Traffic jams in much of the city, where there are many more cars than 25 years ago. However, a large number of people still commute by pedal cycle, together with many of the young on motor scooters and bikes. Metal fencing, segregating the slower lanes for local traffic, provides some limited protection for cyclists from larger, faster vehicles. In spite of this, travelling by road in Chinese cities is stressful, like in other Asian cities, such as Bangkok and Kolkata.

Some beggars on the streets, hustlers peddling their wares. Many of the “hutongs”, or alleyways, with their old houses are being demolished in favour in modern buildings. Visit the shopping mall and street of Wangfujing, near the centre of Beijing, and you could be in almost any western shopping area, apart from the predominance of advertising in Chinese language characters. However, many signs, such as those indicating street names are transliterated into Pinyin, a form of Chinese using the Latin alphabet. In numerous places, promotion of the products of Sony, Panasonic and Samsung, etc., is visible.

Capitalism in China
Without doubt, capitalism dominates China, just as it does the rest of the world. Of course, the form of capitalism is somewhat different from the West. For many years, from 1949 onwards, state capitalism was very much in evidence. Now, the Chinese so-called “Communist” Party is still the only permitted political party. The inverted commas are certainly needed, since the ruling party is no more communist or socialist than Marks and Spencer in the UK.

A huge wave of privatisation has taken place, with commercialism nearly everywhere: on the streets, in the media, etc. Pretty much the same as you would see in the West.

Journeys on the Beijing metro turned out to be of interest. Well air-conditioned! Yes, the underground in London could learn something from this. As I stood in the carriage, I noticed that many of the passengers were looking at the walls of the passing tunnel, much more closely than would be the case in London. I soon realised why. As the train rushed between stations, electronically projected still and movie images, primarily in the form of advertising, were visible, like on a TV screen, – more of capitalism’s propaganda. As in other world cities, many commuters look fixatedly at the screens of their mobile phones and other electronic devices.

The Great Wall
A visit to the Great Wall gives an impression of how far the Chinese tourist industry has developed in recent years. The Wall is one of the world’s most memorable sights, as it winds its way across rugged mountain ranges. Reading the guidebooks had prepared me for the large number of tourists that would be there, and also for the fact that a northerly direction was the best way to go, to get away from the crowds.

All the same, as I did so, it was strange to look back and to see throngs of humanity slowly moving along the tops of the Wall, snaking in the distance, over the rising and falling slopes of the mountains.
Capitalism packages most of the world’s sights, with coach and car parks, entry fees, souvenir shops, cafes, restaurants, etc. Despite this, with a little planning, it is still possible for a person to ignore most of the commercialised tat and to marvel at what one has come to see.

Yunnan
From Beijing, I travelled to Kunming in Yunnan province. This city lies in the south-western part of the country, about 2,000 meters above sea-level. Here I met up with an English language teacher from Canada and her husband, who were spending nearly a year in China, before returning to North America.

I had talks with local Chinese students in the Yunnan University tea-room and found that they were very interested to hear about ideas from the West, since far fewer Westerners are to be found in Kunming than in Beijing.

During my stay in Yunnan, I made journeys into rural areas. Much of the province is very scenic because of its mountainous nature. In the valleys and flatter areas, much of the land is used for agriculture. Little mechanisation is used in farming, with most of the labour in the fields and orchards being done by hand. The work is very arduous, involves long hours and the income is low. That is why many younger people are migrating into the towns and cities. In some parts of the countryside factories are being constructed where the terrain is favourable.

Similarities Between China and Russia
Because of my interest in Russia, I could not help but notice certain similarities between the two countries. The governments of both have used Leninist slogans in their propaganda. The two have presented themselves, in the past as “ideological adversaries” of the Western powers. Now, they still have authoritarian regimes, with a strong emphasis on nationalism, and are frequently portrayed as political rivals to the West.

State capitalism is no longer so dominant in China and Russia, and, like other parts of world, both have significantly embraced privatisation. Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times (8 January 2008) says:

“The new Russo-Chinese model is authoritarian rather than democratic. It attempts to marry capitalism with a large state role in the economy. It holds out the promise of western consumerism for a rising middle class, while rejecting western political liberalism. Rather than relying on democracy or communist ideology to create loyalty to the political system, the Russian and Chinese elites increasingly stress a combination of economic growth and nationalism.”

At the United Nations, China and Russia often oppose the Western policies of exerting pressure on repressive governments – in Sudan, Iraq, Iran, or Serbia. It should be added though, that in the past, a Sino-Soviet split revealed rivalries between Mao’s China and the Soviet Union. In addition, there is still a strong element of mutual suspicion and strategic rivalry, with the Russians wary of the potential expansion of China into sparsely-populated, mineral-rich Siberia.

Officials of the two countries are often ambiguous in their statements about democracy. They declare that liberal democracy remains a long-term goal – but that their countries “must be given time“. They maintain that they will be “democratic” – but they will not allow that idea to be defined for them by outsiders and foreigners.

Gideon Rachman says: “President Hu Jintao of China has called democracy ‘the common pursuit of mankind’. However, the official Chinese line tends to be that small steps are being taken towards a more democratic system – through village-level elections or contested elections within the Communist party – but that it is vital to avoid the ‘chaos’ that could be unleashed by a naive rush towards democracy”.

China and Global Capitalism
Very clearly, capitalism is a global system. More recent developments in China have shown how much that country is a part of the system. Increased privatisation is an example of this.
The Zhongshan or Mao suit, as it is known in the West, which was widely worn in the sixties and seventies has overwhelmingly been replaced by Western style clothing. Most younger people dress very much like their counterparts in the West.

One amusing instance of how things have changed was when I visited a lake land area on the edge of Kunming. Sitting on some benches was a group of elderly men. One appeared to be in his eighties and was holding an ancient Chinese stringed musical instrument. An example of the older part of Chinese culture, to be sure and yet, as I looked at him, I noticed that he was wearing on his head an American style baseball cap, with the word “Sexy” in English, emblazoned across the top.

Capitalism in China
The form which capitalism takes can vary in different parts of the world. In China, the state still has a more important role to play than in the West. Although the ruling party is the only permitted political organisation, how much longer this continues to be the case, remains to be seen.

According to Forbes Magazine (8 October 2007), in 2007 China, with 108, ranked second behind the US, in the number of dollar billionaires. Yang Huiyan, ($16.02 billion) came top of the Chinese list, while Xu Rongmao ($7.03 billion) came second. During the reform period, inequality has clearly risen terms of wealth ownership and, additionally in such areas as household income, consumption of consumer goods, and social outcomes in education and health. On the other hand, economic growth during the past 25 years has brought about a reduction in absolute material poverty. This, of course happened under capitalism earlier in history, in Europe, for example.

During recent times, many workers have lost their previous job security and subsidised housing. According to Amnesty International (Western Australian, 2 March 2007), millions of Chinese workers who have migrated from the countryside to the urban areas are “overworked, underpaid, denied access to health care, education for their children, and even the right to live permanently in the cities which use their labour, and are treated as an underclass”.

The Amnesty report continues: “They are forced to work long stretches of overtime, often denied time off when sick, and labour under hazardous conditions for paltry wages. As well as being exploited by employers, migrant families face discriminatory government regulations in almost every area of daily life.”

Conclusion
China has its own social cultures, such as “guanxi”, a system of favours, services and obligations between individuals. Nevertheless, as it develops, it has become increasingly a part of the world capitalist system.

For me, the visit to China was both memorable and instructive. Memorable, because of the sights, different culture and helpful, friendly people, whom I met. Instructive in the political sense.

In the West, much of the population has been deceived by mainstream propaganda into mistakenly believing that capitalism can only be accompanied by “political democracy”. Nothing could be further from the truth. During the Industrial Revolution, when capitalism developed in Britain and parts of western Europe, for a long time the right to vote was completely absent for the large majority of people, and trade unions were threatened by governments and employers. Privatised capitalism has co-existed and does co-exist quite comfortably, with authoritarian regimes in South America and Africa, as well as with past dictatorships in Europe, such as those of General Franco, Hitler and Mussolini. The state controlled version of capitalism emerged in the Soviet Russia and later in China. Now, Russia and China persist with authoritarian regimes, with which a more privatised version of capitalism has made a convenient accommodation.

Certainly, China never was even remotely “socialist” or “communist” in 1949 or afterwards.

Vincent Otter