‘Money is Irrelevant' (1996)

From the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

That’s the verdict of Sir James Goldsmith, the financier turned politician. A new convert to the Socialist Party, perhaps? Unfortunately, no. When Sir James says that money is irrelevant, he means he has so much of the stuff that he couldn’t spend it all if he tried, he is worth £1,200 million. However, this hasn’t stopped him from making the effort, and he recently pledged £20 million to the campaign for a referendum on the European Union and its single currency, thereby donating irrelevant money to an irrelevant cause.

Sir James’s offensive comment was quoted in the Sunday Times's eighth annual tribute to Britain’s super rich, published in April. This year’s wallow in the cream of the capitalist class appraised the fortunes of five hundred fat cats, worth collectively a staggering £70 billion. This figure is a massive 28 percent higher than that of last year, the highest total since the survey began in 1989:

“Britain’s rich became more than £15.5 billion richer in 1995 in what proved to be a vintage year for personal wealth creation. "

Recalling your miserly two or three percent pay rise (assuming you got a rise at all), you may be forgiven for wondering how you managed to miss out on this bonanza. For most of us, of course, it was more likely to have been a “vintage year” for debt, job insecurity, negative equity and the inexorable struggle to make ends meet. You may be wondering just how the fortunate few came by their even greater wealth. Was it hard work? Thrift? Fiddling their expenses? On the contrary; they didn’t actually do anything:

“A rare combination of record stock market performance, a sharp increase in land prices, a steady rise in art values and a thriving market in the sale of companies has created a sudden improvement in the lot of the rich. ”

If only you’d sensed that thriving market in the sale of companies, you could have got yourself down to the local car boot sale and unloaded a few of those old companies you’ve had cluttering up the garage for years.

Richer and richer

Yes, it’s a funny old world isn’t it?

There you are, packing in the overtime to cam a few extra quid, while Hans Rausing has seen his wealth rise by a stratospheric £880 million—and that’s following his retirement! In fact the average increase in assets amongst this tiny group was £30 million. There were so many millionaires with bigger fortunes queuing to get onto the Sunday Times list that the threshold for entry had to be raised from £25 million in 1995 to £35 million this year. And if these estimates seem astounding, bear in mind that they do not include cash in private accounts!

So what are your chances of joining this well-heeled band? Even less than your chances of winning the lottery:

". ..  no lottery winner has yet made it to the 500 despite . . . rollover jackpots. Until a . . . winner emerges to claim £40m, the most that a winner can hope for is to scrape into the top 1,000 where the bottom line in our database is £10m. Not a bad sum but not serious money."

No, not serious money. If you want to play with the big boys (and they are mostly boys—only 8 percent are women), you won’t be taken seriously without at least thirty five million to your name.

The big boys are people like David Sainsbury, of the supermarket giant, who is worth £1.26 billion. His “salary” rose from £311,000 to £389,000 last year, a cool 25 percent increase. Not that impressive, some might say, for the boss of Britain’s leading grocer. However, this didn’t include his whopping £37.5 million share of the company’s dividends. Interestingly, Sainsbury is quoted as saying: “If I vote at the next general election, it will be for Tony Blair.” Confirmation, if any were needed, of whose interests “New” Labour represents.

Other top dogs include Viscount Rothermere the newspaper publisher, whose family’s wealth tops £1 billion, and there are “unconfirmed reports that his personal wealth in cash alone matches that sum”. Then there is the Duke of Westminster, worth £1,650 million, who “tries to stay in touch with the harsher side of life”. Apparently, he recently took his two children to a drug rehabilitation project “to show them what it was like”. It’s a bit like us going to visit a stately home to see how the other half lives, but instead of pleasure by proxy, the Duke likes a little pain by proxy, just in ease he’s deprived of the pleasure of knowing just how stinking rich and privileged he is.

Different world

Not all aristocrats have fared as well as the Duke, however. The aristocracy of course is no longer in the position of ascendancy that it once was, and incomes for many have reduced dramatically in recent times. If you’ve fallen on hard times lately, you may be eager to hear how these pillars of the community have coped; they do, after all, have much more substantial commitments. Well, the answer can be very simple:

“Though landowning aristocrats no longer dominate the 500 list, they will not disappear completely for several generations. As Simon Howard has shown with his stewardship of Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, it simply takes the auction of one £5 million painting to provide enough liquidity for some years . . ."

So there you have it. You know' those ugly old Van Goghs and Picassos which are making your drawing room look untidy? Get them along to the boot sale with your old companies and you’re quids in.

One of the interesting things about the Sunday Times’s survey is its raison d'etre. It’s difficult to ascertain whether it’s aimed at envious poorer readers, who may drool over the enormous fortunes enjoyed by others, or if it’s aimed at the people who actually feature in it, so that they might also envy those with bigger wads, while at the same time feeling superior to those with less. For many it’s a double-edged sword: if they’re not included they complain, yet when they are included they still complain that they’re either under- or overvalued, depending presumably on whether they are tax exiles or not.

Clearly, the people in this survey inhabit a different world, a world that the rest of us can barely imagine. Many inherited their wealth, while the majority are “self-made” men. Defenders of capitalism try to persuade us that entrepreneurs have acquired their money through some sort of super-human effort, and that they deserve more than the rest of us. But there are only twenty-four hours in a day; only so much work that any one person can do; and whose contribution is more valuable? The entrepreneur who chooses to work ten or twelve hours a day, or the farmer, or miner, of fitter, or firefighter? No matter how hard a worker toils, they will never be rich—but somebody else will. Yes, the fortunes of the wealthy are indeed the results of hard work: yours and mine.

The Sunday Times has at least cleared up a little problem for the government: the whereabouts of the mythical “feel-good factor”, for which the Tories have been patiently waiting to persuade a jaded electorate to vote for them. The feel-good factor is alive and well and living with Britain’s rich, while the feel-conned factor, as ever, stubbornly resides with the working class.

Nick Brunskill

Sting in the Tail: The Ancient Bill (1989)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ancient Bill

In a recent Parliamentary debate Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, revealed that only three out of ten crimes reported in London are likely to be followed up by the police.

This gave Roy Hattersley, Labour's home affairs spokesman an opportunity to berate the present "crime screening" system, whereby priority is given to those crimes most likely to be solved.

Nothing special about this you may think, It is the old parliamentary game of the opposition criticising the government and pretending they could do a better job. But Hattersley went further than this. He was concerned that this would lead to "a decline in trust between public and police."

This view is based on the fallacy that in the past the public had trust in the police. Those workers who took part In the miners' strike would doubtless have something to say to Mr. Hattersley about that!

But distrust in the police force is no modern phenomenon. The first police force in Ancient Athens had to deal with the same problem:

But this gendarmie consisted of SLAVES. The free Athenian considered police duty so degrading that he would rather be arrested by an armed slave than himself have any hand in such despicable work.

Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State by Frederick Engels.

Left-Right Farce

Are you easily confused ? Do you find politics a bit of a mystery ?

If so then don't worry because you're not alone. Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission and obviously a mighty thinker, doesn't know if he is "on the extreme right of the Left or the extreme left of the Right" (The Guardian 16 June).

And according to the media the left wing Labour Party has a right wing (Hattersley, Gould, etc.) while the right wing Tories have a left wing (Heath, Gllmour, etc.).

What all this shows is that different labels cannot hide the basic sameness of outlook of both the "Left" and the "Right".

Source of Value

The price of gold In 1980 reached 850 dollars an ounce but is now around 370 dollars.

Reasons for this collapse include investors' money being lured away from gold by the strong dollar, high interest rates and the recovery of stock markets.

Of course these factors could change tomorrow and gold's price would rise again but there are more fundamental reasons for its decline.

One is the worldwide discovery of new goldfields which have sharply increased its supply. Another is that gold is simply not so valuable nowadays because the amount of labour necessary to produce it has been cut by more efficient mining methods, and labour is what gives every commodity, including gold, its value.

Inflation and Enoch Powell

The government spokesmen are at It again. They are running around the country talking about "inflationary wage demands". The recent increase of 8.8 per cent awarded to rail workers has been greeted with cries of "inflationary wages".

This is of course nonsense. It is not trade union action that causes inflation of the currency. It is governments that cause inflation.

One of the few politicians who recognise this and is not afraid to state it is, surprisingly, Enoch Powell. In the magazine Intercity of July/August he puts the position clearly:

The guilt is not with the public who persist In spending a depreciating currency. The guilt is not — even the suggestion has an old-fashioned sound nowadays — with the trade unions and the workers who obtain "inflationary'’ wage rises or with the employers who pay them.

Guilt there has to be, however, as guilt there will always be when money Is debauched: and the guilt, as usual, Is political, the guilt of politicians who use the power to manipulate the money in pursuit of objectives which, if they were candidly avowed and debated, would be publicly rejected.

Short Memories

Some people have short memories. During a debate in Parliament on the NUR's industrial action, Norman Fowler, the Employment Secretary, told Labour MPs:

The fact is that, however damaging or irresponsible any Industrial action is, you will always support it.

The Guardian 19 July

If Fowler had been dealing with Labour's attitude to strikes when in opposition then his outburst could be excused, but he must know Labour's record when in government.

For example, did Labour governments support strikes by the Dockers in 1949 and 1950, the Seamen in 1966, the Firemen in 1977 or public service employees during the Winter of Discontent ?

These and many other strikes were condemned and the strikers vilified, and this probably explains why no Labour MP told pipsqueak Fowler that no matter the issues in any strike, his party will always support the employers.

In view of these anti-trade union actions by both Labour and the Tories isn't it crazy that the vast majority of trade unionists will vote for them at the next election ? Some people certainly have short memories.

Money Makers

Victor Keegan usually writes clearly about economics in The Guardian so it was disappointing to read his piece of 17 July on the attempted takeover of BAT Industries by James Goldsmith and his cronies.

Keegan writes that the £3.7 billion which the bid added to BAT shares in just three hours ". . . must surely be the fastest bit of wealth creation ever recorded".

A slip of the pen? Not a bit of it, because he goes on - "The Increase in wealth is real in that if the bid succeeds then the shareholders in BAT will be that much richer . . .".

So they will, but the buyers of the shares will be that much poorer so what has that to do with wealth creation?

For Victor Keegan's information, the financial activities of Goldsmith and his ilk merely MAKE MONEY and they are perfectly happy to leave wealth creation - the production of the goods and services society needs - to the useful majority.

A Brave New World

All of us from time to time have tried to envisage what the future will be like.

However it is doubtful if in our worst nightmares we could have envisaged a future such as planned by the Adam Smith Institute. This bunch of hard right Tory headbangers have been turning their collective genius to the problems of crime.

In a report in The Independent dealing with a book "Streets Ahead” published by the Adam Smith Institute we learn:

The quality of city life would be improved by residents "privatising" their streets, mounting security patrols and putting gates at the end of the roads to keep out traffic, according to the Adam Smith Institute.

The only advantage that we can see in the scheme is that we would be able to repel, at our own privatised Checkpoint Charlie, such socially undesirable types as rent collectors, bailiffs and Tory Party canvassers!

Voice From The Back: Thought for food (1998)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Thought for food

Back in the summer, the weather expert in the Guardian chatted about global warming and came to the conclusion that it was capitalism that would cause the problems, not carbon dioxide. She or he said: “[A] Deep Truth about world food supply . . . has been clear since the Science Policy Research Unit made an in depth analysis of climate and world food in the 1970s. There is no difficulty in growing enough food to feed even the increased population of the globe in the 21st century, however the climate changes. The reason why there are famines now, and will be in the future, is that food is not distributed evenly. On many scenarios, the overall effect of global warming will be to increase world food supply. But the haves are likely to have even more, while the have nots experience the droughts and famines. People starve because of politics, not because of the weather.”

It’s a business

As the law stands, dealers in illegal drugs can register their trade for tax purposes and tax officials will protect their identify from the police and other government agencies . . . A spokesman for the Inland Revenue said: “Tax law does not discriminate between profits made from illegal or legal activities. We only report taxpayers to the police if we suspect they are involved in murder” (Independent on Sunday, 16 November)

It’s a crime!

Magistrates in Wales have fined a woman £200 for possessing a tiny piece of cannabis with an estimated street value of 50p. The 23-year-old single mother pleaded guilty to have 0.2 grammes of cannabis at her home in Cernarth, Dyfed, and on top of the fine was order to pay £40 costs. Her solicitor, Mr Alan Lewis, said. “The drug seized was no more than the size of a grain of rice, barely enough to smoke. It was so small she could have brushed it off the table and no one would have known” (Independent on Sunday, 16 November).

New sweatshops

Automatic all distribution (ACD) and information and communication technology (ICT) have enabled call centres to become hugely powerful business machines, and the UK has proudly assumed the mantle of Europe’s “call centre capital”. With more than 250,000 people already employed in call centres, and around 1 million expected to join them by the end of the decade, it is the fastest growing employment sector of the economy . . . Call centres are all about cost reduction. If companies learned one lesson from the recession it was from Direct Line founder Peter Wood’s brainwave: slashing wage bills by replacing hundreds of high street outlets with a shed full of telephones . . . In several of the largest call centres, operators are virtually chained to their desks, even having to ask permission for toilet breaks . . . John Orsmond, chairman of Advertising Research Marketing, which advises advertisers on how to use call centres, says he knows of employers in Scotland paying rates as low as £2.35 an hour.

A grateful nation

An 81-year-old crippled war veteran who was refused a place in a care home by his local authority, threw himself under a train after his pleas for help were ignored, a Northern Ireland inquest heard yesterday . . . Mr McLarnon has been taunted by youths for being an ex-soldier, the court heard. On the day he died, he had visited his local British Legion club—as he usually did—and asked friends for help. He had only 63p in his bank book and did not have enough for his bus fare home. Elizabeth Thompson, nursing manager of the Somme home for ex-soldiers in Belfast, said she had recommended Mr McLarnon’s admittance but the health board has refused to fund it. Health chiefs had been “irate” about the pressure being put on them (Guardian, 13 November).

Giving thanks

As the service of thanksgiving for the life of billionaire Sir James Goldsmith entered its second hour at St John’s in London’s Smith Square on Thursday, the first of the 700-plus congregation began to leave. Baroness Thatcher, who was due at another memorial service, for Viscount Tonypandy, was followed by GEC boss Lord Weinstock and the Earl of Suffolk. In the event the celebration lasted more than two hours, something of a shock for Goldsmith’s widow lady Annabel . . . (Mail on Sunday, 16 November).

They Said It . . . (1992)

From the July 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

• I've never known her pay for anything— Friend of Jimmy Goldsmith’s daughter Isabel.
• A child dies every 2.4 seconds for one simple reason: poverty—Oxfam Appeal.
• What this summit is all about is money— ITN report on the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
• When I first met him, he gave me a big kiss and told me I had a job for life—Ivy Needham, redundant ex-employee of one of Robert Maxwell’s firms, on Maxwell.
• No-one likes seeing details of their private life brought into the open— Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times.

Gold-Seeking Guru (1992)

From the December 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 1992 Schumacher Lectures held in Bristol in October set out to explore the link between "good work, good business, good economics and a spiritually informed world view". One of the advertised speakers was Sir James Goldsmith (in fact, he only sent a video message) who was presented by the Schumacher Society as one of "four great thinkers and activists who look towards a sustainable future based on spiritual and ecological values”. The image that is created of him is that of a businessman and industrialist who has given up his business interests to devote himself to changing human values and creating a better world and who has a particular interest in environmentally-sustainable land use.

Certainly, James Goldsmith gives millions of pounds to the Green movement including organizations like Friends of the Earth. In the 1970s he financed an anti-nuclear campaign against the nuclear plant at Windscale. Nuclear power was, he declared in a recent interview reprinted in Resurgence magazine (no 152), "hopelessly uneconomic, terrifyingly dangerous and insecure”. In the early 1980s he helped his brother Edward Goldsmith launch and finance The Ecologist magazine. Then in 1990 in a flamboyant gesture, he sold his timber interests, the profits from which had largely enabled him to build up his spectacular fortune in the preceding decade, to Lord Hanson. In return he acquired Newmont Mining which owns mostly goldmines. He declared on giving up his timber assets that he would devote the rest of his life to protecting the environment and in particular to persuading businesses and governments to end the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest.

But environmentalists beware! Despite what the Schumacher Society has to say about James Goldsmith—and it is after all one of the leading ecological associations in Britain—his credentials as a great environmental thinker and activist do not bear close scrutiny. The large amounts of money which he dishes out to the Green movement along with the glib, superficial pronouncements he makes on a variety of subjects from communism to Buddhism, farming and sustainable land use amounts to little more than sophisticated greenwash. He is one of those members of the capitalist class who recognize that if they are to hold on to their power and wealth, they must appear to take into account the well-informed and vociferous demands of the growing environmental movement. They must discredit the views of those people in the movement who point to the profit system as one of the main perpetrators of ecological destruction and unsustainable resource use. He attempts to buy off the more naive participants in the ecological movement by appealing to their recognition of the need for global solidarity which is unfortunately coupled with a refusal to grapple with the political reality of the class-divided system under which we live. In the interview reprinted in Resurgence magazine he stated:

I believe business is vital—and a free market extremely important—because you need prosperity to clean up the scars of the past and because people who are reasonably prosperous can think six months, a year, ten years ahead.

But it is the activities of Newmont Mining in which he holds a 42 percent stake that reveals the full hypocrisy of his position as a promoter of ecologically sustainable land use and his commitment to creating a better world.

Profits from pollution

In September this year, two environmental and human rights groups, Minewatch and Survival International named Newmont and one of its subsidiary companies. Dawn Mining, as being among the top ten violators of Native American land. Both companies are at present in dispute with at least two Native American communities whose survival has for centuries depended on the ecologically- sustainable land use which Goldsmith claims to be such an expert on. In Nevada. Newmont Mining has polluted ground water with cyanide and heavy metals from five goldmines on its Carlin Trend concession. The Western Shoshone tribe who are in dispute with the US government over the ownership of this particular area have commented with dismay at this desecration of land which they have looked after so well for so long according to their spiritual values:

It is the Western Shoshone belief that Mother Earth is a living being, she is alive in her own way. not as we humans are but in a different way.The blood that flows in our veins keeps us alive. The water that flows in our Mother Earth are her veins and keep her alive. This water must be kept clean and pure so that all life upon Mother Earth is to continue for the future. (Statement issued by Western Shoshone . National Council, August 1992).

In Washington State, Dawn Mining Company which is Newmont's 51 percent-owned subsidiary plans to use low-level radioactive waste to fill a huge pit on its uranium mine and mill complex, part of which is on a Spokane Indian Reservation. Both members of the tribe and the Washington State Health Department have demanded that the company use clean soil instead. The company is bankrupt and claims it cannot afford to make the site safe unless it is paid by other US states to take their unwanted radioactive waste. If the site is not cleared up soon there is a danger that 400 million gallons of contaminated water may begin to leak from disused mine pits into nearby rivers.

While Goldsmith pontificates about the environment and spiritual values, Newmont mining continues on its profit-seeking rampage around the world. In Peru, Newmont owns a 10.7 percent share in the South Peru Copper Corporation (SPCC). At two mine sites in the south of Peru, SPCC' is responsible for seriously depleting water resources, poisoning rivers and coastal waters and causing serious respiratory illnesses among the local people.

In Australia, the company suffered a slight setback when another of its associate companies, Newcrest, along with several other mining companies came into direct conflict with the Jawoyn Aborigines over a proposed goldmine at Coronation Hill in the Northern Territory. The Jawoyn are strongly opposed to mining in this region because they believe a dreamtime creation figure called Bula lives there. If Bula is disturbed, apocalyptic events will follow. According to the New Scientist (27 April 1991) the Aborigines also refer to the area as “sickness country". It has high levels of radioactivity caused by uranium deposits close to the surface. Mining in the area could indeed unleash the destructive powers of the sleeping spirit. . . Certainly, mining the area would drastically deplete and contaminate the waters of the South Alligator River system which runs through the Kakadu National Park made famous in the film Crocodile Dundee. In June 1991, the Aborigines won their battle to get mining companies banned from the area by an opportunistic Australian Labor government anxious to capture the green vote over this most publicized issue in election year. But how long will it be before the ban is reversed or the companies find a loophole which will enable them to slip into the area?

Greed for gold

In the meantime, Newmont continues to prospect for gold—in Uzbekistan, in South and Central America, in south-east Asia and in Europe, with little care for people and environment. The company's activities make Goldsmith's words sound very hollow indeed. When in 1990 he swapped his timber assets for a mining company, he was simply exchanging interests that were decreasing in profitability and becoming too sensitive for a man concerned to maintain his green image for a more lucrative source of wealth and one about which there is considerably less public awareness. He has admitted that his sole reason for acquiring Newmont was the pursuit of profit when he said in 1991:

Gold and gold-mining shares will have their day and when they do everyone will want to buy gold shares, (quoted in The Guru and the Gold, Minewatch dossier, 218 Liverpool Rd. London Nl)

Goldsmith is no different in spirit from that group of Europeans who first set foot on American shores—the conquistadores—who were also motivated by a greed for gold.

Any discussion about spiritual values and ecological sustainability should surely begin by referring to the experts in the subject—those people whose survival has for centuries depended on a profound respect for the earth and the finite nature of her resources, and whose customs and traditions reveal an intimate and scientific understanding of their environment.

Certainly, there is nothing ecologically sustainable about multinational mining as those who are first to be on the receiving end of its destructive processes point out. Many Native American communities, and indeed other indigenous groups such as the Jawoyn Aborigines mentioned above, have spiritual taboos relating to human activity which tampers with the land in the way that mining for profit does. Some such as the Navahos in Arizona are opposed to digging up coal as they regard any mining as a sacrilegious and destructive act, but other communites in other parts of the world have engaged in small-scale mining activity, taking from the earth what is of use to them and with minimal damage.

Unless Goldsmith genuinely becomes part of the struggle to wrest control of the Earth’s resources from the minority who own and control them, in order to create a society of common ownership based once more on a sustainable use of resources, he will go down in history merely as one member of that class of ruthless profit-seekers who for so long have been responsible for the wholesale destruction of people and planet.

Kerima Mohideen

Editorial: Some Democracy (1996)

Editorial from the June 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are supposed to be living in a democracy. But we aren’t. Or rather, we are living only in a very partial democracy. This is because the democratic features existing decision-making institutions and arrangements have are undermined and distorted by the class structure of present-day society.

According to democratic theory, everybody should have an equal say in making decisions. This is not just in the sense of votes being of equal value but also in the sense of having an equal opportunity to express and present views should we want to do so. This equality, which is a basic condition for the functioning of a true democracy, does not exist under capitalism where some people have more money—and therefore more chance to put over their views—than the rest.

One of these people is Sir James Goldsmith, the sixth richest person in Britain with assets of £1200 million. He has his political views. There's nothing wrong with that. He is as entitled as anyone else to hold and express whatever views he wants. That's perfectly democratic. But Goldsmith is not like everybody else. He is a very rich man. He is more equal than others and has decided to use his riches to set up and finance his own political party, the Referendum Party, campaigning for a vote on the (irrelevant) issue of whether nor not Britain should stay in the European Union. That shows just how undemocratic capitalist society is.

Goldsmith is reportedly prepared to spend £20 million on putting his personal political views across. This sort of money is enough to buy modern premises, publish millions of leaflets, pamphlets and press releases, insert full page advertisements in the national press, and hire office staff, canvassers and candidates. By financing a candidate in every constituency in Britain, Goldsmith is able to buy the chance to put his personal views—both in writing and via TV and radio—to every voter in the country. Just because he is rich. By contrast, we as a small but long-established and serious political party have never had the opportunity to do this.

We are not surprised at this flagrant negation of democracy. It is merely an illustration of the way capitalism prevents a true democracy, in which everybody would have a genuinely equal say in decision-making, from existing.

We will continue as best we can on our limited resources to put forward the case for socialism (we can only afford to put up a handful of candidates in the coming election). As a society based on common ownership of productive resources, socialism will be a classless society where there will be no privileged individuals and groups. Which is the only basis on which the principles of democratic decision-making can be fully applied.