Letter: Two minor disagreements (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

I recently read the 100th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard and I wish to congratulate you for maintaining the case for socialism for a century and not falling into the traps which have ensnared so many who claimed to be socialist, such as reformism, industrial unionism, defence of state capitalism and taking sides in wars.

    

I have, however, two minor points of disagreement I wish to address and would like your views.

    

The Socialist Party contends that once having captured political power, a socialist majority is then in control of the armed forces. In fact in, I believe 1955, an article in the Socialist Standard stated: “Should a violent minority attempt to destroy socialism they would have to be forcibly dealt with . . . no violent minority could be allowed to obstruct the will of the majority.”

    

In my view the capitalist class controls the armed forces if they also control parliament then the services can receive their orders from the capitalists’ political errand boys and, in some cases, girls. Spain in 1936 was a clear cut case of parliament not being in control of the army and air force. I consider this is a minor point because if the majority of the working class are socialists then it logically follows that most workers in the armed forces will also be and, as such, will refuse to attack fellow socialists.

    

Another minor point concerns the resolution about political democracy that was debated at the 1990 conference. Though it is understandable that certain improvements within capitalism are desirable, isn’t openly stating the Socialist Party’s support for such, inviting support from non-socialists who also welcome such improvement. Doesn’t such a thing smack of reformism?

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Ontario, 

Canada

Reply:

The capitalist class can indeed be said to “control” parliament, the government and the armed forces but this is not to be taken literally: there is no direct line of command, public or secret, between the Confederation of British Industry and the chiefs of the armed forces or the cabinet or parliament. The CBI in fact has to lobby the government and MPs just like any other pressure group.

    

Capitalist control is much more indirect since it’s a question of the government, parliament and the voters accepting capitalism and of capitalism being able to function only in the interests of the capitalist class, meaning that governments have no choice but to pursue policies, including how the armed forces are used, that are in the interest of the capitalist class. That’s why they end up being mere “errand boys and girls” for the capitalist class, not because they take direct orders from them. Since in fact the capitalist class is not a monolithic bloc but is made up of sections with differing interests over trade, taxation, etc they require a forum in which to debate and settle such differences; that forum is not the annual conference of the CBI but parliament where the section that has the support of a parliamentary majority gets its way.

   

In all developed capitalist countries, such as Britain and Canada, the government does firmly control the armed forces. It is only in economically backward countries (such as Spain in the 1930s and even there a part of the armed forces did obey the government – that’s why there was a civil war) where the armed forces can play an independent political role. As capitalism develops in these countries, together with a stronger and more self-confident capitalist class, the pressure arises to tell the armed forces to stay out of politics and to bring them under parliamentary control.

    

Capitalist control of parliament, the government and the armed forces depends, then, in developed capitalist countries, on the base of the structure – the voters, the overwhelming majority of whom are workers – accepting capitalism. When this base rejects capitalism then the structure that guarantees the capitalist class control of the government and the armed forces is bound to collapse one way or another. Our strategy is that the socialist-minded working class majority should try to bring this about with a minimum of social disruption and violence, by sending a majority of socialist delegates – socialist errand boys and girls – to parliament and take over political control, so depriving the capitalist class of the possibility of using the armed forces to protect themselves.

    

If a minority of recalcitrant pro-capitalists were to seek to resort to violence to defy the politically-expressed will of the majority for socialism, obviously they would have to be dealt with, as we pointed out in 1955. But, frankly, we don’t see that, faced with a socialist majority legitimately in control of political power, even the top brass of the armed forces, let alone the rank and file (who will, as you point out, also be influenced by socialist ideas) would throw in their lot with a doomed hypothetical revolt by a recalcitrant pro-capitalists minority.

    

As to the question of the importance of political democracy to the working class, obviously we socialists in places like Britain and Canada where this exists can’t be indifferent to the struggles of our fellow workers to get it in places where it doesn’t yet exist. This is just an expression of solidarity with our fellow workers in struggle, and not at all a bid to attract the support of non-socialists and so not in the least reformist.

Editors.

Letter: Socialist MPs and reforms (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

I was interested by Steve Shannon’s letter on reformism and the editorial reply in the September Socialist Standard. I’ve believed for some time that the Party’s principled opposition to reformism is one of its truly distinctive features. Search long enough and you’ll find other political organisations which mouth off once a decade about free access or the abolition of the wages system, but you’ll search a lot longer before you find any which never align themselves with some attempt to rearrange capitalism.

This opposition to reformism is well grounded because reforms are by their nature divisive and therefore work against the vital condition of working class unity. For example, within capitalism, raising miners’ pay will be good for miners but not necessarily for other workers. The only interest guaranteed to be shared by all is an interest in ending their position as wage slaves. Voting for reforms which ‘could benefit the working class as a whole’ would be an empty task if this means benefiting all members. (And what else could it mean?) That leaves the problem pinpointed by Steve Shannon, and reference to the party’s position being ‘long-established’ is no answer.

But there is a way out of this. The editors rightly speak of socialist ‘delegates’ facing the problem of whether to vote for reforms. Who decides how they vote? Not them, but the membership of the Socialist Party. This would have two advantages. It would act as a check on whether the membership had reached the political maturity necessary for bringing about a socialist society. (If they vote for reforms they haven’t.) It would also begin the important process of allowing the electors, and not those they have elected, to have control over what happens.

Still, no hurry in resolving these issues. Looks like there won’t be a minority of socialists in parliament any time soon.

Keith Graham (by email)

Reply:

We can’t accept that all “reforms are by their nature divisive”. Many may indeed benefit just a section of the working class, but surely a reform removing restrictions on free speech or the freedom to organise would benefit all workers (and the socialist movement too)?

By the way, we define a reform as a politically-implemented measure and so don’t include wage increases as a “reform”, or wages struggles as “reformist”, even if these are still changes within capitalism. We are all in favour of workers struggling to get the best deal they can for the sale of their labour power to employers, even though we don’t of course seek support on this basis either. 

Editors.

A century of progress? (2011)

From the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers are still being killed in fires in garment factories because of locked doors.

March 25th will be the centenary of the greatest workplace disaster, prior to 9/11, in America’s history – the infamous fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. Because of a locked door, 146 people died, most of whom jumped to their deaths on the street nine storeys below, obviously preferring a quick and painless end over being burned to death.

The Triangle Company occupied the top three floors of the ten-storey Asch building at the intersection of Washington Place and Greene Street in Greenwich Village. Architect Joseph Asch had boasted his building was fire-proof, which structurally it was. This didn’t mean everything in it was.

No one knows exactly what started the fire, but the most likely explanation was a cigarette end that had not been extinguished, was thrown into a barrel of unused clothing material. Smoking was prohibited for the obvious reason that the materials were flammable. Some of the cutters constantly defied this ban, believing themselves to be a cut above the other employees (no pun intended) and as such, thought the law didn’t apply to them. Workplace snobbery being another of the many ways capitalism divides worker against worker.

The fire began around 4:45 p.m. which was quitting time for the near 500 employees. Factory manager, Sam Bernstein, the brother-in-law of one of the owners, Max Blanck, attempted to douse the flames rather than sound the alarm, an action that cost many lives.

The fire, which began on the eighth floor, sped rapidly to the ninth and tenth, cotton being very flammable. Many did escape, some in the elevators (a few even threw themselves on top of it) and some made it to the roof. Ladders were extended from a nearby building to the roof.

Among those who scaled them were the owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, (betcha couldn’t see that one coming.)

Twenty four died on the fire escape, which did not extend to the ground and was too flimsy to hold that much weight and collapsed.

Though the fire department was called and arrived quickly and extinguished the blaze in thirty minutes, their ladders could only reach as high as the sixth floor. Those who died did so because the door on the Washington Place side of the ninth floor was locked. Controversy raged between whether it was locked to prevent people leaving early or to make them leave by the Greene Street door, then enveloped in flames. The usual procedure was, when they left by the Greene Street door, they would have their handbags checked to see they were not taking home products they had made. In other words, the company had to protect their legal theft as opposed to illegal theft. Whatever the reason for the locked door it made no difference to the deceased. Their choice was death by fire, or jumping.

Most of them were young immigrant women from Italy and the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. Though no one knows what their thoughts were, it’s possible that Jewish girls, having seen in the pogroms, what fire could do to their bodies, jumped so they would be identifiable. Those who remained in the building were identified by a shoe or a lock of hair, or jewellery; six were never identified.

Nothing should have been surprising about the fire which was a tragedy waiting to happen, especially at a time where there was so little workplace safety legislation in effect in America.

In the early 20th century, approximately 40,000 people lost their lives every year to workplace injuries: in mines, foundries, factories and on railroads. What made the Triangle fire sensational is the fact that so many died so quickly, so horrifically and in America’s most populated city.

For three months officialdom did nothing about it except point fingers. State governor, John Dix, said he was “powerless”, an amazing comment, which was interpreted as, “I don’t care.” Mayor, Bill Gaynor, told his secretary to deal with it, who then referred the matter to the Fire Chief, Ted Croker. This worthy had risen to power by the patronage of his uncle, Richard Croker, once head of Tammany Hall, the most powerful political organisation in America. Croker blamed the Building Department, who blamed the Fire Department.

State Labour Commissioner, John Williams, said it didn’t come under his jurisdiction and building owner, Joseph Asch, said he had fulfilled all his obligations. Harris and Blanck said the doors were never locked during working hours. The head of the reformist Socialist Party of America, Meyer London, sneered that, whilst safety reform should be enacted, it probably wouldn’t be, and that nothing would be done about the tragedy.

The press understandably demanded that someone be held accountable. William Randolph Hearst, even created his own panel of experts in engineering, real estate and fire prevention to suggest new laws for safer workplaces for his paper, American, to advocate.

For a time, it looked like London would be proved right, but a young man, ambitious for political office, District Attorney, Charles Whitman, persevered in his attempts to prosecute the owners.

Whitman interviewed survivors and hired a detective to go to the ninth floor and find the lock of the door that opened onto the Washington Place stairs. This lock showed it had not been opened, whereupon the detective, Barry Flood, secured an indictment against Blanck and Harris, whom he arrested.

The defendants obtained the services of Manhattan’s most successful attorney, Max Steur, who had himself once been a garment worker.

Steur, knowing he couldn’t prove the door was unlocked, resorted to cheap tricks like examining the handbags of survivors to see how many garments they could possibly have smuggled out. This was done in attempt to create sympathy among the jurors and to show the reasoning for keeping it locked.

Blanck and Harris, naturally enough, said they weren’t aware of any doors being locked during working hours. Steur emphasised it would be ridiculous if they were locked, considering the constant coming and goings of delivery people, errand boys and salesmen etc. All this was ludicrous when one considers that, when a fire prevention expert inspected the premises in 1909, he noticed the door on the Washington Place side was locked during working hours. Survivors, themselves, had said Harris was constantly checking to see the door was locked.

Judge Thomas Grain, charged the jury to decide, beyond a reasonable doubt, whether or not the defendants were aware the door was locked during working hours. The jury concluded they were not aware of it, so they were acquitted.

The “innocent” partners successfully filed insurance claims that worked out to about $400.00 for every dead worker.

Civil lawsuits were brought against the owners by the relatives of the deceased, but since Steur again defended them, nobody got a penny. Instead, twenty three relatives managed to get the princely sum of $75.00 each from an insurance company.

It is of small, if any, consolation to the relatives of the victims that the fortunes of the Triangle Company gradually declined, and by 1918 had ceased to exist. By 1920, Harris and Blanck split up, neither being prosperous after.

A person who took a great deal of interest was Frances Perkins, herself an eyewitness to the fire. Fifty years later she unveiled a memorial plaque to the victims, at the sight of the tragedy. Perkins became America’s first female cabinet minister, when President Roosevelt appointed her Minister of Labor in his New Deal government. This proved women could run capitalism just as incapably as men.

During the century since the fire, laws concerning workplace safely have been passed and enforced, till by 2006, (the last year this author could get figures for), only two percent of all deaths by accidents in the US were workplace related. As necessary as such legislation is, it is nevertheless merely an improvement within capitalism. But, as long as capitalism lasts, such events will occur. The fact they occur less frequently is no reason to defend capitalism

Obviously, they will happen more in countries where safety laws either don’t exist or are not enforced. In Bangkok in 1993, nearly 200 workers died in a toy factory, where the doors had been locked by their bosses to prevent them from taking toys home. There are other examples, especially from Bangladesh (see boxes).

Despite the tremendous technological advances we’ve seen, life hasn’t changed much under capitalism. Nor, can it be argued, such events are history in capitalism’s greatest power. In 1991, in Hamlet, North Carolina, 25 people died in a fire at a poultry plant, also because of locked doors.

With the profit motive being the main determining factor in production, it would be naive and idealistic to expect capitalists and politicians, who attempt to administrate capitalism, to care. Perhaps, nobody said it better than software capitalist and investor, Kevin O’Leary, who expressed his feelings on altruism by saying, “The emotional tie that I have at the end of the month is when I count the cash.” He also told a prospective business partner, “There’s something nasty about you and I like it.”

Socialists cannot say with any degree of certainty that there will be no workplace deaths in a socialist society. The exact nature of work and the workplace will be determined by the needs of society and the technology available. What socialists can say, is that with the abolition of money and therefore the profit motive, the very death blood of capitalism, priority will be given to workplace health in general and safety in particular. Events like the Triangle Fire will never occur again.

Steve Shannon

See Also:

June 2013 Socialist Standard, Capitalism Kills: The Bangladeshi Garment Factory Disaster

Letters: Earth’s Destruction Necessary for Socialism? (2005)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earth’s Destruction Necessary for Socialism?

Dear Editors

In at least one area my understanding of Marxian economics may be weak, so perhaps you can enlighten me. As you know in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy Marx wrote: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”.

I have no problem understanding the second part of that sentence, but the first puzzles me a little. All previous economic systems were not dynamic systems. They developed to a certain point, beyond which they stagnated, while the new society matured in the proverbial womb of the old. Capitalism is different to all previous systems because it is a dynamic system constantly inventing new tools of production and constantly improving all previous inventions.

My problem here is to analyse what this portends in relation to the first part of the above sentence. Does it mean, I wonder, that we are stuck with capitalism (a lovely thought) until such time as it has destroyed the world with its ongoing murder of the environment? Could it be, I wonder, that the only way socialism can be brought about is by people realising they have to live in a co-operative way or perish? And, if so, when will they realise it? Will it be when capitalism has about 90 percent wrecked this planet?

The Socialist Party have always emphasised and insisted the need for socialist understanding as a precondition for socialism. But has society ever changed because mankind in general considered such changes desirable? I’m sure the medieval manufacturers, traders, bankers, etc never said to each “Let’s invent a new society and call it capitalism.” They were behaving in a certain manner which was in accordance with their economic interests; the sum of such behaviour over two or three centuries brought capitalism into being.

In the Communist Manifesto the authors say in effect that the general, prevailing level of opinions and beliefs of a given society will always be that of the ruling class. We all know changes in the tools of production change the way people think, but we also know it only goes to a certain point, beyond which they still believe in the existence of private property based society.

My sincerest wish is that the working class both understand and establish socialism before capitalism has destroyed this planet  and consequently most species on it, but I can’t envisage this happening. I know I paint a proverbial gloomy picture, but I hope you can show me that my understanding is wide of the mark.

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Canada

Reply:

We agree that, if taken on its own and interpreted literally, the passage that puzzles you could give the impression that Marx thought that capitalism would not disappear so long as it was capable of developing to any extent the productivity of the forces of production. But this can’t have been Marx’s view, otherwise why would he have worked for the abolition of capitalism at a time when it was still capable of developing productivity (as, indeed, it still is, and still does)?

To make sense of it, it should be read in conjunction with what follows (“and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society”) and which you say you have no problem understanding. And also with what immediately follows: “Therefore, humanity always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; indeed, on closer examination, it will always be found that the task itself only arises when the material conditions for its solution already exist or at least are in the process of formation”.

Marx was talking not just about a change from capitalism to socialism but about actual historical changes of social system that had taken place in the past, but in relation to capitalism he probably simply meant that, in developing modern industry and its potential, capitalism had created the material basis for socialism and that, therefore, the establishment of socialism had appeared on humanity’s agenda (as witnessed by the emergence of the working class movement). Once capitalism had developed the forces of production to the point where an abundance was possible, it was open for abolition. Socialism wasn’t possible before then, so until then capitalism had still had a progressive role to play. But Marx was just one socialist and not much is to be gained from poring over every word he wrote to try to understand today’s world. Socialists should be, and are, capable of doing this for themselves.

We, too, conclude that, as capitalism has created the material basis for socialism, socialism is a practical possibility and has been for over a hundred years now and that this is what people should be working for if they wish to avoid the gloomy end you fear. Will people do it? That’s up to them, not us. All we can do is to try to ensure, that when people discuss humanity’s future, part of their experience is hearing the argument that the only way out is to establish a world community without frontiers based the natural and industrial resources of the Earth having become the common heritage of all humanity. – Editors.

 

Bush & Co.

Dear Editors

Regarding your editorial in the December 2004 issue of Socialist Standard, ‘A missed opportunity’:

 

You are quite correct about one thing. The people in the US who voted for Bush & Company knew what they were doing. They were not seduced. They were not misled. They understood what the issues were and they made their choice.

I live in Cleveland, Ohio. When I realized, about a month before the election, that Bush was going to win, I started to talk with Bush supporters, gently and with tolerance, in an effort to get them to open up and tell me why they had taken such a stance. On the whole, I found that the knowledge and understanding among the Bush supporters was about equal to that among the voters on the other side.

There has been a lot of talk about the role of religion in the motivation of the voters but I think it would be easy to give too much weight to this factor. It is true that a lot of religious people voted for Bush but it is also true that a lot of religious people voted against him. Some of the religious people who were and are anti-Bush say he talks about his love for God and then turns around and does the devil’s work.

I feel that the election was a referendum on war. About half the people in this country like being at war, especially if someone else is doing the fighting. They know that the war in Iraq was started under false pretenses but they like the idea of war anyway. They like the idea of telling other nations where to get off and then using the US military to enforce the US point of view.

 

Perhaps being at war makes them feel like winners. The US military machine is impressive. It can go out and “kick butt” on a regular basis. The US usually wins every battle. But I think it will lose the war in Iraq. It might even lose the war in Afghanistan, as it looks like the drug lords will actually win control in that area.

Those of us who were against Bush & Company are still struggling with feelings of loss, of disappointment, and even a sort of grief. We did the best we could but we lost and we are hurting.

Linda Featheringill, 

Cleveland, Ohio, USA.

Reply:

Fair enough, but we hope you didn’t go so far as to vote for the other millionaire (whose name we forget). As if it would have made any difference if he had won instead. Governments don’t control capitalism. It’s the workings of capitalism, and the interests of a country’s capitalist class, which determines how governments act. Things won’t change till a majority act to change the economic and social system rather than the personnel who fill the top posts in government –Editors.

Letter: Socialist MPs (2007)

Letter to the Editors from the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist MPs

Dear Editors

I am writing as a sympathiser and one with boundless admiration for Socialist Party. because of its constant refusal to compromise with all that is harmful to socialism. Therefore I was disappointed, when listening to a recent tape of members in discussion, that should a minority of socialist MPs get elected it would be party policy that reforms should be evaluated on their merits and voted for or against accordingly.

Certain reforms can indeed be said to have merit if they have some benefit to the working class, such as medicare, extension of the franchise and safety legislation in the workplace. However, for socialists to vote in favour of such reforms might well attract support from non-socialists who also welcome such measures. Too much of such support would mean you would no longer have a socialist party. I feel a minority of socialist MPs should (as they probably would) point out the class nature of all reforms, and if they did not feel comfortable voting against some of them (such as the above) abstain.

My view is to let the upholders of capitalism work for reforms and for socialists to work for socialism with the same attitude towards reforms as your party was to taking sides in wars, leadership, defence of state capitalism, nationalisation, industrial unionism, elitism (to name a few) which is “no compromise”.

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

Reply:

Our view is also “to let the upholders of capitalism work for reforms” while we put the revolutionary alternative. Socialist MPs and councillors would be mandated to put the case for socialism and to criticise reform activity from the socialist perspective. However, the long-established socialist position is that socialist delegates in such an environment would be duty-bound to consider voting for measures that could benefit the working class as a whole and/or the socialist movement in particular. These issues would be judged on their merits at the time, and could, for instance, involve socialist delegates voting to stop a war, such as the recent war in Iraq. In such a case abstention would not be justifiable. In taking this position, they would still make clear their opposition to capitalism as a whole and to all parties of capitalism and would at no time seek support from the working class on the basis of a reform programme –Editors.

Letters: Reformist charities (2011)

Letters to the Editors from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reformist charities

Dear Editors

I’ve tried before to convince the reforming charities such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth that their idealistic pleadings will not influence the inevitable, dominating drives of capitalism. They are doomed to failure. Getting governments to change is impossible. The fact is ‘government’ is not understood – they presume its function is to act in the best interests of the people when it just the executive control of capitalism.

Even though it is quite possible to ‘green’ the planet and feed everyone they do not understand the fundamental reason why this can’t happen today – someone has to make a profit from it. I cannot get them to understand the nature of commodity production, buying and selling and money and profit prevent attaining the world they want. Both are ‘middle-class’ petty bourgeois do-gooders and reformers who think futile reforms will achieve their aims. These reformist positions must fail, the only real change can be by changing the very social system of which these are just symptoms.

They probably assume they are radical and energetically pursue these reforms but, for the ‘respectables’, consideration of the real alternative is “Steady on, you’re going a bit too far in wanting a total revolution, and end to money, profits, commodity production, wage slavery and government itself.” No, they are for too nice and sensible, they think appeals and tinkering with the present system is far enough. What a waste of energy.

Stuart Gibson, 

Wimborne, Dorset

World War Two

Dear Editors

Regarding your reply to Simon O’Connor’s letter about the Socialist Party’s stance on the Holocaust (Socialist Standard, May), some political commentators thought certain members of Britain’s wartime coalition government would not intervene on the premise “The more Jews Hitler kills now the less there will be trying to get into Palestine after the war.” It will be remembered the British sought to curry favour with the Arabs to maintain the flow of oil to British industry.

When the Partition vote on Palestine was carried in the United Nations in 1947, some governments voted in favour because they didn’t want Jews in internment and refugee camps coming to their countries. This included Canada whose prime minister was the notorious anti-Semite Mackenzie King. The probability was the capitalists whose interests they represented feared competition from Jewish businessmen. This was the reason for the Aliens Act enacted by the British government of 1905, restricting the immigration of Jews fleeing the pogroms sweeping through eastern Europe. All of which goes to prove that, where the interests of capitalism are concerned, people’s lives count for nothing.

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Plain English

Dear Editors

Can I make a plea for the use of plain English in articles in the Socialist Standard. Whilst it is obviously in the interests of capitalism’s representatives in the press and politics to use euphemism and understatement to cover up the unpleasant facts of the system, surely we should be aiming to do exactly the opposite, namely to highlight its shortcomings and excesses.

In the article “Class against class”, in the June Standard Standard, I counted the word “issue” used no less than 7 times to mean either “problem” or “question”. An “issue” (at least among socialists) that a lack of money in the capitalist world is nothing less than a major problem for the vast majority of the population suffering from the affliction. The word “issue”, like “challenge”, seems to be in vogue at the moment and has apparently crept in from America, where people “have emotional issues” (i.e. “are upset”) or “have weight issues” (i.e. “are overweight” – in many cases to a point detrimental to their health). In a recent TV comedy, a script-writer friend of mine included a scene in which a character asked the company psychologist ‘Do you want me to discuss my what we’re supposed to call “issues” these days?’ When I complimented him on this line, he told me that he felt strongly enough to include it because “my kids are growing up a world in which they never hear the word problems”.

“Sackings” is another word which has been discarded by the capitalist press in favour of any number of euphemisms, evidently because the term is a lot more graphic than “downsizing”, “rationalisation”, “reorganisation” etc. Likewise, bosses use newspeak like “double-hatting” and “extra-skilling” to distract their staff from the fact that what they are really talking about is “making people do more than one job” and “retraining people to do additional work”?

I’m all in favour of neologism and changes of usage, provided that these are necessary or useful, but we mustn’t let that stop us calling a spade a spade. If we don’t tell it how it is, who will?

Martyn Dunmore, 

Brussels, Belgium

Film Review: Jumping the Broom (2011)

Film Review from the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jumping the Broom is a black (and you can bet there’s no pun intended) comedy about class distinction in America’s black community.

Sabrina Watson (Paula Patton) a successful lawyer, from a wealthy family, falls for Jason (Laz Alonso), a Wall Street wiz-kid, whose mother Pam (Loretta Devine) is a postal worker. Tensions flare the day before the wedding, when the two families meet for the first time. Pam feels ultra defensive, especially when she observes the Watson’s home on Martha’s Vineyard, which she compares to the Kennedy compound. When she says grace at supper, the evening before the wedding, Pam sets the tone for the movie by being blatantly insulting.

The crux of the matter becomes her insistence that the ‘Happy Couple’ “Jump the Broom” This dates back to when African slaves were not allowed to marry and jumped over a broom, which was the equivalent of a ceremony.

Mrs. Watson (Angela Bassett) is totally opposed to this on the grounds that it was a slave ritual. She informs Pam that her family had never been slaves and, in fact, once owned them. That blacks themselves, sometimes, had black slaves is a little-known fact of American history. Class distinctions and the hostilities they create reach boiling point, causing family secrets, such as Sabrina’s real parentage, to be revealed. Disgusted with everything, the bride refuses to marry and flees the scene.

This is where the movie, which is Salim Akil’s directional debut, breaks down. When everyone’s been rubbed the wrong way and all hitherto concealed feelings are in the open, it becomes kiss and make up and “lets give the audience a happy ending” time. This is hardly believable of any family in such a previously volatile situation. What is believable is that, if capitalists invest in anything, they will want as good a return as they can get. If it means giving the public an unrealistic ending, they will do so.

There is nothing new about class distinctions based on money, nor hereditary titles among America’s black community. In 1948 when Nat King Cole married Maria Ellington, her wealthy aunt, Dr. Charlotte Hawkins, shunned him because, although wealthy at the time, Cole came from a poor family. Dr. Hawkins, coming from a more prosperous one, had founded America’s first finishing school for African American ladies and boasted of her friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt. When the happy couple returned from their honeymoon, Hawkins paid for a banquet in their honour as she considered it her duty, but refused to attend.

Capitalism is as divisive as it is corrupting whether the community be black, white, red, yellow or any other colour, economics will always cause distinctions between people.

Steve Shannon

Film Review: J. Edgar (2012)

Film Review from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

In J. Edgar, Leonardo Di Caprio, under Clint Eastwood’s direction, gives a thoroughly credible performance as FBI Chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Di Caprio portrays him as the paranoid, vindictive, delusional, hypocritical (he refers to Senator McCarthy as an opportunist) and egotistical man that he was; certainly not high on the list of guys you’d want your daughter to marry.

Arnie Hammer as Hoover’s paramour, Clyde Tolson, Naomi Watts as Helen Gandy, his long-serving secretary and Judi Dench as his overly attentive mother (“You will restore our family to greatness”) all turn in fine performances. Hoover is, in fact, shown as a mama’s boy who went in for crime-busting to please the law-and-order obsessed lady.

Too much is devoted to exploring Hoover’s sexuality, though screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who is gay, probably felt it necessary. To quote Black, “it was a thing you couldn’t discuss even in the privacy of your own home and even with someone you might have feelings for, because it was still a love that did not speak its name.” Black, surprisingly, has Hoover enrage Tolson by confessing he once shared a romantic liaison with Dorothy Lamour.

This gives one some idea how petty he was. Hoover’s ambitions knew no bounds; when shut out of the Lindberg kidnapping investigation by the New Jersey State Police, he had Congress pass a law making kidnapping a federal instead of a state crime so the FBI, could horn in.

Surprisingly, Black makes no mention of Hoover’s greatest ambition to make the FBI a world-wide intelligence organization, which the CIA eventually became. Hoover had his vast army of agents pursue whatever grudges: criminal, political, sexual or personal, that he held – and he held plenty of them. He kept tabs on the extra-curricular activities of President Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Eleanor Roosevelt.  In Eleanor Roosevelt’s case that included spying on her trysts with lovers of both sexes. No-one in the FBI was allowed to be more popular than Eddie baby. That meant destroying the career of agent, Melvin Purvis who had gunned down John Dillinger.

Too much attention is devoted to his relationships with Tolson, Miss Gandy and his mother in this 135-minute movie, which fails to pursue more intriguing matters – such as, Hoover’s refusal to pursue organized crime as opposed to nickel-and-dime bank robbers. Rumour has it the mob had photographs of Hoover in drag and in a compromising position with Clyde Tolson who he made his number two man in the FBI.

Nor did the movie show his relentless persecution of homosexuals, eventually forcing them out of the closet as an act of retaliation. One psychiatrist would later say, “They should call that the J. Edgar Hoover Syndrome – persecuting the very thing he was.”

When Richard Nixon was elected it was the proverbial and possibly the literal death knell for Hoover. Nixon, though heterosexual, was very similar; mean, ambitious and unscrupulous (no kidding). Nixon wanted possession of Hoover’s files and the only way to get them would be to kill him. It isn’t mentioned that Hoover wanted to be Director for life, a life many would like to see end ASAP. It is only slightly implied that his doctor injected him with chemicals that wouldn’t exactly prolong it. Rumour has it that a life shortening pill, which looked like an aspirin tablet, was put in amongst them.

The most significant aspect of Hoover’s career wasn’t mentioned. He became head of the FBI in 1924, a year after the Teapot Dome Scandal in which some senior members of the Harding administration were implicated. In 1973, a year after his death, the Watergate Scandal broke out, but in the intermediate 48 years in which he reigned as the Bureau’s boss, there were no major scandals affecting the presidency.

One may wonder if the seven presidents he served under and their administrative staffs were not like Nixon’s thugs at all; that they were all goody-goodies who wouldn’t stoop to an illegal act.  Or, perhaps – just perhaps – once or twice they did and J. Edgar was on hand to contain the mess, conditional on getting the laws passed and the budgets he wanted – take your pick.

One comforting thought is that it’s highly unlikely in a sane society that anyone would be as sick as J. Edgar Hoover, but if there was such a person, he would receive help, and as the movie makes clear, he surely needed it.

Steve Shannon

Letters: Bargain basement nationalism (2014)

Letters to the Editors from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bargain basement nationalism

Dear Editors

The UK Independence Party is clearly being sold to ordinary voters as a movement to liberate us all. And sadly many workers will back it. Yet as the article ‘People Not Profits’ mentions, UKIP is no alternative at all (Editorial, May Socialist Standard).

UKIP sells a kind of bargain-basement nationalism that seeks to blame workers outside the UK for our problems. It wants to close the borders, and substitute ‘patriotism’ for compassion. And its policies are designed to transfer even more wealth and income into the pockets of the rich.

It’s the economic system that oppresses people, not those who move to the U.K. We need to reject the false ideology of nationalism UKIP promotes, as well as its economic ideas.

Graeme Kemp, 

Wellington, Shropshire.

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Blatant contrast

Dear Editors
Regarding the article on 15 Central Park West (‘Voice from the Back’, April Socialist Standard), some years ago I took a stroll of some of the streets where the buildings look out on to Central Park. The buildings, a mixture of mansions, hotels and apartment blocks, were beautiful and were obviously occupied by the wealthy. The streets which intersected with the prosperous-looking avenue contained some atrocious slums, many of which were right next to the above buildings. Here one saw a blatant and obvious contrast between wealth and poverty. It should have been enough to have the least perceptive onlooker wonder if perhaps there wasn’t something wrong in a society that could create such extremes.

Steve Shannon, 

Mississauga, Canada.

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Compelling Case

Dear Editors

I just wanted to write and say I really enjoyed reading the three election manifestos and supporting article carried on pages 10 to 12 of the May Socialist Standard.

In clear, modern and accessible language, they all set out a powerful and compelling case for a world socialist society, and certainly inspired me to do something positive to bring this about!

Andrew Northall (by email)

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Middle Eastern Marxists?

Dear Editors

Perhaps the most striking part of the International Workers’ Day demonstration on May Day 2014 was the large contingents of Turkish and Iranian ‘communists’ in London. Tens of attendees turned up parading plain red flags in co-ordinated outfits from organisations such as Alevi Federation, Day-Mer (ostensibly, the Turkish community centre in North London) , RedHack, Worker Communist Parties of Iraq and Iran. Perhaps the most prominent figure inspiring some of these groups is the late Mansoor Hekmat (who died in 2002), who rejected both ‘Stalinism’ and Islamism and urged communists to ‘go back to Marx’. Not in itself sufficient for a socialist, but if ‘Marxist-Hekmatism’ is popular enough for a ‘Marx-Hekmat’ society in London or in the large populations of Turkey or Iran, then perhaps it is worthy of further critique by the true socialists in London.

DJW (by email)

A place of their own? (2013)

Book Review from the June 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

House of Earth, by Woody Guthrie. Harper Collins, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-06-224839-8.

Guthrie, America's famous working-class troubadour, who died in 1967, presents in this novel, completed in 1947, a realistic picture of a couple struggling to survive in the Texas Panhandle during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Tike and Ella May Hamlin feel frustrated with the inadequacies of their wooden shack and naturally yearn for something better. Tike buys a DIY government pamphlet on adobe houses made from the earth itself. Because it would be warm in winter, cool in summer, wind-proof, fire-proof and more importantly, dust-proof, Tike decides to make one himself. Since the Hamlins don't own the land they live on, Tike's efforts inevitably bring them into conflict with the powers-that-be.

What is clearly obvious is the extent to which Guthrie was influenced by the eroticism of D.H. Lawrence (in fact, most of the first quarter of the book is about the Hamlins having sex), and the social realism of his friend, John Steinbeck.

This reviewer would certainly recommend the book, but primarily because of the 34-page introduction by Douglas Brinkley and Johnny Depp, which contains an excellent description of the Dust Bowl and its effects. They destroy the myth that soil erosion was caused by the poor farmers not replenishing it: ‘. . . it's that those with power, especially Big Banks, Big Lumber, Big Agriculture, should be chastised as repugnant robber barons and rejected by wage earners.’

Brinkley and Depp mention several interesting tit-bits, such as the social activism of actor Eddie Albert, a friend of Guthrie's and that, when he wrote ‘This Land is Your Land,’ it was a rebuttal to ‘God Bless America.’ They contend that Guthrie could not get this book published at its completion in 1947, owing to the political climate of the times, which they called ‘Trumanism’ and that the book had been largely forgotten during the intervening years.

It is to be regretted that Guthrie was enamoured of the so-called Communist Party and that some of his work was patriotic. In ‘The Big Grand Coulee Dam,’ he wrote, ‘Now roars a flying fortress, for to fight for Uncle Sam.’

However, in his introduction he hits the nail on the head, ‘Life's pretty tough . . . you're lucky if you live through it.’

Steve Shannon

The Company Men (2011)

Film Review from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Company Men, directed by John Wells

This was at first a personal matter for writer and director, John Wells. Having seen his brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, struggle after being laid-off, the plot follows the misfortunes of three executives employed at G.T.X. a major shipbuilding company, whose head honcho, Jim, played by Craig T. Nelson, made $22 million bucks in bonus payments the previous year. “We work for the stockholders now,” Jim reminds his underlings as he prepares to fire thousands of workers.

Tommy Lee Jones is Gene, Jim’s old college room mate who helped him build the company up from scratch. Gene thinks of G.T.X.’s employees as if they were family and it hurts him deeply when he’s required to inform “relatives” their services are no longer required. In an early scene, Jim’s wife requests the use of the company jet, a luxury she won’t enjoy for much longer, to go from Boston to Palm Springs to get in some shopping.

Most of the movie deals with the struggle of 37-year-old hot shot salesman, Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck). At first Bobby cannot come to terms with being unemployed, whereas his wife, Maggie (Rosemarie De Witt) suggests selling the Porsche and the house. Bobby is convinced he’ll soon find employment at his old salary of $120 grand a year, not realising there are few such jobs available and the competition for them is ferocious.

We watch Bobby’s gradual disillusionment; being expelled from the country club because he can’t afford the fees, watching the new owner drive off his Porsche and being forced to live with his parents. In desperation, he accepts a job in construction, working for his brother-in-law, Jack (Kevin Costner), who delights in Bobby’s downfall and lets him know it.

There is a surreal scene when Bobby attends a placement workshop, which Wells himself did. The manager has a roomful of unemployed constantly reciting, “I will win because I have faith, courage and enthusiasm.” When Wells asked the manager if she was embarrassed, she replied, “I’m dealing with people who feel like they’ve been in a car accident.”

The finest acting is by Chris Cooper as Phil, a sixty year-old who worked his way up from a welder to the number three man at G.T.X. Cooper takes the viewer right into the heart of a man tortured by insecurity, fear and anxiety. Phil is bewildered by the new and real world he finds himself in. One job placement officer advises him to quit smoking, on the premise that, “The employers don’t want a guy with health problems, it will push up the insurance.” When applying for an international sales position he finds how age goes against one; “It’s a demanding job, I wouldn’t offer it to anyone older than thirty,” the boss tells him.

Though the acting, direction and dialogue are good and the movie absorbing, it doesn’t tell the viewer anything new. By now most unemployed labourers, truck drivers and factory workers, are aware that getting the axe isn’t any easier for the middle-of-the-road managers than it is for them. Whatever bitterness the ex-execs feel is directed primarily at G.T.X. and a little at America itself. Nowhere is there any suggestion there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism.

A reviewer should not give the ending away, so suffice it to say, it’s capitalist propaganda at its most desperate. Company Men is just another movie that tells its audience, “There’s nothing terrible about the economic system we live under. So what if times are sometimes hard, with faith courage and enthusiasm, things will get better.” In that respect, perhaps the most significant comment is when Bobby glares at the personnel manager, who has delivered the bad news and uses the well-known and delightful, “P.O.” expression. What would be more delightful is when a Socialist majority says that proverbially to capitalism.

Steve Shannon

Food for Thought (2015)

From the July 2015 Socialist Party of Canada Newsletter

- In mid-town Toronto a building is being demolished so they can build condominium apartments there. That's nothing new but what is unusual is that some people are upset that this is the only building in the world built during the brief reign of King Edward VIII that bears his logo. To satisfy these outraged citizens, the developers have agreed to preserve the facade. We have global warming, war, terrorism, poverty and hunger, Ebola, and so on, and these people get upset at the supposed disrespect to the memory of a playboy/parasite, a guy who was not up to the herculean task of shaking hands and making boring speeches prepared by someone else, and used his girl friend as an excuse to get out of those onerous tasks. For a system built on 'value', Capitalism sure distorts people's values.

- An analysis by Andrew Powell-Morse of ticket market place Seatsmart showed that lyrics of pop songs have fallen to the intelligence of eight year-olds. This was his finding after analyzing 225 songs that had spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard charts for pop, country, rock, R & B, and hiphop for any given year in the last ten. In the final reckoning, it's a degenerate culture reflecting a degenerate economic system where anything goes as long as it makes money.

- The New York Times of June 21 included an article by a Brazilian commenting on his country's economics in the last few years. He, Like many others were optimistic in 2003 when Lula de Silva and his Workers' Party came to power with the expectation that the old inequality and oppression of previous administrations would blossom into an equal and just society. Now the old disappointment has returned as corruption scandals, an economic recession, and opportunistic alliances with former rivals have returned the working class to virtually where it started. The Brazilians should have known better – as long as you have capitalism, you will have inequality, insecurity, and, of course, the class system.

- Pope Francis has used his position to speak out for the poor and to put an emphasis on serving the poor. He has invited Latin American priests who founded a movement for social change (once scorned by the church authorities as Marxist, can you believe!). Murdered arch bishop Oscar Romero, shot to death in 1980 has bee beatified (?) and is one step away from sainthood. Pope Francis wants to create a 'poor church for the poor' to get closer to the masses. All this, of course, will do nothing to alleviate poverty and cynic might say the church is looking for more people they can frighten into believing.

- The International Monetary Fund has issued a report detailing the high cost of burning dirty fuels (New York Times May 31). It says that many countries are compounding the problem when their governments subsidize the price to below cost and not taxing the products enough to account for the damage that burning fossil fuels causes to human health and to the climate. The IMF calculates that subsidies this year will amount to $5.3 trillion or 6.5% of the world's gross domestic product. Not surprisingly, the biggest polluters such as China and the US account for $2.3 trillion and $699 billion respectively. Staggering figures when we are so short of cash for health, education, proper infrastructure etc. But even worse is the estimate that eliminating subsidies and taxing higher would reduce premature deaths caused by air pollution by fifty-five per cent, or about 1.85 million yearly!

- In the journal of our companion party in the UK, mention is made of the fact that in Qatar thousands of labourers from Nepal are treated no better than slaves. Companies handling construction work for the 2022 World Cup of Soccer infrastructure forced them to stay by denying them promised salaries and withholding necessary worker ID permits making them illegal aliens. The precarious situation created by the employers has forced the workers to beg for food. Thousands of Nepalese workers in Qatar face exploitation and abuses that amount to modern day slavery as defined by the International Labour Organization. So whether its slave labour camps in North Korea, sweat shops in the third world, or workers in Qatar, slavery continues, not to mention wage slavery. Capital will find a way to keep nineteenth century conditions going in the name of profit. Socialists advocate not the abolition of these conditions, but the abolition of the economic system that causes it.

- Bill and Hilary Clinton recently revealed that since January 2014, they have received more than $25 million for giving one hundred speeches. Contrast that with the fact that millions are trying to survive on less than a dollar a day. Surely one must wonder if there isn't something wrong with the way society works. What were the Clintons saying in their speeches? Whatever the content, the theme never changed, 'preserve the status quo'. Socialists say damn the status quo, let's work for a world without such outrageous extremes.

- A recent edition of "America Unearthed" took place in Rockwall, Texas, so named for the underground wall in a rural area that is thought to have once been above ground. The limestone wall measures three miles by five and a half feet and is seven stories high. Is it man-made or natural? We do not know. Many geologists and archeologists have analyzed it and do not publish their findings because big developers do not want the site to become an archeological attraction, presumably because it could be a lucrative development. Money talks, good intentions walk.

- Here's an example of how a government or an influential (read wealthy) person can get their agenda across to the masses. The Toronto Star (May 30), reports, "Deep inside a four-storey marble building in St. Petersburg, hundreds of workers tap away at computers on the front lines of an information war, say those who have been inside." Known as Kremlin trolls, they work twelve-hour shifts flooding the internet with propaganda aimed at stamping Putin's world vision on Russia and around the world. One worker referred to going to work as entering an Orwellian universe. Bashing out 160 blogposts on each shift, they simply repeat what they are told. For this they are relatively well paid at 40 to 50 thousand roubles a month ($950 to 1,250 Canadian). Obviously, Putin has large amounts of cash at his disposal. This type of activity is used by big capital such as the coal industry in the US touting that coal is clean and environmentally green, or tobacco or sugar soaked food is good for you. The ideas of an epoch are those of the ruling class.

- "Plan to rehire 4,000 Greeks leaves Europeans aghast as a 1.2 Billion Euro bill becomes due." was the secondary headline in an article in The Toronto Star (May 30). Imagine, how horrifying it must seem to the economists that four thousand cleaners and civil servants who lost their jobs to austerity cuts ordered by Greece's creditors, should have a chance to earn a living again! Apparently, according to economic think tanks, German and French families (of four) would be on the hook for 4,350 Euros given that the total figure will be $160 billion of French and German exposure to Greek debt should an exit from the European Union be necessary. Why the families would foot the bill when the capitalists expropriate most of the wealth is another matter.

- The World Health Organization recently reported that air pollution is killing hundreds of thousands of Europeans each year and released figures to prove it. Six hundred thousand died prematurely in fifty-three European countries in 2010 due to fine particles in the air. Nine out of ten Europeans are exposed to a concentration above WHO guidelines. The annual cost to governments is $1.6 trillion due to the premature deaths and related illnesses. That figure represents ten per cent of Europe's gross domestic product. The worst country is Georgia that lost thirty-five per cent of its GDP for this reason. Some point to Sheffield's efforts to clean its air and Sweden's clean-up of its lakes, but it's a case of too little too late. However, it's not too late to support socialism and get cracking on the right track to solve the problem.

- The Toronto Star (May 23) reported that after ISIS took control of Palmyra two hundred and eighty soldiers and citizens loyal to the Assad regime were executed and let their bodies lie in the streets as a warning to all who would oppose them. Shades of Bloody Sunday, Tiananmen square, and hundreds of other atrocities over the years. With a world still divided into competing entities this is bound to continue in one form or another. The end of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will be the end of humankind's prehistory and the beginning of our real history.

- Well, at last we know why there are huge income gaps between the workers and the owning class. A team of (vulgar) 'economists' has put out a research paper that states that income gap is not due to differences between high and low earners in one company, but rather the difference is due to the widening gap in wages between different companies. Take Apple and McDonalds, for example, pay differences are not because the executives are getting greater increases than the ordinary workers but because the average pay at Apple rises faster than at McDonalds. Obviously another attempt by capitalist toadies to explain away the gap. It's still there and getting bigger, but notice no mention is made of the idle investors who are raking in the money faster than anyone and giving no equivalent for what they get.

- It sometimes seems that the environment and global warming have disappeared from the news, from election platforms, from the public consciousness. This is a result of a major planned effort on the part of think tanks and editors in many places. Also, the doubters were handed information from a UN study in 2013 that claimed that warming of the earth was slowing down. Now a research paper from the scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that contradicts the UN report has been published. According to NOAA the rise in temperatures since 2000 have been 'virtually indistinguishable' from the rate of the previous five decades. "A whole cottage industry has been built by climate skeptics on the false premise that there is currently a hiatus in global warming" (Toronto Star, June 6). Strange how that kind of news can get into the media.

- Under Ontario's Employment Standards Act, that is now under review, there is no limit on how long a company can employ workers as temporary before giving them permanent status. There is nothing to prevent employers from paying temporary workers less than those on permanent status (if there is such a thing today!). There is nothing to prevent them from hiring their entire work force on a temporary basis if they wish. To quote the head of Toronto's Workers' Action Centre,"If the employer knows he can hire you and doesn't have to pay benefits, doesn't have to pay you a pension, and can hire you for a lot less, there's no incentive for him to hire you permanently." This is especially so as the average wage for temporary workers is $15 per hour compared to $22.40 for permanent workers. Making workers permanent would, naturally, cut into profits. Changes to the above act, if legislated, could improve conditions for some temps but socialists say let's legislate the act to put capitalism out of business where squabbling over meagre handouts from capital will be a thing of the past.

- Barack Obama is calling for federal legislation that would require companies to guarantee workers' paid sick days. At present, forty million American workers do not get paid if they are off work sick. Since San Francisco started sick pay for city employees in 2007, nearly twenty cities and three states have also passed sick pay laws. McDonald's and Walmart stores are both making changes to their sick pay policies. We can only guess that this is to stem the growing discontent among the work force experiencing the stress that capitalism creates.

- The good news from the city of Toronto is that the city has a $190 million surplus from the 2014 budget year. Don't get too excited, though, much of that surplus comes from not hiring staff to fill positions when city workers retire or quit, a total of 1,200 jobs. This fact is not as newsworthy as a surplus so it doesn't make the headlines. Now, transportation services say they cannot repair the roads and Parks and Recreation will not be able to prune the trees. Our services are continually being cut back in spite of greater wealth being produced so that more of the profit can be taken by those who simply hand money over to professional investors and contribute nothing.

- On May 28, political and business leaders from fifty-eight countries came together for an economic conference that included Middle East youth unemployment on the agenda. The rate for unemployment there is the world's highest at 29.5%. As a former Jordanian labour minister said,"If the unemployed do not find a decent living, they look for the alternatives and the alternative is the so-called Islamic State." A delightful choice for the youth anywhere and a typical one under capitalism where those in need do not get much choice at all.

- As a school bus driver for nine years, one SPCer notes that the younger the students are, the more they chat, interact, and enjoy each others' company. Conversely, the older they are, the less they socialize and become engrossed in their electronic devices. With internet, email, texting, etc. people are less interested in each other. That is proved by the fact that membership in historic social clubs has decreased all over the world. The technology is wonderful but has de-humanized us. It is interesting to speculate how this and future technology will be used in a socialist world.

For socialism, John & Steve.

Capitalism — No Magic Slipper (2005)

Film Review from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Make no mistake, “Cinderella Man” is a crackerjack movie which thoroughly justifies the praise lavished on it. The true story of Depression Era boxer James J. Braddock, who rose from the welfare rolls to winning the World Heavyweight Championship, thereby earning his nickname, “Cinderella Man”, is totally absorbing and powerfully directed by Ron Howard.

Braddock’s story was representative of his time. The movie begins in the late 1920s, when he lived in a nice suburban house and was a leading contender for a world title. It resumes when the Depression was at its worse in the early 30s and Braddock’s career was at its lowest ebb, hence his standard of living too. As the Depression gradually recedes, we follow his rise to a shot at the title (at odds of 10-1) and victory over the seemingly unbeatable Max Baer, who was (dis)credited with two ring deaths.

“Cinderella Man” clearly depicts how tough times were in the early 30s, which doesn’t mean it’s a happy-go-lucky romp in Elysian Fields today. When Braddock’s daughter asks for an extra slice of baloney, Braddock, who hasn’t eaten that day, pretends he isn’t hungry. When a guy comes to their tenement apartment to switch off the hydro, Mae Braddock (who is unable to pay the gas or milk bills either) attempts to dissuade him. He tells her, “I’ve got kids too. If I don’t switch it off I’ll lose my job.” Mae and her three children tear the slats off a billboard, for fuel, risking trouble with the authorities.

Though his pride has sustained some fierce body blows, his spirit is unbroken. Braddock’s strength comes from his closely-knit family and the belief in his capabilities by Joe Gould, who (unbeknownst to Braddock) sells his own furniture to pay Braddock’s training expenses.

As we follow Braddock’s new-found success it becomes clear this movie is about the indomitable human spirit. As Ron Howard said recently, “It’s a film about people finding the strength to carry on and do the things they have to do.” Most of us like to see the underdog triumph, most of us like to see a comeback, and here we have both, therefore, we can enjoy this film. Although it’s perfectly OK to enjoy “Cinderella Man”, it’s not OK to be taken in by it. Sure it’s a paean to the never-say-die, gotta give it my best shot feeling that exists in all of us. In that sense it’s uplifting and a film in tune with the times we are living in, let alone the 1930s.

But on a deeper level the message of the movie is, “Hey, take it easy buddy, capitalism ain’t so bad. Sure there are times when it’s tough all over, but if you hang in tough and keep struggling like Jim and Mae Braddock did you’ll find things’ll work out just fine.” This viewpoint was echoed by Russell Crowe on the David Letterman Show on June 8 and has become the main mantra of the media.

On the docks, Braddock befriends an ex-stockbroker who lost his job, mortgage and belief in politicians the day the market crashed. When Braddock suggests things might improve now Roosevelt is president, his friend replies, “FDR hasn’t got me my mortgage back.”

In implying that we shouldn’t trust politicians, they are saying the right thing for the wrong reason. Politicians of all kinds stand for a continuation of capitalism, a system that causes the conditions within which the Braddock family, like most families, struggled.

The pity of it all is that Braddock, like most members of the working class, didn’t learn much, but continued to believe society didn’t need changing. In 1928, a year before the Wall Street Crash, he lost $20,000 when the Bank of the United States went belly-up. This was the year Herbert Hoover was elected president on the promise of continued prosperity. According to Mr. Hoover, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.”

Braddock, who was paid $32,000 for beating Max Baer, eventually gained greater prosperity by a deal that was thoroughly in keeping with boxing’s, hence capitalism’s, shoddy ethics. When Joe Louis had emerged as the outstanding challenger, Joe Gould informed him he could sign ten percent of his earnings over the following ten years to Gould and Braddock, should he win, or forget about a title fight. Knowing he could be denied a title shot for years because he was black, Louis signed.

Braddock died in his sleep on November 30, 1974 at the age of 69. The next day in the New York Times, Red Smith wrote, “If death came easily, it was the only thing in his life that did.”

Steve Shannon

Made in Dagenham (2011)

Film Review from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Made in Dagenham, depicts the true-life struggle of female workers for equal pay, in 1968 in the Ford Plant in Dagenham.

Produced by ‘BBC Films’, it stars Sally Hawkins as Rita O’Grady, the girls’ main spokesperson, Rosamund Pike, as Lisa Hopkins, the wife of a Ford executive, who opposes him when the women strike, and Miranda Richardson, who delivers a crackerjack performance as Minister for Employment, Barbara Castle. Castle is initially angry that after two years of Labour goverment, with a large minority, they’ve had 26,000 strikes, lost five million working days and now, these women want to add to it.

Ford’s Dagenham plant in 1968 was the fourth largest auto manufacturing plant in the word, producing 3,000 cars a day. It comprised an area of 42 million square feet, employed 55,000 men and 187 women. The women were previously classified as semi-skilled, but were demoted to being unskilled with a corresponding pay cut, which wasn’t objected to by the Union.

According to their shop steward, played by Bob Hoskins, “This has nothing to do with being unskilled. Ford decided to pay you less, because they can, because you’re women.”

Initially, the strike, opposed by the Union, was to upgrade the women to semi-skilled status but under O’Grady’s fiery leadership, became a battle for equal pay for equal work. The women, all 187 of them, sewed seat covers, but nowhere in Made do you see one man doing that; equal work?

Most of the movie deals with opposition from men in various areas. The overall view is, in 1968, most Englishmen were chauvinistic. Though this reviewer hasn’t lived in England since 1966, he knows the depiction was reasonably accurate.

Without seat covers the Plant shut down. Laid-off male workers bitterly opposed the strikers, which caused problems in the marriages of couples who were both employed at Ford. O’Grady’s husband was extremely nasty when their fridge was repossessed. This made the women more bitter, considering they were supportive of the men when they were on strike.

Union leaders begged them to return to work. One, in a fit of profundity, declaimed, “Marx said men make history; he didn’t say women make history.” The word ‘man’ in the greater sense, which is how Marx meant it, carries no gender connotation.

In desperation, an executive from head office in Detroit came over to put the world to rights. This economic genius argued, to grant equal pay, would shoot up the price of product, which would kill the market. Surveys have shown, an average of 7 percent of the price goes to wages and salaries, including that of high-price CEOs. A few years before the strike London busmen were out all summer for higher wages. A survey, conducted a year later, showed that for every pound received in extra fares, only two shillings (then one tenth) went towards wages.

Perhaps the most perceptive comment in the movie is when Lisa Hopkins tells the guy from Detroit, Ford should take a leaf from Vauxhall’s book and not be so aggressive towards the union. Though Hopkins didn’t say it, this aggression stems from the early days when Henry Ford did all in his considerable powers, to prevent unions getting a foothold in his plant.

After crashing the Union’s national conference, the delegates vote in favour of equal pay and Castle, realising the women won’t quit, sides with them even after being warned by Harold Wilson, “Don’t upset Ford, I’ve enough trouble with Americans.” The women settle for 93 percent of their demand. In 1970 the UK Parliament passed the Equal Pay Act, which was soon adopted by other countries. Even Ford management accepted it.

The movie, directed by Nigel Cole, is well acted, fast moving, totally absorbing and contains some humour, arising from real life situations. Perhaps, the funniest is when an attractive girl finks on the rest by entering the plant for a photo shoot and double crosses the company.

Though Made is recommendable, this reviewer has one small quibble. The thrust of it is no different to millions of movies; you don’t know what you can do until you try. Certainly, one must admire O’Grady and her friends, who had no previous experience of negotiating and propagandising. Nevertheless, Made depicts people fighting for improvements within capitalism. At one point, the shop steward says, “Someone has to stop those exploiting bastards from getting away with what they’ve been getting away with for years.” Meaning forcing them to be less exploitative. The question of no exploitation full stop, is never addressed. One thing which Marx said that the union official never repeated is “…abolition of The Wages System.” The most a Socialist can say about the women is their aims were alright as far as they went, but they didn’t go far enough. For real equality, a society where all will stand equal in relation to the tools of production, is the only answer.

Steve Shannon