Pathfinders: Regreened and pleasant land (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In what may be an omen of the new Trump incumbency, Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket underwent a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ last month. In a similarly unpromising start to the MAGA 2.0 regime, large areas of Los Angeles also underwent their own version of a rapid disassembly as winter wild fires raged along the beachfronts and through the Hollywood hills. When even millionaire celebs’ houses are burning down, you know the world is in crisis.

The LA fires were particularly devastating because of the ‘weather whiplash’ effect. Global warming is disrupting weather systems and rainfall patterns, making wet events in Southern California wetter, and dry events longer. Heavy rain a year or so back resulted in a profusion of new foliage, which then dried out during the subsequent and prolonged drought, creating a mass of kindling just waiting for the next lightning strike or discarded cigarette butt (tinyurl.com/vp6fd9jv).

This weather whiplash effect is being felt around the world, leading in many places to increasing floods and desertification, aided and abetted by human activity including deforestation, industrial farming and overgrazing, soil degradation, building, mining and pollution. It’s estimated that 25 percent of global land will be under threat by 2050. The Gobi desert in Mongolia and China is expanding by around 6,000 square kilometres a year, causing tens of thousands of migrants to flee to the cities. The Sahara, a desert the size of the United States, is advancing by around 48 km a year, exacerbating land conflicts in already poverty-stricken areas. The Thar desert in north-west India, for centuries held back by the natural barrier of the Aravalli mountains, is now blowing dust storms across croplands and into cities as the government have failed to prevent illegal mining of those same mountains.

Capitalism, which cares nothing for consequences, is the real ‘tragedy of the commons’, in which Earth’s common resources are owned and controlled privately and for private gain, to the impoverishment of all. In socialism, where resources would be commonly owned and managed, this unnecessary tragedy could be shunted into reverse. We don’t even need new technology to do it. We can simply apply ancient techniques used by the Egyptians and the Inca to create artificial water-harvesting structures to regreen the land.

Some of this is already happening. One famous regreening project is in the Sahel, the wide strip of semi-desert that borders the southern edge of the Sahara. Contrary to popular belief, it does rain in the Sahara, but rarely, and the water runs off the dry and impermeable ground in violent flash floods, leaving nothing behind. But since 2007, locals have been digging crescent-shaped depressions in the ground to catch the run-off, with deep sinkholes to permeate the sub-soil. The result has been a return of trees – a natural barrier to Saharan dust storms – and lush vegetation. The ‘Great Green Wall’ project runs right across Africa from coast to coast, involves 22 countries, and aims to restore 100 million hectares of marginal land by 2030 (youtu.be/udaihhReGAA).

Look online for stories about regreening deserts. They’re everywhere. Take Ethiopia, birthplace of coffee and once a ‘garden of Eden’ with at least 66 percent forest and woodland cover, reduced by human activity to 3.1 percent by 1982. It stopped raining and the wells dried up, causing droughts and biblical famines. But local community projects have been building micro-watersheds consisting of terraces, deep trenches, check dams and percolation ponds. Since these started, 13 streams have returned, of which 6 now flow throughout the year. Project lead Tony Renaudo put it plainly: ‘If you give nature a chance it will heal itself’ (youtu.be/RBP2uRQk5pQ).

China’s Kubuqi desert project is one of the world’s most successful, where desertification expanding at a rate of 10,000 km2 per year in 2000 has been reversed, leading to a re-greening of 2,000 km2 annually, using only local rainfall.

Also in China, the Loess Plateau had been stripped bare by overcropping and overgrazing, causing soil erosion, flooding, desertification and dust storms. The 35,000 km2 project was explained to local volunteers this way: you need to ‘dress’ the landscape – the hilltops need to wear hats (trees), the hills need to wear belts (terraces), and the valleys need shoes (dams). They regreened the entire area in a decade.

In India, monsoons come for just 3 months, giving farmers a fleeting window to produce just one annual crop, before 9 months of drought. The Paani Foundation project in India’s Maharashtra region hosts an annual Watercup competition to see which village can install the most water-harvesting structures within 45 days. Thousands of villages have participated since 2016, replenishing the water table in just one season and saving an estimated 145 billion gallons of water in 4 years, enabling 2 or more crops a year, creating food security, and ending migration to cities.

The Arvari river in north-west India had been dry for 60 years, with monsoon water simply running off the dry earth. In 1986 they started building water-harvesting crescents as in the Sahel, and by 1995 had restored the river year-round. They’ve since done the same thing with four more dry river systems (youtu.be/Tpozw1CAxmU).

Saudi Arabia has used subterranean water for crop irrigation but this is not sustainable as low rainfall can’t replenish the water table. The west-coast Al Baydha project, begun in 2010, built dams, channels and ditches to direct the floodwater into long-term storage areas, with the result that local vegetation was able to survive a 30-month drought without artificial irrigation (youtu.be/D6Kz_OcOgvE).

These and many other projects are being done now, not thanks to capitalism but in spite of it. What they mostly require is simply the cooperative labour of vast numbers of local people who understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. It’s a tantalising foretaste of what socialism could achieve on a world scale, once the barriers of private ownership and profit-seeking are torn down, and more of us start rolling our sleeves up.

Paddy Shannon

The Passing Show: Now He Tells Us. (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Now He Tells Us.

In November 1956, a British and French force invaded Suez. At the same time, Russia was busily suppressing the Hungarian rising and there was a rich field for hypocrisy, with each side condemning the other for military aggression. America, smug in her official non-alignment, tut-tutted loudly and it was mainly as a result of her pressure through the U.N. and behind the scenes, that the Suez adventure collapsed. The Israelis had already attacked and it was claimed that the Anglo-French operation was really a “police action” to separate the contestants and demilitarize the Canal zone. The Daily Mirror made mincemeat of the little piece of double talk, and a lot of people didn’t believe it anyway (a lot did believe it as well).

The real reason for the action was the threat which Britain and France saw to their interests in the area from Nasser’s seizure of the Suez Canal—only on August 8th of that year, Sir Anthony Eden had said “Suez is a question of life and death for us.” Moreover, the active support and encouragement given by Cairo to the Algerian rebels had long angered the French ruling class and here was an opportunity to put a stop to it once and for all. There was a sort of tenuous three-sided collusion between Britain, France and Israel—tenuous because Britain was not the willing ally of Ben-Gurion and, if we are to believe the Bromberger Brothers, as late as mid-October had been prepared to bomb Israel in the event of a conflict with Jordan. Tenuous because, again according to the Brombergers, the French wanted much swifter and more decisive action than the ailing and hesitant Sir Anthony was prepared to take.

Less than a year later, Merry and Serge Bromberger published their book Secrets of Suez which well and truly blew the gaff about the double-dealing and behind-the-scenes manoeuvres between the participants in this ugly affair. “We were warned” they said in a foreword, “that there might be denials for political reasons.” An under statement indeed—there were plenty of denials, including a denial of collusion With Israel, despite the mounting evidence to support it.

Well that was a few years ago and memories may have got a bit hazy, so it’s interesting to have the Israeli General Moshe Dayan’s confirmation in his book Diary of the Sinai Campaign reviewed in The Observer for September 26. General Dayan says that consultations with London and Paris had been going on for at least two months before the outbreak of hostilities, and when the Israeli attack came it was well organised and executed.! It had naval support, and air cover by some sixty Mysore IV fighters and fighter bombers—all provided by France.

We should be used by now to the lying denials of capitalist politicians, particularly concerning matters of war; none of them would dare to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’s in the bitter irony of capitalism’s scheme of things that only long after the event does the truth trickle out; often from the pens of those who were doing the dirty work at the time. The Brombergers were not opposed to the Suez action; they were concerned mainly to criticise the way it had been handled, particularly by the British. The collusion, apparently, was not efficient enough for them.

By the way, the Socialist Party did not have to wait years before we took a stand in opposition. We published a leaflet in unqualified condemnation within a day or two of the start of the fight, and sent copies of it all over the world. Remember that on this ninth anniversary of the Suez crisis, then read again the Brombergers’ book and appreciate the soundness of our stand.

But not a drop to drink.

Water has been in the world a long time, but just look at the state of some people’s necks! Just the sort of funny to make a Hyde Park audience titter you might think, but if the drought conditions experienced in New York this summer become more commonplace elsewhere, the dirtynecks among us may be claiming some moral justification for their existence. New York’s water supply all but dried up, and you would consider yourself lucky if you got a muddy brown dribble at the turn of your kitchen tap. “Save Water” begged the slogan tied to a blimp floating over the city.

Droughts have been with us on and off for many years—I remember the “use less water” posters on the sides of buses when I was a boy—and are not a feature entirely of present day society. Their effects have however been accentuated by rapidly increasing demand, mainly industrial, particularly since the end of the second world war. In fact, even without droughts, the rising level of water consumption threatens to cause serious shortages in parts of the world within a few years.

If you are a simple minded type who looks at problem purely from a technical point of view, the answer to the problem would also be quite simple. Build more reservoirs; transfer water from one place to another by a grid system (the rainfall in Britain overall, for example, is still enough to meet overall needs); perhaps desalt water from the sea? Regrettably, though, the answer is not entirely a technical one, or the problem would never have reached its present proportions.

Why do I say this? Because the experts have been looking not just for a solution, but for a cheap one, and the first two alternatives I have mentioned would call for a lot of money. So also would the third, a few years ago. Methods of desalting such as conventional distillation, ion-exchange etc. have been available for some time (in fact the firm of G. and J. Weir patented their first desalination plant in 1884) but they were not a cheap proposition. The matter has been raised again now, only because atomic energy looks like bringing the cost down with a bump.

“Can water from the sea be processed at a cost which rivals that of rainwater collection?” asked Guardian science correspondent Anthony Tucker on October 5th. The first international conference on desalination in Washington early in October, seemed to think that this was feasible. The flash- distillation process would use the heat from an atomic reactor (already producing cheap electricity) to produce desalted water costing about three shillings a thousand gallons. Anyway the British and American governments are sufficiently confident to invest quite a few millions in its development and in the not too distant future, we shall no doubt be witnessing the familiar competition between rivals trying to capture the new market for this type of plant. It has been estimated that single contracts in this field could be worth £50 millions or more.

The lesson to learn from this is not that capitalism is incapable of solving some problems technically, but that its profit motive often hampers and delays their solution for years. As Tucker points out, man has had it within his power for some time to make the desert bloom again. However:—

The future of Australia and of many large semi-arid areas . . . will be largely determined by whether or not it is economic to secure the supplies of water necessary for development.

So there it is in a nutshell. We shall never be able to see the technical wood for the financial trees so long as capitalism lasts.

Gaspers.

“According to the new system, workers would be paid more for producing more, improving quality and raising the profits of their enterprise”.

(Soviet Premier Kosygin, speaking on new bonus system, on September 27th.)

“Action to mitigate noise is limited by economics. Our own national airlines have narrow profit margins, and if foreign airlines found restrictions too great they might avoid Britain and leave us in an aviation backwater”.

(Aviation Minister Roy Jenkins, to the airport consultative committee at County Hall, September 15th.)

“The worst drought conditions in parts of Southern and Eastern Africa for thirty years have brought hundreds of thousands of people to the edge of starvation.

(Guardian report September 23rd.)

“President Nkrumah said that Ghana would restrict production rather than put up with the present low prices for her cocoa”.

(Guardian report September 23rd.)

“I am not here to help the industry but with the intention of helping our company and our shareholders”.

(Egg Producer John Eastwood, speaking to shareholders on September 22nd.)

“I am not a rich woman”.

(The Dowager Marchioness of Queensberry, after having been robbed of £15,000 worth of jewellery.)

Eddie Critchfield

Man and the Sea. Resources for Society’s Future (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

In obtaining food from the sea, man is continuing a process begun in the hunting and gathering stages of his history, although modern technology has taken much of the element of “luck” from fishing.

It appears that the sea is a virtually untapped food source, especially of protein foods. Fishermen are now taking less than 50 million tons of fish a year, while the amount available has been calculated to run as high as 100,000 million tons a year.

As well as using new methods of fishing such as echo-sounding and sonar beams, new uses are being found for the fish. One apparently important one is fish flour, a solvent extraction of fish protein: FPC or fish-protein concentrates. This is being developed in a number of places, and the US Bureau of Commercial Fisheries has devised a process for obtaining FPC from hake. The concentrate, which contains 85 per cent, protein, is highly nutritious, and practically tasteless and odourless. The idea is not that FPCs should be used as food in their own right, but as additives to the traditional dishes in areas where diets do not contain sufficient protein.

Another idea is to make use of the kinds of fish not yet exploited commercially, such as coley, redfish and dogfish, and to serve them in different and novel ways. School and industrial canteens have been used as guinea-pigs and the fish was found to be “perfectly acceptable”. Apart from the obvious advantages, the use of new and unknown kinds of fish will lessen the pressure on the traditional fishing grounds.

New Kind of Harvest

Many scientists believe there is a far richer source of sea food in plankton — the microscopic plants and animals that swim in the water and form the basis of all animal life in the sea. The plankton is eaten by small fish which in turn are eaten by bigger fish, and anywhere along the line man steps in and catches some of the bigger species. A way of eliminating the middle man, so to speak, would be to harvest the plankton directly. In this food chain, it takes about 100 lbs. of plankton to create 10 lb. of herring which creates 0.1 lb. of tuna fish.

The whale, one of the few mammals living in the sea, has a diet which consists entirely of plankton, which it scoops up as it travels through the water, and by doing so has drastically shortened the food chain. An idea would be to have nuclear-powered man-made whales, ships that would pour a steady stream of plankton into their holds as they ply the oceans.

Herds for Food

Very little farming of the sea has been done as yet, that is, to consciously rear and harvest fish, etc. The cultivation of the yellowtail is quite exclusive to Japan, although this cannot be considered true “farming” because the fish are taken when young from out at sea and are then fattened in enclosed areas of the sheltered inland sea.

The real breakthrough for marine farming came with the recent developments in stocking marine fields with domestically hatched and reared marine animals. There are still many problems to be overcome, but this opens up the possibility of achieving the same kind of revolution as Robert Bakewell achieved in livestock breeding in England in the 18th century. The specially-bred animals would be reared in marine fields. One of the most successful such ventures has been the rearing of the Japanese prawn. Methods were devised for hatching eggs obtained from female prawns brought in by fishermen.

In this way two types of fishery could develop. On the high seas fleets could cull the wild fish populations — somewhat as some African countries “crop” the wild animals in their National Parks; and nearer home, the marine farmer would cultivate “domesticated livestock” in the inshore pastures of territorial waters.

Scientists are now also turning to the sea as a source of drugs, and it seems as though it is a practically untapped source of potentially useful medicines, especially of further antibiotics.

Fit to Drink

Water is said to be in short supply in relation to the domestic, agricultural and industrial needs for it. Under capitalism much water is wastefully used, but even so very little is taken directly from where most of it is: the sea. The oceans and seas hold about 97 per cent, of the world’s stock of water, and unlike most other natural resources the sea is self-renewing — all the water eventually ending up in the sea, in a series of events known as the water cycle.

Although work is being done to develop strains of crops which are resistant to salt water, most of the water used by man needs to be fresh. So to obtain water from the sea, all the dissolved minerals have to be removed — desalination. There are generally three different types of methods, of which distillation is the major and oldest process. Desalination plants are in use in a number of places over the world. In Israel, where present water supplies fall short of the potential demand by as much as 80 per cent., the impetus for developing methods of desalting the sea and brackish waters derives from the question of survival rather than commercial interest. The Israelis have carried out an extensive research programme which they hope will lead them eventually to emancipation from the threat of serious shortages of water, and already have several desalting installations in operation.

Power from the Tides

The oceans are a huge source of restless energy deriving from winds, waves, tides and currents. The effects of these are sometimes disastrous, as in January 1953 when serious flooding in eastern England and the Netherlands caused extensive damage and resulted in the deaths of 2,107 people. Fortunately the oceans do not always expend their energy in such destructive ways, and can be put to man’s use. As tides are relatively reliable they can be harnessed to turn turbines and produce electricity. A place with a high tidal range is obviously necessary for the location of a tidal power station and there are only about two dozen suitable places in the world, of which about ten have been seriously considered.

The major possibility in Britain is the Severn Estuary, and a power station from Cardiff to Western-super-Mare has been estimated as being able to supply one-twelfth of the United Kingdom’s power, and an additional road between Wales and England. The French were the first people to build a tidal power station. It straddles the Rance Estuary in NW France, and is designed to produce 240 megawatts of electricity, enough for a city of about 500,000 people. Receiving the direct force of the great Atlantic tidal wave this coast also has remarkably regular tides, and during the spring tides has a range of 42 feet. At the height of the spring tide flow, water comes rushing up the estuary at a rate of nearly 4 million gallons per second. Even so, the power station’s output is only a small proportion of the 180,000 megawatts of energy thought to flow from the Atlantic into the English Channel, and is almost insignificant beside that of world tides — 1.5 million megawatts.

Resources Galore

For every statistic prophesying doom for the world in terms of mineral resources, there is another to contradict it. The ecologists contend that we must use the resources of the world austerely, to make them last — at least until other substances can be found to take their place. However, commerce lives only for the day: in case the high-grade deposits on the land really are becoming exhausted, the mining companies have their eyes on (and pockets ready for) the mineral wealth in the sea and on the sea bed.

The beautiful thing about the sea is that minerals are being deposited there faster than man can hope to collect them. Every year rivers flowing from the land add about 3,300 million tons of material which eventually comes to settle on the ocean floor. Nearly 4 million tons of meteoric and other materials rain down from outer space. In fact the oceans form a global chemical plant, in which practically every chemical is being processed and finally stored: providing a renewable resource which will last beyond the foreseeable future.

Dr. John Mero has presented some astonishing estimates of the various minerals in one type of deposit, manganese nodules, found on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. According to him, the nodules hold enough aluminium to supply man for about 20,000 years, cobalt for 200,000 years, copper for 6,000 years, manganese for 400,000 years and zirconium for 100,000 years. (The figures are based on 1960 rates of consumption.) In addition, these nodules are estimated to contain 207,000 million tons of iron, which is almost twice as much as the present land resources which are expected to last at least 250 years. There is also estimated to be nearly three times as much lead as the present land reserves which, we are told, could be exhausted by 1988. And the list goes on; but the store is hardly touched by man. Manganese nodules are not restricted to the Pacific. They are also found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. They were first dredged from Scottish lochs!

Extracting Minerals

The problem is that the average depth at which they are found, about 13,000 feet in the Pacific, makes conventional dredging out of the question. Dr. Mero suggests that giant dredgers controlled from the surface could sweep up the nodules from the ocean floor. But while land reserves are still sufficient there is as yet no real incentive to take these minerals from the oceans, especially as the cost would be in the order of some £12 million or more. A further problem quoted was that America might find herself in the “embarrassing situation of having a surplus of some minerals”.

Red clay sediments on the ocean floor contain enough copper and aluminium possibly for a million years, but again are difficult to obtain. However, small amounts of sand, gravel, shells, limestone, tin, gold and diamonds are all dredged from the sea in shallow coastal regions. In 1966 over 6 per cent, of this country’s gravel and sand came from the sea bed. Apart from their direct use in construction works, sand and gravel taken from the sea also play a part in land reclamation.

Only three dissolved chemicals are extracted from sea water on a commercial scale: salt, magnesium and bromine. Today as much as a third of the world’s production of salt comes from the sea, the heat of the sun being used to evaporate the water as it has been done for centuries. The production of salt in this way led to the extraction of magnesium from the sea in the nineteen-thirties, and today most of this metal comes from sea water or brines.

For the Future

Natural gas, oil and molten sulphur can be piped up from the underlying rocks of the sea bed, and some 200 drilling rigs are at this moment probing the continental shelves in various parts of the world in search of these minerals. It is very difficult to gather figures as to the estimated amount of oil under the sea.

So there we have, briefly, the potential of the minerals in the sea. Their use, as with everything else, depends today upon the capitalist economics of mining for profit and on international law and technology. In many cases the necessary equipment does not yet exist, although the knowledge of how it may be used does.

SUE.

The above article is from the notes of a lecture given to our Birmingham Branch last year.

Material World: Signs of things to come (2022)

The Material World column from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much of our planet is suffering from heatwaves and droughts with record-breaking temperatures and the experts say it is not isolated incidents but a harbinger of weather events that will become increasingly common in the future as global warming increases.

Namrata Chowdhary of the environment activist group, 350.org, stressed that ‘the truth behind these heatwaves is searingly clear: fossil fuels did this. While these temperatures are quite literally shocking, they come as no real surprise to communities that have long since lived on the frontlines of the climate crisis.’ Chowdhary continued, ‘This is the latest spike in a rapidly worsening disaster, one that was foretold by climate activists the world over.’

Nushrat Rahman Chowdhury, co-author of a Christian Aid report, said: ‘Drought is not new, but its intensity and frequency have increased over the last 30 years due to global warming. It is a real danger; it threatens lives and livelihoods of some of the poorest people in the world, who have done the least to cause the climate crisis’.

Over 1.2bn poor people across the globe are highly vulnerable to extreme heat, which is 28 million people more than in 2021, according to Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL).

The western states of the United States are suffering one of the worst droughts in a thousand years. California is in its third year of drought and virtually all areas of the state are classified as either in severe or extreme drought. However, US farmers will get insurance payouts, although this means rising premiums, and also are entitled to government tax subsidies.

European countries such as France and Spain are also being subject to punishing drought conditions. However, in Africa it leads to hunger and migration, since it is the poor who are the most vulnerable victims.

One Karachi-based urban planning advisor said the urban poor would suffer most from extreme heat, probably due to the ‘urban heat island effect’, where concrete-built landscapes push up temperatures: ‘Unplanned densification, automobile intensive mobility choices and rapidly reducing green cover are worrying urban trends.’

The poor do not have access to indoor cooling and the infrastructure in the slums makes life even harder, plus they often do outdoor construction and agricultural work with no shelter during the worst of the day’s heat. Heat is a silent killer, often responsible for more deaths than higher-profile disasters like floods, hurricanes or tornadoes, and the rising toll is expected to worsen as the world warms. In 2010, a heat wave in India killed 1,344 people in the western Pakistan city of Ahmedabad alone. In 2015, a heat wave killed more than 1,000 in the capital, Islamabad. However, due to inadequate death registration procedures this is likely to represent an undercount for the whole region.

According to the Lancet, 356,000 people died of extreme heat in 2019 alone.

The World Weather Attribution group analysed historical weather data and suggested that early, long heatwaves that impact a massive geographical area are rare, once-a-century events. But anthropogenic climate change has made these 30 times more likely. That may be a conservative estimate as another study by the UK Met Office said climate change makes heatwaves in north-west India and Pakistan 100 times more likely. That means the region may now see such events in excess of record 2010 temperatures every three years. If it were not for climate change, these events would happen just once every 312 years.

In 2018 Cape Town, in South Africa, was the world’s first big city to almost run completely out of water. That problem hasn’t gone away. The charity Christian Aid warned that in addition to Cape Town, London, Sydney, Beijing, Cairo and Phoenix are all in danger of running out of water as the climate crisis takes hold, according to its report, ‘Scorched Earth: the impact of drought on 10 world cities.’

Two-thirds of Africa is desert and dry savannah with 45 percent of Africa’s land area affected by desertification, more than half of which is at very high risk of further desertification. Africa has suffered from drought more frequently than any other continent with 134 droughts between 2000 and 2019, of which 70 occurred in East Africa, 14 extreme cases in the past two years alone. A fourth season of failed rains is causing one of the worst droughts East Africa has seen in decades and the UN’s World Food Programme says up to 20 million people are at risk of severe hunger. In Somalia, 40 percent are facing starvation as the food and water supply becomes desperate. Millions of children are malnourished, while the domestic animals that families depend on have died. While in southern Africa Angola is facing the worst recorded drought in 40 years, with southern provinces where 1.58 million people are suffering high levels of acute food insecurity having experienced the fifth consecutive year of drought conditions.

Droughts are being fuelled by climate change, and so only global action can make a difference. Our urgent need is building a world of coordinated mutual aid which is integral to our case for a cooperative commonwealth for the future – world socialism. As explained in last month’s Material World, socialism may be Africans’ last hope to change their dire situation and conditions.

ALJO

Finance and Industry: Free Distribution (1967)

The Finance and Industry column from the June 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Free Distribution

The productive resources of the world have long since reached the point which would allow mankind to go over, in a very short time, to free distribution of the things needed to life and to enjoy life. Socialists are suggesting a world community where wealth is produced by voluntary labour and is available to all free of charge.

To many this suggestion seems fantastic. Perhaps we can make what we mean a little clearer by pointing to a few things with which everybody is familiar.

Sir Alan Herbert, the humorist, always makes a witty speech at the Annual Meeting of the shareholders of the Savoy Hotel. This year he spoke of an Air (nationalisation) Bill:

"Everybody breathes and occupies air, but not the same amount and extent, which is evidently unjust"

As a defence of private property in the means of production Sir Alan chose a particularly inapt example. For air, continually recreated by natural processes, is one of the few things that is now freely available to all. Nobody has managed to establish a monopoly in the supply of air. But with other, equally necessary, requisites for life such as food, clothing and shelter the situation is different. Food, for instance, is not freely available. In fact the production of food is carried on not to satisfy human needs but for sale at a profit. Before people can get food they must already have in their possession wealth — generally metallic or paper money tokens. This they must hand over, on a value for value basis, to those who own the food before they can eat it.

Why could not food be freely available like air? And, if it can be, why isn’t it? The difference between air and food is this: food is the product of human labour ; air is not. Before food can be freely available men must have free access to the means and instruments of labour.

But, what is free access? Last August 5 the Daily Telegraph had an article under the headline SPACE FOR ALL MANKIND. The article discusses a draft space treaty. Under the treaty, states and individuals were to be barred from appropriating the moon “by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means". The treaty proposed there be “free access” to all celestial bodies. Thus space would become “a province of mankind”.

Although it is difficult for lawyers (products of a world where land and other wealth is monopolised by a class) to grasp what free access is, we must grant that those who drafted this treaty have not done badly. They make clear that sectional ownership of celestial bodies is to be barred so that they will belong to all mankind.

Apply this to Earth and what we mean by free access should become clear. No section of society will monopolise access to the means for producing wealth. These will belong to no-one and so will be the property of the whole of mankind to use as they think fit.

But, once again, there is an important difference between free access to areas like celestial bodies and free access to the means of production. To operate these organisation is needed. In other words, free access must not merely be allowed, it must be organised too. Where there are no social classes the only method there can be is democracy. Mankind will control the use of the means of production through democratic institutions.

The technical problem of producing enough wealth for all to enjoy has been solved long ago. However, there could be temporary problems in supplying certain things — but at least, if there are to be problems, this is what they should be. How to provide more and not how to cut down consumption as is the case today.

What, do you think, is the purpose of gas and electricity meters? The answer is simple: to see you don’t get unlimited supplies to use as you feel necessary, as you can with water. Water is not of course provided free. It is just that the method of paying for it is unusual: by means of a general water rate. After paying this, you can use as much water for domestic purposes as you like. But for how long? Already they’re discussing metering the water supply. An article in the March issue of the Three Banks Review discussing the water industry says:

The question arises whether it is justifiable to use land and money to provide water in unlimited quantity to domestic users. Unlimited water is a pleasant luxury, but might not the consumer prefer the land and money to be used in some alternative way, even if this means restricting bis water use? . . . The only way to find out whether domestic consumers are prepared to pay for extra water at cost is to charge that cost. This means charging by quantity and ultimately means metering every domestic supply.

In other words, meters could be installed to restrict water use.

One of the reasons the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries in its report on the Post Office gave for not returning to the system of allowing unlimited use of telephones after paying the rental charge was:

A considerable amount of extra exchange equipment would have to be installed to handle the extra traffic induced . . . In particular changes would have to be made in the present arrangement for metering all calls.

Meters once again restrict use.

It is not our job to get mixed up in arguments over pricing policies for such things as water, gas, electricity and telephones, but to point out that the different ways of charging for water and, say, electricity bring out the restrictive nature of capitalism. There is no technical reason why electricity, gas and telephone services could not be provided to be used as needed. Indeed the technical problem for capitalism is just the opposite: to find ways of charging so as to prevent unlimited use.

Socialists have always pointed to ticket collectors as an example of the absurdity and waste of capitalism. Apparently, there will be none on the new Victoria Line underground in London. Instead, the Sunday Times of April 16 tells us:

When the Victoria Line opens next year it will be equipped with a novel robot ticket collecting system. Instead of handing in their tickets at the end of a journey passengers will present pieces of paper coated with iron oxide to a machine to ’read’. If the machine reckons that they have paid too little the automatic exit gate remains firmly shut.

What a waste of resources in terms of time and skill! And just to see that people don’t use the underground as they please.

In these cases mechanical devices make obvious the restrictions capitalism places on our use and enjoyment of wealth. However, our access to other goods and services is just as effectively restricted by other, social means: the size of our wage packet or salary cheque.

Adam Buick

And not a drop to drink (1989)

From the April 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

It takes a remarkable degree of disorganisation to create a problem of clean water supply in a country like Britain where it rains at least one day in three. The problem is not entirely new of course. Ever since the Tudors and increasingly since the industrial revolution the rivers and inshore waters have been used as open sewers.

In seventeenth century London the paths of disease could be traced on a map along the rivers of the capital — the Fleet, the Brent, the Lea. The rich were smart enough to live on the high ground — Hampstead, Stamford Hill. Dulwich, so that their sewage flowed down toward the poor at the bottom in Camden. Tottenham, Walworth and the streams that drained the valleys.

The problem had begun with the depopulation of the countryside by Enclosures. The dispossessed peasants flocked to the cities as they are now doing in the Third World, and the Plague of London of 1665-6 was an early consequence. The city's population exploded from the few tens of thousands it had been in the Middle Ages. It was no longer a real city with a corporate existence but just a huge aggregation of people without clean water or sewage. The cry of Gardee Loo! as the chamber pot was emptied out of the bedroom window into the street below was a commentary in sound of the sanitary arrangements. The peasant on the other hand would have had his thunderbox well away from the house, an earth or pit closet, placed downhill and as far away from the well as possible.

London in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries resembled Calcutta today (if they could be said to differ, London would come off worse). The situation got so bad that, after continual outbreaks of cholera and typhoid which infected Gladstone and Queen Victoria and killed Prince Albert, the government in 1858 ordered the piping of London for sewage and clean water supply. Waste was simply conveyed downstream and put into the river beyond the sniff of the capital.

Elsewhere in the country, rivers like the Clyde and the Mersey, the Humber and the Taff. which had teemed with fish and water-fowl, otters and crayfish, became stinking black ditches.

Market economy to blame

The reason for all this was identified by the economist A.C. Pigou as "externalities", that is, businesses shrugging off overheads in the form of unwanted waste products onto the rest of the population. It gives you a business edge to throw your rubbish over the fence, to let your filth run into the nearest stream rather than build a treatment plant. The same economic mechanism which rewards the drive for profit also rewards the drive to cut costs — at other people's expense. It is an inescapable consequence of the market economy.

There is no way the problems can be dealt with while goods and services are produced with a view to sale and profit. Tinkering with the problem will only shift the burden somewhere else.

Power stations and car exhausts produce acid rain which leaches out aluminium in the soil and into the streams and rivers from which it is piped into our taps and is strongly suspected as a major factor in Alzheimer's Disease. It is little comfort to discover that much of the power produced goes to provide us with junk mail, computers in banks, tanks and aircraft carriers for the next war.

Trichloroethylene and tetrachloroethylene, which are used for degreasing metal in Vauxhalls at Luton among other places, have got into the water table at levels high enough to disturb the experts because they are regarded by the World Health Organisation as a major cause of cancer. Many of these cars are destined for reps who will be sent out to sell soap powder, Mars bars and life insurance.

In the summer of 1988 a boy canoeing on the Warwickshire Avon found two dead herons on the river bank. He mentioned the fact casually to a young man who was a biologist interested in environmental matters. Examination showed that the birds had died of dieldrin poisoning (remember Seveso?), an insecticide banned everywhere in the developed world. The source was traced to a company in Coventry which cleaned drums for an American multinational in Avonmouth which manufactured the poison for export to the Third World (they are not allowed to produce it in the US). Dieldrin has since been found in Severn eels, up to eight hundred tons of which were annually exported to Holland and Germany. The Ministry of Agriculture found this out in the spring of 1988 but kept the finding secret. The facts were leaked to the Continentals and the imports were cancelled. More recently still the Gloucester Citizen carried the headline “Probe As Fish Quit Severn".

The only exception to the falling quality of water in the rivers was the much publicised cleaning-up of the Thames by improving the sewage works at Thurrock in recent years. Within a very short while some thirty species of fish were reported to have returned to the river and one wealthy optimist seeded the headwaters above Oxford with thousands of salmon fingerlings in the hope that when mature they would return to the river to spawn. There were reports three or four years later that salmon had been taken by anglers but since then trouble with sewage works along the river has brought the quality of the water down again.

The cleaning up of the Thames was little more than a public relations exercise and a bit of charity beginning at home for members of the ruling class obliged to spend time at Westminster. Elsewhere water quality continued to fall with nitrate pollution in East Anglia, cryptosporidium in Oxfordshire, and massive aluminium-sulphate poisoning of people in Cornwall.

Obsession with privatisation

In the middle of all this the Thatcher government is pressing on with privatising the water undertakings. How irrelevant this is can be seen from the fact that 20 per cent of the industry has always been in the hands of private firms. Neither they nor the majority of firms that are government owned have shown the slightest urge or ability to come to grips with pollution, but as we have tried to show above, they can't anyway. Like the rest of the economy, it is really out of control. Polluting the environment is profitable for Conservative investors and Left Wing bureaucrats can do little about it.

The vile water we have to drink will inevitably become even more expensive. At present only half of the fifty odd thousand employed in the industry actually do the productive work. Putting a meter on everybody's house will cost £1.5 billions in the aggregate and will require a new tier of non-productives to read the meters, send out bills, chase non-payers, prosecute those who make imaginative use of a piece of pipe and two hoseclips to bypass the meter . . .

In addition, the £7 billion it will cost to transfer the businesses from local bureaucrats to independent companies will have to be met by the consumers, plus the interest on same, which is set to increase from 5 per cent to 8 per cent annual return on capital on the whole package to make it attractive to owners of capital. Even then, it will only be a percentage point or two above the rate of inflation.

The latest news is that the EEC has turned down a request by Nicholas Ridley. Minister of the Environment (No kidding!) that his government be exempted from having to observe Commission standards for water purity. His argument was that when the new companies are set up, their being responsible for policing themselves will be our guarantee of pure water in the future. After all, if they don't come up with the goods we can all exercise the customer's prerogative and go without, can't we?

Ken Smith

Voice from the Back: A Wasteful Society (2009)

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

A Wasteful Society

Capitalism is a very wasteful society that spends millions of potentially useful labour time and ingenuity in protecting private property. All over the world men and women spent their time in organisations like armies and police forces. Here is a small example of the stupidity of a private property society, in this case the border between Mexico and the USA. “18,000 – the number of Border Patrol agents assigned to it in 2008 (up from 4,000 in 1993) 705,000 – the number of people caught trying to cross it illegally in 2007/2008, down from 1.6 million in 2000. That’s the equivalent to 2,000 people a day. 1,954 – the number of people who died crossing it between 1998 and 2004, mainly of exposure, drowning or car crashes.” (Times, 16 January) Inside world socialism there will be no countries and no national borders. Everyone on Earth will be free to roam the whole world without passports or visas. There will be no border patrols, people will be free to engage in useful work.

 

Alternative Life Styles

Two pieces of literature came through many workers letter boxes recently. Here is one from the Observer, 8 February – “Prince Edward spent last week on an official visit involving lots of good works to Barbados, including lunch yesterday at the Sandy Lane hotel (favoured by Michael Winner and Simon Cowell, with rooms costing around £3,000 per person per night) and an afternoon at the resort’s golf course.” Here is another from the charity WaterAid “Every 17 seconds, a child in the developing world dies from water-related diseases, in around the time it takes you to read this paragraph, someone, somewhere, will die. Everyday, people in the world’s poorest countries face the dilemma of having to trust their health and that of their children to the consequence of drinking water that could kill them. It’s a gamble that often carries a high price – seeing children needlessly dying is simply heartbreaking.” WaterAid suggest that the answer is to send them £2 a month. Socialists suggest that we get rid of this insane society even though it might interfere with Prince Edward’s £3,000 a day golfing trip.

Capitalist Priorities

As unemployment soars and re-possessions increase it speaks volumes for the priorities of capitalism that military expenditure keeps on rising. “The cost of Britain’s military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq this financial year has soared to more than £4.5bn, an annual increase of more than 50%, figures released yesterday reveal. Operations in southern Afghanistan accounted for a little over half, nearly £2.6bn, compared with £1.5bn last year. Most of the money was spent on providing tougher armoured vehicles for soldiers who face a growing threat of roadside bombs. Surprisingly, as the government prepares to withdraw from Basra, the cost of Britain’s military presence in southern Iraq this year increased to nearly £2bn, compared with less than £1.5bn last year, according to the figures released by the Ministry of Defence. …The defence budget will be increased by more than £500m to reach a total of just over £38bn this year, the MoD said yesterday.” (Guardian, 13 February)

Snowfall

On Monday 2 February heavy snow fell in many places in Britain, and some workers failed to get to work.   The British “Federation of Small Businesses estimated that continuing bad weather on Tuesday could cost the British economy more than one billion pounds”, said Reuters (2 February). This is the usual news item which appears on those rare days when the weather stops industry operating normally. It just makes you wonder why, on all those ordinary, typical days throughout the year when industry is operating normally, there is nothing in the papers about the tremendous contributions to “the British economy” the workers have obviously made.

Sewage: Profit first, health second (2022)

From the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hot on the heels of all the bullshit and false promises of the world’s leaders at COP26 last month, comes an indicting report from UK based campaign group Surfers Against Sewage (SAS).

No sooner had the dust settled in Glasgow, than SAS published their 2021 Water Quality Report, which reveals shocking evidence of the sewage pollution crisis plaguing the UK’s seas and rivers, with their findings categorically showing that water companies are increasing the discharge of harmful amounts of sewage into the environment. Raw sewage spillages into coastal swimming waters have increased by more than 87 percent in the past 12 months, with devastating consequences to the health of people and ecosystems.

They stated: ‘Water companies treat us like Shit. Discharging sewage into coastal waters. Raking in billions in profit’, adding, somewhat optimistically, that ‘But their days of pay-outs at the expense of people and planet are soon to be over’.

It emerged that water companies spilled raw sewage from storm overflows into coastal bathing waters used by holidaymakers and families no fewer than 5,517 times in the last year. They were polluting beaches that were supposed to be the cleanest and safest in England and Wales, and used frequently by children, surfers and swimmers.

We are in the midst of a new wave of sewage pollution, the report showed: ‘There are thousands of sewage discharges polluting rivers and coastlines, all of which could impact the overall health of aquatic ecosystems.’ Hugo Tagholm, the chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage, said: ‘The findings of our report are shocking and outrageous, but they are by no means unexpected. Time and time again, governments have claimed concern over the pollution of rivers and seas, but have so far failed to take concrete action to change the status quo. Loopholes in laws and systematically defunded regulators have left water companies to run amok.’

The rivers tested were Afon Wyre River, flowing into Llanrhystud Beach, Hoffnant River, flowing into Penbryn Beach, Figgate Burn into Portobello Beach in Scotland, River Bann into Portstewart Beach in Northern Ireland, Seaton Burn into Seaton Sluice Beach, Northumbria, the River Adur into Southwick Beach in southern England, the River Ribble into St Agnes Beach in northwest England and the Cadoxton River flowing into Whitmore Bay Beach, Barry Island, South Wales. E.coli levels in Figgate Burn are at a level that ‘poses an extreme risk to public health’.

Dr Christian Dunn, senior lecturer in natural sciences at Bangor University, said: ‘Untreated sewage can be a death potion to our rivers and waterways. It is a cocktail of harmful viruses, bacteria and chemicals. Some of these can directly harm aquatic life and others lead to devastating disruptions in the oxygen levels of the water – risking entire ecosystems… rivers are essential for the health of entire landscapes, our wildlife depends on them, and there’s no surer way to destroy a river than flooding it with sewage.’

A spokesperson for Water UK, an industry body, said the companies recognised the urgent need for action to protect and enhance the UK’s rivers and seas. ‘We know our performance has to improve and we are driving a step change in investment spending’. Blah, blah, blah, he continued. Of course, by investment we all know that translates to finding the cheapest way to generate maximum profits, rather than the safest way to protect the environment and all of its inhabitants.

Paul Edwards

Tiny Tips (2010)

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

Most of today’s African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they’re predators. That’s why we see stunning atrocities like eastern Congo’s rape epidemic, where armed groups in recent years have sexually assaulted hundreds of thousands of women, often so sadistically that the victims are left incontinent for life. What is the military or political objective of ramming an assault rifle inside a woman and pulling the trigger? Terror has become an end, not just a means:

[Link.]

Megamansions. With an estimated billion-dollar cost, Mukesh Ambani’s under-construction 27-story Mumbai skyscraper eclipses previous records for the world’s most expensive homes. No two floor plans for the inside of the lavish tower—known as Antilla–are alike and each space uses different materials, such as one bathroom’s Gingko-leaf sinks with stems guiding the running water into their leaf basins. In the U.K., Russian-Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev owns the Palladio, an extravagant 17,000-square-foot manor outside London, which he bought for $65 million in January 2008. (That works out to $3,824 per square foot.) The home has a bulletproof front door, a goldplated  pool, an indoor cinema and a hair salon for good measure:

[Dead Link.]

It takes more than 4,000 gallons of water to make a $20 bag of pet food. Researchers predict the end of cheap water around the corner:

[Dead Link.]

A record number of people contacted a debt charity last year but about 160,000 of them were so poor they could not be helped:

[Dead Link.]

It is no exaggeration to call this gendercide. Women are missing in their millions—aborted, killed, neglected to death. In 1990 an Indian economist, Amartya Sen, put the number at 100m; the toll is higher now.

[Link.]

The World Health Organisation has estimated that around the globe up to 2.6 billion people – or a third of the world’s population – do not have access to proper toilet facilities. More than half live in China and India. The UN’s target for providing proper facilities for all people is 2015. Up to half a million people in India are engaged in what is termed “manual scavenging”: cleaning toilets that have no sewage system and carrying away waste or “night soil” on their heads or in carts. The practice has been officially outlawed but persists because in many places there are no alternatives:

[Link.]

20+ African countries are selling or leasing land for intensive agriculture on a shocking scale in what may be the greatest change of ownership since the colonial era:

[Dead Link.]

Production Values: bottled water (2011)

The Production Values Column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

   A sideways glance at capitalism through some of its products.  This month: bottled water 

It may come as a surprise to younger readers to learn that water hasn’t always come from the supermarket in plastic bottles. There was apparently a time when you could drink it pretty much for free, straight out of the tap. Just as if it fell out of the sky!

But that was in the bad old days. Before consumers wised up and demanded that all those empty spaces waiting on supermarket shelves were filled with rows of different brands of bottled water. Petitions, campaigns and protests demanding new beverage “experiences” finally forced manufacturers and retailers in the 1980s to relent and meet consumer demands for water filtered through Corsican volcanic rock, carved from ancient arctic glaciers or condensed from mountain clouds in Fiji. (These high-end products are of course in the minority. Most products, despite the iceberg or mountain stream on the label come via a tap in an industrial estate, across from an abattoir, just off the M6).

To think that there was a time when we used to think there was just water! H2O our science teachers used to call it, which does scant justice to the range of minerals, fizz and flavourings that can now be pumped into this “pure” product. None of which appears to make much real difference, it has to be said. According to the Observer, one blind tasting panel praised a particular water’s ‘fresh, sweet, lemony aroma’ only to inform them it came from a tap in a Birmingham public toilet. Taking the piss surely.

Under capitalism there is nothing new under the sun. Not even rain. The market wasn’t of course responding to a real demand so much as completely creating that demand. Perrier and Evian are hardly even an example of capitalism’s supposed dynamic inventiveness, more a case of “old wine in new bottles”.

Humans need water. But capitalism doesn’t need humans – unless they can be employed or sold to. So because they are too poor, 3,000 children die each day from diseases caught through drinking tainted supplies. Their mistake? – to be born not as capitalists, nor even as consumers under the market system. In some regions wars are fought over which capitalist controls the water. Every time a borehole is dug a common resource is sucked up, enclosed and sold back to us. Does capitalism think we will swallow anything? Clear as.

Next month: We look at “the best a man can get”. A cure for cancer?! Of course not, we’re just looking at the razor blade.

Voice From The Back: Good Will Hutton (2001)

The  Voice From The Back column from the April 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good Will Hutton 

Surprise, surprise—the journalist Will Hutton, Keynesian economist and supporter of New Labour has actually written something interesting:

“The wealthy are doing well in America. Since 1976, the share of wealth owned by the wealthiest one per cent of Americans has doubled courtesy of the explosion of stock options, near halving of the top rate of income tax and the cuts in inheritance and capital gains tax. As a result the top one per cent of households own more than the bottom 95 percent of Americans combined” (Observer, 25 February).

Construction site carnage

  “Deaths of construction workers are ‘spiralling out of control’ as building companies slash staffing numbers in a bid to meet tight margins. There have been 100 fatal accidents on British sites over the last year in an industry booming thanks to increased orders and consolidations. Unions blame this ‘construction site carnage’ on firms that force workers to go self-employed. George Brumwell, general secretary of the builders’ union UCATT, said: ‘The increase in the number of employees forced to go self-employed leads to corner-cutting, risk-taking, people doing jobs they are not trained to do, and cash-saving at all costs'” (Observer, 25 February).

Supporters of capitalism delight in telling socialists that competition and the market are the most efficient way to run society. According to the above press report, capitalism is the best way to run society—if you happen to be an undertaker.

10,000 kids a day

Profit is the driving force of capitalism. The environment, the health and happiness of humanity is of no importance in relation to the profit motive. This has been again illustrated by the WHO report Water for Health; Taking Charge:

  “More than a billion people lack access to clean water, despite 10 years of intense efforts by aid agencies to avert drought and pollution. An investigation by the World Health Organisation has revealed that tens of thousands of children are dying every day of thirst or from diseases triggered by infected or poisoned water. The WHO report, to be published next month says global warming will exacerbate the situation. ‘The greenhouse effect is already bringing more extreme weather and that means more droughts and more outbreaks of serious flooding,’ said Dr James Bartram (co-ordinator of the WHO’s water, sanitation and health programme). With flooding, drinking supplies get contaminated with sewage and people can no longer consume unpolluted water. Epidemics of disease, such as cholera then break out” (Observer, 25 February).

Mysterious indeed

The Judeo-Christian God is a particularly blood-thirsty deity. According to his followers he is a dab hand at slaughter, famine and pestilence. Not to be outdone the Muslim deity (or is he the same one?) has been busy on the mayhem trail lately. The ways of God are indeed mysterious but those of his superstitious adherents are downright baffling.

  “Thirty-five Muslims were crushed to death in a stampede near the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia yesterday, as tragedy once again struck the annual hajj pilgrimage. The victims, 23 women and 12 men, mostly elderly and of various nationalities, were trampled and suffocated when a huge crowd in Mina valley rushed towards one of three giant pillars representing the Devil during a ritual known as ‘Stoning of Satan’. It was the first such tragedy at the hajj since 1998 when at least 118 pilgrims died, and more than 180 were injured in a stampede at the same spot in the third and last day of the stoning ritual. A year earlier, 343 pilgrims were killed and more than 1,500 injured when a fire destroyed 70,000 tents in Mina. The worst hajj disaster came in 1990 when 1,426 pilgrims were crushed to death in a stampede when a bottleneck developed at the entrance to a congested tunnel” (Times, 6 March).

It’s not cricket

The socialist view that capitalism distorts every human endeavour and makes it a mere commodity to be sold on the market place was recently illustrated by that arch-conservative the former Test Cricket umpire Harold Davis Bird (Dickie Bird):

  “I think it is very, very sad that the old umpire has gone, but it all boils down to money. Winning means everything—don’t get me wrong—we all like to win but, once we lose the enjoyment of playing the sport you’re gone and it’s all down to money” (c.CrickInfo.Ltd, 6 March).

The futility of reform 

  “The Government’s measures to help the most excluded people in society have had no significant effect, researchers have concluded The study, Low-income Families in Britain: Work, Welfare and Social Security in 1999, found that more than 80 per cent of children in households where neither parent worked were forced to go without basic necessities.” (Times, 15 March)

Danger: capitalism at work (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Conservatives were the first government to act on the issue although the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years" declared Francis Maude, Minister of Consumer Affairs, in the House of Commons on 13 January. He was referring to the government's intention to bring in legislation to ban inflammable foam furniture from the beginning of March 1989. In trying to score a point off his Labour critics the Minister avoided having to answer the real question: if the dangers had been known for 15 to 20 years, why wasn't anything done before?

The short answer is: because we are living in a capitalist society where furniture, like everything else, is not produced for use but for sale on a market with a view to profit. If satisfying the need for it was the sole reason furniture was produced, then the problem of having to ban the use of inflammable foam or any other dangerous material in its manufacture just wouldn't arise. Only furniture that was comfortable, solid and safe would be produced. But under capitalism the main reason furniture is produced is not to satisfy needs but to make a profit. Of course what is produced has to have some minimum use, otherwise it would not sell, but safety is a secondary consideration especially if catering for it will increase the cost of production.

Profit is the goal of production under capitalism. It is why production is undertaken and is what every firm, whether private or state-owned, must seek to obtain. Profits are created in the process of production in the form of surplus value and represent the unpaid labour of the producers, the value of what they produce over and above what they are paid as wages. Profits, however, are realised — converted into money (the form in which they really are profits) only on the market when the products in which they are embodied are sold.

All firms are therefore engaged in a competitive struggle to sell their products, precisely in order to realise the profits that are embodied in them. To succeed in this struggle they must be competitive in the sense that their production costs must be low enough to allow them to sell their wares at the going price and at the same time make enough profits to be able to invest in more up-to-date cost-reducing equipment. Competition can oblige all firms to run fast just to stay still. To remain in the race for profits, firms must stay competitive and to stay competitive they must continually increase productivity; to increase productivity they must make profits and accumulate them as capital invested in new. more productive equipment.

The furniture industry is no exception to this rule but. as an industry producing overwhelmingly for sale to wage and salary earners, it has an interest in keeping its prices low, not just through increased productivity but also through keeping the quality low too. The consumption of wage and salary earners is limited by the size of their wage packet or their salary cheque, so they are under constant financial pressure to go for the lowest-priced furniture on sale. This means that when there are two pieces of furniture on offer it will be the one with the lowest absolute price rather than the one with the lowest price-quality ratio that will tend to sell the best. In other words, the furniture industry is one of those industries that can make more profits by selling a large amount of low quality, low-priced goods than by selling a small amount of higher quality, higher-priced goods.

It is clear that in this situation, arising out of the competitive nature of capitalism combined with the restricted incomes it imposes on wage-earners, if no controls exist then furniture manufacturers will use the cheapest material in the manufacture of their goods even if this material is dangerous to the user. This is not contested by people in the trade; indeed, it is taken for granted, as can be seen from recent comments by them in the press.

A safer foam material has been available for some time but has not been used in all furniture because it is more expensive than the dangerous foam. The marketing manager of Dunlopillo, a firm that can produce the safer type of foam, was quoted as saying: . . .

  the [furniture] manufacturers are in a cut-throat business. They won't ask for more expensive foam unless they have to (Independent, 6 January 1988).

A similar view was expressed the next day by the merchandising director of Harris Queenway, the furniture retailers:

  We are in a commercial world. I still have my doubts whether the public will buy the safer furniture. They seem more affected by price and comfort (Independent, 7 January 1988).

After March 1989, if the government's legislation goes through, only the safer furniture will be available in shops. Before supporters of capitalism cite this as an example of how conditions under capitalism can be improved by reforms, they ought to reflect on the fact that, on the minister's own admission, nearly 20 years went by between the discovery of the danger and the banning of the incriminated material. In the intervening period hundreds of people have died unnecessarily, including the 12 over Christmas — without whose deaths ministers would have gone on giving for even more years the same reason for doing nothing as that given by one of their predecessors in 1980: "Alternative fillings would lead to soaring costs in the production of furniture”.

Even if some legislation to protect people's safety and health is eventually enacted, the long delay in reaching this stage is in itself proof of the inherently anti-social nature of capitalism in which it is normal that profits should come before safety. What has happened in the case of dangerous foam in furniture is the general rule every time that some issue concerning people's health or safety arises under capitalism. Two members of the Green Alliance environmental lobby group give us another recent example:

  In 1976. the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended changes in our air pollution regulations. Six years later, the Government agreed to consider these recommendations. After a further four years it published a consultation paper. Shortly after the election, however, it announced that there was no parliamentary time for legislation (Independent, 13 January 1988).

Legislation will no doubt eventually be passed, perhaps in time for a minister to declare "our party was the first to act on this issue although the measure to protect people's health had been recommended for 15 to 20 years".

Its exactly the same story with regard to water pollution. In 1975 the EEC Commission proposed a Common Market framework directive "on the quality of water intended for human consumption". Five years later, in 1980, the EEC Council of Ministers adopted the directive, giving Member-States two years (to 1982) to incorporate it into their national legislation and a further three years (to 1985) for the higher standards to be applied. The directive, however, also allowed for exceptions and for a longer time-limit for compliance if justified. The higher standards, which in any event represent only the minimum that scientists consider should be done to reduce the danger to health, have still not been applied in Britain. The British government has in fact invoked one of the exception clauses to request a delay in implementation until 1989.

Among the substances whose presence in water is to be controlled are nitrates. These chemical substances have been linked to stomach cancer and to the “blue baby" syndrome. They get into drinking water through some of the artificial fertilisers farmers spread on their land to increase yields — to be able to stay in the race for profits — being leached off by rain into water supplies. The problem is particularly acute in East Anglia. The National Farmers' Union are demanding compensation for the "loss of competitivity" that will result if restrictions are imposed on their use of nitrate fertilisers.

That water supplies have been polluted by artificial fertilisers has been known for many years but nothing much has been done about it until now because, as the NFU rightly points out, to do so would have reduced the competitive power of farming firms which, like all other firms, are in business to make profits rather than to supply useful things. This is a classic example of the environment being polluted as a consequence of the competitive struggle for profits.

Another dangerous farming practice has been the use of anabolic steroids to fatten up cattle for sale. These stay in the meat and are still there when it is eaten by humans, and so get passed on to us. As a result of a scandal a few years ago, a ban on the use of these hormones for this purpose was adopted and came into force in Common Market countries on 1 January 1988. Once again complaints about loss of profits have been made, revealing why they were employed in the first place. Michael Leathes, secretary-general of Fedesa, described by the Times (24 December 1987) as "an animal health association funded by the European animal drug manufacturers", stated:

  The ban will result in the loss of about 10 per cent extra bulk in an animal that a farmer would expect from using previously legitimate implant steroids — that effectively kills his profit.

Some of those involved in the administration of capitalism are very well aware of the limitations that the operation of its economic laws impose on what can be done to reduce the danger to health and to the environment resulting from current farming practices. Consider the following statement by James Kerr, Head of the Farm and Countryside Service to the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture:

  While it is right and proper that environmental considerations should be given much more attention than in the past, it must be not be forgotten that farmers are in the business of producing food and unless they can do this efficiently they will not be able to compete in the marketplace and will go out of business. Such a situation is clearly not in the interests of either farming or conservation. Farmers must therefore continue to take advantage of new developments in technology to remain viable (Europe in Northern Ireland No 38. December 1987).

It is not that all new cost-reducing techniques are necessarily more anti-ecological than the techniques they replace but simply that the effect on people's health and on the environment is not the deciding factor in their adoption, as it would be if the aim of production was to provide for needs rather than to make profits.

It is true that in the end capitalism is forced to take some account of these considerations but only after the damage has been done — after some source of water has been polluted. after people have died or had their health damaged — and then only to the extent that the damage done raises production costs, either directly or through reducing the productive efficiency of wage-earners, to a level where it becomes less costly to take steps to reduce pollution than not to do so.

Too little, too late is neither a rational nor a satisfactory approach to protecting the environment and people's health and safety but it is the very most that the rigid economic laws of capitalism will ever permit.

Adam Buick

Africa: Can it help feed us all? (2019)

From the September 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

Africa’s Potential Bread Basket

‘It is people who make the world: the bush has wounds and scars.’ – a Malawian proverb

Global food security is one of the most serious concerns of our time. The global food system is at the root of many environmental and health crises.

Humans have made the African savanna their home since the dawn of time and have greatly affected the environment. People in pre-colonial Africa were engaged in hunting and gathering, agriculture, mining and simple manufacturing. Agriculture involved most people and there were many different systems of agricultural production in pre-colonial Africa, to suit the variety of conditions the people faced. Without modern machinery and modern inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides they were not, however, able to transform nature on a large scale and were to a large extent at the mercy of the land and the weather. Intensive agriculture makes it possible for populations to grow.

Today, Africa does not grow enough food to feed its own population and African countries have tended to satisfy their increasing demand through expensive imports from the global market. The agriculture sector in many African countries is in a perilous state. It’s a situation that results in discontent and unrest. It is stating the obvious that the solution to the food crisis in Africa is for Africa to grow more food. Africa does in fact have the ability to grow enough food not only to feed itself, but also to help feed the rest of the world.

Africa is host to 60 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, yet currently spends tens of billions of dollars per year on importing food. This figure is projected to shoot up to US$110 billion by 2025. Africa is importing what it could actually be producing. African countries export raw goods outside the continent to be processed into consumer products imported back into Africa for purchase. In essence, Africa is exporting jobs outside the continent, and contributing to Africa’s poverty.

The African Guinea Savannah is one of the largest underused agricultural land reserves in the world with less than 10 percent used to produce crops. An area twice as large as that planted to wheat worldwide – a swathe of land with potential fertility that runs from the coasts of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Senegal eastwards to the Ethiopian border, then veers southeast to cover parts of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and the Congo before spreading across the continent over large areas of Angola, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and western Madagascar. Population figures are hard to come by when looking at the savanna, ranging from two to over 100 people per square mile and roughly 45 percent live in urban centres. 

The Guinea Savannah zone covers about 600 million hectares, of which about 400 million hectares could be used for crop agriculture. Currently, less than 10 percent of this area is being cultivated. This region has the potential to feed Africa and send produce elsewhere. It features a warm tropical climate with 800–1,200 millimeters of rainfall annually, allowing for a growing period of 150–210 days. The variable annual rainfall and poor soil quality make this a challenging agro-ecological environment. It supports three main farming systems:

(a) the root crop farming system; (b) the mixed cereal-root crop farming system; and (c) the maize mixed farming system.

All have potential for increasing agricultural production. The zone is one of the major under-used resources in Africa. It accounts for about one-third of the land area in Sub-Saharan Africa and underpins the livelihoods of more than one-quarter of all African farmers. Maize is the most important cereal in most African countries and also serves as a staple food source for some 200 million people in the developing countries. People have farmed grains in this area for centuries. One could try to enhance productivity through increasing use of manure to better fertilize their fields. Or to be mixing creatively different crops together that complement one another, so mixing legumes with grains, for instance — the legumes fix nitrogen and increase grain productivity. But one that is not so dependent on fossil fuel inputs from outside of the area.

According to Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the African Development Bank:

‘There is therefore absolutely no reason for Africa to be a food-importing region. Africa has huge potential in agriculture, but, as Dr. Borlaug used to say, nobody eats potential… Unlocking that potential must start with the savannas of Africa.’

There is indeed no ‘absolute reason’ why Africa couldn’t produce enough food to feed its inhabitants, but there is a practical one: capitalism and its production for profit instead of to meet people’s need for food (and everything else).

However, there is a cautionary note. When land is cleared and cultivated, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from the soil, and the plants, shrubs and trees that grow there. The more densely the land is packed with vegetation, the more carbon is released when it is cleared. Nevertheless, if even a small fraction is turned into farm-land – some 16 million hectares – is transformed, it could set Africa up to decrease dependence on food from elsewhere, feed itself and contribute to feeding the world.

Research scientists are studying groundwater resources in order to understand the renewability of the source and how people can use it sustainably towards a green revolution in Africa.

‘We don’t want to repeat some of the mistakes during the green revolution that has taken place in Asia, where people opted to use groundwater, then groundwater was overused and we ended up with a problem of sustainability,’ said Richard Taylor, the principal investigator and a professor of Hydrogeology at University College London. Scientists are learning how and when different major aquifers recharge, how they respond to different climatic shocks and extremes, and they are already looking for appropriate ways of boosting groundwater recharge for more sustainability.

Using the Guinea Savannah predominantly for agriculture will inevitably, as all agriculture does, bring some environmental costs, but agriculture can also benefit the environment. This ecosystem is delicate and it needs to be kept in balance.

People attribute Africa’s problem to overpopulation yet most parts of Africa are not densely populated at all with much lower density rates than many states in America. Yet there are those in the ecological movement who tend to focus on the population issue and concentrate on family planning. Hunger is not Africa’s inescapable destiny and it can be eliminated.

There is no such thing as benevolent capitalism. Socialists know that under capitalism attempts to change the way food is produced so as to fill the empty bellies of Africans will be thwarted by the international trading system and foiled by the national ruling class. But this land is our land and should be used to feed the people and not the greed of shareholders in Wall Street, the City of London or Shanghai.

What is required is the democratic self-empowerment of the workers to replace the exploitative global economic system of capitalism by socialism so as to be in a position to genuinely satisfy the food needs of the people. This is no fantasy but a practical, revolutionary proposition to live in a world without waste, want or war, and in which each person benefits from sharing in the fruits of the Earth. Hunger is not Africa’s inescapable destiny but it can only be eliminated by ending the capitalist system.

ALJO