Science, Uncertainty and the Bomb (1998)

Theatre Review from the September 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Copenhagen by Michael Frayn. National Theatre.

Michael Frayn, whose previous work has won him a trio of coveted "Best Comedy of the Year" awards (for Make and Break, Alphabetical Order, and the hilarious Noises Off), has, perhaps unexpectedly, fashioned a wonderful play about science which is full of ambiguity and paradox. Its focus is atomic physics, hardly the most accessible of subjects. But such are Frayn's linguistic skills that the audience has little difficulty in following narrative, and what emerges is a compelling play about how science is done, and the way that the scientific enterprise-like other behaviour-is mediated by the personalities of those involved. In the process Frayn has written one of the best plays about science and society that it has been my pleasure to see, and one which is marvellously realised on the stage of the Cottlesloe Theatre.

In 1941, in the Second World War, Nils Bohr, the so-called "father of atomic physics", met Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen. Heisenberg had been Bohr's research assistant in the mid-1920s, and together they had developed two of the key insights of modern atomic theory: the complementarity hypothesis (Bohr) and, especially, the uncertainty principle (Heisenberg). Uncertainty is one of those common scientific ideas (chaos is another) which has become part of the common currency of language, and in doing so has lost much of its original meaning. The uncertainty principle does not suggest that the behaviour of, for example, electrons is unknowable, but rather that "what is limited is the simultaneous measurement of connected variables such as position and momentum, or energy and time". The more precisely you measure one variable (such as the position of an electron), the less certain can you be of the value to attach to the second variable (such as "its speed").

What Frayn has done is to examine the uncertainties which lie behind Heisenberg's apparent motivations. Why did he, a German working on research into nuclear fission, journey to Copenhagen in 1941, to speak to his previous professor, a citizen of a country occupied by Germans? Drawing on biographical and autobiographical records he has fashioned a handful of separate explanations, all but the last of which have already been explored reasonably fully in various publications. Frayn doesn't suggest that our thoughts and motivations are specified as pairs of variables, but rather that a person's thoughts and motivations "cannot be established more clearly than he or she is willing to state them". Frayn wants to know whether Heisenberg (or indeed anyone else) really understands with any certainty the basis of their own thoughts and motivations.

What emerges is a picture of two scientists, previous colleagues, who find themselves caught up in the race to build the atomic bomb. (A year after their conversation in Copenhagen, Bohr was spirited out of Denmark and transported to the United States where he became a key member of the team which successfully built the first atomic weapon.) The evidence seems to suggest that Heisenberg perhaps deliberately mislead the German authorities about the difficulties which faced the research team, and as a result knowingly prevented the likelihood of Germany producing the bomb first. After the end of the war he and his team were captured by the British and brought to Britain, apparently to prevent them handing on any secrets to the French and Russians. And in a postscript Frayn describes the horror with which Heisenberg first heard of the dropping of the Hiroshima bomb. We cannot be certain but it appears that were it not for Heisenberg's common humanity either London, or Paris, or Amsterdam might have been devastated rather than Hiroshima. Such is the murderous way in which the scientific enterprise is used by capitalism. The profits of the few must always matter more than the lives of the many. About that there can be no uncertainty.

Michael Gill

Capitalism – barrier to useful work (2011)

From the May 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many are suffering the misery of unemployment while much useful, necessary work remains undone. One of the contradictions of capitalism. We want free time, to reduce the working day so that we can move beyond the tyranny of survival into free and creative mutual activity. Both employment and unemployment are capitalism preventing our human development in this direction.

The problems of unemployment are huge – worldwide problems affecting millions in some countries and billions globally if we include the massive numbers of 'informal' workers, those recognised as outside of the system, many of them non-persons living on the very edge of existence with no access to even the basic services.

What is this strange system that grants 'remunerated employment' to some who produce nothing worthwhile or useful for themselves and others whilst totally rejecting others who have the skills and ability to grow food, to build houses, to recycle others' rubbish, to contribute all manner of useful work? Why such a seeming imbalance between the work we can all see needing to be done but left undone and actual available work?

Given the way the world economic system is structured, we recognise the logic that requires a surplus of labour, a spare pool to be drawn on as and when required, a surplus that keeps down wages and favours the employer minority over the employed majority. But, as a member of human society, who can recognise any logic based even faintly on empathy or solidarity or common sense use of human capacities for the benefit of society as a whole?

Much of worldwide discontent and dissent is predicated around this matter of unemployment which creates unnecessary and unnatural divisions between sections of both domestic and international communities. Migrant labourers working for a pittance in lands which themselves have high domestic unemployment; migrant skilled workers enjoying artificially high wages in lands where local graduates can't find work; young people fresh out of education with little or no prospect of finding work while those wishing for retirement are told to expect to work for longer before earning such a luxury; production decimated in many developed countries because overseas underdeveloped countries have won the competition for the lowest wages.

This disconnect, this illogicality stares us all in the face. We know it makes no sense for any of us as a class, a class of workers, or would-be workers. Over the years we have experienced the circumstances getting worse, not better for many. We worry for our children, our grandchildren, the next generation, the stability of the world and the whole human race. We see the inequity (and iniquities) and worry.

The work to be done versus available work

If we were to approach the problem from a different angle we could see how to turn something totally illogical into something that would work better for everybody wherever they are in the world. Doing this would entail ridding ourselves of useless work and wasted time and effort and result in getting the work that is widely recognised as necessary to be done for the good of the people done, by the people.

It will be natural for anyone considering this topic to focus first on their own country and, in particular, their own locality, if only because this is the most familiar and best understood. However, considering at the same time the wider world in general will greatly increase individual capacity to focus on the enormity of the shortfall facing the global population, a shortfall deliberately ignored by the minority who capitalize greatly by their neglect.

This shortfall, this work needing to be done, includes all the obvious stuff seen around any location but neglected because of a different kind of shortfall, lack of funds in the individual, municipal, national or international budget. It can range from the very basic to much larger issues. Housing in disrepair for which private owners are without the means for proper upkeep, public housing which is underfunded and slums which should have been cleared long ago. Holes in the road. Leaks in classroom ceilings. Grubby town centres. Negligence with regard to the safety of the general public. Heavily polluting industries affecting air and water quality. Poor standards of safety allied to working conditions. Old, substandard, decaying or lack of infrastructure of all kinds. Shoddy public transport poorly planned to meet the needs of the greater community. Inadequate and inappropriate energy provision. Lack of local production facilities, whether food or industry. Localities not structured to meet the requirements of citizens. Health and education provision woefully inadequate with insufficient trained personnel to meet the wide and varied needs.

These examples can be expanded ad infinitum according to the local neighbourhood or the wider regions of the globe. The one thing they have in common is that there is much work waiting to be done that, in all likelihood, will not get done for a very long time, if ever, within the constraints of capitalism. The logic of the capitalist system is that profit must be considered above all else, society's needs are a poor also-ran.

Useful work is manifold and includes the production and distribution of material goods and food, scientific research and development, aesthetic and artistic endeavours, service of all kinds including installations, communications, infrastructure, maintenance, health, education, recreational, technological and social; producing and providing the goods and services required and needed by society as a whole on an ongoing basis.

As unemployment figures reach ever higher it must point to the fact that there just isn't enough remunerated work available. Meanwhile, if a comparison is made of the above work waiting to be done with much of the worthless, useless work currently being undertaken for remuneration by millions worldwide it begins to become clear just what a crazy system we are operating within. Work that offers no product, service or benefit to society must surely be considered useless work. What cannot be considered useful or necessary includes all the jobs currently involved in the huge financial industry; jobs which are tied to the movement of money from one place or person to another.

Being considered unnecessary because they produce nothing of use, provide no useful service and are of no benefit to society a large number of institutions would be redundant. All banking establishments, insurance companies, tax collection, benefits and pension offices, to name a few, would no longer be required and, as a consequence, many buildings would be freed up for use to be decided upon by civil society whilst technicians, office and other associated staff would be available for more people-beneficial work schemes.

The worker – employment or meaningful occupation?

When we consider in detail the vast range of tasks undertaken by humanity of blue or white collar variety – manager, foreman, labourer, part-time, full-time, self-employed, indentured, casual, indoor, outdoor, on land, sea or in the air – all are employed in order to fulfil the same requirement, their ongoing needs. All require regular remuneration in order to feed and clothe themselves and their dependents and keep a roof over their heads.

We must wonder why then, in some quarters, there is still a derogatory slant to the use of the term 'worker'. For what is it in reality but a misunderstanding of one's own position in the scheme of things? Whether labourer or architect, hairdresser or world-famous model, cashier at a supermarket or hedge fund computer screen minder, BMW production line worker or BMW owner – whoever must work on a regular ongoing basis in order to live, whatever the size of their remuneration, is a worker. S/he works. S/he is a member of the working class. Anyone not convinced should ask themselves how long as an individual they can afford to be out of work and without pay before their own personal crisis happens?

Isn't it ridiculous, too, that there are still those who can't recognize the different but equal importance of all contributions to society? Who's to say what or who is more important or necessary to society's functions when we know that (a) even if we wanted to we can't all do everything, all the tasks that are needed in our lifetime because we all have limited skills and time, (b) we would suffer as a society without all the seemingly menial, dirty, dangerous or difficult tasks being taken care of and (c) as individuals we don't want to be denigrated or undervalued for our own contribution. When we acknowledge these terms we are also ready to accept all others' contributions as valuable too. Apart from not being able to do everything, most of us probably don't want to have to do everything, preferring to have the time to engage in the things that take our individual fancy, interest or passion; time that the majority do not have at their disposal now.

'Not enough jobs to go around!' This is the mantra. Of course there are! In a global socialist society unemployment will be a word confined to the history books. In a world of voluntary work and free access to goods and services, when society is structured deliberately and logically to do the work that we, the people, declare to be necessary and important, there will be ample occupation for all, liberating us, at last, to forsake individual advantage in favour of the common good now and into the future.

Janet Surman

Dreaming of the future (2014)

Book Review from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poor Man's Heaven: The Land of Cokaygne and Other Utopian Visions by Omasius Gorgut, Past Tense, 2012. 134 pages.

The Land of Cokaygne was a Middle English poem, the word 'Cokaygne' from Old French 'cocaigne', probably meaning ’cake’. Thomas Aquinas had emphasised hierarchy, private property and class divisions as the natural order of human society. Eden was lost, entry to heaven restricted by Church teaching, therefore Cokaygne was a land of no work, free access, common ownership, peace, happiness, and social justice. Cokaygne was a utopia for the serf offering relief from labour and the struggle for food in a hostile natural world where a bad season might mean absolute famine. Peasants looked to a lost communist golden age. 

AL Morton saw Cokaygne as 'arising from lower class self-awareness in terms of class conflict'. Gorgut sees the Peasant's Revolt as 'serfs … becoming aware of their servitude.' John Ball preached 'have your reward both on earth and in heaven. For I say that earth and heaven are not two but one, when Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? From the beginning all men were created equal by nature.' Gorgut writes 'a land with no lords, no clergy, no serfs, but equality under God and the king, confirm that many of the poor believed a Return to Eden was achievable in this life.'

Millenarianism was rife but what was coming to an end was not the world but a mode of economic production, i.e. feudalism. With the rise of capitalism moralising enters into the world of Cokaygne reflecting bourgeois protestant morality evident in the Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting The Land of Cockaigne with its portrayal of gluttony and sloth.

German peasant leader Thomas Müntzer attempted to establish Cokaygne declaring 'All property should be held in common’, and in the English Revolution Digger Gerrard Winstanley wrote of the 'the Earth as a Common Treasury'. Gorgut writes of America 'elevating the New World to Cockaygne-like stature' with the community of Merry Mount, Massachusetts where 'settlers, runaway slaves and servants and native Americans lived together communally, brewing excellent beere and dancing around an 60 foot maypole. This attempt to blend old world carnival fun with practical race-mixing and egalitarianism was denounced by puritan pilgrims who feared and hated everything wild and free.'

American hobo songs of the early twentieth century such as The Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Poor Man's Heaven evoked Cokaygne. They still found resonance in the 1980s when The Big Rock Candy Mountain was sung by Tom Waits in the 'hobo' film Ironweed, Rudy Wurlitzer made the film Candy Mountain, and the Indie band The Motorcycle Boy sang their own lyrics to Big Rock Candy Mountain: 'dancing with the working man, looking for the big rock candy mountain.'

Gorgut closes his book with a quote from Hal Rammel: 'Liberated from the everyday, we dream of the world's limitless possibilities, the pleasures of life, and the bountiful earth, one day free for all.' 

Steve Clayton

Why We Want Socialism (1927)

From the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old people tell us how lucky we are living in an age when the aeroplane and the steamer and the express train bring America as near to London as Edinburgh used to be. We see moving pictures of tigers in the jungle and natives living in uncivilised ways. We read every day in the papers of fresh marvels in the way of machinery—and yet we have to work hard, or look for work, and keep a watchful eye on a doubtful future—just as our forefathers did before the age of steam, gas and electricity.

In spite of all the marvels man has contrived, we still live near enough as of old, a life of struggle and poverty, with a little joy thrown in.

The reason for this is the same as it used to be. As of old the people who work do not own the things that they make, nor the tools that they work with, nor the land that they live on. The things that are made and the tools and the land are owned mainly by a group apart, the rich people who do not work, but live on the money they get from the shares they hold in companies. To buy enough shares in a company to be of any real use, requires a great deal of money, and as working people generally only earn enough to provide themselves with the most urgent of the things they need, the chance of a worker passing into the rich class of owners is remote.

The things that are made to-day, clothes, houses, food and so on, are not made simply because they are useful, though, of course, if they were not needed they would not be made at all. The real reason why such things are made is because they can be sold, and the company selling them make a profit. That is why we read in the papers of this or that company making good or bad profits. And that is why we read of houses falling down, accidents happening, bad food, and bad clothes being made, because the owners of the companies do not care what they make so long as they make good profit.

Now, if the only way of making things was by a rich class of people setting poor people to work, then there would be nothing to grumble about. But who gave the rich their power and their wealth? There is no law of some supernatural power that lays it down that one man shall be born rich and another poor. As the music-hall song used to run, "We all came into the world with nothing, and we can't take anything out."

The pictures we see at picture shows often give us views of natives who know not master and man. People who club together to make the things that are needed, and then distribute what they make to those who need. Why, then, can't we do the same on a much larger scale? Masters are only needed where despots must be served, where there is an oppressed class to be kept in subjection. Just as an allotment holder cultivates his little plot without a master to push him or a shareholder to draw a dividend, so the whole of the people of the world can cultivate the earth in harmonious societies, and reap its fullness in community when once they make up their minds to do so.

Gilmac.

Pathfinders: The Speed of Enlightenment (2012)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone interested in physics yet curmudgeonly enough to hate UK TV’s newest scientific celeb Brian Cox must be having a miserable time of it at the moment. The nation’s favourite teen-throb professor is enjoying a quantum celebrity, appearing almost everywhere simultaneously on live gigs, radio and TV, as well as the Christmas hot-selling bookshelves. Mathematics has its amenable Marcus de Sautoy, archaeology its balding Baldric, but physics has wormed its way into the nation’s Higgs Bosom with a photogenic superstar who unlike most celebs actually knows what he’s talking about. The secret of Brainy Brian’s success is not that he’s especially good at explaining physics, because he isn’t, and in fact often overreaches himself.

Nor is it his disarming aura of schoolboy innocence, which he wears in the full knowledge that whenever he says ‘Big Bang’ half the adoring audience are thinking of something other than cosmology. The real reason is most likely that science, and especially physics, is downright intimidating for most people, but it’s hard to be intimidated by the man who co-authored New Labour’s diabolically cheesy election song even if he is a professor of particle physics. It’s well known that any science book with an equation in it will not sell. People take fright at anything that looks difficult. But with Cox in charge, things can only get better.

Back in olden days when it was assumed that science was interesting in itself, and when there were only 4 channels and no internet, TV presenters could afford to be eccentric. There was no image to promote, no need to look cool and sexy, and oddball characters like James Burke, Magnus the Windmill Pyke or lisping David Bellamy were anything but. The only ones left of this old school are Patrick Moore, the Churchill of astronomy, orbiting a TV black hole for fifty years, and St David Attenborough, the only man ever to be canonised by popular consent while still alive.

Today science doesn’t just have to combat the aggressive ignorance of increasingly influential religious zealots, it also has to combat the fickleness and attention-deficit disorder of a fast-food media audience which is perpetually dazzled for choice. In TV, if the target demographic doesn’t like the message, you do shoot the messenger. As this column has noted before (April 2011), studies show that people accept or reject facts depending on who is delivering them. So no wonder science is getting a shot of showbiz pizzazz.

But there’s no doubt that people are interested, when one considers the recent hoo-ha about faster-than-light neutrinos and the more recent hubbub over the Higgs quasi-result. There is a demand for understanding, if it can be made accessible enough, proof that contrary to the fears of Dawkins Doomsayers the Enlightenment is not about to perish beneath Dark Satanic Forces. Perhaps, in a world of discredited politicians, bent journalists and coppers, kiddy-fiddling priests, venal financiers and vacant know-nothing ‘reality stars’, scientists are seen as the last real deal, the only experts left with any authenticity, genuinely interesting things to say, and no squalid private agendas.

Add these credentials to youthful good looks, and it’s easy to see why Brian Cox and others are getting the star treatment. Now they are playing ‘stadium gigs’ as if they were rock stars, lecturing audiences amid music and comedy about biology, chemistry and quantum mechanics.

At a recent Uncaged Monkeys gig it was debatable if the audience grasped fifty percent of it. It wasn’t so bad when Ben Goldacre did a session denouncing drug companies for not releasing test results, since this was a purely political argument, or even when Simon Singh did a presentation on probability theory, since there wasn’t a shred of mathematics in it. But here was the problem: where the show was comedy there was no content, and where there was content it was no fun. Brian Cox soon reminded audiences why he’s a professor, with an eye-glazing exposition of proton gradients in submarine black smokers that had half the audience secretly ordering Modafinil and other alleged IQ enhancers on their iPhones. Even Tim Minchin, brought in to leaven the stodge with music and comedy, managed to look slightly fearful.

Tim Minchin, a kind of latter-day Tom Lehrer with eyeliner, explains in a recent New Scientist interview why he likes to incorporate militant pro-science and atheism into his material (16 November). The interview strikes an odd discordant note when he is quoted as saying: ‘It is entirely appropriate to appeal to authority, in life. For pragmatic reasons, you can’t know everything. If you say 90 per cent of scientists believe this, that’s an appeal to authority. [...] Your job is to figure out what a good authority is.’

Of course he’s right, up to a point, but it would be easy to take the wrong lesson from this. It’s no good replacing one set of priests with another. Science can and should be participative, and you don’t need to be an expert to think scientifically. One organisation which makes this clear in a practical way are the Sceptics in the Pub, a national network of 25 groups to date which meet in pubs to discuss topics of general interest, including the debunking of pseudoscientific claims. It’s a fast growing new pub game that anyone can play, and another healthy sign that capitalism hasn’t managed to brainwash critical thought clean out of us.

If only the same could be said of politics, which is another theatre where there is a large passive audience and a small troupe of actors. Given the way that politics is routinely conducted, it’s no surprise that people have no respect for it. But this removes the will to understand what needs to be understood about how the world works, and this is why radical opposition to capitalism is dogged with misconceptions and circularities. Socialists try to operate in the same way that scientists do, by looking dispassionately at evidence without prejudging the conclusions, by testing theories with prediction, and by challenging assumptions, including their own. It’s not always easy to do, but it’s not that hard either, and it’s a refreshing way to think, compared to the vacuous sloganeering of the Left. In socialist politics, as in science, one can always be learning, and one should always be participating. When people start approaching politics the same way they do science, it won’t take photogenic young celebs to tell them what needs doing with capitalism.

Erratum
Re January Pathfinders, Brian Cox writes: “Good article. Only one fact check. I didn’t co-author Things Can Only Get Better. It was written by Peter Cunnah and Jamie Petri.” Apologies for the grievous misattribution.

The fall of the ILP (2007)

Book Review from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Failure of a Dream. The Independent Labour Party from Disaffiliation to World War II. By Gidon Cohen, Tauris. 2007.

In 1932 the ILP, which had been founded in 1893 and had been instrumental in setting up the Labour Party, voted at its annual conference to disaffiliate from Labour and to set out to establish itself as a leftwing, indeed “revolutionary socialist”, alternative to it. Cohen (a former Socialist Party member as he acknowledges in his introduction) recounts in this book what happened afterwards.

The first thing to happen was that the Stalinists tried to take over the party. With some success. They got the ILP to favour Workers Councils (soviets) as the agent of change, to regard Russia as a “Workers State” on the way to “socialism”, and to commit itself to eventual unity with the Communist Party. In 1935, however, Moscow ordered its agents in the Western Labour movement to change policy and to advocate reliance on the League of Nations (previously, the ‘League of Bandits’) and to agitate for a “Popular Front” of all anti-fascists including Liberals and dissident Tories instead of a “United Front” of workers’ organisations.

The ILP stuck to the old policy and the Stalinists left to join the Communist Party. From then on the ILP was situated to the left not just of the Labour Party but of the Communist Party too. This aroused Trotsky’s interest and he ordered his followers to “enter” the ILP to try to take it over and get it to support his call for a Fourth International. They didn’t get very far.

The ILP survived these assaults but its membership fell, according to Cohen’s calculations, from over 16,000 in 1932 to  under 2,500 in 1939.

Trotsky described the ILP as “centrist” (whatever that meant). For us, it was just another reformist party as it retained the programme of reforms to capitalism it had had since the start and sought support, at and between elections, on this basis. We also pointed out that it was confused about the nature of socialism, seeing it (as Labour did) as essentially nationalisation and mistakenly seeing state capitalist Russia as some sort of pro-worker regime.

On one issue, however, we were prepared to give credit where it was due: on the question of war. When Italy attacked Abyssinia, the ILP’s Inner Executive (dominated by its 3 MPs, led by Jimmy Maxton) issued a statement saying that “in our estimation the difference between the two rival dictators and the interests behind them are not worth the loss of a single British life”. The Socialist Standard  (May 1936) described this as a “sound line”. However – as Cohen describes in detail – this turned out not to be the view of most active ILPers. They wanted to take sides and support Emperor Haile Selassie as a victim of imperialist aggression.

Similarly, after the Second World War broke out, the Socialist Standard (May 1940) wrote: “The ILP propaganda to-day is largely concerned with the war. It takes a line which, in appearance, seems to be fairly sound and in conformity with the Socialist position. It is an imperialist war, it is argued, fought over questions of trade routes, colonies and for political domination”.

By 1939, as Cohen shows, most of the members of the ILP were resigned to reaffiliation to the Labour Party, which he says would probably have occurred had the war not broken out. After the war, the matter came up again, but Maxton opposed it. Instead, members left and joined Labour as individuals, including prominent pre-war members such as Fenner Brockway, Bob Edwards, Walter Padley and Jennie Lee, who all became Labour MPs. In fact “later a Labour MP” is a phrase that occurs quite a few times in Cohen’s book.

The ILP staggered on until 1975 when it changed its name to “Independent Labour Publications” and became a think-tank within the Labour Party.

Adam Buick

Further Reading:

October 2009 Socialist Standard: The rise and fall of the ILP

Mis-spent youth (1986)

From the April 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It seems that the government's new two-year Youth Training Scheme has got off to a sticky start. The television advertisement suggests that, given two years "training", young unemployed workers can become virtually anything they wish, from circus clowns and musicians to business tycoons and professional footballers—all grateful for receiving a place on the new scheme. Full-page newspaper adverts show how a youth writing "SPURS" on a wall with a can of spray paint is transformed into an employed signwriter working on the lettering of a sign at Tottenham Hotspur Football Club.

But if the waste of unemployment and the YTS makes us angry, we should not jump to the conclusion that "real" employment is the answer. It is in fact the problem. For as long as workers think its natural to work for a boss in return for wages or salaries then we will periodically be faced with mass unemployment, as market forces indicate to our bosses that it is no longer profitable to hire us.

This brings us to the Labour Party, which no longer claims that it can bring about full employment, but that it could lower the figures. Here the Labour Party reaches the depths of political dishonesty. If there was such a master plan to reduce unemployment would not all governments implement the necessary policies? Come to think of it—why haven't Labour cured capitalism of unemployment in their past governments? So what is Labour's secret plan for slashing unemployment?

Well, it is a pretty cunning one. It seems that their latest ploy is to capture the hearts of Britain's youth by wheeling out pop stars (spokesmen for the young generation) like Billy Bragg and Paul Weller to sing passionately about the effects of capitalism—and then tell us to vote for capitalism's great friend the Labour Party. But the oddest solutions come from Labour's intellectual heavyweights like Michael Meacher. They claim that "real" jobs could be created by improving Britain's roads and sewage system.

To suggest that such "public works" schemes can solve unemployment is to misunderstand capitalism—a madness fostered by massive advertising campaigns and a constant barrage of political propaganda which claims that employment is natural. However, many workers see that YTS schemes don't teach real skills and are extremely exploitative. Workers should look at their own daily employment and ask the question: Is the boss doing you a favour by employing you, or are you doing him or her the favour of creating their profits and privileged lifestyles?

Derek Devine

Lost hero (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dan Billany - Hull's Lost Hero by Valerie A Reeves & Valerie Showan. Kingston Press.

I have a confession to make before I start: this review is one of those tedious ". . . and the Socialist Party is briefly mentioned in line x of page x-ty x". Yes Billany was an ex-member - joining in 1931 and being expelled under foggy circumstances just two years later. But besides this, Reeves and Showan's biography is a fascinating study of the author of The Trap, which Ken Worpole, in his study of working class writing Dockers and Detectives, called the "finest novel to come out of the war".

Billany was born in 1913 in the terraces off Hull's famous Hessle Road, close by the western docks. Leaving school at 14 he was briefly an errand boy before starting an apprenticeship as an electrician with a local firm. As part of the training he had to attend evening classes and like many other working men found a new interest in learning. Before long he left the electrical works to become a full-time student first at the local Technical College and then at Hull University. By the outbreak of the Second World War he was an English teacher at Chiltern Street school in Hull and in the spring of 1940 he joined the army. It was at this point his writing career took off with the publication of The Opera House Murders, a rather run-of-the-mill thriller, and the acceptance of The Magic Door, based on his advanced teaching methods. In 1942 Second Lieutenant Billany was posted to North Africa, and not long after his arrival was captured at the fall of Tobruk. After months of appalling deprivation he was shipped to a POW camp in Italy. After the Armistice in September 1943 he was released by the Italian authorities but because Italy was occupied by the Germans was forced into hiding. In all probability he died of exposure in the Apennines near Rome a few months later. The Trap and The Cage, two novels relating to his wartime experiences, written while in captivity, were published posthumously.

Just for once the socialist ideas held by Billany are represented very accurately. That nationalisation is merely state capitalism (and this well before the late Tony Cliff appropriated the notion for his own sloganising purposes) and that "colonial freedom" really meant the substitution of a local boss for a white boss are both mentioned. The problems with this book lie elsewhere.

Firstly, the purpose of Reeves and Showan is to portray Billany as a repressed homosexual. This is tendentious. Billany was definitely interested in the idea of male homosexuality, as for instance in The Cage which is a rather tedious account of the obsession of one man for another in a POW camp. However the authors go too far in presenting fiction as dramatised fact. In relation to his early unpublished novel Paul they talk about Billany "fantasising" about being in love with a boy. This is practically accusing the fellow of being a child molester; an image of homosexuals not only old-fashioned but totally unjustified by facts.

Secondly, and rather more importantly, Reeves and Showan do not really address the crucial question of why Billany volunteered for service in 1940. Vaguely saying he wanted to prove himself really doesn't wash, because Billany was not politically ignorant. In The Trap he clearly refers to the cause of the war as diplomatic scrambles over "international credits, trade routes, and a steady five percent" and goes on to state that "I do not 'believe' in the war—in this or any other." Yet he was there, as an officer fighting for the cause of British capitalism. He was not forced to enlist, indeed with bright prospects as an author he had no personal reason to. The reason lies doubtless with Billany's attitude to fighting. This first crops up when, as a teacher, he inspires his class with the story of an old pupil who was a hero in the First World War, single-handedly taking a section of the enemy front line. Billany was a romantic with a romantic's desire for adventure. For heroism. And for this he went against what his logic and political background told him. This was to cost him dearly. He paid for it with his life.

KAZ

Material World: Hovels or Homes? (2014)

The Material World column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The shanty towns that choke the cities are experiencing unstoppable growth, expanding by more than a million people every week, according to the UN. It maintains that over the next 30 years, the population of African and Asian cities will double, adding 1.7 billion people  – more than the current populations of the US and China combined. Every major metropolis has its share of slums; the U.N. estimates that one-third of the developing world's urban population lives in them, with nearly 40 percent of East Asian urban dwellers living in slum conditions. The majority of this urban poor will be under 25, unemployed and vulnerable to religious fundamentalism.

A 2002 report concluded that more young people below the age of 18 are killed by guns each year in Rio de Janeiro than in many areas of the world formally at war. The study concluded that there are strong similarities between children involved in drug wars in Rio's slums and child soldiers elsewhere in the world. There are estimated to be between 5-6,000 armed children in Rio. The report details how the gangs employ teenagers to guard their domains. Sometimes they are even given ranks and called soldiers. The levels of violence are comparable to a war zone. In the last 14 years, for instance, almost 4,000 under-18-year-olds were killed by firearms in Rio alone. That compares, the report says, with just under 500 children killed in the fighting between Palestinians and Israelis in the same period.

Sri Lanka’s capital city Colombo is home to over 30 percent of the country’s population, one in every two people living in the Greater Colombo Area is a slum dweller.

Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, is home to 34 percent of the country's population and is the fastest growing city in Asia – around 40 percent of those living in Dhaka are slum dwellers.

In India fully half the population of the capital, New Delhi, lives in slums, while the figure could be as high as 60 percent in glittering Mumbai. Nationwide 93 million people are estimated to be living in slums.

Ming Zhang, the World Bank sector manager for Urban Water and Disaster Management for South Asia, predicted that the urban population in South Asia would double in the next 25 years. Already one in every four persons is categorised under ‘informal population’ or living in shanties or slums in the urban areas of the region

Regional experts and those from the World Bank agree that most of the problems faced by the cities are man-made, primarily due to lack of proper planning.

‘If we thought about proper urban planning, institutional coherence and community participation, we would be able to address a big chunk of this problem,’ Abha Joshi-Ghani, the World Bank's Sector Manager for Finance Economics and Urban Planning explained, ‘We are depleting our resources by inefficient and indiscriminate use of resources.’ Joshi-Ghani went on to say that any relocation of slum-dwellers has to take into consideration the incomes and lifestyles of those affected, which, if disrupted, could turn the solution itself into a problem. ‘Many think that cities make people poor, when in fact cities attract the poor who think they can make a better living there’ she said.

‘It's pointless trying to control urban growth by stopping migration,’ George Martine, a demographer and the author of the report said. ‘It doesn't work. We have to change mindsets and take a different stance. We're at a crossroads and can still make decisions which will make cities sustainable. If we don't make the right decisions the result will be chaos.’ (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2714169.ece)

The modern slum is not the result of a lack of resources. It is the product of the capitalist profit system. The only way to free humanity of the slums is to overthrow the system that breeds them. The only way to ensure that every single human being on the planet has an equal chance to enjoy a life free from material deprivation is a world where all the resources of the planet have become the common heritage of all humanity. Another world is possible but it has to be a non-capitalist – a socialist – world, offering decent comfortable housing for all in well-ordered communities.

Engels wrote of the slums of Britain, offering clear descriptions of the degradation that was to be found. He also wrote of a possible future where urban and rural were no longer separate entities:

’The abolition of the antagonism between town and country is now not only possible, it has become an absolute necessity for industrial production itself. It has also become a necessity for agricultural production, and is, above all, essential to the maintenance of the public health. Only through the amalgamation of city and country can the present poisoning of air, water, and localities, be put at an end and the waste filth of the cities be used for the cultivation of vegetation rather than the spreading of disease.’ (Anti-Dühring, chapter 9)

ALJO

Socialists and Pacts with Capitalist Parties (1936)

From the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our April issue we replied to a letter written by Mr. W. J. Last, in which he gave his reasons for thinking that Socialists should join with the Labour Party and should support Trade Union struggles. We replied, pointing out that the differences between Socialists and the Labour Party are fundamental, and that the S.P.G.B. does support the efforts of the workers on the economic field.

We have now received a letter from "United Front" continuing the discussion. The writer, having failed to grasp what we replied to Mr. Last, repeats the advice that the S.P.G.B. should support struggles with the employers over wages, and tells us that "to deny that this is an integral part of the class struggle is to relegate that struggle to text books and arguments." If "United Front" would read again the reply to Mr. Last, or would read any of the numerous pronouncements made by the S.P.G.B. in the past 32 years he would know that we do not deny that that is an integral part of the class struggle. On the contrary, we have on several occasions made a special point of criticising that school of thought which maintains that it is not part of the class struggle, but only a "commodity struggle," like the haggling between buyers and sellers of other commodities, and which, consequently, believes that the term "class-struggle" should only be applied to the class-conscious minority of organised Socialists. So much for that.

The rest of "United Front's" letter is as follows :—

“Can we deny that valuable reforms and concessions have been wrung from the ruling class with the collaboration of sections of the master class? Obviously, such privileges as the franchise, social insurance, free education, etc., are partly the work of petty bourgeois elements supported at times by sections of the ruling class itself. If the ruling class is divided on the question of peace or war we cannot say that this is a matter of indifference to the working class. The very weakness of the ruling class, its fundamental contradiction that makes its downfall inevitable is the conflict of interests within it. How then pan you maintain in Point 1 of your Declaration that the interests of the working class are diametrically opposed to all other interests? 

Every concession gained by the workers strengthens their consciousness of their power and their need for unity. At the same time it prepares them for making fresh demands and, weakening the ruling class, makes the latter less able to concede them. Then and therefore comes the time when the working class, conscious of its power, makes a demand which the weakened and demoralised ruling class cannot grant. A reformist demand thereby becomes a revolutionary demand, as the workers, united, see the impotence of the ruling class and realise that they can seize power and thus solve their problems themselves.

In your reply to Comrade Last’s letter and in your Declaration of Principles you ignore the contradictions implicit in the capitalist system which must be exploited by conscious revolutionaries to bring about a downfall of the regime. As Comrade Last points out, failure to co-operate with Labour and other parties in a reformist policy because of abstract "Socialist" principles can only strengthen the reactionaries and demoralise the working class. 

The role of a Marxist is to aid and direct the class struggle on every front—not to start a private war of his own against everybody.

—Yours faithfully,

UNITED FRONT.”

Reply:

The argument here is a hotch-potch of half-truths and false assumptions that need only be pointed out for their nature to be revealed.

In order to prove that Socialists ought to join with the Labour Party, "United Front" tells us that the franchise, social insurance, and free education are "valuable reforms," gained with the collaboration of sections of the master class. He overlooks the fact that the greater part of these reform measures was gained before the Labour Party came into existence. Consequently, if they prove anything they prove that the Labour Party should never have been formed at all and that the still earlier policy of playing off Liberals and Tories against each other should have been continued. Then "United Front" leaves out of account the major aspect of some, if not all, reform measures. He assumes they were won because they were valuable to the workers. The truth is they were, in many instances, forced, on workers and capitalist minority alike, because they were valuable to the dominant section of the capitalist class. When, as in the case of the Trade Union Law in 1927, the capitalists have wanted to go back on changes formerly introduced, not all the wailings of all the reformist parties together made the slightest difference.

"United Front" tells us that "we cannot say "that the issue of peace and war" is a matter of indifference to the working class." It is precisely for that reason that we have not said so, and we challenge our correspondent to show that we have ever said or suggested such a thing.

Granted, then, that the question of peace is a vital one to the workers, how does this necessitate that Socialists (who are utterly opposed to supporting capitalist wars) shall sink their identity in the Labour Party (which supported the last war and is committed to supporting the next if it is under League of Nations auspices) ?

The next statement, that the downfall of the ruling class is inevitable because of "the conflict of interests within it," is contrary to Socialist teaching and to all the facts before our eyes. The downfall of capitalism is only inevitable because the working class have an interest in securing its downfall. The overthrow will come from outside the ranks of the capitalist class, not from within. That a minority of capitalists may be at loggerheads with the majority on certain secondary issues may hamper them, it will certainly not itself cause their downfall. On the primary issue of the maintenance of capitalist private ownership all sections of the capitalist class will unite against the working class. Can "United Front" name any exception to this rule?

Regarding the ancient theory resuscitated by "United Front," that a reform demand becomes revolutionary when the capitalist class cannot grant it, not a year passes without numerous instances showing this to be false. By definition, a reformist demand is one which reforms without abolishing capitalism, and which, therefore, can be granted by the capitalists. Every time the capitalists are faced with a more or less widespread demand for some reform they can try various methods of splitting, side-tracking or breaking the movement. Failing anything else they can always go half-way and thus rob the movement of a large part of its support. They rarely have to concede the whole of the reform demand, but, of course, could, if need be. That is what they have done with demands for adequate maintenance for the unemployed, old-age pensions, "workers' control," etc., even down to appropriating the name " Socialism " in certain instances.

In conclusion, in order to make the position clear, we would emphasize that Socialism can only be brought about by Socialists. This involves the hard plodding work which the impatient and the ambitious cannot bear to undertake. To avoid it they seize upon any flashy apparent substitute which presents itself. The reformism and political bargaining with the capitalists advocated by "United Front" are all of them quack remedies of that kind. They lead to corruption, disgust and general apathy. Socialists must expose and condemn them without cessation. 

Ed. Comm.

Letter: Naked truth (2000)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

I was impressed by David A. Perrin's history of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, well researched and well written. But I have a cavil relating to myself. He says my book. The Origins of British Bolshevism hardly gives a mention to the formation of the SPGB. This is correct. But surely the SPGB has never claimed to be Bolshevik, and therefore stood outside the remit of my frame of reference.

Moses Baritz was mentioned in the book because in those days the Left was inhabited by weird and wonderful creatures. Socialism at that time was a strange idea and consequently tended to attract strange individuals.

David Perrin could perhaps have said that I gave much more prominence to another eccentric—John S. Clarke—one of the SLP early leaders. I even wrote a short biography about him. It was entitled John S. Clarke: Parliamentarian, Poet and Lion-tamer. The Glasgow Herald, in its obituary of him, stated Mr Clarke claimed to have been the youngest and oldest person to enter the lion's den. He had around his body many scars which attested to the nature of his trade. On one occasion he was bowled over by a tiger with toothache. With the animal towering over him, he stroked it and pulled out the offending tooth.

One of my subsidiary reasons for writing his biography was that I hoped it would act as a model to other parliamentarians. In my opinion, British politics today would be much better if more Members of Parliament took up lion-taming, preferably specialising in tigers with toothache.

Then there was the SLP's general secretary Frank Budgen. He published the first cheap edition of The Communist Manifesto. He was a friend of the great Irish writer, James Joyce, who wrote a poem which begins "Oh, boozy Budgen and canvas dauber." He earned his living as an artist's model. I have a drawing of Frank Budgen naked, but, after much heart-searching, I decided not to include it in The Origins of British Bolshevism.

It might have tempted the general secretaries of other political parties to cast off all garments. That would have created the ultimate obscenity. For instance, would members of the SPGB like so see, plastered everywhere, drawings of their general secretary stark naked?

Raymond Challinor, 

Whitley Bay, Tyne & Wear

Hamburger Society (1982)

From the February 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who in America does not know the McDonald chain of hamburger shops? The large illuminated red and yellow sign is a beacon for hungry folk and around five-hundred million of them were beckoned by it in 1978. Inside the shops they found everywhere the same standardised product—a bun, throwaway packaging and clean, informal seating. A few quick bites and it's time to go. Over the next few years every large town in Britain is likely to find a McDonald's opening in its centre. Add up the other fast food outlets like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Wimpy, other assorted burger bars, hot bread shops and pizzaries and you have an astonishingly large market. Burger shops in America alone total 15,000.

What's happening? What does it all mean? Are we workers being brainwashed into the fast food habit by psychologically engineered advertising? Is it just monopoly capital moving into the cheap restaurant market and cleaning up? Or is it a capitalist plot to break the tradition of the wholesome family meal in the home and get us to eat junk, so that the exchange of commodities and alienation of human existence into the very process of eating?

Fast food and capitalism

On an analogy with motor cars and petrol stations, the explanation that these food outlets are a cheap way of refuelling the workers has some plausibility. But why hamburgers particularly? People have a physiological need for food, but it does not have to be minced, pressed beef. Cheapness, speed, convenience for the customer: ease of production and standardisation for the manufacturer, provide some of the reasons; but there are social and intellectual adjustments to be made by the people who use these food outlets. In brief, hamburgers change consciousness.

The capitalist class control the means of disseminating information and so can sometimes manipulate consciousness in the workers directly, so it is said. Sometimes, too, we are told that institutions like the nuclear family condition workers into an acceptance of authoritarian relationships; hierarchy and power in the home—hierarchy and power in society; which symmetry is supposed to reinforce the attitude that wage-labour and capital relationships are natural and prevent a desire for socialism.

What are the links between food and society? "Man is what he eats", said Feuerbach. Does eating hamburgers make socialism impossible.

The abominations of Leviticus

Social anthropologists try to find links between cultural phenomena. One problem that vexed them for years has to do with the eating habits of the ancient Hebrews. Why did the Jewish religion forbid the eating of pork? There is a list of this and other abominations to be abjured in book eleven of Leviticus, a chapter in the old testament.

Tentative explanations for Jewish eating habits were that pork meat was unclean, infested with tapeworm, that pigs grew by feeding on dirt, that pig flesh went bad after slaughtering and so on. Such ideas may be summed up by saying that they credit the Jews with some awareness of hygiene rules and with primitive bacteriological knowledge. But, if this was an explanation, why does Leviticus prohibit the eating of snake meat? After all, snakes are cold-blooded animals whose flesh is easily dried and preserved from infection. Other interpreters dismissed the whole chapter as beyond comprehension, because it forbade the eating of bats, but praised the wholesome qualities of locusts. Actually Leviticus was an early field-guide on the passing livestock of the Jews, an Egon Ronay handbook on the good and the abominable food outlets in Judea.

The ancient Hebrews lived by pasturing sheep and goats in the hills and valleys. So, the exemplary clean animal for them was a cloven-hoofed ruminant. The pig crossed the boundaries of this classification because although it was cloven-hoofed, it did not chew the cud. All things that walk upon the earth must have feet and legs; the snake has neither, it is an abomination! All birds that fly through the air have feathers and beaks; but the bat has skin and teeth, it is confusion! All fish that swim in the waters have finrays and scales; but the shark, porpoise and sturgeon have neither, but they are anathema! The Hebrews took these rules to the extreme and classified the whole animal kingdom into the sacred and the profane, starting from their own means of subsistence.

Hedged around by warring tribes, conquered over and over, delivered into bondage in Egypt, these food rituals preserved the fabric of the old Hebrew society. "Be thou holy as I am holy", means, "Be thou separate from all other peoples."

All in a bun

Meals can be ideological. In an expensive restaurant the chef and waiter conspire over a complex ritual of place-settings, wine-tasting and food preservation, leaving you the impression that a meal is a measure of your social status. You go to a four-star establishment for the sake of the food, while the whole brigade of staff cunningly suggest that, as a top-class person, the food and service are only what you deserve. So the meal is taken in a social pantomime celebrating your own status as an individual in a society where everyone who can pay is a lord for a night.

There is, too, an ideology of food consumption that goes with the nuclear family meal, in a home where everyone knows their place and definite authoritarian rituals are observed: like "father carves the meat", "mother serves the vegetables" and "Johnny sits there". Such rituals can become sanctified over time, causing father to lose his temper when interrupted by unexpected visitors, or the telephone.

In contrast, meals in hamburger shops are taken in public democratic surroundings. You may sit anywhere, but there are no boundaries, no cutlery and no place settings. So, as the fast food habit grows, we may expect the mysticism and ritual that surround eating to evaporate. You may gauge progress in this direction by questioning the friends you meet coming out of McDonald's. Some will wholeheartedly espouse the ideology of food as refuelling: it should be cheap, quick, convenient, clean and so on. Others will assure you that four-star cuisine is their normal fare but that time, the kids, the mother-in-law or their jobs, conspired to thwart them.

Try one yourself. Walk into a burger bar and you're out in minutes. All the clutter that goes with a restaurant meal is eliminated, leaving only the bare commodity transaction and the bun. The leap from that situation to imagining the wealth of the world being freely available is a difference you'' enjoy.

B K McNeeney

Show Biz re-visits world poverty (2005)

From the July 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can Live 8 and the host of attendant charities campaigning this month really make a difference to world poverty?

“Make Poverty History” is an imaginative slogan. Who could disagree with the idea of a society in which all people enjoy good health and material security, with all the miseries of world poverty consigned to the past?  Sir Bob Geldof is one who believes in such a world and, as a rock performer with credibility, is trying to mobilise millions of like-minded people in great demonstrations aimed at bringing pressure on the G8 governments to assist the desperately poor in the undeveloped countries. If his plans succeed a million people will go to Edinburgh, and added to these will be many more attending concerts in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Philadelphia, all to celebrate their solidarity and to make the point that the people of the richest countries should spend more money to end hunger. The aim is also to persuade world leaders to drop third world debt, reform trade laws and double aid to the undeveloped regions.

It is not for socialists to spoil a good party.  On the contrary, we can take some heart from these popular demonstrations of care and concern. It would be even more depressing if millions of people were dying every year from easily preventable causes while those better off never gave it a thought. However, this is not the case, so at least there is something reassuring about the willingness and enthusiasm of many people to join together to focus attention on the tragedies of needless death in a world that could so easily provide the good things of life for all.

However, we are bound to ask some critical questions. The staging of pop concerts aimed at making poverty history is beginning to acquire a history of its own.  It is twenty years since the first Live Aid Concert was staged at Wembley in 1985 and was thought to be a great success.  The aim was to make a difference but what difference did it make?

Reality behind the hype

No doubt in a very minor way the money raised following concerts and channelled through organisations like OXFAM has done a bit of good. But this should be seen against the scale of the problem and whether the actions led by Live Aid, or as it is now called Live 8, in any way address its causes. Over the years, agencies of the United Nations such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation have posted the numbers suffering poverty. For example, in 1975, 435 million people were seriously undernourished. By the year 2000 this had almost doubled to 820 million. UNICEF states that approximately 40,000 children under five die every day from preventable causes.  These figures indicate that since the first Live Aid concert in 1985 the numbers dying from poverty have been increasing horrendously, which leaves little doubt that pop concerts and the charities have made no significant impact on the problem. The grim facts are that the present methods of the “Make Poverty History” campaign stand no chance of ending deaths from hunger. If we are to be serious about stopping this perpetual holocaust, the many thousands of people who support this campaign should have a serious re-think about how best to go about it.

We don’t see much by way of analysis, but judged by its methods the “Make Poverty History” campaign appears to think that the fault lies with the developed countries in not cancelling third world debt, not opening up more free trade, and not being more generous in sending money aid to the undeveloped countries, particularly in Africa. However, there is not a shred of evidence that any cancellation of debt will result in improved conditions for workers in Africa.  It is claimed that the aim of loans to African states is to improve services such as health and education and build up infrastructures such as communications, port facilities, roads and bridges, etc. In theory these would assist the development of trade with a prospect of raising living standards throughout the continent.  A more realistic view is that loans enable Western governments, banks and global corporations to maintain an economic stranglehold on the economies of countries that are rich in resources such as oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium ore, bauxite, timber, rubber, copper and other vital materials.

One example is Nigeria with a population of 135 million, GDP per capita of $275  per annum, an external debt of $1.1 billion and producing 750 million barrels of oil per year under the control of global oil companies such as Shell (Anglo Dutch), Exxon Mobil (US), Sasol (South Africa), AGIP International (Italy), Chevron (US), Total (France), BP (UK), Statoil (Norway).

Angola financed its civil war from profits from the sales of oil and diamonds and also relies on oil-backed loans which now burden the economy with an external debt of  $10.45 billion. Average life expectancy in Angola is 36 years.  Its GDP per capita income is $632 per year. Whilst most of its population suffers the most severe poverty its political rulers benefit from corruption. “The IMF found that between 1997 and 2002 some $4.22 billion went missing equivalent to some 12 percent of GDP. Angola’s wealth is concentrated in the hands of a small elite, who often use government positions for massive personal enrichment” (Guardian, 1 June).

The small country of Equatorial Guinea was recently subject to an escapade involving Sir Mark Thatcher who was accused of being part of an intended takeover. It is immensely rich in resources with oil and gas production expected to reach 150 million barrels a year. It carries an external debt of $248 million. Some international companies reaping high profits include Marathon Oil (US), Exxon Mobile (US), Energy Africa (South Africa), Chevron (US), British Gas (UK).

Marathon Oil operates in Equatorial Guinea on very good terms which may be associated with the benefits its politicians enjoy. “Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the country’s president, and his wife and son, were apparently treating themselves to planes, big houses and shopping sprees. Millions of dollars in cash were being lugged around Washington in suitcases” (Guardian, 2 June).

Taking the continent of Africa as a whole the (British) Prime Minister’s Commission for Africa “estimated that the amount stolen and now held in foreign banks is equivalent to more then half the continent’s external debt of $300 billion” (Guardian, 3 June).

There can be little doubt that the world we are now describing is one motivated by greed and pursued through a ruthless exploitation of natural and human resources. The main players are governments, multinational corporations and corrupt local politicians running gangster regimes. It may well be that the governments of the G8 will make a gesture that partially cancels third world debt but the write-off of these dollars will only be a means of continuing their grip on African countries whilst dressing their actions with the phoney rhetoric of care and concern.

There will be no outcome that will solve the problems of the desperately poor of Africa, and however well meaning may be their slogans, workers in the developed countries should not become involved in the machinations of interest groups whose basic concern is profit and the economic strategies of ruling elites.

Weakness of mere protest

Whilst the G8 protests may demonstrate great strength of feeling they will also demonstrate a great weakness; this is the lack of control of those who take part and their dependence on the decisions and actions of present power structures. Because of this, protesters can become victims of a seductive but deadly process. The capitalist system constantly throws up issues that demand action amongst those who are concerned and by many people who think of themselves as socialists. As a result, protest tends to become a demand for an “improved” kind of capitalism which leaves the long-term reasons for protest intact. This has been the history of protest.

In this sense, protest tends to set a stage for further protest and further demonstrations. Though the issues may vary the message stays the same: “We demand that governments do this, that or the other!” The spectacle of thousands demanding that governments act on their behalf is a most reassuring signal to those in power that their positions of control are secure.  In this way, repeated demonstrations do little more than confirm the continuity of the system. The point is to change society, not to appeal to the doubtful better nature of its power structures.

With Sir Bob as its high priest, we could also think of the Live 8 concerts as homage to the god of money and the illusion that it has powers of action on its own.  But the opposite is true. Money is part of a system that prevents us from using our real powers of production for the benefit of all people. Geldof never stops going on about giving more money and this feeds the illusion that without money we have no way to provide for the things we need. This leaves us separated from our powers of action. It ignores the fact that productive resources are not money but labour, land, industry, manufacture, transport and communications. The problems of world poverty require that these should be liberated from the economic constraints of money and the profit system.

Given that the number of people suffering and dying from the effects of world poverty have doubled over the past 25 years and on any realistic forecast will continue to increase, it should be obvious that we must go far beyond mere protests, organise to abolish the profit system and replace it with a world of common ownership, democratic control and production solely for needs. Such a socialist world would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health.

Pieter Lawrence

The Class Struggle in Cambodia (2014)

From the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In some parts of the world workers are still being shot down for asking for higher wages.

During 2013 in Cambodia (the Khmer name is Kampuchea), the Khmer working class – particularly the half million garment factory workers – were active in the class struggle between capital and labour, clashing with the authoritarian government of Hun Sen and the repressive forces of the Cambodian police and military. The resistance of the garment factory workers to the downward economic pressures of the capitalist class culminated after a two week national strike in the New Year of 2014 with four workers killed and twenty seven injured when police and a deployment of an elite unit of soldiers, Special Command Unit 911 opened fire with AK-47s into a group of workers.

The workers' economic struggle has become allied with the protest movement for liberalism and bourgeois democracy in Cambodia which is associated with Sam Rainsy and his 'Party of Rescuing the Nation.' They allege electoral fraud in the July 2013 elections and claim they were cheated out of winning the election. This liberal political grouping have promised the garment factory workers their desired wage increase to $263 per month. In September 2013 20,000 workers including garment workers, students, civil servants, teachers, farmers, and Buddhist monks protesting against the government's 'rigging' of the election clashed with police and one worker was killed and others injured. 

Cambodia's government has been described by Human Rights Watch's Southeast Asian Director, David Roberts, as a 'vaguely communist free-market state with a relatively authoritarian coalition ruling over a superficial democracy' (Political Transition in Cambodia 1991-1999, Curzon Publishers, 2001) which is quite accurate except Cambodia has nothing to do with 'communism'. Cambodia operates a capitalist market economy. It is notorious for corruption, ignoring human rights and suppressing political dissent. Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge soldier, has been Prime Minister since 1985 and is leader of the Cambodia People's Party which is the renamed Kampuchea People's Revolutionary Party which was the sole party in the People's Republic of Kampuchea 1979-89 when Cambodia was occupied by the Vietnamese army. This Party had a Leninist ideology and Cambodia was run economically on Russian state capitalist lines. In the 1990s Hun Sen adopted free market capitalism, privatized state industries, and established private property rights.

During 2013 the Khmer working class have realised that their employers had contracted  their standard of living  at a time of increased productivity and profits in the garment industry. Strikes are necessary if the working class are to prevent themselves being driven into the ground by the never-satisfied demands of profit. The working class must organise to defend and improve wages and conditions of work or even just to keep pace with an inflationary standard of living.

The Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia estimates that over a quarter of working days in the last two years have been lost due to strikes. The garment industry supplying clothes and footwear mainly to the European and American markets represents the largest portion of Cambodia's manufacturing sector, accounting for 80 percent of the country's exports. The garment industry manufactures clothes for a huge range of British high street companies, including H&M, Gap, Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Levis. In 2012, the exports grew to $4.61 billion, up 8 percent over 2011, and in the period from January to November 2013 the garment industry made $5.1 billion, a 22 percent increase on 2012.

More savvy than assumed

David Webb, Cambodian programme director at the Solidarity Centre said 'Workers are, frankly, far more savvy than they get credit for, and can see these vast amounts of money being made off the backs of some of the poorest workers in the region and how little they get back in return' (Guardian 16 December). A woman worker called Khmon is quoted saying 'There is no work in the countryside, so I have to work in the factories. The factories don't care about us. They pay us so little, work us so hard and throw us away when we cannot work for a moment' (Guardian 16 December). On May Day 2013 a garment factory worker named Chao Sinoun told Radio Free Asia 'The factory owner is exploiting my labour' (Sonorng Khe for Radio Free Asia Khmer Service, 1 May).

The May Day rally in Phnom Penh saw 10,000 garment and footwear factory workers with teachers and civil servants demanding wage increases, retirement pensions, reduced petrol prices, and the arrest of the killers of trade union activist Chea Victea in 2004. The same month saw two workers killed in a factory collapse at Wing Star Shoes owned by a Taiwanese company who make running shoes for Asics. A wage protest at a Nike Factory run by Sabrina Garment Manufacturing in the Kampang Speu province, west of Phnom Penh, involved 3,000 workers mostly women. They were seeking a $14 pay rise to cover transport, rent and healthcare on top of the $74 minimum wage but were attacked by riot police with stun batons and 23 workers were injured.

A July 2013 Report on Working Conditions in Cambodia's Garment Sector produced by Better Factories Cambodia, an ILO project found inadequate working conditions, fire safety, health and safety violations and child labour. Ath Thorn, President, Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union pointed out that Cambodia’s Ministry of Labour found that garment workers needed at least $156 per month to cover the cost of living. He added 'The current wages are too little and can't meet workers' needs' (Morning Star 28 December). 'The government and the factory owners know that workers cannot survive with the current salary' said Chea Mony, President, Free Trade Union of Workers (Morning Star 27 December).

The minimum wage per month was increased in May 2013 from $60 to $75 a month plus $5 living allowance but the increase was swallowed up in rent increases and other expenses of living in the capital city such as inflation, rent increases, and job insecurity. The value of labour power may change because the values of the necessities the worker and their family consume has changed. If their value increased, then a wage increase would merely restore the position and allow the workers to consume the same amount.

Race to the bottom

Cambodia's garment industry continues to grow rapidly which can be attributed to the country's open economic policy which has drawn large amounts of foreign investment into this sector of the economy. Nearly 80 percent of the garment factories are owned by Chinese, Taiwanese and South Korean companies with only 5 percent owned by the Cambodian capitalist class. The capitalist class say the onus was on Western clothing chains to pay more for the garments they were buying from Cambodia's factories. Ken Loo, Secretary-General of the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia said 'The garment industry is a footloose industry, it is not difficult for any investor to uproot and move its investment elsewhere. In Cambodia the industry is made up of predominantly foreign investors. If investors decide to relocate, there would be no local factories that would rise to take these places. We do not own the brand of the items we are producing so our profits are determined by the brands and retailers who place orders with us, they have the ability and the finances to increase the minimum wage, not us. The focus has to be on the brands and retailers to start paying factories more, so that in return we have the ability to pay our workers more' (Guardian 16 December).

After the killing of workers in the New Year the Cambodian police forced 1,000 workers from their rally camp in Phnom Penh, and banned any further protests against the government. The State Prosecutors issued warrants for Sam Rainsy and his deputy to appear in court on 14 January on charges of inciting social unrest. On 7 January thousands of garment workers returned to work after the two week national strike. The strikes cost the garment industry approximately $20 million in lost revenue, and orders could decline by 20 to 30 percent in 2014. Sam Rainsy said 'Now we are working on the diplomatic front, on the commercial front, on the legal front. We are in touch with unions and workers’ organisations all over the world to condemn violence on workers and to help workers to achieve the minimum wage' (Morning Star 8 January).

The close relations of the trade unions in Cambodia with this liberal party led by Rainsy is effectively a non-revolutionary approach for the Khmer working class. The Cambodian trade unions should not depart from the principle of an antagonism of interests between the working class and the capitalist class. When they collaborate with the capitalist class, the state or political parties such as the National Rescue Party they are departing from this principle. As well as campaigning for an increase in the minimum wage the garment workers trade unions should aim for the 'Abolition of the wages system.'

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia, Surya P. Subedi said 'All parties, the Government, striking workers, trade unions, the factories and buyers needed to reassure protesting workers that they would develop a realistic wage structure' (United Nations Radio 27 December 2013). Van Son Leng, Chairman of Cambodia's Garment Manufacturers Association concluded 'It's bad that there were deaths and injuries but when there's violence and force is used, there's always going to be collateral damage. It's difficult to avoid' (Wall Street Journal 7 January).

The Khmer garment factory worker Khmon said 'The poor are always unlucky' (Guardian 16 December 2013) but, as our comrades in the Socialist Party of Canada have pointed out, there is a way-out for the trap the working class in Cambodia find themselves in:

'The capitalist apologists have a hard time explaining the nineteenth century wage rates and conditions that capital is flocking to. Isn’t capitalism supposed to bring widespread prosperity? If there is something lower, capital will flow there naturally like water flowing downhill. China is outsourcing its clothing orders to Bangladesh. If Cambodia can’t get lower than Bangladesh in wages, conditions of work, labour and safety legislation, etc, you are out of luck. There are always greener pastures for capital, until, that is, we, the workers wake up and make all property and the resources therein the common heritage of all mankind' (The Socialist Party of Canada Secretary’s Reports for November 1 and December 1, 2013).

Steve Clayton