Commerce and Cancer (1986)

Book Review from the February 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cancer in Britain: the politics of prevention. Lesley Doyal (Editor). Pluto Press. £5.95.

This book is a sequel to Epstein's influential The Politics of Cancer and examines the dangers to health of carcinogens in industry, food additives, tobacco, environmental pollution, drugs such as female sex hormones and oral and injectable contraceptives in Britain.

Cancer is regarded by the authors as a preventable disease and they are critical of the curative emphasis that dominates most research, pointing out that the rates of cure for most major cancers have improved only slightly in the last 30 years. There are marked differences in the cancer rates of urban and rural areas, with very high rates of lung and stomach cancer in the industrialised inner-city areas — a pattern previously observed in the United States. The major cancers are common among semi-skilled and unskilled workers, particularly men, probably reflecting in part their greater exposure to occupational carcinogens.

The authors explain that there are two distinct approaches to cancer causation — the "establishment" approach which argues that occupational cancers cause less than 5 per cent of all cancers and resists attempts at regulation of industry, claiming that people's "life-styles" are responsible; and the "radical" approach which argues that 20-40 per cent of cancers are work-related and aims at better health and safety measures at work.

A comprehensive account is provided of the dangers of working with carcinogens; how industry resists attempts to make working conditions safer and how comparatively few people are able to obtain compensation once they have developed cancer through their work. The difficulty of regulating industry is increased by the manufacturers' secrecy, although as ASTMS have pointed out:

The chemical companies have no secrets from one another: each can analyse the product of its rivals within hours in an analytical laboratory. The real object of "commercial secrecy" is to keep information out of the hands of the unions, (page 38)

The pursuit of profit, not lack of knowledge, lies behind the failure to make the working environment safer. There are, for example, about 2.000 asbestos-induced deaths each year and although a Home Office report pointed out the dangers as long ago as 1906, regulations to control the levels of asbestos dust were not introduced until 1932.

The most flagrant examples of commercial interests influencing the regulation of dangerous substances can be seen in the case of the pesticides aldrin and dieldrin, which are banned in the United States but used and manufactured exclusively in Britain, and chlordane and heptachlor which are restricted in Britain but made and used in the United States. The failure of successive governments to regulate the tobacco industry and prevent the 50,000 deaths a year caused, at least in part, by smoking is influenced by the £4,000 million received every year from tobacco tax. The book points out that “. . . the financially precarious newspaper industry earns more than £30 million each year from advertising, a fact reflected in the consistent refusal of newspapers to criticise the industry or to support campaigns for stricter regulation" (page 81).

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the use of carcinogens has been in the treatment of pregnant women with diethylstilboestrol, mainly in the 1950s. The drug actually increased miscarriages and baby deaths instead of preventing them, caused abnormalities in the offspring and an increase in the incidence of breast cancer.

In a chapter devoted to fighting the causes of cancer it is stated that "The problem is inherent in the nature and priorities of a society in which the profit motive is predominant" (page 147). Reformist measures such as campaigning for a Freedom of Information Act and more public participation in decisions are advocated and are doomed to failure under capitalism because of their effects on profitability. Socialism is not mentioned.

Nevertheless, despite its faults, this book is well researched, well referenced and provides a lot of useful information about how one-fifth of us will die prematurely to provide profits for capitalism.

Carl Pinel

Letter: BBC bias (1986)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

The recent questioning of the myth of BBC editorial independence must be a very touchy issue in Broadcasting House. I doubt if Richard Cooper's letter to them concerning possible TV censorship (Letters, November Socialist Standard), will evoke other than evasive platitudes in reply. But even these would be an advance on their card replying to my letter, sent from India to the Listener, copied to World Service, and telling me that they had no space to print my "interesting letter". This letter had pointed out that references by their correspondent Mark Tully, to the government of the state of Kerala, India, where I was then living, as marxist. were contradictions in terms and that his persistent references to the government of state capitalist Russia as "the Soviets" were similarly historically inaccurate and misleading.

The reputation for objectivity held by the BBC abroad rests largely on the assumption that its news reportage is unsullied by bias, personal or official. Having worked in the UK for the BBC and abroad with other broadcasting organisations, I have concluded that unless one is closely familiar with the subject, personally biased news reporting usually goes undetected. Even when exposed, the wholly unwarranted reputation persists. There is, of course, no reason to suppose that BBC and other media employees should be any less biased than the rest of the working class in matters of sex, politics and race.

The fact is that BBC bias exists on many levels. Apart from personal partiality, the perpetuation of popular myth can be seen in the reporting of the role of black workers in inner city rioting. I first heard of the 1981 riots in St. Pauls. Bristol from the World Service news. This referred to groups of youths "some of whom were black ' Factually correct of course, but quite irrelevant the area in any case has a significant black population and their absence, not their presence, would have been exceptional. It would have been equally correct, but just as pointless, had the reference to colour emphasised "some of whom were white". But the stereotypical, riot-prone black loomed larger in the minds of the newsroom editors and the damage was done. Just as it was when the black worker whose traffic offence is alleged to have sparked off the Handsworth riots, was invited to make abject apology on TV for the rioting immediately after the revelation that two Indians had been burned to death. Although two white workers were subsequently charged with their murder, the blacks were already guilty by association. The colour of those involved was. of course, quite immaterial.

These examples of the perpetuation of historical and racial mythology may not appear strictly as bias, but they do reflect the underlying distortions that, through repetition in the "respectable" media, have become common in support of status quo ideology.

The reinforcing of popular prejudice by the broadcasters' subjective, often unconscious, assumptions is probably the most dangerous power of the media, for it is largely hidden. Blatant and open propaganda is usually easier to counter. To charges of bias, such as those regularly made on ITV's Right to Reply, the producers will answer that an in-depth programme on a contentious issue requires some favouritism and discrimination in order to express its viewpoint. It cannot allow an impartiality which, within programme-time limitations, would reduce its analytical perspective. Balance is to be achieved, they maintain, not within any one such programme, but over a substantial period during which allocation of facilities is made without bias.

This seems fair enough. But does broadcasting policy permit of such balancing of opposing viewpoints? The three main reports on broadcasting since the war are all specific on this. Beveridge's 1949 Report of the Broadcasting Committee states in Chapter 10:

It is essential that the broadcasting authority, in allotting opportunities for ventilation of controversial views, should not be guided either by simple calculation of the numbers who already hold such views, or by fear of giving offence to particular groups of listeners. Minorities must have the chance by persuasion, of turning themselves into majorities.

Even more explicit is Pilkington's 1960 Report of the Committee on Broadcasting:

Both the BBC and ITA must see to it that minor parties are given a fair opportunity to take part: it is part of their responsibility to see that dissent in party political, as in other forms of public discussion, can have a hearing. The difficulty of ensuring impartiality and balance should never be allowed to serve as an excuse for excluding controversy and dissent from public discussion (page 94)

So why is it that the case for socialism is distorted and rarely heard? After mentioning the restrictions due to the compromising dependence of journalists on their information source such as politicians.,Lord Annan's Report of 1974 provides the answer. Under a heading "External Pressures" on page 24. it states

. . the constitutional authority of radio and television to function at all stems from an organ that the political parties control.

So despite fears the BBC may feel for its alleged independence, it doesn't really matter if the Peacock Committee recommends replacing existing funding — through licence fees and government grant with private sponsorship and advertising The state remains the final arbiter and authority on its broadcasting function. Its Board of Management will still have to be polite to the Board of Governors and through them to the Home Secretary.

In any case, the BBC has never been independent of government pressure on its programme content Its 1927 Charter makes clear that "Government has the last word. It confers on the Government a formally absolute power of veto over BBC programmes", and the Secretary of State . . . may from time to time by notice in writing require the Corporation to refrain at any specified time or at all times, from sending any matter or matters of any class specified in such notice". (Clause 13(4) of the Licence.)

It has also been clear since 1927 what the BBC means by "impartiality" The Charter goes on:

Impartiality is not absolute neutrality, or detachment from those basic moral and constitutional beliefs on which the nation's life rests. The BBC does not feel obliged to be neutral as between truth and untruth, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery . . .

And if we ask whose truth, whose justice, whose freedom the BBC is partial to, we need look no further for the source of its bias.

This may throw some light on the continuing difficulty the Socialist Party experiences in trying to obtain access to broadcasting facilities.

W. Robertson 

Brighton

Letter to the Editors (1985)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

5th August 1985

BBC Television 

Broadcasting House 

London W1A 1AA

Dear Sirs

I watched your programme, Choices, An Embarrassment of Riches on Sunday last. 4th August. and found myself once again experiencing a BBC "discussion" in which only half the argument is debated. (If ever a programme cried out for some expression of the idea of common ownership of the means of living in a propertyless world of production to satisfy human need, this one did.)

Can you please explain, therefore, why it is that, despite the existence of so powerful a philosophy (socialism) which grew out of the intellects of such giants as Plato, John Ball, Gerrard Winstanley, William Morris, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Friedrich Engels (to name but a few), your programmes should be so emasculated in this respect? After all, our masters haven't censored you in this area yet, have they? - Or have they?

Richard Cooper 

Skipton, North Yorkshire

(The BBC's reply - a printed postcard saying "Thank you for your recent letter which is being brought to the notice of the producer concerned". EDITORS)

What is socialism? (1985)

From the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialism, as envisaged by the World Socialist Movement, will be a global society without governments, states, money or wages. All human beings will own in common, and democratically control, all the means for producing and distributing wealth. As goods and services will be produced solely for use, money will be non-existent. As we will all be the common owners of the means of production and distribution we will all automatically have the social right of free access to satisfy our needs without the restriction of a wages system or vouchers of any kind.

Marx's reference to labour vouchers in the Critique of the Gotha Programme is completely irrelevant when we consider the potential for producing and distributing wealth that exists today. His approach might possibly have had some justification in the nineteenth century — it has none now. In socialism each of us will work to the best of our ability and satisfy our needs as they arise. The ability to produce the quantities of wealth to satisfy the reasonable demands of the world's population has already been developed by capitalism.

This does not mean that the productive capacity of the world is unlimited. One can assume, however, that a world population endowed with sufficient social consciousness to have established socialism, equipped with the productive know-how previously acquired under capitalism, will generate practical demands which can be satisfied with comparative ease. This obviously can only be achieved when the world is operated as a single unit — the establishment of socialism in one country, or even a group of countries, is both inconceivable and impractical.

In socialism, government will be non-existent. You cannot have governments without the "governors" and the "governed" and this automatically entails the paraphernalia of the state machine in one form or another. We draw a clear distinction between the democratic administrative structures of socialism and capitalist government.

When socialism is introduced the workers of the world will not have forgotten overnight the ability to produce cars, houses, food, clothing, and so on. We should therefore logically assume that socialist men and women will also have the capability of establishing and organising their own socialist administrative structures. The "administration of things" would be a social organisation quite distinct from "government”, which must of necessity coerce people in a class society. The democratic structures of socialism will reflect the relationships of the new society of common ownership, production for use, and free access

Samuel Leight

(World Socialist Party of the United States)

Violence on the streets (1985)

From the November 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

In one way I am not sorry they set fire to Lozells on 9 September. It always reeked of poverty. When I lived in Handsworth as a kid in the thirties, Saturday morning film shows were only 2d at Lozells Picture House when they were 6d at the Odeon in Perry Barr. But in spite of that we didn't often go in the Lozells direction. We were afraid. Lozells Road formed a boundary to Handsworth. Beyond it into the centre of Birmingham were the really destitute slums of New Town and Hockley, where the houses in their thousands were small, black and insanitary, and violence was common among children just as it was among their parents.

Almost all those slums have gone now, partially cleared by a deliberate council programme just before the war; then by German bombs and land mines; and finally by urban planners with their traffic expressways and high rise flats. But Lozells and Villa Cross were left largely untouched, the frayed edge of Handsworth, getting more tattered every year.

As the fabric of Handsworth deteriorated those of us who could afford to move out did so. Those who could afford nothing else moved in to live in our cast-offs, and they have mainly been Asian and West Indian immigrants.

When we moved to Handsworth fifty years ago I was seven, and I can still remember the dismay I felt when I first saw it. Even then it was old and grimy and gloomy. Now I live three miles away, and when I drive through it about once a week it is obviously a ghetto. They say that £20 million has been spent on it. Thousands of patched and leaking roofs have been renewed. The privet hedges have been pulled out of thousands of dank little front gardens and replaced by low brick walls. And concrete tubs of dead plants are dotted along the pavements of Soho Road.

Patching the worn-out fabric of Handsworth like this emphasises the official view that it is considered basically adequate for those who live there. For black teenagers it confirms the fact that there is no escape. There is no need for walls around the ghetto. Without enough money to go and live somewhere else without working — without the need to beg for a job — they must stay there, without work and without hope. In this type of mathematics poverty equals frustration.

Most of the journalists and politicians expressed pained surprise that the orgy of violence and looting came almost immediately after all the noise and fun of the annual carnival. Surely, they implied, a few hours of music and colourful clothing in the streets ought to keep them quiet for a few months. It is a very insulting attitude — partly racist of course: but it is also typical of the capitalist class attitude towards unemployed and low-paid sections of the working class in general. And journalists and politicians — as befits their professions — try hard to talk in the accents of their masters. Of course. I don't know what individuals in Handsworth felt about the carnival, but it doesn't seem strange to me that Sunday's "innocent" fun, organised by the "community leaders", should turn into Monday's much uglier and more bitter fun, as the harsh realities of the week reasserted themselves.

The same sort of insulting attitude lies behind all the efforts to explain why the riot happened at this particular time. There is probably some truth in all of them: weeks of TV newsreels of South African riots; drug trafficking and police attempts to curb it; the police handling of a particular parking offence by a Rastafarian; the long history of antipathy between West Indians and Asians. The trouble is that they all assume that any amount of deprivation, frustration, despair can be kept under control by "softly-softly policing" and gestures of community relations.

Speaking with quite a different attitude, television producers show that violence produces results. Industrialists, financiers and even governments have shown themselves prepared to reward it if it is sufficiently powerful. Toxteth, Brixton and Handsworth itself have all received money from central government because they had riots. And the riots in South Africa have evoked trading and financial sanctions from the major western governments because the Botha government is seen as too cautious and niggardly with its reforms. All of this has been shown on television. So has the heavily armed and organised violence of the South African police, so that television has actually been accused of causing the riots in Britain.

The best commentary I have seen on that point of view was made, completely without words, by a television cameraman at the scene in Lozells on the following morning. His zoom lens pulled back to take in the scene of smoking devastation from a dose-up of an advertisement hoarding which carried a huge picture of Sylvester Stallone as Rambo — brown skin, rippling muscles, long tangled black hair, stem fatalistic face — cradling his heavy automatic rifle with his finger poised on the trigger. Rambo First Blood II is one of many films that turn violence into entertainment, a kind of romance, and make a great deal of money from it. Most black youngsters must be able to identify themselves with mistreated. misunderstood John Rambo and the trail of death and destruction he leaves behind him. A large proportion of western society must find the character and the subject sympathetic, judging by the huge box office success this film has been in America. It is a film that has won the approval of that old second-rate movie cowboy. Ronald Reagan, and it shows just how much this society has changed since I used to watch Tom Mix and Flash Gordon on Saturday mornings. Its heroes and its philosophy of life are now unable to escape the obvious fact that capitalism, eastern or western variety, is founded upon violence and is maintained by violence or the threat of it all the time. In every nation the ruling capitalist class has risen to power and wealth by violence. And they defend their hold on society's means of living, against other nations and against their own working class, with military forces and police forces — the professionals in violence.

Working class violence, in contrast, has no objective and no organisation. It is simply a reaction to living in a society of violence. The vicious behaviour of football supporters at Birmingham City or Brussels is not a ghastly exception. It is part of the social pattern which includes Beirut, Nicaragua, Soweto, Uganda and many others. It is part of the same society as the miners' strike and the nuclear arms race. And it mainly hurts other workers.

The war let me escape from Handsworth, first as a child evacuee at the beginning and then as a conscript into the navy at the end. It totally altered my view of things, and I wondered recently what my life and my views would have been like if I had been forced to stay in Handsworth. If I had grown up there in the eighties instead of the forties, during a slump instead of a war. with my horizon limited to the Lozells Road, having to spend every day with nothing to do, knowing that I was surplus to society's requirements, more of an embarrassment than anything else. I imagine that at times I might have felt like looting a few shops or setting fire to a few cars. But the war was six years of the bloodiest violence and destruction the world had ever seen. It was capitalism really excelling all its previous efforts. And it convinced me that I wanted to live in a society without violence. I wanted to live in a world without poverty and shabbiness and despair. I also wanted some of the far better living conditions that I had seen away from Handsworth.

That was when I found socialists to talk to and began to understand the real reason for slums and unemployment and crime and war, instead of believing the bullshit of politicians and priests and community leaders. That was when I also realised that, when it comes to violence, the capitalist state can win against workers every time. That is its job. It may simply smash them or sometimes it may grant hand-outs of money and show willing to talk, but only save more money and to stay firmly in control, like the Polish government did with Solidarity.

Socialists are angry about the sorts of lives we are forced to lead, about bad housing. unemployment, old people dying of cold in winter, and all the other drab, depressing features of poverty — but we don't pick on other workers — Pakistanis or Italian football supporters, or whites, or blacks, because that only hurts ourselves. It suits the capitalist class very nicely as long as the anger is directed away from them, and away from the real cause of the problems. What really worries them is when members of the working class get together, when they organise an efficient democratic political movement with the single aim of throwing them out, and when that movement starts to gain mass support.

Socialists call on all men and women of the working class, whether they are black, white, brown or yellow, whether they are employed or unemployed, old or young, to join us in a growing political movement to end this violent, poverty-stricken way of organising society. It is ours for the taking as soon as we make up our minds to act all together.

Ron Cook

Branded (2003)

Book Review from the September 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Branded: The Buying and Selling of Teenagers. By Alissa Quart. Arrow.

“Catch them young” has always been the slogan of those peddling religious ideas, but it has now been taken on board by people in charge of marketing in capitalist corporations. As Alissa Quart shows in this interesting if sometimes superficial book, clothing and cosmetics companies in particular are increasingly targeting teenagers and 'tweens' (nine-to-thirteen year-olds).

The idea is that youngsters who develop an attachment for a particular brand (Gap, for instance) will continue to buy it as they get older. Thus money spent on advertising to kids will pay big dividends over the years ahead. Brands and logos become crucial in adolescent peer groups: if you don't have the right bag or shoes, then you may have trouble being accepted by your would-be friends.

But how to advertise? Teenagers spend less time watching TV these days than a few years ago, preferring to surf the web or play video games. So, while TV advertising remains important, it is being rivalled by sneakier ideas such as product placement in films. In Legally Blonde, for instance, it is clear which make of nail polish and shampoo the main character uses. Another avenue for publicity involves planting logos in video games: a skateboarding game may contain logos for a company that makes boards and clothing, or the 'characters' in the game may skate past one of the company's shops.

Teen peer-to-peer marketing is another ploy, with teenagers being 'employed' as unpaid salespeople, to spread the idea of a particular brand to their friends and provide feedback on proposed new lines. At the same time, parents work longer hours and so have less time with their children, who they may buy off by spending more money on them. As a result, the brand has become a kind of surrogate parent:

“Teenagers have come to feel that consumer goods are their friends – and that the companies selling products to them are trusted allies. After all, they inquire after the kids' opinions with all the solicitude of an ideal parent. Tell us how best to sell you our products, they ask. If you do, we will always love you.”

There may be a bit of exaggeration here, but it remains a pretty dreadful condemnation of the pressures that commodity-based society places on workers as both producers and consumers.

I must confess that I found parts of the book barely comprehensible – I'd like to think that this is due to its American emphasis rather than my being an old fogey. Quart supplies a preface for this edition, where she discusses the extent to which US-derived marketing ideas have spread to Britain. Schools, for instance, often house subsidised vending machines from Coke and so on, while the Walkers' Crisps campaign involving “free” textbooks has boosted their brand rating. On the whole, though, things are not quite as commercialised here – not yet, anyway, but there is little doubt about the way that capitalism is going and about how it is driven by marketing considerations rather than any satisfying of human needs.

Paul Bennett

Thomas Henry Huxley (1923)

Quotation from the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters
  Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities— whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party.” 

T. H. HUXLEY.

(Darwiniana, Page 52).

Between the Lines: Miner distortions (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the April 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Miner distortions

Most people these days find out what is happening by watching the news on television. As is usually the case when there is a conflict between wage labour and capital, the TV news about the miners' strike has struck a fair balance between lies and omission. Recently the letters column of the Guardian contained several letters from outraged media-watchers who are appalled by the way in which facts were distorted and events presented in a one-sided manner. What do such people expect from TV news? Can you imagine a newscaster coming on the screen and announcing that a strike has occurred because the employers broke a written agreement with a trade union? Is it likely that TV news editors are going to go out of their way to ensure that the propaganda of the bosses is not swallowed by the gullible public? The fact is that the function of the so-called news is to inform workers in accordance with the general requirements of the system.

For readers wanting an example of the fairness of the TV news in relation to the miners' strike, here is one to be getting along with: In November of last year a certain strike-breaker (sorry, rebel) by the name of Barry Newton became famous in the North East because he was trying to lead a back-to-work campaign in the Durham area. Newton alleged that he was attacked by three men in balaclavas who threw ammonia in his face. A disgusting and unjustifiable crime, without doubt. The TV news programme in the region lost no time in showing the alleged tactics being used by supporters of the strike and exhibiting Newton as a hero. In February this year Newton was taken to court for wasting police time. It turns out that police investigations showed that the allegations were without foundation. But did the TV news presenters and the journalists on the regional newspapers carry equally big stories in February as they had run in November? Of course not; and. needless to say. the news editors who have deceived people by omission, will not be charged with wasting workers' time. How many striking miners will learn as a result of seeing television's distortions of their strike that you can never trust what the bosses' media tells you?

Who invented JR?

What exactly are the characters in Dallas up to? I mean, what are they actually doing in life? Every week millions of us stare at the images of J. R. Ewing and his self-righteous brother. Bobby, swivelling on their big leather chairs on the top floor of the office block which they own — but what do they go into the office to do? Whenever we see them they are engaging in Big Deals with gullible Texan oil magnates or else tricking their best friends into bankruptcy, bed or both. But what is the function of the Ewings?

Now, we all know that Betty Turpin in Coronation Street is there to sell beer and that Benny Hawkins in Crossroads is employed to mow Mr Hunter s lawn. The Ewings of Dallas seem never to do anything of the slightest social use. There is a reason for this. The characters being portrayed are businessmen: in fact, the Ewings are into Big Business. And being a family of capitalist millionaires (the brothers inherited the oil company when Jock Ewing's contract ran out and he was killed in a mysterious plane crash), the function of the Ewings is not to make anything or care for anyone or organise anything — they just sit there in a perpetual state of parasitical idleness, tricking and gossiping and screwing. And we, the workers who don't swivel about on leather chairs all day nor have Mexican waiters running in with classy cocktails every time we fancy a drink, are expected to admire the Ewings, to identify with them and even to feel sorry for them when business is not going too well

In the first programme of the interesting ITV series Television we saw a group of South American peasants huddled around a television set (the only luxury in their slum home) and getting excited about the privileged happenings in Dallas. Such entertainment is a powerful opium offered by our bosses to keep the minds of the workers away from the reality of our own social problems. What they are saying to us through offerings like Dallas is "If you want luxury you can't have it, because it's only obtainable for the few. but as a compensation prize we'll show you snippets of other people living in affluence and you can switch into such a fantasy for an hour every week".

Some time ago somebody attempted to shoot and kill J. R. Needless to say, the boring old millionaire lived to sign a new contract and make a new series and so we are still receiving our weekly ration of boring tales of the Texan scroungers. They are not the only capitalists put on show for us to watch: on another night of the week we can try to identify with the bores of Dynasty and a few years ago, for those who like to be the passive observers of home-grown parasites, there was Brideshead Revisited. Instead of escaping into the fantasy worlds of other people's luxury the millions of workers who regularly switch on to such programmes would do better to consider the possibility of a society in which we can all live life to the full.

Socialist comment

On 4 February Brian Montague, a member of the Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party (Ireland) appeared on the Channel Four Comment programme and stated as cogent a case for socialism as could be fitted in to the few minutes available. Which goes to prove that British television is balanced and democratic: after all. what more can we ask for than four minutes to put the argument for socialism against the countless hours each week devoted to putting the daft political, religious and cultural ideas and values of world capitalism?

Steve Coleman

Tony Blair – Big Business, Big Dictators, Big Money (2016)

From the April 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blair’s successful career of getting people to vote for him and make him Prime Minister, 1997-2007, meant he was able after leaving 10 Downing St to move into the very remunerative world of advising wealthy companies and foreign governments.  

He made a good start. J. P. Morgan, the American investment bank, hired him to advise them for a fee of about £2.5 million a year.  He got other deals from Zurich Insurance, Bernard Arnault (part of a luxury goods conglomerate), and the International Sanitary Supply Association (Times, 2 March). His main firm, Tony Blair Associates, has been doing very well ever since.  Not only rich businessmen, but autocratic rulers round the world, can count on Blair’s support, at a price.  

Egypt

In 2013 Egypt’s first ever elected government (like every other government round the world, it was disreputable and unscrupulous – but it was elected) and its President Mohamed Morsi were overthrown by an army coup, a thousand ‘dissidents’ being killed, and thousands more arrested. Blair hurried over to Cairo to see the new army leader, Abdel al-Sisi, and went on Egyptian television to give his support.  ‘We can debate the past and it’s probably not very fruitful to do so, but right now I think it’s important the international community gets behind the leadership here.’  Previously Blair had given his backing to an earlier Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, and to the Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi (Guardian, 30 January 2014).

Blair keeps up a high moral tone.  In 2007 he went to China (in a private jet, naturally) and told a meeting of philanthropists (who paid £1500 a head – more than a Chinese production worker then got in a year) that you should be judged not on what you do for yourself but on what you do for others.  He made $500,000 for that speech.

Kazakhstan

One of his main clients is Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, who pays Blair at least $13 million a year (some say twice as much as that).  In the days when the country was part of the Soviet Union, Nazarbayev rose to become First Secretary of the local state-capitalist party (for propaganda purposes it was deceitfully called the ‘Communist’ Party); that is, he was the local ruler.  Then when the Soviet Union broke up, Nazarbayev held an election for a new President, and (believe it or not) easily won with 91.5 percent of the vote.  Unlike rulers in countries with a bit more free speech, he gets more popular the longer he rules.  He’s been re-elected several times, and was able to announce that he had won the 2015 contest with 98 percent of the vote. The Human Rights Watch perhaps helped to explain this, when it pointed out that ‘Kazakhstan heavily restricts freedom of assembly, speech, and religion . . .  Torture remains common in places of detention.’  Nazarbayev was anti-religious in the Soviet days when that was the party line, but since then has become an enthusiast for Islam (most Kazakhs are Muslims), and has done the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.  There was an awkward business in 2011 when government forces killed fourteen unarmed protestors at a demonstration. Blair was able to advise Nazarbayev how to deal with the public relations angle, and sent him 500 words for his next speech to explain it all away.  All this goes down very well with other governments: Russia has given Nazarbayev six medals, and other countries have handed over another twenty-seven – including the dear old United Kingdom, which made him an ‘Honourable Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George’.  So no one could object to Blair’s giving (or rather selling) a helping hand to a knight backed by a couple of saints.  (What saints George and Mick really think of Nazarbayev hasn’t yet been disclosed.)

Azerbaijan

Another of Blair’s clients is Azerbaijan.  Heydar Aliyev was the KGB chief when Azerbaijan was in the old Stalinist Russian empire, and soon after independence he became president, until he died in 2003.  They know how to handle these matters in dictatorships, and (as with Assad in Syria) Heydar’s son – Ilham Aliyev – was immediately installed as ruler.  Ilham has a nice little family, two daughters and a son, and they all soon found themselves owning large Azerbaijani companies, not to mention valuable real property.  Ilham’s son, another Heydar, actually bought some luxury mansions in a Dubai development when he was only eleven years old.  Clearly a promising lad.  No prizes for guessing who will be groomed to succeed his father in due course as Azerbaijan’s freely-elected leader.  (In fact the family spent $44 million altogether on Dubai mansions, despite the fact that Ilham’s official salary is only $228,000; they must have been saving their pennies.)  Blair went to Baku (Azerbaijan’s capital) in 2009 and made a speech boosting the regime, in return for a fee of nearly $150,000.  ‘Journalists and human rights activists have been intensely harassed and savagely beaten’ (Guardian 6 January 2015), and opponents find themselves in jail; the security forces have arrested demonstrators ‘in order to protect citizens’ constitutional rights’ (which is one way of putting it).

Rwanda

Among numerous other clients is the ruler of Rwanda.  Blair is ‘an uncritical friend and well-paid adviser to the likes of Paul Kagama of Rwanda, a violent authoritarian’ (Economist, 5 March).  In that auspicious country, those who speak against the leader would do well to make their wills.  A number of politicians who opposed Kagama have come to a sticky end, while more than one who hoped to baffle Kagama’s strong-arm boys by fleeing abroad has met with a violent and unexplained demise even in a ‘safe haven’.

Blair’s wife Cherie is in on the act.  She has founded a firm to provide ‘strategic counsel to governments, corporates and private clients’.  One of her customers is the president of the Maldives, Abdulla Yazmeen, who has put the leaders of three opposition parties in jail, along with another 1700 opponents.

Providing help to despotic potentates round the world certainly pays off.  Blair’s personal fortune is now estimated at £70 million.  Windrush Ventures (which advises foreign governments; Firebush Ventures looks after affluent companies and sovereign wealth funds) –has just trebled its annual profits to £2.6 million, and the average pay of its forty-eight staff is now over £100,000 (Daily Telegraph, 6 March).  A tax specialist professor at City University said Blair when prime minister used to favour ‘accountability and transparency’; now he is ‘embarrassingly silent about his sources of income’.  Blair’s London home is a capacious house in Connaught Square (once owned by John Adams, later the American President), near Hyde Park, along with a substantial mews house behind, both guarded round the clock by armed policemen.  His country residence, which he bought in 2008, is a Queen Anne mansion in Buckinghamshire, complete with tennis court and swimming pool.  In fact Blair is now believed to own thirty-six properties.

Blair is keen to keep on good terms with the other world, and has founded ‘Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation’ to support all the major religions (with its main office in Grosvenor Square, just across from the US embassy); so perhaps he feels that in return the various supernatural rulers of the universe are supporting him, however dubious his activities.  Blair’s excuse for joining in the invasion of Iraq (which kickstarted the total chaos across the Middle East today – Syria has 250,000 dead, and half the population are ‘displaced’, i.e. refugees) – his excuse was that Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator (as indeed he was).  He keeps saying he will defend the assault on Iraq ‘till my dying day’.  How ironic it is that Blair is now making his fortune by supporting other equally brutal dictators.

Socialists have always pointed out that Labour governments, and Labour Prime Ministers, can do no more than attempt to run capitalism more efficiently, and pretend to make people better off.  Tony Blair is now apparently engaged in an earnest effort to prove socialists right – at least he’s doing his best to make at least one ex-Prime Minister better off.

Alwyn Edgar

Best years of your life (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

No wonder it's called the silly season. While the scenes at the party conferences purported to be "serious politics", the media events outside the conference halls were what were really meant for public consumption. to show that our leaders are really human.

You know the sort of thing — Neil Kinnock finds a beach to fall over, or maybe Margaret Thatcher chances on the birth of a calf in Scarborough. All in front of the TV cameras. But that's not the end of it. In this, the International Youth Year, youth has suddenly become important to the politicians and their PR officers. This is not because of any particular concern for the health or hopes of the young, but something of far greater importance — their votes.

According to the Observer (1 September 1985). between now and the next general election two and a half million new votes will join the electoral register, bringing the total number of voters between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four up to a decisive five million. That's not all because, as the Observer quotes a leading psephologist, the young are "trendy and more malleable than other voters" and they no longer give automatic support to the Labour Party. The evidence of previous governments has shown that despite the repeated promises from Labour politicians on jobs, peace and poverty, the Labour Party is as powerless to deal with these problems as are the other parties of the profit system.

Many of the young suffer particularly from these problems; from the prospect of a life that capitalism — through the dole queue — dictates will be useless; from nuclear war, the mere threat of which claims some psychological victims among those least used to the brutal truths of the property society; or from the artificial escape of an empty crisp bag and a tube of glue. As if this were not all, from every hoarding and magazine the young are offered Clearasil for their spots, pop stars for their emotions and carefully packaged leaders (in many flavours) to do their thinking for them.

So it's open season on the political field. The hunt is on for that prized species, the gullible young voter. Reared on mindless and unquestioning fodder from the pulpit, the press, or the classroom, they are fair game for any opportunist with a nice smile. The first shot in this massacre was fired by the SDP in the form of their "Youthblitz". According to the Observer, David Owen, who is worried at the effect of his Gang of One style of leadership, has devised a series of speeches and high profile media stunts due to start soon. From the party that delights in meaningless slogans (remember "Caring about the People, Caring about the Costs". "Compassion and Competition", and "Toughness and Tenderness"?) they now plan all this publicity under the title "Have You Got The Guts - To Take Up The SDP Challenge?", which is presumably like the Pepsi Challenge TV advert, except less honest.

On the other side of the Alliance. David Steel is keeping a lower profile, presumably because, with his style of leadership he does not need to worry so much about his image with the youth of the Liberal Party. He listens intently and earnestly to the Young Liberals every year before overruling their annually-successful conference resolutions on "defence". The leader of the Liberal Party, though, is already a pastmaster at the sordid business of capitalist politics, that of getting votes regardless of the basis on which they are given. Not for him the blatant publicity tricks of Owen, nor the degrading scraping after votes on any flimsy pretext. No, when David Steel seeks votes he's artistic — a couple of years ago he rapped on a truly unforgettable disco-funk record called "I Feel Liberal, OK”. But it had about as much chance of getting to number one as he has of getting to Number Ten.

The leader of the Labour Party must have learned something from that, for when he recently entered the pop world (appearing on a video for a Tracey Ullman single), he for once kept his mouth firmly shut. It seemed to work. His popularity rating improved immediately. Tracey Ullman, however, hasn't had a hit since. Another artist prepared to align himself with the Kinnock camp is the rock poet Billy Bragg, who appeared with Neil Kinnock as part of the Labour Party's Jobs and Industry campaign. The task of the Labour leader was to explain how it is that this time the Labour Party in office will create jobs when, in their last term of office, unemployment in fact doubled. Billy Bragg's function was to entertain a few thousand people with just himself and his guitar a relatively easy task, as it turns out, compared with that of Neil Kinnock.

The SDP, for their part, have decided on principle that they don't want to stoop to the depths of the Labour Party and use pop stars in their campaigning. This decision, however, may also have something to do with the fact that no pop group (that would like to continue selling records) is prepared to align themselves with the SDP. For the Tories, who had their bluff called in 1983 and are now vainly trying to fulfil their promises, the best policy is silence; the best argument is no argument. Their efforts will be directed towards keeping the FCS (which spells electoral liability) well out of sight.

Add to all that lot the more mature activities all other parties go in for to attract the vote of adults —such as kissing their babies — and it should be clear that only the Socialist Party is concerned with the workers' vote to the extent of what it represents. In the hands of gullible, misled workers the vote is a waste or worse. But in the hands of politically aware workers who refuse to be diverted by the rhetoric, the promises, or the pop songs of politicians, it is a potent weapon for peaceful, democratic, revolutionary change. To paraphrase Engels, the vote is like a razor-blade in that you can use it for its real function, to shave, or you can cut your throat with it.

The point then is clear. The problems that plague young and old under capitalism, as well as the insulting attempts to trick them out of the power of their votes, will continue only as long as we let it. So next time you turn on the TV to be faced with the sight of Neil Kinnock looking out of place in a Madonna video, or maybe Nigel Lawson breakdancing in the city streets for the benefit of the cameras, don't just think "What pillocks!", but rather. "What's the alternative?"

Brian Gardner

Editorial: Kinnock's Tanzanian illusion (1985)

Editorial from the September 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

You can always test the authenticity of those who claim to be socialists by asking for a definition of socialism. For example, a "socialist" who tells you that the Russian Empire, where independent trade unions are illegal and criticism of the government leads to imprisonment, is an example of socialism in action clearly knows as much about the subject as the Duke of Edinburgh does about living in a slum. Likewise, anyone who says that Labour governments have run socialism are soon answered by a Labour Party chairman who stated that “Never has any previous government done so much in so short a time to make modem capitalism work" (Douglas Houghton, The Times, 25 April 1967).

In July Neil Kinnock visited Africa, ostensibly to show his concern for those dying as a consequence of the world capitalist system which he and his party perpetuate. While there he paid a visit to the so-called socialist nation of Tanzania, presided over by Julius Nyerere. If we are to believe Martin Kettle's Guardian report of Kinnock's trip ("Kinnock counts himself as a Nyerere fan", 26 July 1985), the Labour leader was most impressed by the Tanzanian effort to create "socialism in one country". What. then, can we learn from this "socialism" ?

In 1967 the Arusha Declaration of Socialist Reconstruction initiated Nyerere"s policy of ujamaa. Stripped of its ideological pretensions, this policy is based on the assumption that state regulation of industry and agriculture will lead to prosperity for all the people. In short, it is a policy for state capitalism. At the time of the Arusha Declaration Tanzania’s most profitable export was sisal. 230,000 tonnes of which were sold annually. In 1984 a mere 47,000 tonnes were exported, largely because of the state s economic mismanagement of sisal production. Although there is no natural or technological reason for the decline in sisal production, profits are falling because strict capitalist standards of efficient exploitation have not been adopted by the state-run Tanzanian Sisal Authority (TSA). In response to this Nyerere. who is due to retire as President in November, has ordered the beginning of a process of privatisation of the sisal estates. By returning them to private capitalist ownership and control he and his government hope to increase profits. So, after a recent visit to the sisal-growing Tanga region of his country. Nyerere ordered the TSA to declare that it will sell off twelve of its thirty-nine estates to private investors within the next year. Shortly before this the state- controlled Morogoro Oilseed Processing Company (Moproco) was informed by the government that its most profitable assets were to be sold off to private investors. Nyerere insists that all of this is in line with the ujamaa policy: "ujamaa is here to stay" he stated in a recent speech (reported in Concord - a Nigerian publication - 13 June 1985). But at the same time Nyerere"s party, the Chama Cha Mapinduzi. is advocating the policy of tujisahihishe which is based on the assumption that “socialism" must learn from the economic methods of Western capitalism.

Let us take a look at what it is that has impressed Kinnock about Tanzania. Clearly, it is not a socialist society. Apart from the fact that socialism cannot under any circumstances exist in one country, there is nothing about the Tanzanian economy which distinguishes it from capitalism. Production is for profit; workers receive wages which are less than the value of what they produce; the state exists in order to regulate the profit system; access to goods and services is determined by how much money people possess. Tanzania can be characterised as a state-capitalist country — a nation in which the main productive forces have been nationalised.

Kinnock does not understand the difference between state ownership (capitalism) and common ownership (socialism) and therefore he is "a Nyerere fan". But. in the light of recent economic developments in Tanzania, there is reason to believe that Margaret Thatcher might be joining Kinnock in the fan club. After all. what can be more acceptable to Thatcher's outlook than the transfer of centralised state ownership to private ownership? Is not Nyerere"s policy in relation to Moproco and TSA not a Tanzanian version of Thatcher s policy for British Telecom and Britoil?

If Kinnock is a fan of such policies in Africa may we assume that a future Labour government led by him would do the same in Britain privatise the unprofitable NCB, perhaps? The hard fact for partisans of the conflict between state capitalism and private capitalism is that neither offers any alternative to the problems generated by a society which produces for profit rather than need. Some private-capitalist countries will nationalise industries when it is profitable to do so (that is why nationalisation in Britain was initiated by avowedly capitalist parties) and some state-capitalist countries will privatise, as Tanzania is doing now. None of this has anything to do with socialism, which will only be established when workers get rid of both private and state capitalism. For Neil Kinnock to help spread the illusion that there is socialism in Tanzania is proof either of his political ignorance or his dishonesty; whichever it is, we can be sure how far to trust him when he preaches to workers about socialism.

To A New Reader. (1923)

From the September 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is now in its twentieth year. This may or may not seem a long time. Measured by the life of a man, it is a considerable slice; compared with the life of mankind, it is but a minute. During our twenty years of existence as a party we have had but one essential thing to say; all else has been by the way. Briefly (and yet once more) it is this.

You are poor. You are poor because you are robbed. You are robbed because you are slaves—hired slaves or wage slaves. You are slaves because you own nothing but your power to labour, and must therefore hire your labour-power to those who own the means of livelihood. These are the masters. Owning your means of life, they can lay down the terms upon which they will hire you. Their terms are, that in return for the hire of your labour-power they will give a sufficient sum to enable you to support life and reproduce your kind. This sum is called wages, and the system based upon wage labour is called capitalism. At different times in history the wage slaves have revolted at the hardships of their condition. Hitherto they have always been beaten, either by starvation or brute force, although sometimes a little amelioration or palliative has been thrown to them. These have had some temporary value and, in the case of the granting of the vote, a tremendous possibility. But as the workers have never yet been inspired with anything beyond the immediate need, they remain slaves. That is the important thing to remember—they remain slaves.

Now, the Socialist case is this. There is no need for anyone to be poor. There is no need for anyone to be robbed. There is no need for slavery in any form. The workers are held in subjection by the armed forces of the nation. The control of those forces is vested in Parliament, and Parliament is composed of men who have been elected there by the votes of the workers. The workers must revolt once more, but it must be a conscious, intelligent revolt this time. It must be aimed, not at some trumpery ephemeral object, or the securing of some little easing of their slavery. They must, by means of their votes, capture Parliament and the control of the armed forces. They must then proceed to reconstruct society. Instead of the product of the nation’s toil being divided among the handful of immensely rich who own the means of wealth-making, each member of the community would receive according to his need. The colossal waste of capitalist society; its competition; its advertising; its over-production; its under-employment; its petty industry; its production of shoddy, and so forth, would be eliminated, and human effort would yield enough for a high level of comfort for all.

We differ from all other alleged working-class parties chiefly in this, that we say the achievement of Socialism is so immediate and so urgent that it dwarfs everything else. We say that if all the effort now diverted to the gaining of some momentary object were concentrated upon getting Socialism, our goal would be in sight. Think of the dozens of "aims" which have possessed the Labour Party and the I.L.P. since their formation. Old Age Pensions, State Insurance, Eight-Hours Day, Single Tax, Free Trade, Votes for Women, etc., etc. "Aims'' so "revolutionary” that either capitalist party can select any one of these aims and pass them on the Statute Book without blinking. And when they are passed, are the working class any better off? They are still slaves. Assuming they got their latest demand—the Capital Levy— where would it leave the workers? Still slaves.

Another so-called workers' party, the S.D.F., which changed its name to the S.D.P., and then again to the B.S.P., and then split up into the N.S.S. and B.S.P., and then somehow changed back to the S.D.F. again—this chameleon-like party thinks the greatest thing we can have at the moment would be a citizen army!

One other claimant to the title of a workers' party is the Communist Party, and we have dealt with them so often.that it seems like labouring the point to devote further space to them. But a new reader may like to know that their object is the same as the Labour Party's; they have tried desperately hard to affiliate with them; they have helped them at elections; and in Parliament they are anxious to assume the Labour Party's harness, through the latter's whips. Their difference from the Labour Party is quite minor, and mainly confined to methods. The quickest way to rouse the workers from their apathy is to make a noise, they say. The bigger the noise, the bigger the crowd. Having got the crowd, lead them. Never mind where, at the moment, but gradually the crowd will instinctively turn to you as their natural leaders. Then, when capitalism’s great crisis occurs, take your place at the head of the mob and lead them, the half-baked, the wholly-baked, and the three-parts-baked, on to the conquest of society and the dictatorship of the proletariat. Such is the essence of the Communist Party’s outlook.

We prefer that the workers should know where they are going; should be conscious every step of the way. This process is slower. Noise and firework have no place in it. We expect no huge, wild influx of members, immediately followed by similar slumps. We expect a steady growth composed of those who realise their servile position in society; who can see how it has historically come about; and, above all, those who can see that the only way to end servility is for the workers to gain political control, so that society may be run for the benefit of the whole of its members, and not, as at present, for a few. If any of those who read these lines would like to take the first logical step to their emancipation, and are convinced of the soundness of our position, we cordially invite them to apply for membership of our Party.

W. T. Hopley

The Ravings of a Hired Scribe. (1923)

From the August 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘‘If Labour Rules,” is the subject of an article recently contributed to the columns of ‘‘The Sunday Pictorial” by the chief contributor to that journal, Mr. Lovat Fraser. Mr. Horatio Bottomley once occupied the position of chief contributor to the “Sunday Pictorial,” but since his well-earned “retirement” the position has been occupied by Mr. Fraser.

It appears from his article that Mr. Fraser is scared out of his wits. He is shuddering, at so much per ‘‘shudder,” of course, lest something disastrous should happen to "British Working Men.”

The source of the trouble is that a conference has been held at Hamburg. The conference was convened for the purpose of devising ways and means of uniting the “Socialist” movement on an international basis. The British delegation, which numbered over forty, included such real live “representatives of British Labour” as J. H. Thomas, Arthur Henderson, and Sydney Webb. 

Mr. Fraser tells us that after a good deal of talking at Hamburg, a new organisation was formed, which is to be known as the ‘‘Socialistche Arbeiter Internationale.” The name is sufficient to make any ‘‘true Britisher” turn upside down, but there is something far more terrible. The President, Otto Wels, is a German. The two French members of the executive are notorious pro-Germans. The two members from the United States are not American born; one being by birth an Austrian, and the other a Russian Jew. And if all that is not sufficient to transform the blood of the average Britisher into liquefied margarine, "every man upon the executive is an avowed champion of Germany.”

The greater part of the proceedings at this conference, says Mr. Fraser, were really a demonstration in favour of Germany. Hence he laments :—

“Nearly a million of our countrymen died in the Great War, and if they could have risen from their graves and contemplated the Hamburg jamboree, they might well have thought they died in vain.”

And so say all of us. For, after all is said and done, one can never tell with certainty what the dead are likely to think in the event of having risen from the grave. But we think we can say without fear of logical contradiction that the last thing in the world that those who died in the Great War would be likely to think about is the conference at Hamburg. What might engage their thoughts is the reward they would have received for having rendered their services to “ King and Country." The constant visits to the Labour Exchange, and the continual struggle against starvation, are things they would most likely be concerned about. They might even think that after all the Great War was not fought in the defence of “little nations,” and that the Socialist was right when he said that the war was carried on because of the quarrel between rival groups of capitalists concerning trade routes and the world’s markets.

Anyhow, there are many reasons why they might think they died in vain, apart from what took place at the Hamburg Conference.

The chief complaint of Mr. Fraser is that in the event of a Labour Government being elected it will have to obey “a foreign pro-German executive.” Now let us hasten to assure Mr. Fraser—that is, if he needs assurance, and did not write the article whilst deliberately lowering one eyelid, that there is no reason whatever for those he represents to fear the election of a Government composed of such men as those who made up the British delegation at Hamburg. These people may use the title of Socialist, but their actions—which, we are told, speak louder than words—disqualify them from a genuine claim to the title. They have shown over and over again that they can assist in carrying on the capitalist system quite as ably as Liberals and Tories. Of course Mr. Fraser knows this, and one gathers from his article that had the executive been made up of men such as J. H. Thomas and Arthur Henderson, to the exclusion of any representative from Germany, then not a word would have been written about the matter in the “Sunday Pictorial.” We, of the Socialist Party, repudiate those who met at the conference at Hamburg. As for their professed Internationalism, we need only refer to their activities in connection with the late war to show what humbugs they are.

Our point with Mr. Fraser is to expose the hypocrisy of his pretending to shudder at the prospect of British working men being ruled by “ oreigners.”

The workers of Britain, like the workers throughout the world, are ruled by those who own the means of life, and whether those who rule are British, French, German, or Americans, matters not one iota to the working class. The point that should engage the serious attention of the workers is the means they should employ to abolish class rule altogether. If the workers enquire into the laws of capitalist society, they will learn all about the process by which they are robbed of the wealth which they produce and the reason why they are poor in the midst of plenty. They will learn that the cause of their trouble is not to be explained through the hoary old stunt of the "foreigner,” but is to be explained through the existence of the class ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production. Having learned this, they will organise politically for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist form of society, wherein classes will not exist, because the means of living will be owned and controlled by and in the interest of the whole community.

Robert Reynolds

Capitalism makes you sick (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Illnesses are commonly, and mistakenly, believed to strike at random and are often considered to be the result of the “affluent” life-style of advanced countries. Ulcers and heart attacks, for example, are viewed as the price of success for executives although unskilled workers are four times more likely to die from ulcers than the wealthy and also more prone to develop heart disease.

Health trends, with the exception of hereditary diseases and some genetic disorders, are determined to a considerable extent by economic factors. The general health and types of diseases prevalent in population groups vary according to historical development; class differences; stages of the economic cycle; and relationships between developed and underdeveloped countries.

Life expectancy in Anglo-Saxon Britain was about 31 years, increasing to 35 in the Middle Ages, 48 in 1840 and 69 years for men and 75 years for women today. In modern Britain about 15% of the population are over 65 compared with only 5 per cent at the beginning of this century, reflecting improved survival rates in childhood and early adulthood.

The advantages of wealth in maintaining health can be seen in pre-capitalist Europe where the aristocracy were, on average, almost a foot taller than the peasants and lived nearly twenty years longer. Capitalism, by applying modern productive processes to agriculture, has revolutionised food supplies and made it possible to sustain over four thousand million people — a number far in excess of the capabilities of pre-capitalist societies.

Before the industrial revolution infectious and parasitical diseases were the major causes of deaths in Britain. Town dwellers formed only a small proportion of the total population but had higher mortality rates than the rural poor due to pollution and poor sanitary facilities. The invention of the jenny in 1764 and the spinning throstle in 1767 radically changed production methods. The farming weavers and smallholders abandoned the land to work in factories, and land enclosures and the increasing use of agricultural machinery “assisted” the migration of smallholders and yeomen to the towns.

At first mortality rates fell as the rural poor increased their earning power in the factories. But the manufacturing centres expanded rapidly: the populations of Leeds and Bradford nearly trebled and that of Glasgow increased from 30,000 to 300,000 in the first three decades of the nineteenth century. The cities became notorious for their back-to-back slum houses and open sewers. Factory work was exhausting, dirty and often dangerous. Capitalist competition, in the absence of workers’ organisations, gradually forced wages down, while the invention of new machines reduced the demand for craftsmen.

From about 1816 mortality rates rose sharply as a result of the overcrowding and poverty endured by the new industrial working class. Although smallpox became less prevalent after about 1800 with the widespread use of Jenner’s vaccine, typhus, cholera, tuberculosis and gastro-intestinal infections exacted a terrible toll. Typhus has been aptly called “the poor man’s disease” while tuberculosis, which spreads rapidly among malnourished, overcrowded populations, caused about one third of all deaths in the nineteenth century. Such was the toll of life in infancy, childhood and young adulthood among the working poor that the average age of death was 17 years in Manchester and 15 years in Liverpool.

A series of public health measures beginning with the 1848 Public Health Act, resulted in improved sanitation. These changes were spurred on by working class unrest and the fear that cholera epidemics might spread to engulf affluent as well as working class districts. The living standards of workers began to improve from about 1860 and led to improved nutrition, particularly in the consumption of meat and fruit imported cheaply from abroad. Although fluctuations in wages occurred, by 1900 “real wages” were nearly double those of 1850.

The last decades of the nineteenth century saw the need for a fitter, more reliable and skilful workforce as machines became more complex. Good business, not altruism, was the motive behind the public health legislation of the 1870s and 1880s, and with improved living conditions the death rate from tuberculosis halved from 1850 to 1900 and typhus and cholera declined dramatically. But considerable ill health remained the fate of workers during the early decades of the twentieth century. Although mortality rates improved they remained considerably higher for the poor than for the wealthy; in fact, they are only part of the picture because they do not show the chronic ill health and misery of debilitating, but not necessarily fatal, diseases.

The economic recession of the 1920s and 1930s saw a considerable hardship for the working class, who were continually afflicted by rickets, juvenile rheumatism, rheumatic heart disease and bronchitis. (Juvenile rheumatism, for example, was thirty times more common among the children of the poor in industrial towns as among the wealthy.) These diseases of poverty, which reached a peak before the second world war and dwindled after it, have started to reappear with the present economic recession. With 15 million people now living below the official poverty line, rickets has been reported in a number of British cities.

It was assumed that the National Health Service would progressively improve the people’s health, but such a view failed to recognise that poverty, bad housing, pollution, stressful, repetitive, alienating factory work and the insecurity of capitalism’s economic system are the causes of physical and mental ill health. In the United States tuberculosis, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough and measles all declined considerably before the introduction of antibiotics and widespread immunisation. Even underdeveloped countries find that improved food distribution and public health campaigns have a greater impact in improving mortality rates than sophisticated medical care systems. But profits, not human needs, are the driving force of capitalism, and thus food production is actually cut back in developed countries despite widespread malnutrition in other parts of the world.

Although reductions in infectious and parasitical diseases have occurred in advanced capitalist countries there has been an increase in cardiovascular diseases, road and industrial accidents, diabetes, cancers, respiratory diseases, mental illness, suicide and alcohol-related diseases — to mention only a few. Health trends are affected by booms and slumps in the economy. The higher wages gained during a boom lead to better housing and nutrition while the need for a fitter, more reliable workforce results in the provision of improved medical care, although this has a more marginal effect in producing a healthy population. During a slump the fall in wages leads to a deterioration in housing conditions and poorer nutrition. Medical care deteriorates as the capitalists’ profits are squeezed and they have less need to maintain a healthy workforce, although some firms selectively protect the health of skilled workers and executives through the provision of private insurance schemes.

However, the complexity of health trends in advanced capitalism make it difficult to evaluate whether booms or slumps are more harmful. Although better housing, nutrition and health care in booms are beneficial they must be weighed against an increase in smoking and alcohol consumption, more pollution, more accidents due to increased overtime and travel, and the spread of epidemics and break up of families due to migration. During slumps smoking and alcohol consumption decreases, pollution lessens and there are less accidents. Short term unemployment appears to have little effect on health but long term unemployment causes feelings of hopelessness and depression.

Mortality rates may have improved considerably, but the stressful, alienating nature of factory work and the insecurity, poverty and pollution inherent in capitalism’s organisation of society prevents the workers from achieving the health at present enjoyed only by the wealthy.

Carl Pinel

The Old Bill's new Bill (1985)

From the July 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tough law and order policies are a great vote catcher for politicians, who whip up fears among workers that crime and violence are on the increase and then use those same fears to justify increased powers for the police, the building of more prisons and more expenditure on sophisticated technology with which to control and monitor workers' lives.

The Police and Criminal Evidence Act. 1984 will come into effect in January 1986 and is the product of this kind of thinking. This legislation will give the police a whole range of new powers, or rather it will legalise what has long been police practice although officially proscribed. Sir David McNee, former Metropolitan police commissioner. said when giving evidence to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure: "Many police officers have, early in their careers, learned to use methods bordering on trickery or stealth in their investigations". Translated into plain English this means that many policemen broke the law in the course of their duties. The new police bill will mean that they can continue with their old practices but do so within the law.

Road blocks

The Act euphemistically refers to police road-blocks as "road-checks" and empowers the police to set up random checks for up to seven days (although this can be extended without limit) if a senior officer thinks that a serious crime has been, or is likely to be. committed in a particular area. Given that “serious crimes" are fairly routine occurrences in most towns and cities there is no reason why the police should not be able to set up road blocks on a more or less permanent basis in such areas.

During the recent miners’ strike, police road blocks were set up, not to prevent crime (although they were justified in the High Court as preventing likely breaches of the peace) but to obstruct the freedom of movement of trade unionists. They were also used to collect intelligence about strikers. their movements and activities which was undoubtedly added to the already large store of information held on the Police National Computer. There is no reason to suppose that once the police have formal powers to set up such road blocks they will be any more scrupulous in their use of them.

Stop and search

Remember the old "sus" laws that were used routinely to harass young black people in the inner cities? Those laws were repealed but under the Act the police will have new powers to stop and search people and vehicles if they have "reasonable grounds for suspicion" that a person is carrying stolen goods, house-breaking tools, offensive weapons or articles used to carry out a theft or steal a car. "Offensive weapons" may include such everyday items as umbrellas, keys, credit cards and combs. And what constitutes "reasonable grounds for suspicion"? Why, the policeman's own perception of what is reasonable! The only safeguard offered to the public is that the police are obliged to give a reason for the stop and to record it as soon as is practicable. But, if they think a person might be too stupid to understand the reason then it need not be given.

If you are young, black, unemployed or homeless then you may very well fit the policeman s stereotype of a criminal and the police will have full powers to harass you in the streets by stopping you, asking you questions, and even searching you.

Entry and search of premises

Under the Act the police will be permitted to enter any premises, including people's homes, without a warrant, and using force if they have "reasonable belief" that in doing so they will find a person who has committed an arrestable offence or who is suspected of having committed a breach of the peace or any number of other offences. In addition, if the police obtain a magistrate's warrant (and they are rarely refused) they will be empowered to enter any building to look for evidence of a "serious arrestable offence".

These new powers are so sweeping that the police will now. quite lawfully, be able to go on "fishing expeditions" for evidence in anyone’s home, place of work or any other building and be able to use "reasonable force" in order to gain entry.

Arrests

The police can arrest people without a warrant if they are "reasonably suspected" of having committed a "serious arrestable offence" or an "arrestable offence". The serious offence category covers not only crimes such as murder, rape, arson, and firearms and explosives offences, but also offences deemed to be threats to the security of the state or public order. It also covers any offence which involves serious financial loss to anyone. This includes all sorts of petty thefts since serious financial loss is defined as "serious for the person who suffers it". If the police suspect you of having committed any such serious offence they can detain you at a police station for up to four days subject to a magistrate's review.

If a policeman suspects that any offence has been committed, no matter how trivial, then a person may be arrested without warrant if certain conditions apply: if the person does not give the police their name and address, or if the police believe that the details given are false; if it is believed that the person might harm themselves or someone else, damage property, obstruct the highway or cause an affront to public decency. If you are arrested under these circumstances the police can hold you at a police station without charge for up to 24 hours.

Detention

After 24 hours the arrested person must either be charged or released. If, however, a person has been arrested for a "serious offence" then they must be brought before a magistrate after 24 hours and only at this point will they be able to talk to a lawyer. The magistrate only has to be satisfied that the person is suspected of a "serious offence", that it is necessary that they be detained in order to secure or preserve evidence and that the investigation is being carried out diligently and swiftly, for the police to be allowed to detain a suspect for a further period of up to four days.

Research into the effects of detention in police custody, including that carried out by the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure. shows that after a very short time most people, kept in isolation in a police cell and subjected to interrogation (not to mention the threats and physical and verbal abuse which frequently occur), are unable to keep silent regardless of their guilt or innocence. For this reason the Royal Commission concluded that no confession made by a person in this way could ever be regarded as purely "voluntary". And yet such confessions and other evidence obtained in a similar manner will be admissible in court. Is this really so far removed from the "confessions" that are extracted from dissidents by the totalitarian regimes of Russia and Eastern Europe, whose abuses are so regularly deplored by the so-called liberal regimes of the West?

The Act also empowers the police to carry out body searches, including strip searches by a constable of the same sex as the suspected person. "Intimate" body searches will also be permitted, again by force if necessary, despite objections by the British Medical Association that there was a risk of injury. Fingerprints may also be forcibly taken from a detained person if a criminal offence is suspected.

All these measures are justified by the claim that the police need new powers to deal with the rising tide of crime and uphold the rule of law. There is an underlying assumption that given the right laws and a strong police force, together with the appropriate (tough) sanctions, crime can be eradicated or at least reduced to a minimum.

This analysis totally fails to look at the kinds of crime most widely committed and the motives behind them.

Despite the popular impression gained from the media and politicians most crime is not violent but rather consists of minor property offences. Criminals are much more likely to be shop-lifters than murderers or rapists. Such crimes must be seen in the context of a society which defends the acquisition of property so long as people play the game according to the rules. So, for example, it is quite lawful for the capitalist class systematically to rob the working class of the fruits of its labour through the form of exploitation called employment. Indeed, the greater the wealth that can be extracted from the workers the greater the praise and rewards. But if workers break the rules and try to grab a small slice of the cake by helping themselves from shops or banks, then they will feel the full force of the state against them.

A good example of the way in which workers are criminalised in this way occurred during the miners' strike. Many strikers were attempting to heat their homes using coal "picked" (at great personal risk) from slag heaps. This low quality coal had been mined by them and was of little use to the Coal Board, and yet many miners were prosecuted and charged with the theft of Coal Board property. To add further insult to injury a number of miners convicted of this type of "theft" were then sacked.

Class law

Besides the institution of private property itself, one cannot ignore the kinds of anti-social behaviour which capitalism induces through the ethic which places personal gain above that of the community. Is it any wonder that the ruthless and competitive quest for personal wealth is carried over to other areas of life?

Capitalism needs a police force to protect its central institution of private property and look after the interests of the owning class in a more general sense, for example to suppress certain kinds of dissent, justified on the grounds that certain acts constitute a threat to Public Order or National Security. (The recently published Government White Paper on Public Order Law represents a move in the direction of much tighter controls on the freedom of assembly.) The liberal values of impartial justice and the rule of law are mere rhetoric when governments, acting on behalf of the capitalist class, can constantly increase police powers to harass and control workers' lives still further. The "civil rights" of the working class, at best only tenuous, look set to suffer still further erosion.

What is needed is not to make the police more accountable, or to fight this particular piece of legislation or that police practice, but to challenge the whole basis of a society which gives rise to crime and the need for prisons and police forces.

Janie Percy-Smith