Finance and Industry: Are They The Only Cranks? (1967)

The Finance and Industry Column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are They The Only Cranks?

So the Social Credit Party has won a seat in the New Zealand parliament. These currency cranks have fielded a full complement of candidates at every election since they set up their Social Credit Political League in 1953. Their theories are based on the mistaken ideas of Major Douglas that at present there is a chronic shortage of purchasing power. Odd, you might think, that people can think that in a period of inflation there is a shortage of purchasing power. In any event, when the New Zealand government set up a Royal Commission on Monetary, Banking and Credit Systems, the Social Crediters decided to have a try at proving this. The Appendix to the Commission’s Report which appeared in 1956, and which deals with the Social Credit witnesses, makes interesting and amusing reading. Giving “evidence” for Social Credit were Mr. Jordan of the Social Credit Association and Miss King and Mr. Young of the Social Credit Political League.

Social Crediters claim that the present monetary system is inherently defective as there is a chronic gap between the amount of purchasing power and the prices of goods and services. The chief cause of this gap is the banking system which has, they say, a monopoly of the destruction and creation of money. In place of the present system they propose that the power to issue credit should be vested in the “community.” Hence the name: Social Credit. They propose to cover the gap by the issue of “debt-free money” which will allow taxes to be cut, prices to be reduced and social security benefits to be increased (Good vote-catchers these!). Further non-commercial public works could be financed in the same way – without any increase in the public debt. The ultimate aim of Social Credit is a system where all income takes the form of a national dividend, financed by debt-free money.

Douglas encouraged the myth of a chronic shortage of purchasing power with his spurious A+B Theorem. He merely took over the myth that banks create wealth from the Mystical School of Banking Theorists, as explained in last month’s Socialist Standard.

The Social Credit witnesses put up a sorry show. They refused to defend the A + B theorem; they could not even precisely define “purchasing power”; they had no idea of how banks operate; they implied that money doesn’t circulate; and their statistics were exposed as frauds.

Basically, Social Credit is a conservative movement wanting to preserve private enterprise capitalism while trying to remove some of its defects by tinkering with the money system. The Commission had little difficulty in showing where such tinkering would lead:

  If made in the present circumstances, the large issue of debt-free money contemplated by the Association and recommended by other Social Credit witnesses would produce most serious and chronic inflation and gravely disrupt New Zealand’s economy.

The Commission gleefully pointed out that the Social Credit schemes for abolishing interest would in the end be incompatible with the continuance of private enterprise capitalism. This was enough to temper the witnesses’ opposition to interest.

The Commission did manage to extract some revealing confessions. Poor Mr. Jordan seems to have been convinced that there was too much purchasing power! Says the Report:

  The Association’s original submissions were clearly based on the assumption that the supply of purchasing power in New Zealand has been and remains inadequate. But we can only conclude from Mr. Jordan’s final address that the Association had by then come to the conclusion that New Zealand was suffering in present circumstances from excess spending and an excess supply of money. Indeed, Mr. Jordan appealed to the Commission for a recommendation ‘that the war against inflation be carried on’.

Enough said. Social Creditors are of course easy meat. But they are not alone in promising to cut taxes and prices and to increase state hand-outs. There are others who claim to be able to solve the housing problem, abolish destitution and stop war to boot. If Social Credit are cranks, what are these others?


Jobs for the Bosses

Our masters seem to be split on whether or not to support their Labour government. On October 27 the Times reported a speech by Sir Frank Kearton, chairman of Courtaulds, under the headline SOCIALIST VIEW OF BUSINESS RESTATED. While SHAWCROSS CALL to RESIST SOCIALISM was the Daily Telegraph headline on December 2, reporting what Lord Shawcross, a director of Shell Petroleum, said in the House of Lords.

Kearton, who is also chairman-designate of the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation (the body set up by the government to encourage mergers), told his American Chamber of Commerce audience:

  As a young man and as an undergraduate I was an active worker for the Conservative cause. It is only now that I have become an old man that I have had to rather reluctantly recognise that the current Socialist Administration seems to have a better appreciation of business matters than did its Conservative predecessors.

He gave as his reason the fact that Labour was trying to build up the “dialogue” between government and business, as already happens in America.

Shawcross, on the other hand, confessed :

  Twenty years ago I was a Socialist myself. Five years of active experience in Government convinced me that whatever might be the position from an idealistic point of view. Socialism did not work in practice . . .
  I think the time is coming, if it has not already come, when leaders of private enterprise in this House and outside it. will have to consider whether, in the light of recent events, they should not more actively assert the advantages of the system in which they believe, rather than co-operate in measures which are intended to undermine it.

Of course, Kearton and Shawcross are not arguing about Socialism. We can be sure that as leaders of private enterprise they don’t look at anything from an idealistic point of view. What they are arguing about is the degree of state control over industry.

Kearton may have been a Tory but Shawcross never was a Socialist. He was Attorney General under Attlee, his two claims to fame being to shout “we are the masters now” in 1945 and having a go at prosecuting some strikers in 1951. Now he doesn’t want to co-operate with Labour. But the present Labour government is trying to do what the last one did: to man the organs of state control over business with people from business. Besides Kearton, those who are cooperating are impressive: former Tory Minister and former chairman of Stavely Industries Aubrey Jones (the man paid £15,000 a year to see we don’t get too much ourselves), arms salesman Ray Brown of Racal Electronics and his predecessor Sir Donald Stokes of Leyland. Ray Geddes of Dunlop and Lord Plowden of Tube Investments who have chaired Royal Commissions.

Adam Buick

The Passing Show: And a Happy New Year (1967)

The Passing Show Column from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

And a Happy New Year

If the Labour Government gets its way, the wage freeze will continue almost unabated until July. And even after that, there is going to be a lot of top level interference in pay negotiations, whatever the T.U.C. may feel. This much emerges from the Government’s White Paper issued at the end of last November.

When the Government’s plans were announced on November 22nd, there followed one of those little discussions in the Commons in which one or two interesting things were said. For instance that pearl of wisdom from the lips of Mr. Ian Macleod: ‘The normal or primary cause of poverty is the size of families.” What enlightenment! And this is one of our ‘betters’—a man we are supposed to respect for his wisdom in guiding our affairs. More about poverty next month, but for the time being, we’ll just content ourselves with reminding Mr. Macleod of the large families which exist, some of them very rich indeed. The cause of poverty has nothing to do with family size, although of course an already poor condition can be affected by it to some extent.

But if Mr. Macleod waxed eloquent in his ignorance, he certainly could not find a much better match than Economic Affairs Minister Michael Stewart, who was at great pains to explain how legitimate and desirable profits were. “Of course,” he said. “It’s up to the Government to take fiscal measures to deal with excessive growth of profits” . . .  and just what that meant is anybody’s guess. From our point of view, there is no such thing as “excessive” profit; we are opposed to the profit-making system anyway. But for the Labour Party, perhaps an apt new year’s slogan would be. Profits for the few and a wage freeze for you.

Incidentally, if you watched TV a couple of nights later, you may have seen the rotundly well fed Mr. Callaghan telling us all to get ‘lean and fit’ for the battles ahead. This is merely a variation on an old and tedious theme which went under different headings in the past, such as ‘pull your belts in.’ And strangely, it is often uttered loudest by those with the biggest waistline. There is no shortage of large girths and accompanying impertinence, in the present Labour Government.

Exit Another Promise 

It was Mr. Krushchev, I think, who said: “Promises are like piecrusts, made to be broken.” Well, as a particularly cynical Soviet politician, he should have known; but when he said it, there were umpteen other politicians hastening to make public condemnation of his words. Yet they certainly had a ring of truth in them as far as capitalist politics is concerned. We can all recall, for example, how the Tories said they would stop the rise in the cost of living—and failed; and we have seen how Mr. Wilson’s government are doing all sorts of things they said they would never do, like favouring unemployment. The latest of their broken promises is in housing. According to the Housing Ministry’s report of November 14th 1966, there is little prospect of their programme going above 382,000 dwellings this year, despite their 1964 election pledge of 400,000 a year minimum. If you are a Labourite, you will perhaps be surprised and disappointed. If you are a Socialist, practically nothing will surprise you.

Maybe some politicians make promises they know they haven’t a chance of keeping. Maybe others are more sincere. It makes little difference to the end result, because capitalism operates regardless of the sincerity or otherwise of its statesmen. Its caprices can make a mockery of the most modest promises, and housing has been a perpetual casualty in this respect for many years. Yet you can take an even bet that every capitalist party will make a promise to solve it, at the next election.


The Cost of Living — and Dying

We live in an acquisitive society; everyone is concerned directly of otherwise, not only in producing wealth, but in grabbing hold of as much as possible of it. Nevertheless, it’s a process which favours the few to a considerable extent, for most of us can only dream of being rich. Amassing riches means, among other things, that sales must be kept as high as possible and costs as low as possible. Hence a constant obsession with production costs in capitalist society is all-pervading, and pokes its ugly snout into fields where, we have been traditionally led to believe, the only concern is human welfare.

Such as medicine. And it is depressing to see the cold-blooded way that some of the leading doctors and experts accept without question that costs are really more important than human beings — although they would fiercely deny this if you expressed it so baldly.

According to the Guardian (28.11.66), between 6,000 and 7,000 lives a year could be saved in the 15—44 age group, if there were concentrated research, medical facilities, and health education. Good for its own sake, you might think, but the fact that it would mean a “nett contribution to the economy of about £30 millions was the salient point to Mr. George Teeling-Smith of the Office of Health Economics. Each survivor, according to Mr. Smith’s calculations would be worth about £5,000 . . .

  . . . and if the cost of curing him was less than this it was ridiculous not to find it.

You see what I mean? What if the cost were greater? The object is to get a profit, or at least avoid too great a loss, and if that can’t be done, then the priority shifts elsewhere.

This sort of consideration has affected the allocation of haemodialysis machines for the treatment of kidney disease sufferers. At present there are not enough of these machines to go round, so doctors have the unenviable job of deciding priorities. Those who are lucky enough to get a machine will at least have their lives prolonged, but in the present state of medical knowledge, the remainder will almost certainly die.

If a Socialist world had to deal with such a problem, we would first of all strain every nerve and fibre to overcome the machine shortage, and if despite this doctors still had grim decisions to make, at least the question of cost would have no part in them. But today, in a set of eight criteria listed by Professor de Wardener of Charing Cross Hospital, the following are noteworthy for their callousness:

What are the financial consequences?
Who ought to pay?
Ought the large sums involved be directed to this purpose?
                                                               (Guardian 28.11.66).

It seems there are more ways of dying for capitalism than on a battlefield.

Eddie Critchfield

Notices (1967)

From the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a letter from E. Ashley, without any address. It is not our policy to publish such letters, but if she will let us know her address—which will of course not be revealed—we shall be pleased to publish her letter with our comments.

#    #    #    #

Last month we published what seemed to be an article, with the title, ‘Its up to You’. We did not make it clear that this was in fact a letter from a person who at the time was not a member of the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain.

#    #    #    #

Jamaica

All those interested in Socialist cause contact George Dolphy, 26 Hannah Street, Hannah Town. Kingston, Jamaica.

Letters: The spirit of Clause Four (1967)

Letters to the Editors from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The spirit of Clause Four

Sir,

In your August edition of the Socialist Standard, H in his book review of Incomes Policy. Legislation and Shop Stewards refers to Clause Four as the clause “which commits them (the Labour Party) to mass nationalisation or state capitalism”. On reading Clause Four I find no mention of nationalisation or state capitalism but only “common ownership” and “popular administration”. I do not deny for one moment that Clause Four has come to mean state capitalism, but that was. and is, not the spirit behind it.

P.A.S. 

Leamington Spa

Reply:

What is the "spirit” behind Clause Four? It talks about common ownership, in the same way as Labour Ministers assert that the wage freeze is a step towards Socialism, but it also mentions the means of exchange. There is a contradiction here, for how can wealth which is commonly owned need a means of exchanging it?

Clause Four is typical of the confusion and the hypocrisy of the Labour Party. To the mass of Labour supporters, common ownership means nationalisation. If this is a change in “spirit” then that is what was to be expected from an organisation which sought support from non-Socialists and which cadged for votes on a programme of capitalist reforms.

In any case, why have a constitution which is open to interpretation and whose “spirit” can be changed? An organisation which stands for Socialism can say so, clearly and consistently. Have a look at our sixty-three year old Object and Declaration of Principles.

Editorial Committee

Negative Criticism

Sir,

I have read the Socialist Standard for over a year now, in which time 99 per cent of your space has been devoted to the negative criticism of capitalism in all its aspects.

However, you never seem to ask yourselves “Where do we go from here?” Granted that capitalism is rotten and that Socialism would be far better; you seem unable to advance any positive ideas for the establishment of Socialism. You do not put forward any plans for the running of world Socialism if and when it is here.

You only appear capable of waiting on the sidelines for the “inevitable collapse of capitalism”; perhaps you do not know that the only thing which comes to he who waits is whiskers.

Look at your party’s object — “The establishment of a system of society . . .” Very well, then, do something constructive to help this.

Possibly you have been so long criticising, looking for the bad (and finding it) that you are unable to think in a positive way.

Surely instead of continually thinking and writing of the faults of capitalism today you would be better occupied thinking and writing of ways and means to implement Socialism tomorrow?

D.M. 

Eltham, S.E.9

Reply: 

The collapse of capitalism is not inevitable; if we thought it were, we would not be working so hard to bring capitalism to an end; it would happen whatever we did.

Socialists are not content to wait for Socialism; we are impatient for it and we know it to be urgent now. But Socialism cannot be established by a minority; it must be the political act of a majority of workers who are consciously Socialist.

We live today under capitalism because the majority of the working class are content to do so. The job of a Socialist is to encourage the spread of discontent with capitalism and to show that there is an alternative to it. How are we to do this?

First we must diagnose society’s illnesses. We must point out that capitalism causes problems like hunger and poverty and war. We must expose organisations like the Labour Party, and the fraud in Russia; we must analyse the influence which “great men” are supposed to have in society and so on. What this amounts to is a criticism of capitalism. And because the workers’ support for capitalism is so widespread, and so deep-rooted, we have to spend a great deal of time in criticising.

The first positive idea about the establishment of Socialism —an idea held only by the Socialist Party — is that it can only be brought about by a Socialist working class. We do not know when this will happen; we do not know, for example, what methods of production and communication will be at man’s disposal when it does happen. Because of this, we cannot lay down plans of what Socialism will be like. We can only set out its basis —the common ownership and democratic control of the means of wealth production and distribution. We are as impatient at this as anyone. The remedy is with the working class. We are working as hard as we know to bring Socialism about. D.M. has been reading the Socialist Standard for a year now; if he agrees with our case his place is inside the Socialist Party, helping us.

Editorial Committee

GLC Elections (1967)

Party News from the January 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt Britain is planning to contest 14 seats in the coming GLC elections; the full numbers of candidates will be put forward in the following areas: Camden (3), Ealing (4), Haringey (3) and Lambeth (4).

Further details will be published next month. Meanwhile funds are needed and donations are welcome. Please send your donations to E. Lake, Treasurer, Socialist Party of Gt. Britain, 52 Clapham High Street, London, SW4.

The bulk of the work will be done by the branches in the areas concerned. These are Paddington and Bloomsbury (Camden); Greenford and West London (Ealing); Haringey (Haringey); and South West London (Lambeth). Those interested in further details can contact the secretaries of these brandies.

Proper Gander: Living The Dream (2016)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

It might sound obvious, but the way we react to global events depends on what information we have about them. In his latest epic polemic, Adam Curtis takes this simple point and turns it into something deeper and more unsettling. He argues that the way we have come to see the world is through a process of ‘Hypernormalisation’, also the name of his film, available through the BBC iPlayer.

The title comes from Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, which analysed the mood in the Soviet Union during its last decades. Yurchak coined the term ‘hypernormalised’ to describe the strange way that Soviet society was perceived by its populace at the time. Official pronouncements about matters like rates of commodity production were recognised as unreliable by most people every time they went to an empty shop or joined a food queue. But without alternative explanations, everybody had to act as if the official story was real, distorting their sense of reality. An analogy familiar from many workplaces is how targets and outcomes are measured, which everyone involved realises are manipulated and fake, but which we all pretend are objective and accurate. We’ve bought into a ‘dreamworld’, shaped from the top by politicians and financiers, as a way of covering up how they don’t have control over events, from suicide bombings to Brexit, from corruption to migration. The aim is to maintain as much stability as possible in an unstable world.

The political and social climate in which this shift in perception has taken place developed from the mid-70s. Then, according to Curtis, the way authority was exercised changed from old-fashioned political negotiation to new-style power through money and threats. Two examples he gives are from 1975, when in America, banks stopped lending to businesses, and took authority away from politicians, and in Syria, where President Assad’s attempts to unite Arab nations were scotched by the then US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. He used an approach he called ‘Constructive Ambiguity’ to fracture alliances between Arab states by misleading them about the details of treaties between other nations. This succeeded in disuniting the Middle East and infuriating Assad. These events helped shape the world we live in now, of tensions between Islamic states and a West still facing a financial crisis. Being unable to control the situation has meant that governments focus on manipulating our understanding of them, through other tactics like ‘Perception Management’. One example of this was the American government and armed forces engineering the UFO phenomenon. Curtis argues that they spread disinformation that the strange lights and shapes people were seeing in the skies could be alien spacecraft, to cover-up their real explanation as experimental military planes.

The strategy of Perception Management is more than just telling lies, though. Its ‘highest achievement’ was when George W Bush and Tony Blair turned to Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for help with the situation in Iraq. The Public Relations industry, espionage and most academics all contributed to Gaddafi’s reinvention as an ally, having been demonised by the West for years. Gaddafi pretended to dismantle weapons of mass destruction he didn’t have, and took the blame for the Lockerbie bombing in exchange for sanctions against Libya being lifted, introducing the odd notion of accepting responsibility for something you don’t admit doing. Gaddafi’s role and persona has been remodelled by Western states, regardless of the truth about him, whatever that is.

The government and media personified conflict in the Middle East with ‘evil people’ like Saddam Hussein, Assad of Syria and, sometimes, Colonel Gaddafi. This distracted us from how the conflict was really shaped, as described in Curtis’ previous broadcast (see Socialist Standard, March 2015). In Bitter Lake, he argued that American and European military and economic involvement in the Middle East fuelled jihadism and suicide bombings, which in turn fuelled more Western involvement, creating a feedback loop.

In Russia, perception has been manipulated through the work of ‘Political Technologists’, such as Vladislav Surkov, now working as a personal adviser to President Putin. Surkov sponsored fascist groups, and anti-fascist groups, and parties opposed to Putin. Then he let it be known that he was doing this, so that no-one could tell how real these organisations were.

When so much about the outside world is confusing and contradictory, we’ve turned to cyberspace to find some reassurance. But the algorithms behind social media mean that we get pulled to online content which isn’t likely to challenge our views. According to Curtis, in an age of individualism, we find security in having ourselves reflected back at us.

Radical politics has also changed to fit with our uncertain times, and now tries to influence people’s thinking through personal expression, not through collective action. So, singers, artists, comedians and writers (including Curtis himself) voice radical ideas which may empower them and produce great, perceptive works, but they can’t change the world because that relies on working together. Curtis says that radicalism now doesn’t involve people giving themselves to a collective project as much as those in the 1960s civil rights movement did.

He discusses the two recent movements which did involve people acting collectively: the Arab Spring and Occupy. He argues that the Occupy movement set out to make real the original aim of the internet, as a leaderless space, free from politics and hierarchies. The sharing and spreading of ideas which the internet enables means that it could be used to organise a revolution without leaders, and it contributed to both how the Occupy movement and Arab Spring operated. However, after using social media to organise themselves, radicals in the Arab Spring ground to a halt without having a vision of what they wanted society to be. Hard-line Islamists did have a plan for the future, though, and this gave them the drive to gain power. In the West, the Occupy movement lacked a programme to really change society, and instead became confused and dominated by meetings. Its members had no vision of a future world, so instead the movement was less about ideas than how to manage situations.

In interviews, Curtis has emphasised that not seeing a better, future society is central to the problem of our ‘hypernormal’ perception of capitalism. We’ve lost the ‘thrill’ of wanting to jump into an unknown future, and find reassurance in accepting the version of reality presented by (and suited to) the capitalist class and its apologists.

Rulers manipulating the ‘truth’ is nothing new. The difference now is the sophistication with which this is done, whether through Perception Management, Constructive Ambiguity, Political Technologists or algorithms. Curtis’ argument isn’t just that these approaches are used to keep control of us, but also to cover up the lack of control each section of the ruling class has over global events. His aim is to help us see through the ‘hypernormalised’ version of reality we are fed, to raise awareness of our awareness.

Mike Foster

Poster Boys (2016)

Book Review from the December 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Mad Men & Bad Men: When British Politics Met Advertising’, by Sam Delaney. Faber & Faber £9.99.

Political advertising is not allowed on radio and TV in the UK, but is permitted on posters, in the press and on-line. Party political broadcasts do not count as advertising, though advertising gurus work on them. Political ads are not subject to the advertising code, so do not need to be honest and truthful. Here Sam Delaney examines the contribution of advertising to politics, based mainly on interviews with admen and a few politicians. A couple of adwomen get brief mentions.

Saatchi & Saatchi are well known for their work on Conservative Party posters and election broadcasts. It worked both ways, though, as the political impact helped make the agency very successful. Delaney opens, however, by recalling an interview that Maurice Saatchi gave when Thatcher died, in which he claimed that the agency had not really done very much, and that presentation was not all that important in politics. Maybe this just illustrates the common adage that the adman should never take credit for the client’s success, since it is all down to the quality of the product (whether shampoo or a political party). Of course sometimes admen do claim that they played a central role. Possibly the truth is that advertising and presentation are crucial in close elections, such as that of 1992, but not otherwise.

The Conservatives have nearly always had far more money to spend on advertising than Labour, and Tory ads have often been rather more brutal than those of Labour. Perhaps the best-known political slogan was ‘Labour isn’t working’ from 1978. Complaints about this led to even more publicity for the Tories and the poster containing it. The ‘Labour’s tax bombshell’ poster from 1992 had a comparable impact, despite being not entirely accurate. Big ad agencies have been reluctant to be associated with Labour, on the grounds that their corporate clients might not approve, so their links have sometimes had to be kept secret.

One of the book’s themes is the way the balance of power between admen and politicians has changed over time. Originally admen were very much in the back seat, and Callaghan only consulted them after making decisions. But gradually they became more central, softening Thatcher’s image, for instance, and influencing which topics were given most importance in campaigns. The emphasis on criticising opponents rather than presenting a party’s own achievements and promises remains, but admen and their agencies now seem to have less of a role.

After reviewing the 2015 General Election campaign, Delaney writes, ‘It is hard to see why or to what end political parties will ever employ ad agencies again.’ This does not mean the end of political advertising, but a big change in how it is carried out. In April 2015 the Conservatives were spending £100,000 a month just on Facebook advertising. The use of social media has now become central, together with ads targeted at specific groups of voters (such as voters in marginal seats, or women who might be thinking of voting UKIP rather than Conservative). A lot of money has been spent in building up a database of actual and potential Tory voters, partly based on the causes people supported in petitions on change.org. Just as all advertising has become slicker and more ‘professional’, the same applies to its political cousin.

There is no mention of admen in Anthony King’s Who Governs Britain?. It can hardly be argued that the admen are among those who govern, but they clearly sway people’s opinions and that shows the influence wielded by money.

Paul Bennett

Rear View: Clueless Charities (2017)

The Rear View Column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Clueless Charities

Shelter, a charity campaigning to end homelessness, celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. Towards the end of 2016 they reminded us that during the season of goodwill 120,000 children in Britain would be homeless. Related news coverage has been grim and predictable. ‘A homeless man froze to death on the streets of Birmingham just a day before UK charity Shelter warned more than 250,000 people in England will be homeless this Christmas as high rents, benefit cuts, and a worsening housing crisis create the perfect storm. The body of the unknown man was found in the West Midlands city at 11.30pm GMT on Wednesday, the coldest night of the year. It is understood the body, found in John Bright Street, is that of a 30-year-old man with no fixed address. Figures compiled by Shelter reveal that 255,000 people across the country are forced to live in hostels and other types of temporary accommodation, or to sleep rough on the streets. London has the highest rate of homelessness. As many as one in 25 residents of the central London borough of Westminster are without a home” (rt.com, 1 December). But what has 50 years on the reformist treadmill achieved? We are informed that presently one in three UK households are on the ‘brink’ of homelessness. This ‘problem’ existed long before Shelter and many other charities came into being and will persist for another 50+ years unless we bring an end to capitalism. Oscar Wilde expressed this well: ‘their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease. They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible’ (The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891).

Free Speech

‘Cardiff University in Wales has said it will no longer ban events by controversial speakers, declaring censorship is not the answer. The decision was made by the Cardiff University Students’ Union at their annual conference last week, where they passed a motion called Challenge, Don’t Censor‘ (patriotnewsagency.com, 3 December). This is good news. Socialists value free and open debate with all opponents, and naturally oppose censorship and safe spaces. George Yancy, a professor of philosophy at Emory University, stated recently ‘I refuse to entertain my students with mummified ideas and abstract forms of philosophical self-stimulation. What leaves their hands is always philosophically alive, vibrant and filled with urgency. I want them to engage in the process of freeing ideas, freeing their philosophical imaginations. I want them to lose sleep over the pain and suffering of so many lives that many of us deem disposable. I want them to become conceptually unhinged, to leave my classes discontented and maladjusted’ (nytimes.com, 30 November). Such a rare and provocative approach to education has been reported to the Professor Watchlist, a modern-day form of McCarthyism promoted by the conservative youth group Turning Point USA. The Economic League in the UK had similar objectives for the duration of its existence, 1919-1993.

Pious Platitudes

Who said ‘. . . what we are speaking about is the common good of humanity, of the right of each person to share in the resources of this world and to have the same opportunities to realize his or her potential…’ (time.com, 3 December)? Marx? Morris? Wilde? No, one Jorge Mario Bergoglio – in his current role as Pope. The 1 percent have no need to tremble in their designer boots as the Dalai Lama went through such a phase, even calling himself a Marxist, without socialism being any nearer. Besides, did not Sarah Palin insist recently that one or other gods had intervened in the US election in order to give us Donald Trump? The prayers of the capitalists are answered: it’s business as usual.

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

‘. . . pyrimethamine, the drug the Sydney Grammar School kids were able to make for $2 per dose, and which Turing sells for up to $750, can be bought in India for as little as $0.10’ (qz.com, 2 December). That’s capitalism folks!

Proper Gander (at the movies): The Benefits Trap (2017)

The Proper Gander Column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Film Review: 'I, Daniel Blake' director Ken Loach

The most important film of 2016 was undoubtedly Ken Loach’s passionate response to the government’s austerity measures, I, Daniel Blake. The eponymous main character (played by stand-up comedian Dave Johns) is a 59 year-old joiner living in Newcastle. The story begins with Daniel recovering from a heart attack. His GP has judged him not fit to work, and has signed the ‘med 3’ form (used to be nicknamed a ‘sick note’, now renamed in doublespeak as a ‘fit note’) he needs to claim Employment and Support Allowance sickness benefit. However, at the ‘work capability assessment’ which claimants have to undertake to continue to be paid, he is judged to have enough capacity to find work. Perversely, this decision by a ‘healthcare professional’ trumps that of the GP. So, Daniel (almost literally) half-heartedly looks for employment, but feels unable to accept jobs because of his GP’s advice. He makes a claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance, but struggles with the procedures for looking for vacancies online. In the job centre, Daniel meets Katie, who with her young children has been relocated from a homeless hostel in London to a flat in Newcastle. She is claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance, but her claim gets suspended (or ‘sanctioned’) because she’s late for an appointment. Without an income, she is forced to instead turn to prostitution and food banks.

The script was researched with the assistance of Department for Work and Pensions employees, who remain anonymous in the credits for fear of losing their jobs. The film doesn’t dwell on the reports of job centre workers having targets for the numbers of claimants they sanction, although it features staff being told off by a manager for being helpful. Other details in the film are familiar to anyone who’s tried to navigate the benefits system, such as the questions in the work capability assessment: ‘can you raise either arm as if to put something in your top pocket?’. Similarly accurate is the music heard when Daniel inevitably gets placed on hold when phoning the benefits office. What would Vivaldi think now if he knew that was the use to which his Spring would be put?

I, Daniel Blake has had a wider impact than Loach’s recent films. In November, the film’s pivotal scene of a spray-paint protest was played out for real when the words ‘I, Daniel Blake’ appeared on the wall of Exeter job centre. In a Prime Minister’s Question Time session, Jeremy Corbyn suggested that Theresa May should watch it when he was criticising the ‘institutionalised barbarity’ of the benefits system in relation to unwell claimants. Someone who hadn’t seen the film was Damian Green, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, who nevertheless felt able to describe it as ‘monstrously unfair’. One of his predecessors – Iain Duncan Smith said ‘The film has taken the very worst of anything that can ever happen to anybody, lumped it all together and then say ‘absolutely, this is life as it is lived by people’. And I don’t believe that’. A DWP spokesperson chipped in with ‘This film is one person’s artistic interpretation of the benefits system. … It is a work of fiction, not a documentary’.

Loach has said that he finds politicians criticising the film ‘predictable’. In a comment to the Press Association, he said ‘If they don’t know what they are doing to people they are incompetent and shouldn’t be in government. If they do know what they are doing then they are not fit to be in government.’ Elsewhere, Loach has criticised the Tories for the ‘conscious cruelty’ of the benefits system. He’s a fan of Corbyn, but isn’t a member of the Labour Party, having previously backed Left Unity before it was eclipsed by Labour’s shift leftwards. He still calls Labour ‘the party of the working class’. While Loach may be a left-wing reformist, his film doesn’t openly advocate reforms to the benefits system. Instead, it shows the bureaucratic trap where many people too unwell for work fall (being unable to fall into the other trap of employment), and allows us to draw our own conclusions. The film is likely to reinforce the views of those who back reformism, but could equally be interpreted as illustrating how the whole system of which the welfare state is a part is unworkable. Once he has to rely on the benefits system, Daniel finds that it’s not really there to benefit him, and its rules and procedures seem designed to make it harder to maintain a claim.

At the age of 80, Ken Loach has lost none of the anger at how capitalism affects people which his previous films have expressed. I, Daniel Blake takes elements from his previous work, such as the title echoing that of My Name Is Joe, his 1998 film about a recovering alcoholic. And he hired a stand-up comedian to play the lead role, as he had with casting Chrissie Rock as a victim of domestic abuse in 1994’s Ladybird, Ladybird. Most obviously, I, Daniel Blake shares its target with Cathy Come Home (1966), both criticising the failings of the welfare state, and both having an impact beyond the screen. Loach himself has said that it’s ‘shocking’ he’s made a film in a similar vein to Cathy Come Home fifty years on.

Mike Foster

Must There be a Ruling Class? (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the social philosophy of Marxism a ‘pernicious illusion’, a variant of a ‘utopian dream’ which must cost humanity dear whenever an attempt is made to realise it? In other words is the realisation of socialism impossible?

They say ‘Yes’

A powerful argument against its possibility has been advanced in the political sociology of Mosca, Michels and Pareto. Their arguments are impressive, especially when we remember that, writing before the First World War, they were writing prior to the establishment of modern totalitarianism, and at a time when optimism was as general as pessimism is today. The fact that their predictions have been partially confirmed by events gives them added weight.

Anyone who has had experience of modern politics would tend to agree with Mosca’s theory; it has a high plausibility and contains much that is true. It asserts that political power in actuality never rests upon consent of the majority, that irrespective of ideologies or leading personalities, all political rule is a process, now peaceful, now coercive, by which a minority gratifies its own interests, in a situation where not all interests can receive equal consideration. As Mosca puts it in The Ruling Class:

  ‘Political power always has been, and always will be exercised by organised minorities, which have had and will have the means, varying as the times vary to impose their supremacy upon the multitudes.’

The means vary from public myths and legal frauds to direct brutal force, depending upon the conditions of the time. Whichever side wins the masses who have fought, bled and starved, lose. Their ‘saviours’ become their rulers under the prestige of new myths. The essential content of minority control and exploitation remains despite the fact that mythical forms change. For Mosca this is a ‘law’ of all social life which can be demonstrated to the satisfaction of everyone except the ‘dull,’ the ‘pious’ and candidates for political leadership. It is a ‘law’ accepted by every political partisan as obviously true for other organisations but as a slander when applied to their own.

According to Pareto (in Mind and Society) differences between groups and conflict between their interests are always more persuasive than the harmonies which idealist philosophers discover more often than not by definition. Belief in the homogeneity of society is a fable for simpletons. Every society divides roughly into two classes – an elite which includes all who enjoy the fruits of recognised excellence in virtue of their strength, cunning, valour, wealth, social origin – ‘the lions and foxes’ – and a non-elite which comprises the rest of the population – the sheep. The elite, in turn, subdivide into a governing elite and a non-governing elite which mutually support each other. Like the poor, the governing elite we will always have with us. Whenever its members lack quality of vigour, will, discipline and readiness to use force in an emergency new members are recruited from the non-elite, those who prove that they are not sheep after all. ‘History is the graveyard of aristocracies.’ But we will always have aristocracies. Power may be taken in the name of humanity, democracy and freedom; it can only be wielded by a few.

Michels in Political Parties reaches the same conclusions, but they are based on a far more empirical study. Political power on behalf of any ideal, no matter how democratically conceived inevitable, involves the emergence of a leadership which in the (last analysis) controls the organisation. If it is defeated it is replaced, not by a functioning democracy, but by a new leadership. All democratic movements, therefore, are doomed by the ‘iron law of oligarchy’. According to this ‘the majority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined by tragic necessity to submit to the domination of a small minority, and must be content to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy’.

We say ‘No’

We should distinguish between the descriptive analyses and the theoretical explanations these writers offer. After differences in political rule have been taken into account most of their conclusions are valid. Ruling parties are controlled by minorities, they do rely on lies, chicanery and naked force. These are the props of political rule. We couldn’t agree more. But in explaining these phenomena Mosca falls back upon a psychological theory of human nature as something given and fixed independently of its social and historical context. Almost every one of his major explanations and predictions involves an appeal to an original nature, seen as essentially unalterable despite its varying expressions. Political laws are derived from the unchangeable elements in the nature of humans. Mosca referred to them as ‘wicked instincts’. It is from this conception of original sin that his direct prophecies flow.

Pareto’s doctrine of the constancy of the residues – instincts, needs and interests – is summed up in the sentence: ‘The centuries roll by and human nature remains the same.’ Michels weakens the force of his arguments which are drawn from the technical indispensability of the division of labour in all political organisations by deducing that ‘the majority is permanently incapable of democratic self-government.’

An argument from human nature is invoked to support a sociological law. The analysis, although historical in form and content, is based upon a non-historical theoretical explanation. The sociological explanation is empty because it is devoid of history, that is, it is not based on theoretical activities of man but upon presupposed psychological qualities which give rise to these activities.

For the sake of argument we can grant their claims except when they speak in the future tense. Social problems are always specific, are always rooted in the concrete needs of a particular people at a determinate time. How they will solve these depends upon the conditions at hand – the knowledge they possess, for example, the knowledge of political and economic laws, the predominant social values and a number of other factors. The way people will act in the future will depend upon the problems they will have to solve and upon their state of knowledge, and not upon any unchanging nature. The problems themselves change with changing understanding. The problems facing the socialist are difference from those facing the non-socialist. Different problems require different solutions, thus different behaviour, different ways of acting, a different human nature.

It seems, then, that any attempt to find an invariant core of properties which constitute human nature will not stand up to sociological or historical analysis. We can only observe how people behave and act under certain conditions. What we are interested in is what people actually do and how they do it, and since human activity and behaviour is continually changing, the study of human nature must be a historical study. Historical traditions, habits and social institutions play a much more important role in political behaviour, and are more reliable in predicting the future than any set of innate impulses, residues, instincts or urges. By isolating the latter from their objective cultural setting, selecting from among them an alleged impulse to dominate, to be selfish, to fight, love or flee, the pattern of human nature can be cut to suit any political myth. This is precisely what the elitist theorists have done.

They have rendered a service in so far as they make us realise the need for devising institutional safeguards for the attainment and preservation of democracy. The most import safeguard being the replacement of the institution of private property by that of social property. These theories are pernicious in that they amount to a counsel of despair. If human nature is something unchanging and static then any social change is futile, since domination, oppression and exploitation will remain although masquerading in different forms and under different ideologies. Indeed Mosca and Pareto (Michels is in a different category, although a pessimist, he advocates struggle and social revolution) maintain that social revolution is meaningless. We cannot agree. We find the status quo impossible.

L.H.

‘Bourgeois’ Ideology (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of my less endearing characteristics, according to some friends, is my condemnation of anything I find politically or culturally objectionable as ‘bourgeois’. It is a polemical convention that socialists sometimes use as a description of values and concepts we find to be provocatively antithetical. For non-socialists this kind of political shorthand can be mystifying and downright annoying. So what exactly do we mean when we use this most cutting and dismissive of critiques? Is there a coherent set of values and principles that underlies the constant drone of contemporary cultural commentary which represents a conscious attempt to control our response to events and ideas and make them conform to political norms?

Before continuing our analysis we must define what we mean by ‘bourgeois’. Historically it defined the capitalists who were to challenge the political hegemony of the king and aristocracy. After having been successful in their quest for power they now represent a ruling class. Today’s ‘middle class’ can be defined as members of the working class who are relatively a little more affluent than their fellows and who, more importantly, aspire to the position and values of the ruling class. In many ways it is this section of our society that has attempted a political defence of their masters in terms of a value system (ideology).

Throughout this article when referring to this ideology it is not a reference to any work done specifically by members of the bourgeoisie themselves, but rather to the efforts of those who seek to proclaim and defend their legitimacy. Bourgeois economics for instance, is rarely, if ever, the product of the class that bears its name but rather that of those who are blessed and sponsored by them (including mainstream media etc).

So what is the essence of this ideology? Perhaps there are three elements that are always present: (a) the deification of the market, (b) the need for authoritarian social structures and (c) the contempt for real ‘work’. Other bourgeois ideologists replace these three categories with: (a) rational economic exchange, (b) democratic security and (c) success as a celebration of ‘hard work’. This obvious dialectically opposed description of the same ideology is an illustration of what Marx called the ‘internal contradictions’ within the attempt to rationalise the ruling class’s power. As to which description is more relevant or which better represents ‘reality’ let us now revisit our categories in turn.

Adam Smith’s celebration of the ‘invisible hand’ in his work The Wealth of Nations was an important step towards the deification of the market system. It is both a supernatural metaphor for the economic mechanism of capitalism together with a quasi-religious admiration for it. In a way Marx also shared this admiration but only insofar as it made socialism possible. Marx systematically demystified capitalist economics and although he represented the climax of Smith’s classical tradition, subsequent economists have sought to distance themselves from his work. Why? Because he revealed it for what it was, and still is – the exploitation of the majority by a parasitic tiny minority.

Most contemporary economists work within the narrow paradigms of capitalist ideology that refute the possibility of any alternative economic relationship and, through ignorance, proclaim it as the ‘true faith’. As a result of their attempt to ‘rationalise the irrational’ most people are totally mystified and believe that these high priests of bourgeois ideology must have access to some profound secret that explains it all – when all they have, in reality, is their faith.

Given the stark contradiction between the social production of everything and the individual ownership of what’s produced it is not surprising that this tiny minority feel the need for the threat of force to be available to defend their wealth. This is the only reason for the existence of the state and its enforcers: the armed services and police. Bourgeois ideology depends on a phantom of ‘human nature’ as greedy, envious and violent in order to rationalise this ever-present threat. Enshrined in their ‘laws’ are the rights to defend their stolen wealth with violence and imprisonment. This authoritarian ethos becomes even more dangerous when, as periodically occurs, capitalism crashes and the subsequent chaos encourages people to blame immigrants and foreigners for their economic suffering, which in turn, enables the authoritarian character of the state to flourish.

Bourgeois ideology has no interest in whether ‘work’ is fulfilling, meaningful or even destructive just so long as it’s profitable. If, as socialists believe, the very essence of our humanity is our creative work and the benefits it brings to the community, then capitalism has rendered us ‘inhuman’. An employer once told me, when asked what motivated him, that: ‘I want to lie around on a desert island and never work again’. Such a sad superficial understanding of what brings happiness to humanity together with the obvious contempt for any kind of ‘work’ is an indictment of their ideological perversion of a basic human need.

This then, is the ideology created by the intelligentsia of capitalism. It is debatable how appropriate or informative the use of the term ‘bourgeois’ is for all of the intellectual and productive endeavours within capitalism, but given the above definition it seems always present to a greater or lesser degree. We have to bear in mind that socialism will be born out of capitalism and so some of its activities are potentially subversive and progressive. Although there is much talk of ‘bourgeois science’ it is hard to recognize an ideological element within mathematics or geometry; that particular debate has yet to be resolved. Of course the uses to which science is put in this benighted culture of ours are readily explained by bourgeois ideology but perhaps the ‘scientific method’ itself, however problematic, will aid and not hinder the cause of revolution.

Wez

Power, Overt and Covert (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The concept of power is an important but contested one. For socialists the question is an important as they are engaged in a process challenging and ultimately transforming the existing power relations of society. How power is defined determines what is examined and what our conclusions about it will be. This article looks at how some key contemporary writers have approached the problem.

Writing in the 1960s, Robert Dahl came to the conclusion that while there was an apparent tension between equal access to voting rights and unequal access to power resources – such as ‘knowledge, wealth, social position, access to officials, and other resources’ –  a small elite did not dominate policy making and that a wide range of actors did take an active part in the process. Dahl based his work around study of political activity in New Haven, Connecticut, US and focused exclusively on the final decision-making stage of the policy process, where the actions of the various actors could visibly be studied. He measured success in terms of having a proposed policy accepted.

Bachrach and Baratz, in a later study, saw this as a shortcoming of Dahl’s work and argued that power can be exercised as much by keeping issues off the political agenda as by having a policy approved. For them Dahl’s focus on overt power failed to capture the whole picture, where covert influence – such as the press’s and politics ability to control the terms of the debate – played an important role. When an issue reaches the stage of political discussion a certain amount of obstacles have already been overcome.

Further criticism was raised by Steven Lukes, who looked at how the preferences of actors involved in the process of policy development were shaped and developed. For an issue to become a candidate for a prospective policy it has to be framed in such a way as to motivate sufficient interest and salience. Lukes argued that the way in which people think about an issue – about what is valid, realistic or fair – is shaped by the dominant values of their society and that these values therefore exercise a kind of latent power. For a certain set of ideas or values to become socially dominant a vast amount of persuasion and leadership must have already been drawn upon. Lukes was concerned with the broad value structures of society and how these shape outcomes.

Taken together these three outlooks can be seen as representing what Lukes in his 1974 book Power: A Radical View called the ‘three dimensions of power’. Dahl focuses on the visible vote winning and proposal acceptance, as one dimension. Bachrach and Baratz add the ‘none visible’ power of agenda setting as a second dimension of power. Lukes adds the third dimension, the most hidden aspect of setting the social norms and values that steer agenda setting. It is this third dimension that is of most interest to socialists, since socialism is not currently on the agenda and common opinion would still seem to be against it.

Many regular readers of the Socialist Standard may note the similarity between Lukes’ third dimension of power and Marx’s and Engels’ writings on ideology and false consciousness, and Luke’s would not deny this. The idea is that people do not act according to their real or objective interests because these have been clouded by false consciousness or a mistaken understanding of the facts. There are generally two objections to this proposition. The first is that the claim makes reference to some kind of privileged access to true knowledge; that someone, other than the person in question, is better determined to know their real interests than they are themselves. The second, more recent, criticism is that there cannot be such a thing as ‘false’ consciousness since there are multiple ‘true’ consciousnesses each generated and sustained by power. On this view, to impute false consciousness is mistakenly to believe that there even could be a correct view that is not itself imposed by power.

Lukes argued that it is possible to speak of false consciousness without claiming to have access to perfect knowledge. Our desires and beliefs are not fixed, as many of the criticisers of false consciousness imply, but can to a lesser or greater extent be changed through reasoning and reflection. The power of others can and does play a role in influencing our reasoning. We can be mistaken and misled in terms of what we desire and what we believe, and mistaken in the underlying beliefs that form these desires, so ultimately we can be misled about where out real interests lie.To deny the possibility of our being led astray is to say something highly implausible. We have many different interests and in some cases because of inaccurate or incomplete information we will not know what our real interests are.

Lukes gives examples drawing on what Bernard Harcourt has called ‘the illusion of free markets’ – the notion that markets are natural and state intervention or regulation is unnatural, that markets are inherently efficient and left to their own devices will achieve equilibrium. This has the effect of shielding from criticism the distributions of wealth that occur through the market and masks the role of the state and its regulatory and legal framework that is behind every supposedly free market transaction. So through these means you can have the example of unemployed followers of the literature and ideology of the US Tea Party who, though dependent on social security themselves, call for the end of government and spending and welfare so as to boost the economy.

Claims like these are depend on the truth of the assumptions behind them. It is possible to attempt to separate out ignorance of facts about the social world, from theoretical disagreement about how to explain it, and we can do this without making arrogant claims about our possession of the truth. If we make judgments about others, we must be able to adequately justify them, and the same goes for judgments we make about ourselves. To quote Lukes ‘To judge well –to assess rightly what policies or programs are in one’s interest –one needs, first, to have an adequate understanding of the status quo; second, to have a convincing view of what is (counterfactually) feasible; and, third, to judge whether the costs of transition to what might be a better situation are worth paying. Here too the recognition of these sources of fallibility involves neither an arrogant claim to privileged access to truth nor the claim that there is nothing for such judgments to be mistaken about.’

Darren Poynton

World Common Ownership (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

By common ownership we don’t mean state property. We are not proposing the science-fiction nightmare of all the Earth’s resources being owned and controlled by a single World State. We mean the opposite: that there should be no private property or territorial rights over any part of the globe. The Earth and its natural and industrial resources should not belong to anybody – not to individuals, not to corporations, not to states. They should simply be there to be used by human beings to satisfy their needs.

World Common Ownership is not a new concept. When in the 1970s they were discussing dividing up the seas amongst States and individuals in the same way that the land has been, the idea of ‘global commons’ was put forward. And you had, of all people, President Nixon talking about making the seas ‘the common heritage of all mankind’. The idea was that there should be no private property and territorial rights over them. The same has been proposed for Antarctica and the Moon.

What we are proposing is that this should apply to the Earth as well – that private property rights and territorial rights over any part of the planet should be abolished. This is the only basis on which we as the human species can set about arranging our relationship with the rest of Nature in a rational and ecological way so that the planet becomes a habitable place for all of us.

Due to the development of the world market economy, the relationship between humans and the rest of Nature has now become a relationship between the whole human species and the biosphere as a whole. Which is a point that some Greens overlook when they propose going back to local small-scale self-sufficient communities.

Just look at the sort of problems that have been discussed at the various Earth Summits that used to be held: global warming, tropical deforestation, the thinning of the ozone layer, acid rain. All these are world problems – problems that ignore the artificial frontiers which crisscross the globe, problems which concern the whole human race.

The calling of so-called Earth Summits and other meetings to deal with climate change are a recognition that there are no national or local solutions to these problems. But these meetings have been failures, and were bound to be, because solutions were sought within the framework of the present, profit-driven, capitalist world economic system. The leaders of states, driven by the system to engage in a competitive struggle for profits against each other, were expected to co-operate to solve ecological problems – problems caused by the competitive, profit-seeking system they support and uphold.

While it is clear that a question which concerns the whole world such as the possible consequences of global warming can be effectively dealt with only by unified action at a world level, it is equally clear that this is not going to happen under the profit system. The different states into which the world is divided have different – and clashing – interests. At most, all that can happen under the profit system when a global problem arises is ‘much too little, much too late’.

The profit system, the world market system, must go before we can tackle these problems in a constructive and permanent way. It must be replaced by a global system of common ownership and democratic control. We must organise to take the Earth back from those who currently own and exploit it, and must make it the common heritage of all.

The Blurring Boundaries of Political Spending (2017)

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the increase in inequality, the influence of corporate political spending is stronger than ever.

In the current free market framework of global politics, regulation is perceived by capitalists as a barrier between big business and an increased accumulation of assets. These free market principles have been applied to many aspects of life, from the deregulation of the financial industry towards the end of the 20th Century, to the increasingly neoliberal state of political finance regulation. In the United States particularly, a common trend has been occurring with regards to political spending. In 2010, the United States saw a Supreme Court decision that would change the role of money in politics by deeming caps on political spending to be ‘unconstitutional’. This was a decision born out of the misuse of the 14th Amendment of the American Constitution and, having had a significant impact on political spending, corporations are now playing an increased role in influencing governments to be capitalist- friendly.

The 14th Amendment and Corporate Personhood

In 1868, the 14th Amendment was added to the American Constitution, with its purpose being to bring equality to all citizens of the United States. Putting this into context, the amendment was made in the wake of the American civil war, and its intention was to protect newly freed slaves from further persecution. Whilst this amendment was added to protect the people, the rise of capitalism as the dominant ideology in the United States has led to this legal construct being twisted to suit the needs of corporations. Capitalists argue that, as corporations are formed and exist within the confines of the United States, they should be entitled to the same constitutional rights as people. This idea has remained in the psyche of the United States since the addition of the 14th Amendment and still holds influence today, with the Supreme Court case of Citizens United vs The Federal Election Commission being based around this theme.

Citizens United vs The Federal Election Commission

This was a Supreme Court case held in response to legislation restricting corporate funding for political advocacy adverts during electoral periods. After deeming Michael Moore’s ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ documentary to be a smear campaign against President Bush in 2004, conservative non-profit group Citizens United produced a documentary named ‘Hillary: The Movie’ in the run up to the 2008 primaries. This film contained clips from interviews with major political figures, in which they were highly critical of the career of Hillary Clinton. The Federal Election Commission took Citizens United to the Supreme Court as a result, stating that the documentary’s sole purpose was to influence the opinion of the public. However, Citizens United won the case, with the Supreme Court ruling that caps on political spending violated First Amendment rights to free speech, essentially rendering defunct the legislation for this.

Quid Pro Quo Politics

Whilst the Supreme Court verdict suggested that spending money comes under the remit of the First Amendment rights to free speech, this should not be the case. In capitalist societies, where the sole purpose of production is to accumulate as many assets as possible, big business will only spend money if there is a guarantee of returns on their investment. This causes an issue to the wider public as, with the mammoth increase in political spending since this decision, governments are pushed into the arms of corporations. Noam Chomsky is clear about this sentiment when he says “Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power”, as the continued influence of money has blurred the boundaries between politics and business.

Brexit Campaign

This theme of spending money to influence political issues has not just been a phenomenon in the United States. In this year’s EU Referendum, just over half of the donations given to groups from both sides of the debate were given by 10 individuals. Breaking down the totals of the top 10 donors, £6.9 million was donated to the Remain campaign, with £9.5 million to the Brexit camp. Thus, the ball has been removed from the court of the wider public when important political decisions are being made, with the tide now very much with the wealthiest individuals in the world. This is a damning statement, particularly when considering that the wealthiest 1 percent of individuals in the world now own at least as much as the rest of the 99 percent combined. It’s a worrying thought that, with enough money, anyone can get what they want. Just ask Mr. Trump.

William Horncastle

Pathfinders: How the Rich Suffer With Their Piles (2017)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The news late last year that Buckingham Palace was to receive a makeover to the tune of £369 million of ‘taxpayer’s money’ was greeted with outrage by that section of the press which thinks it will sell more papers by simultaneously fawning over celebs and royals while also striking populist poses against wealth and privilege.

As we’ve often said in this journal, this taxpayer’s money may appear to come out of workers’ wages, but really it bypasses those wages altogether and flies directly from the employer to the Treasury. Thus it is not with outrage but with equanimity that socialists look upon the prospect of the capitalist class being forced to rewire and replaster Brenda’s Royal Shed at their collective expense. Let them buy the old trout a gold roof while they’re at it, and a new Xbox with the latest Call Of Duty and Grand Theft Auto pre-loaded, if it makes her happy.

Buck House isn’t the only stately pile in need of remedial work. Many great houses in Britain are in a decrepit state as their former lordly owners pissed their inherited wealth up against a wall and left the bills to their descendents, who are now unable to keep up with the upkeep. Many have thus been donated to (or dumped on) The National Trust, though being a business like any other the NT isn’t keen on taking on the huge repair bills these estates bring with them.

One grand mansion with hidden problems is Highclere Castle, the Hampshire location of TV’s Downton Abbey and lately doing a roaring trade in visitors. These visitors have to pay handsomely to see the house, and extra to see the Egyptian collection in the cellar, so they will probably assume that the Carnarvons who own the place are running a pretty lucrative racket. However Wikipedia reveals what the Highclere website doesn’t, which is that the milords are stuck with a £12 million repair bill, that all but the ground and first floor, and at least 50 rooms, are uninhabitable, and that the owners have been living in a cottage in the grounds for the past seven years. A similar state of affairs can be found at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, currently swathed in scaffolding and where rooms are closed to visitors not because they are private spaces for the owners but because they are derelict. Likewise Castle Howard in the Yorkshire Dales, still unrecovered from a devastating fire in 1940 and now suffering serious water damage, with the south-east wing an empty shell. Go to just about any large stately home in Britain and talk to the staff, and you’ll hear variants of the same tale of woe.

Some visitors who tour these gorgeous estates with their manicured lawns, sophisticated collections, exquisite furniture and priceless paintings will likely find themselves sympathising with the ‘plight’ of the current owners, whom they suppose to be as sophisticated as their surroundings. Socialists however would view this as a form of Stockholm Syndrome. The rich are nothing to look up to, and indeed, when you look at their histories, rather the reverse.

At Blenheim Palace, known to at least one unhappy wife as ‘The Dump’, the 9th Duke of Marlborough inherited a bankrupt estate and coldly married into the American Vanderbilts in order to siphon their money into it. The Vanderbilts, dazzled at the prospect of buying a real English title, locked up their daughter Consuelo until she consented to the marriage. The Duke thereafter treated her so appallingly she later divorced him, and his second wife dined with a loaded revolver next to her plate. Eventually he had the water, gas and electricity turned off to force her out of the Palace.

Why therefore should socialists care a jot about the condition of these estates, whose existence continues to rub our collective noses in our own poverty while celebrating the crass self-interest and obscene luxury of the exploiting class?

Well, we should care, because in the future socialist society, these places are going to belong to all of us as part of our collective world heritage. You might imagine that country houses, castles, palaces, stately homes and genteel manor houses are not particularly numerous, but in fact they’re everywhere. In England alone, and not including those in a state of ruin, there are around 2,700. Many have been converted for charitable uses or as museums, but a great many are still in private hands. Think what we could do with them.

Call it educational or call it art, but heritage matters. Nobody in their right mind would destroy the Pantheon in Rome simply because its first owner was a Roman emperor with despotic powers ruling a slave empire. Nobody would pull down Versailles just because Louis XIV was an autocratic ruler with a large ego. Unless revolutionaries are seized with some insane Mao Zedong-like mania for destroying all the art and culture of pre-socialist times, people are going to want these towering hulks to be in reasonably good nick. So if you love architecture or sculpture or you just like poking round posh people’s houses, you don’t need to feel you’re betraying any socialist principles. Relics of oppression they may be, built on misery and blood and injustice without a doubt, but still beautiful works of art for all that. And once we’ve got socialism, you won’t have to gyp at the price of admission.

Paddy Shannon