Housing crisis 1984 (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a previous article we saw that recent government housing policies have sought to make council tenancy the residual tenancy category, thus giving it the same stigma as the dole. However, below the council tenant there is a significant number of workers, many of them small family groupings, such as single parent families and young newlyweds with perhaps one child; others are immigrants suffering discrimination and ostracism. The present stock of council houses have quite a high proportion with three bedrooms and it is “inefficient" to place these small families there. While attempts to enforce minimum standards tend to be defeated by recurring drives to reduce “public" spending, when they are followed they can aggravate this “problem”. This happened to a certain extent under the 1945-51 Labour government.

The result is that these groups are thrown onto what is left of private rental. It also leads to the standard of this accommodation being well below that of council housing, 68.5 per cent being built before 1914 as against 3.7 per cent of the “public” sector and 30 per cent of “owner-occupied" (J.R. Short, The Post War Experience: Housing in Britain. University Paperbacks. 1982). While the standard of “owner-occupied" houses, taken as a whole, is above that of council accommodation, significant exceptions are developing, mainly in inner city areas. Here many older private sector houses have been abandoned as these areas have depopulated and the emphasis of housing policy has shifted from clearance to renovation. Demand for these has been particularly strong among immigrants, particularly Asians.

In the earlier article we said that we would use the term "owner-occupier" in its current sense, even though it lumps together capitalists with those who arc really anything but owners, having in some cases not one but two or even three mortgages to repay. On this topic Martin Pawley (House Ownership, The Architectural Press. London, 1978) has an unusual viewpoint:

  Compared to the property owners of history we might he tempted to suppose that today's owner occupier is hardly a property owner at all. In contrast to the great estates of the past, his property is rarely handed on from father to son and indeed on average remains in his hands for only five or six years before being exchanged for something better. The size of his possession too leaves something to be desired; both dwelling and plot of land being so small that the poorest yeoman of the Feudal era disposed of greater estates. Furthermore the triumph of the flexible interest mortgage means that his wealth is dependent on the vagaries of interest rates and employment: his home only being a castle to the extent that his credit card is a shield. Yet even this uncertainty has historical parallels: the Feudal knight or farmer enjoyed rights over his fiefdom only so long as his landlord could (with his compulsory aid) defend it himself. During the Wars of the Roses . . . numerous estates were confiscated and bestowed on others, only to be confiscated again according to the ebb and flow of advantage during the struggle . . . Like the modern mortgage holder the medieval land-owner had no absolute title to his property, only certain rights which a run of adverse circumstances could remove altogether.

The previous article also touched on the discrimination applied by the building societies in allocating mortgages. In their efforts to ensure that their money is safely invested they inevitably tend to make the largest loans to those least in need. In order to reduce expenditure on “public” housing, governments have introduced schemes to get round these mortgage restrictions, one of which gives powers to local authorities to enter the mortgage business themselves. In 1971 the Heath government laid down explicit guidelines on who these loans could be made to. As easier terms on initial deposit mean larger repayments, these dictates illustrate the difficulties faced by lower paid workers. Out of seven groups specified the following two are specially significant (quoted from Short op. cit.): (a) Applicants who are homeless, threatened with homelessness or living in overcrowded or unhealthy conditions, (b) Applicants who wish to buy older or smaller property but who are unlikely to get a commercial mortgage". It might have been expected that these would have been found council housing in the “residual tenure" category. And of course few workers “wish" to live in old small dwellings; they are forced to settle for them because that is all they can afford.

For workers with some measure of choice there are a few advantages to owner-occupation. For those who have been able to stay in one place for some time, repayments on a house “bought" 15 years ago for £4,500, but selling today at £22,000, would only be about £7.50 a week. This situation however can only continue if government policies of inflating the currency continue. In these cases the burden has been shifted onto first time buyers saddled with inflated prices and high rates of interests.

Tax relief on mortgage repayments was until recently considered a great benefit of the mortgage system. In fact the workers do not pay tax. The price of their labour power as a wage or salary reflects the cost of their means of subsistence. Of necessity it is the take-home pay which corresponds to this price so that any tax deduction is in reality a charge on the employer, not the worker. The increase in house prices since the war is again something which may not continue. Taking advantage of the situation is not easy, for the workers must have somewhere to live. Older workers whose children have left home can sometimes sell and take smaller accommodation. For most however any gain would be at the expense of moving into an inferior dwelling, or alternatively subletting rooms, a common practice among tenants also. High house prices reflect a shortage of cheaper working class dwellings which the building interests will be reluctant to change for fear of lowering prices. Housing is a commodity produced to make profits, not because workers require a roof over their heads.

Further evidence of the plight of the low paid is given by Mary Smith (Guide to Housing. Housing Trust Centre. London, 1977). The proportion of first time buyers has been falling for some time, from 63 per cent in 1969 to 47 per cent in 1975. More "owners" are now mortgagees, 58 per cent in 1975 against 52 percent in 1965, with correspondingly fewer outright owners. (Private landlords are included in this assessment.) In 1976 the number of mortgages allocated to first time buyers of new houses had fallen to 9 per cent.

These increasing inequalities within the mortgage paying bracket are illustrated by information given by Short (op. cit.) on the distribution of what he calls “economically inactive household heads”. Such a hybrid term encompasses capitalists, retired workers and the unemployed, a type of confusion-mongering which cannot be entirely accidental. We must therefore use Short's information with some care. First we find that over Britain as a whole 33 per cent of household heads are classed as inactive. However, among the “owner occupiers" only 4 per cent of those paying off mortgages come into this category, but as many as 57 per cent of outright owners qualify. The message here is pretty clear: attempted purchase is for workers who have steady jobs. If unemployment strikes the worker will probably have to sell. In contrast, outright owners comprise mainly capitalists and retired workers. From this we see again that most workers who do become outright owners are near retiring age, and retirement usually means a drop in income.

Just as interesting are statistics given by Short of housing assets as a proportion of gross personal wealth. Housing assets are calculated by subtracting outstanding mortgage repayments from the market price. The following table, which is based on 1980 figures, compares the percentage of housing assets and company securities for gross personal wealth up to £200,000.

This table shows that housing assets are a small portion for the impecunious mortgage repayer. Then as wealth increases so the value of the house increases considerably more, leading to more under-occupation of good quality housing when measured against human needs. When we come to the mansions of the very rich, we find that as a proportion of the whole they are actually less significant. Here the emphasis is on stocks and shares, perhaps a few works of art. with less importance attached nowadays to conspicuous consumption in housing.

Where workers are able to make a choice between tenancy and the mortgage game it is of little concern what they decide, but political actions aimed at altering tenure distributions, in whatever direction, are an entirely different matter. On an individual level, workers "buying" a home, preoccupied with DIY decorations (or to quote Pawley, with “balancing car port against loft conversion against kitchen modernisation") may be turning their attention from the class struggle. Socialist workers, whatever their form of accommodation, realise their subservient position and the similar plight of the rest of their class, irrespective of the type of dwellings they inhabit. Their attention cannot be distracted by the superficial. but is concentrated instead on how to end the housing problem once and for all.

E C Edge

Bleeding parasites (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1980 the United Nations General Assembly launched the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade. Ambitiously, it was hoped that Third World governments and International Aid donors would massively step up their investment from a current annual level of $6-7 billion to something like $80 million a day—a four- to five-fold increase—to provide clean water and sanitation for all by 1990. Such a sum may seem immense but bears comparison with the daily global expenditure of $250 million on cigarettes and more than $1,400 million on arms.

Whatever its intentions it is clear that the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade will fall a long way short of its target: within the profit system’s structure of priorities the necessary funds are just not there. The recession and the cuts in public spending have added to the problem by hitting overseas "aid” from the developed to the developing countries. Nevertheless, the basic needs to which the campaign has attempted to address itself remain pressing indeed.

In the "Third World”, three out of four lack adequate waste disposal facilities while more than half the population lack reasonable access to safe water supplies. These difficulties are particularly pronounced in the rural areas. Partly this is because it is more convenient and cheaper to supply densely populated urban areas but partly also because of government sensitivity towards the rapidly growing numbers of city dwellers who wield more political clout than their relatively atomised rural cousins. It is not uncommon for people—usually women and children—to walk ten or fifteen miles each day simply to fetch water from the nearest available source. Yet the alternative in many cases is to resort to an unsafe water source nearer at hand: according to the World Health Organisation, about 80 per cent of all diseases in the Third World—and about 25 million deaths—are related to inadequate water and sanitation.

Prominent among these are the diseases caused by parasitic infestations. These are mainly concentrated in the tropics, for climatic and economic reasons, and affect literally hundreds of millions of people. Parasites may range in size from tiny single-celled organisms to stomach-turning intestinal horrors exceeding 40 feet in length. What they all have in common, however, is that they live on or within some human host with debilitating, even deadly, consequences.

For example, there are at present, out of a world population of 4½ billion, about 3 billion cases of infection by parasitic worms. Of these, the dreaded hookworm accounts for just under a third—932 million people—causing widespread iron-deficiency anaemia and a reduced ability to withstand other diseases. Hookworms are transmitted through contact with the faeces of infected individuals. The larva;—Nature’s entryists—bore their way through the skin of feet and via a complicated route reach the small intestine where the worms feed on the mucosal tissue as a result of which the host loses a certain amount of blood.. According to the New Scientist (8 March 1984). on the basis of an individual hookworm causing a leakage of 0.15 ml of blood daily, "one parasitologist estimated some 20 years ago that the daily blood loss due to hookworms was equivalent to the total exsanguination of about 1.5 million adults, representing a loss into the gut of about 3.75 tonnes of iron per day"! If one takes into account also the impaired absorption of food due to the damage done to the intestinal lining—not to mention the physical presence of the worms themselves which impede the digestive process—the amount of nutrients lost as a result of hookworm infestation can be quite significant indeed.

This example illustrates an important point that can be made about the general pattern of disease in the world today—its close correlation with the problem of malnutrition. It is not simply that most cases of malnutrition happen to occur in precisely the sort of unsanitary environment most conducive to the spread of disease. This, we can clearly see, is no coincidence: both hunger and poor sanitation are symptomatic of the same thing which is the economic poverty of the victims of this double onslaught. But more than this, the relationship between disease and malnutrition is in fact a synergistic one. In other words, the occurrence of one exacerbates the other and vice versa so that when they occur together the damage done is greater than had they occurred separately. As James Grant. Executive Director of UNICEF explained, malnutrition:

  . . . is inextricably interlocked with the illnesses and infections which both sharpen, and are sharpened by malnutrition itself. Perhaps as many as half of all cases of severe child malnutrition, for example, are precipitated not primarily by the lack of food but by intestinal parasites, fever and infection—especially diarrhteal infection—which depresses the appetite, burns the energy, and drains away the body weight of the child. The net result is that every day of this last year more than 40,000 young children have died from malnutrition and infection (The State of the World's Children 1982-43).

In short, the elimination of disease cannot be effectively tackled in isolation. But by the same token, progress in combating disease can contribute to the solution of other problems—like malnutrition—that impinge on it. In Grant’s words:

  A cats cradle of synergisms link almost every aspect of development . . . in an endless pattern of either mutually reinforcing or mutually retarding relationships which can minimise or multiply the benefits of any given input (ibid).

Some of the world's most serious parasitic diseases—and the prospects of eradicating them—were investigated in a thoroughly absorbing Horizon documentary, The Conquest of the Parasites, shown on television recently. Interestingly, a reference was made in this programme to the hugely successful campaign launched by the UN in 1967 against smallpox—the last natural case of which was recorded on 26 October 1977 in Somalia. It is curious how often the example of smallpox is cited (particularly by the supporters of the United Nations) both as a source of hope and a practical model for campaigns against other diseases. But—as the programme hinted—such faith overlooks certain important factors such as the nature of the disease itself which favoured the successful outcome of the campaign against smallpox. It can be easily identified and speedily contained by vaccinating the surrounding population and thus systematically eliminated in a relatively cost effective way. Such factors do not apply (or at any rate, not with the same force) in the battle against the intractable parasites.

The problem with parasitic infestations is that they are largely rooted in the social landscape of poverty, a poverty that is part and parcel of the normal workings of world capitalism. Take, for example, schistosomiasis or Bilharzia, as it is otherwise known—a wasting disease endemic in about 70 countries and affecting roughly 200 million people (mainly children). The infection cycle passes through humans and certain kinds of freshwater snails which act as intermediary hosts. The eggs of the schistosome worm, which leaves the body in urine or faeces, must be deposited in waterways. Once hatched, the larva; have at most 26 hours to find a host snail in which they can mature and multiply asexually, producing many more larva;. These later leave the snail and penetrate the skin of people wading in water. Inside the human host the worms live in the veins of the bladder and bowel where they mate, producing eggs that enable the cycle to be repeated.

For schistosomiasis to be brought under control it is necessary to break this cycle at some point. One way is to eliminate the snails on which the larvae depend. But this is not as easy as it may sound. In an experimental programme carried out in Sudan's vast Gesira irrigation scheme, health workers spent about five years in one particular village attempting to eradicate the disease. One of the measures taken was to clear the irrigation canals in the area of snails. At first this proved very successful and by 1977 no more cases of schistosomiasis were reported. But subsequent investigation revealed that “92 per cent of boys and all but two of the girls in local schools were reinfected . . .These snails had somehow managed to invade the area again” (Guardian, 12 August 1983).

Ironically, economic development in the form of newly-built dams, reservoirs and irrigation projects can actually exacerbate the problem by encouraging the spread of snails. The ripples caused by such development can be registered in places as far away as the Hospital for Tropical Diseases in London (where this hapless writer once had to spend a few days). As the Observer Magazine pointed out in an article on the famous “Hotel Tropicana” (as the Hospital is nicknamed): “Every time a new dam is built in Africa there is a feedback in the increase in cases of schistosomiasis” (26 November 1978).

It is possible to treat the victims of this disease. One newly-developed drug. Oltipraz, has had an 80 per cent cure rate, but at $8 for a course of four tablets it represents a considerable outlay to an impoverished farm worker in Sudan. There are cheaper treatments but whether they are as effective is another matter. But in any case treatment is no substitute for prevention. As long as the necessary preventive steps are not taken, the possibility of re-infection and thus the need for re-treatment will remain. Clearly, the most important of these is the provision of adequate sanitation — a step which tends to come up against the familiar economic barrier of the profit disincentive. Yet without proper sanitation the waterways will remain often the most convenient, and sometimes (as on the Gesira plains) the only private, place to do what Nature bids.

The three other major parasitic diseases examined in the Horizon documentary were trypanosomiasis, filiariasis and malaria. Trypanosomiasis — or sleeping sickness — is essentially a disease of Africa south of the Sahara. It is transmitted from one person to the next through an insect vector, the tsetse fly. The trypanosome parasite also infects cattle (causing the disease Nagana) and game animals who serve as a reservoir for the parasite. The eradication of the disease is chiefly geared to the destruction of the tsetse fly. usually a “scorched earth” policy that requires cutting back foliage alongside rivers where the fly has to breed. However, a new method of control may make this unnecessary: trials in Upper Volta and the Ivory Coast using insecticide-impregnated strips of cloth have reduced the tsetse population by 99 per cent in a matter of months. There have also been attempts to devise some means to destroy the parasite itself which the tsetse fly carries, but these have met with little success: the trypanosome is notoriously adept at outwitting the vaccines developed so far. The eradication of trypanosomiasis is important not just on grounds of health. It will also increase significantly the agricultural potential of sub- Saharan Africa by opening up quite sizeable parts of it to farming.

Like trypanosomiasis, filiariasis is transmitted through water related insect vectors — the mosquito and the blackfly. It is a disease which focusses its attack on the poor, for it typically occurs in heavily populated areas with inadequate sanitation which favours the breeding of vectors. Filiariasis affects about 300 million people and comes in two main forms: elephantiasis (250 million people) which causes an enormous swelling of the limbs and onchoccrsiasis or river blindness (30 million people). The latter variety takes its heaviest toll of victims in the Volta basin where some 65.000 square kilometres of fertile river valley have been vacated because of the disease. No words can express more forcefully why once vibrant villages have been turned into empty husks than the pathetic sight in the Horizon documentary of a human chain of blind people led by a young child.

One of the biggest killers in the world is malaria, a disease from which 800 million suffer with 150 million new cases recorded each year. The disease is transmitted through the female anopheles mosquito which sucks the blood of an infected individual containing the plasmodium parasite, which is passed on to others it bites. The campaign against malaria is one of the oldest of all mass campaigns. In the two decades following the Second World War, malaria's toll was drastically reduced by mammoth anti mosquito drives. In the 1970s, however, the disease staged a comeback especially in South and Southeast Asia and Central America. Partly to blame was increased resistance to both drugs and pesticides like DDT (it is said that the Vietnam War greatly facilitated the mosquito’s acquired resistance to such chemicals). But in the Mediterranean, malaria was eliminated except in parts of Turkey — a fact which has been widely interpreted as suggesting a link between the disease and the level of economic development.

New drugs are being developed which could destroy the parasites in malaria victims, thus breaking the transmission cycle. In addition, it is possible that a vaccine may now be developed though a lot of research has yet to be done before this can be said for certain. As for controlling the mosquito population, one of the latest proposals being examined is to release millions of sterilised mosquitos into high risk areas. All such developments will require a substantial injection of resources — according to one estimate about $2 per person a year. But as the New Internationalist (March 1984) put it, “In many countries such as India. Pakistan and Ethiopia this would be more than the per capita health spending for all health services”.

This is not to say that a disease such as malaria will never be eradicated while capitalism continues. Such a view would be absurdly dogmatic: it is possible that some technological breakthrough may be sufficiently cost effective to permit a repetition of the success in the case of the smallpox campaign. Our point is simply that capitalism acts as a drag on the process of technological discovery and implementation where there is little or no prospect of profit. Indeed, as the WHO noted in 1975, the global research budget for the six major tropical diseases was a tiny $30 million. Animal parasitology, on the other hand, presents a very different picture: cattle, it would seem, are more valued for their meat than the lives of human beings.

Meanwhile, the number of people living in a state of “absolute poverty” is rising relentlessly. All the summit meetings, all the wringing (not to mention washing) of hands in public places, all the reports, have been to no avail. With every passing year it becomes more and more obvious that nothing short of a revolutionary transformation of society will serve to wrench the mass of humanity out of the debilitating cycle of deprivation and despair. Paradoxically. it is those who want anything less who are the worms in the gut.

Robin Cox

Correction (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the article “Nationalisation changes nothing" in our May issue we state (p.88, top of centre column): ". . . more of them (the media) insist that the NUM, also in the interest of democracy, should not settle the strike until after the workers have, by ballot, agreed. This should have read “ . . . . none of them insist . . .". Our apologies.

In the drink? (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the drink? If the opinion polls are to be believed, Neil Kinnock’s popularity, although he is nowhere near passing through the doors of Number Ten, is on the wane. The newspapers are beginning to tell us that since he became Labour leader he has been on a honeymoon with the voters which is now at an end. This news can only make the Labour Party even more worried; they may well be wondering now whether anyone, or anything, will ever be able to beat Thatcher.

Kinnock was supposed to be able to do this because of his youth, because he has something called charisma, an attractive wife and an ability to provide good copy for media like when he fell into the sea at Brighton. He also comes from Wales, which is supposed to give him an instant understanding of poverty and a fluent tongue. And of course he was a left winger. In spite of that episode on the beach at Brighton, perhaps he was the man to turn the Tory tide.

In fact there is nothing new about Kinnock. It is an established Labour Party tradition that their leaders come up on the left wing, which causes a lot of excitement among the punch-drunk membership about the dawn of the revolution. As the new leader adjusts to the realities of their position the excitement dies as the membership perceives, through the tangles of the grass roots, that their hero is moving to the right.

This was what happened with Wilson and Foot, who both had the problem of keeping their hold on the support they had built up on their way to the top. For a long time, Wilson was slickly clever at this trick but Foot made a bumbling hash of it. Kinnock's popularity may well depend on what sort of a job he makes of it, on how effectively he reconciles the irreconcilable.

This typical history illustrates the messy impotence of capitalism's leaders who, far from controlling the system, can only stumble from one crisis to another. Whatever hopes now rest on Kinnock's head must in the end be disappointed for, if he ever gets to Number Ten, he will have no choice but to run capitalism as it must be run — against the interests of the working class who elect him to power.

There is an alternative to this which is neither messy nor impotent but which cannot be written up by the media in terms of heroic charisma — and it is the more effective for that.

Euro-capitalism or world socialism? (1984)

From the June 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of the first European Elections in 1979, we asserted that the European Parliament was not a step towards world unity and nor was it meant to be. We put forward the socialist proposition that the only solution to social problems is the establishment of a world without frontiers, based upon common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, with production solely for human need.

This argument was a condemnation of the political and trading arrangements entered into by various European states, in order to further the interests of their capitalists. It also put out the challenge of positive and practical action which could establish a sane world operating in the interests of the whole community.

The argument still stands, vindicated by the experience of the past five years which have been tragically wasted. These have been further years in which society has remained trapped in the insanities of economic, political and military power structures.

What has happened during these years in this so called “European Economic Community?” Disregarding the empty promises of Labour, Conservative and other reformist politicians, what, in reality, did the electorate support in 1979? Governments have paid farmers to destroy cattle, tear up orchards, plough back vegetables and destroy fruit. They have created milk and wine lakes and butter mountains. Now they are cutting milk production in the overall interests of profit. All this in a world in which 40,000 children die every day from starvation. In Europe itself, over 30 million of the population are living below the official poverty line with many seriously undernourished.

In reality, what does the “common market” mean for workers? It is the labour market in which our powers of work are the commodities. We sell our skills and energies producing goods which the capitalists then own. Just as commodity goods are unsold when they are surplus to the market, so our powers of work are unsold when they are surplus to the labour market. Millions of workers are unemployed in the EEC, but at the same time billions of pounds, francs, marks and guilders are extracted as profit from those who are “employed”. We are used as the source of profit and live on wages or salaries while the capitalists maintain their economic power and their grip on the means of living.

This is what the “European Economic Community” is all about. It is part of the profit system, and to protect the capitalists interests involved, millions are wasted in the armed forces and in armaments production. This could provide for Europe as a power bloc to stand against such existing power blocs as America or state capitalist Russia.

Market surpluses amidst deprivation; unemployment amidst poverty; economic exploitation; preparations for war; waste and pollution of the atmosphere; these are the destructive forces which promote the interests of the capitalists in their so called “European Economic Community”. How many more years will be wasted on a system which is utterly unworkable as far as the interests of the whole community are concerned.

Only one interest rises above the economic, political and military divisions of national and international capitalism—our single, world-wide common interest as workers. Its political direction is clear—we must ensure the growth of the world socialist movement with the object of capturing political control of all the powers and machinery of governments by democratic political activity.

From this position we will enact the common ownership of the means of living. This will strip the capitalist class of their monopoly of land, industry, manufacture, transport and resources, whether maintained by private ownership or state control. We will establish free access by the democratically organised community to all these productive means and resources so that they can be freely used to provide directly for human needs.

This will involve the abolition of the state and the conversion of all useful government functions for the democratic administration of needs, operating through a decentralised system of decision making on world, regional and local levels.

Socialism will remove all economic constraints on social action, and will involve the abolition of not just the “common market” but all distribution by buying and selling through the use of money; and therefore will establish free access to all the goods and services which the community could more freely make available. The wages system, which is the market for labour power, will be replaced by direct co-operation between people.

With this world co-operation, socialism would abolish all armed forces and armaments production. Thus all the potentially useful resources of labour, materials, technique and equipment now used for the military would be re-directed for human needs. During all the years which have been wasted on support for capitalism, socialism could by now have solved the major social problems.

Again, the choice between capitalism or socialism is the issue which socialists are raising in this election. The urgent priority is for workers to join the growing world socialist movement. This is the only practical activity which is now being directed at the solution of social problems. Support for parties seeking to participate in the administration of capitalism through the European Parliament will prove as irrelevant and futile now as it did in 1979. But those who want and understand socialism will use the electoral process as and when possible. In the meantime they can show their support by writing “SOCIALISMUS”, “SOCIALISM”, “SOCIALISME”, as the case may be, across their ballot papers.

The Executive Committee

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain

Voice From The Back: What immigration problem? (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

What immigration problem?

The US government has recently had a crack down on illegal immigration and the French and British press have been full of the problems of immigration in those countries, but for one group there seems to be no problem in settling in another country. “Seven of the wealthiest billionaires living in Britain come from overseas, according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List. Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal comes out on top with a fortune estimated by the newspaper at £14.8 bn. Roman Abramovich drops to second place, but the Russian oil tycoon and Chelsea football club owner is reckoned to be worth £7.5 bn.” (BBC NEWS, 3 April). So far none of the seven billionaires seem to be having any trouble with housing, schools or social security and no one has suggested passes or tagging for any of them.

Not so bright

When socialists attack the inequalities of capitalism we are often told by its defenders that the owning class deserve their wealth because of their hard work or superior intellect. No one could ever accuse Paris Hilton of hard work, she recently celebrated her 21st birthday by having 5 birthday parties in 5 different countries, attended by thousands of friends. The rich tend to have more friends than the poor. If she couldn’t be accused of hard work she certainly could not be accused of possessing a grasp of world affairs. “The word ‘mother’ confused her, a friend of Paris Hilton explains the hotel heiress’s request to meet Mother Teresa’s children in preparation for playing the nun in a new film” (Observer,16 April).

Primitive Accumulation 

In recent months we have highlighted the process of the capitalist class grabbing land and throwing off the previous occupants in India and China. Now from Botswana comes another example of this “primitive accumulation of capital” so well described by Karl Marx in Capital in the 19th century. “Since 1997, more than 1,500 Gana and Gwi Bushmen have been evicted from their homes in the Kalahari” (Observer, 16 April). They have been found to be “primitive and a barrier to progress” ever since De Beers took an interest in the area’s diamonds. 

The American Nightmare

The journalist Heather Stewart in her Letter from Washington describes the contrast between the rich and poor in what is described as the most affluent country in the world. “Men in chinos and women with neat hair and brilliant white teeth sip giant cappuccinos or chat animatedly into their cellphones. …Look closer, though, and there are signs of another DC. Tired looking black men stand on street corners holding out the same giant coffee cups to collect coins. The Washington Post details a horrific crime wave of car-jacking and gunpoint robberies. Less than a mile from the grandeur of the White House are neighbourhoods with all the deprivation and social issues of the poorest inner cities” (Observer, 23 April).

A Fishy Story

Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan are in dispute with Iran in a bitter controversy. What is it all about? Civil rights, nuclear armament? No way. This is about caviar! “Iran may be increasingly out of favour with the UK Security Council, but the UN Secretarial for International Trade in Endangered Species gave the country the thumbs up last week, when it gave Iran’s quota to export 44,000 kilos of caviar this year. Exports from the other countries have been banned by the UN since January” (Times, 27 April). The price of caviar is currently £6,000 a kilo, so the furore is easily understood. After all Russia alone caught 650 tonnes in 2001. Millions of thousands of hard currencies is more important than war, poverty or civil rights to capitalist governments.

Do-Gooders Do Badly

“The world is failing children by not ensuring they have enough to eat, says the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef). It says the number of children under five who are underweight has remained virtually unchanged since 1990, despite a target to reduce the number affected. Half of all the under-nourished children in the world live in South Asia, Unicef reported. And it said poor nutrition contributes to about 5.6 million child deaths per year, more than half the total” (BBC NEWS, 1 May). Despite the efforts of Unicef and countless well-meaning charities capitalism is still starving millions of children to death every year.

A Depressing Tale

“Depression is the biggest social problem in the UK, says Richard Lanyard, a health economist who advises the Government on mental health. He claims that 15 per cent of the population suffers from depression or anxiety, and that the cost in lost productivity is about £17 billion” (Times, 2 May). It is typical of capitalism that not only does it drive us screwy, it can only see mental ill-health as a productivity problem.

Editorial: They call it sport, m’lud (2006)

Editorial from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Prepare yourself for the big business and sporting festival (we put them in this order for a reason) that is the World Cup. From the first game in Munich on 9 June to the final in Berlin one month later, there will be sixty-four matches, each one keenly contested by players, media and supporters alike.

Like all big international sporting occasions these days, sponsorship and advertising are very much the name and motivation of the game. The tournament’s ‘partners’, such as McDonald’s, Budweiser and Mastercard, are paying vast sums of money to get their brands and logos in prominent positions both during and between matches. Moreover, one ticket in eight (nearly half a million in all) will go to sponsors, enabling their bosses and other VIPs to enjoy the games while genuine fans are excluded. In many of the grounds, seating capacity has been reduced in order to increase the number and size of advertising hoardings and hence the income for the organisers, FIFA. The ‘rights’ to TV coverage will of course add millions more to their coffers.

No doubt the media will stoke up nationalist sentiments, especially the rivalry between England and Germany. ‘Two World Wars, One World Cup’ will be the refrain, particularly if the two countries play each other, as they may well do in the second round. Sadly, many of the supporters will echo the jingoistic nonsense of the press, fighting the wrong battles and misdirecting their energy and enthusiasm. How many St George’s flags will be flying from cars, houses and pubs while the tournament is on? Those supporters actually in Germany will additionally be paying the rip-off prices for tickets and accommodation, and trying to steer clear of the attention of police and hooligans.

Of course English nationalism is not the only kind which will be on display, for each of the thirty-two countries competing will bring its own brand of patriotic myth to the proceedings. The invented and historically-accidental entities known as countries have become the focus of so many workers’ loyalties, as if it really matters which bit of the earth people were born in or ‘belong’ to. It would be nice to think that meeting supporters from elsewhere will show that ordinary people, whatever language they speak or whatever passport they carry, have far more in common with each other than with their bosses and rulers.

So, if you like football, enjoy watching the World Cup if you can. But behind all the endless televised replays and the post-match inquests into fouls and offsides, remember that it’s all part of the greater game of dividing workers from each other. A socialist world would have no countries and no national teams. And there would be no sectional interests for some group of people at the expense of other members of the global community. In the meantime, the crying need is for workers to realise that nationalism is a diversion along the road — not to Wembley or Cardiff or Berlin — but to a sensible society.

Pathfinders: Game On (2006)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Game On

A man from Sydney, Australia, buys an island populated by wild animals for $26,500, and charges tax for hunting rights, as well as renting beach front property. This is perfectly normal behaviour in capitalism. The money he earns from it is real enough. The island, however, does not exist. It is a virtual island, with virtual animals. (New Scientist, May 20)

Elsewhere, in Shanghai, a man lends his prized sword to a friend, who then secretly sells it for 7200 yuan (£500), back-pocketing the proceeds. Furious, the man complains to the police, who do nothing. Enraged, he breaks into his friend’s house, and stabs him to death. The knife he uses is real enough, and the man gets life imprisonment for murder. No action is ever taken over the original theft, because the sword does not exist according to any known law. Real blood spilled by a virtual sword.

From Carolina, one man has made a fortune selling rare virtual furniture and other items, which, he discovered through a bug in the program, he could duplicate, and sell over and over again. Nobody knows if he has broken a law. The game company closed the bug hurriedly, but not before the man had cleared $100,000.

Online gaming is moving beyond the purview of geeky kids. Virtual items and goods, though theoretically worthless, acquire value in the real world as players seek to shortcut the time-consuming process of acquiring them in the game, and serious money is being made in the ‘grey market’ of virtual trading. Now game currencies have been indexed to real currencies, and one game developer, MindArk, has launched an ATM cashcard that players can use to withdraw real cash, calculated according to MindArk’s exchange rate of their ‘game’ wealth. The global trade in virtual goods is currently estimated at $880 million and rising, with 30 million, mostly western and mostly affluent gamers, playing games for up to 18 hours a day. In one popular online game, Second Life, a third of the players spend more time in the game than in the real world.

It’s not hard for socialists to see why people would want to escape the rigid fetters of real-time capitalism. People have been escaping the real conditions of life ever since the Greeks invented the outdoor theatre. What is slightly depressing but perhaps not very surprising is that people work so hard at their escapist fantasies only to create societies of lawlessness, savagery and insane self-destructive cruelty that make capitalism look like a pussycat by comparison. In one game, players are dedicated to the task of setting off virtual semtex bombs and blowing themselves and their online world up. In others, there are virtual assassinations, or random slayings, where players find their character has been murdered for no particular reason, apart from somebody’s idle amusement. A player can take a long time, sometimes years, to build a character up, provide it with its special faculties and powers, as well as its virtual property. To be robbed and murdered after all this work is no small thing and can be deeply upsetting to the player. But this is the virtual wild west, and there is a nihilistic appeal. Law doesn’t appear to work in people’s interest in the real world (true, in many ways), so the idea is to get rid of all law and have an orgy of violence and blood in the games.

The problem is, as with the Shanghai murder, the violence is starting to spill over into the real world, prompting some observers to suggest that law and punishment should be introduced into the games. The game developers are opposed. What is the point of playing a game that lets you do nothing? That’s just like real life, the very thing people want to run away from.

The other problem, from a socialist view, is the constant reinforcement these bloodthirsty games give to the perceived need for law and policing. For these are, in a way, highly moral games, in that they strongly emphasize what dread chaos results from ‘amoral’ or lawless behaviour. Socialism proposes to abolish all coercive law which serves class interests (which is to say, all property law, at the very least). What laws or rules socialism would retain is a moot but interesting question. What is evident however is that no rational debate on the socialist need for laws, or rules, or their nature or means of enforcement, is possible among workers while they are bamboozled into believing that a society without repressive legal structures is always going to look like a scene from Conan the Barbarian. Play one of these online games for a week and you will either become a nightmare axe-murderer from the Dark Ages or you will be screaming for the return of capital punishment and school floggings.

Why normal bank clerks and home heating engineers should want to lead double-lives as marauding rapists and genocidal maniacs is a topic too large to enter into here. But it would be interesting to speculate what a socialist society would make of it. Would they look back at capitalism and trace a pattern from the Boy’s Own stories of Empire days with their strongly moral content, through the poignant emptiness of punk culture and on into the cybernight of shoot-em-ups and global conquest games and say: there, that was a society in decline? By giving reality to the horrors of the repressed mind is capitalism liberating or enslaving us even more deeply? Will there come a point, perhaps with the total abolition of hard cash, when capitalism will itself become a virtual game, with a human population of players who try to amass arbitrary ‘units’ of currency in order to buy arbitrary artifacts? The difference between real life and a game is that you always have to return to real life eventually, but it is just possible that this difference may one day disappear, and our grip on reality may disappear with it.

Game Off

On a more positive note, a friend who is a computer repairman reports a recent case where a young man came in to have his computer repaired. The graphics card, an expensive one, had blown, and the cost would be over £300. The man appeared, and was given the bad news. He went away to think about it. A week later he returned.

“£300 is a lot of money when you don’t have a job. I can’t get a job because I’m too busy playing online for 16 hours every day. I haven’t been to a pub in two years, all my friends have disowned me, and I never see anybody. On top of that, I’m bored with the games because I am Grandmaster in all of them and can’t be beaten. In the past week I’ve gone to the pub, gone to a party, found all my friends and even met some new ones. In fact, I’ve had the time of my life. Tell you what. You can keep the bloody thing.”

And with that, he walked out into the real world.

Paddy Shannon

The BNP advances – what does it mean? (2006)

From the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The BNP gained seats in the May local elections because it put together a better package of lies than the mainstream parties

Despite recent claims to the contrary, the vast majority of British voters find the policies of the BNP nauseating. In the run up to the 2004 local and European elections and again during the 2005 general election, all manner of people, organised in their respective groupings, mobilised against them, from Labour and Conservative Party activists and the myriad left-wing groups, to student bodies, church groups and trade unions. Back in 2004, Searchlight, the anti-Nazi organisation, produced 28 versions of a newspaper targeting the BNP election campaign and distributed 1.5 million copies in areas where the BNP were perceived as posing the biggest threat. Prior to this year’s elections, Searchlight handed out 400,00 copies of their newspaper in 16 versions as well as quarter of a million postcards and again the left and the unions campaigned where the BNP were felt to be most active.

This time round, by all accounts, the panic was just as big as an in 2004. In the wake of a huge election push by the BNP, the anti-racist group Searchlight identified 18 key “battlegrounds” where the neo-Nazis had to be confronted. Other anti-racists groups observed how the BNP, standing 364 candidates, were as strong now than at any time since 1982, when it displaced the National Front as Britain’s favourite bone-head magnet. Ever the pessimists, anti-racist organisations believed BNP pre-election claims could be an underestimate and suggested that a 5 percent swing to the BNP could see them increase their tally of councillors to 70.

A YouGov poll conducted by the Daily Telegraph, prior to the elections, suggested the BNP was set to make “significant gains” in the elections. The poll showed that 7 percent of voters were ready to back the BNP and that some 24 percent had considered voting BNP in the past or were thinking of doing so now.

Regardless of how much these smiley-faced fascists claim to have changed their image, supposedly booting out the bone-headed troublemakers of yesteryear, they still represent the politics of hate – and their writings and statements still contradict the respectable shirt-and-tie image they try so hard to project.

For over six months BNP literature had been portraying the coming elections as a “Referendum on Islam”, linking the threat of Islamist terrorism in Britain to the Labour Government’s asylum and immigration policies and the war in Iraq. One BNP leaflet, handed out in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London, declared: “If only they had listened to the BNP.”

Moreover, the BNP’s anti-Islam position has gained in prominence since Nick Griffin was acquitted of racial hatred charges at Leeds Crown Court back in February. It did not help that the judgment came at the same time as the hullabaloo over the anti-Muslim Danish cartoons and the consequent display by a handful of young Muslims dressed as suicide bombers and demonstrating in London, a coincidence that allowed the BNP to pass itself off as the champion of freedom of speech and all things British.

Overnight, the BNP moved further to the right in its anti-Moslem line of attack. Heartened by what they perceive as a lowering of tolerance for Islam, the BNP has become more obsessive. Speaking to the Observer, (24 April), Simon Darby, the man BNP leader Nick Griffin has appointed to take over should an appeal to re-convict him go ahead, said: “We are giving voice to the concerns of ordinary people, Yes, part of it is still about race.” Since 9/11 and 7/7, he says, “things have changed: the new issue is Islam”.

Two years ago the BNP were fortunate to ride a wave of patriotism – a tool they can use to great effect when it suits – in the run up to the election, with voters going to the polls as the 60th anniversary of D-Day was being commemorated and rammed down our throats every night on TV, and the English football team were gearing up to compete in Euro 2004 and when manufacturers were reporting sales of 4 million St George flags. This time round they could count on the nationalism whipped up by the World Cup taking place in Germany as well as the patriotism created by the Queen’s 80th birthday celebrations. And neither is their raw branch of nationalism that unique in today’s climate where the UKIP and the Conservative Party can make huge gains in the European elections on a “say no to Europe” platform, proclaiming the merits of British sovereignty, and where the Labour Party is all too ready to send British troops off to far away lands to protect the interests of Britain’s ruling elite.

Recent scandals within the mainstream reformist parties, particularly the Labour Party, and coming in election week, clearly helped boost the BNP vote and resulting in their tally of councillors leaping from 20 to 48. Not least of which was the Home Office fiasco involving the release of foreign prisoners from British prisons, many of whom went on to reoffend, and which played straight into BNP hands. The sleaze turned many would-be voters away from the polling stations too – something the BNP further capitalised on with their supporters making a point of going to the polls. For instance, the BNP claimed a surprising win from Labour in Solihull, when it won the Chelmsley Wood ward by 19 votes, taking its first fascist seat on the council there. But look closely and we see that in Chelmsley Wood 74 percent of the electorate never bothered turning up to vote.

In the borough of Dagenham and Barking, the sitting Labour Party MP, Margaret Hodge, clearly made the BNP look like the party of  the moment when she announced shortly before the election that she had discovered massive support for the BNP, offering that as many as 80 per cent of the electorate would vote for them. She commented: "That's something we have never seen before. They used to be ashamed to vote for the BNP. Now they are not." The media, of course, made much of this, with the BNP thriving on the oxygen of publicity.

Of course there were other factors at play in Dagenham and Barking, such as the government’s refusal to allow the council to build housing and the council’s allocation of housing on a points basis. The areas continuing deindustrialisation, marked by job losses in the docks and at the Ford plant in Dagenham, was also an issue the BNP could mobilise support around. Where the mainstream parties where seen as having let voters down, that was where the BNP found the greatest success.

Lord Tebbit, writing in the Daily Telegraph (21 April), had this to say about the BNP:

“I have carefully re-read the BNP manifesto of 2005 and am unable to find evidence of Right-wing tendencies. On the other hand, there is plenty of anti-capitalism, opposition to free trade, commitments to ‘use all non-destructive means to reduce income inequality’, to institute worker ownership, to favour workers’ co-operatives, to return parts of the railways to state ownership, to nationalise the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and to withdraw from Nato. That sounds pretty Left-wing to me.”

It certainly does sound like left wing reformism – but not Socialist – with the assumption being made that capitalism can be managed for the good of all.

Stuart Jeffries, considering Lord Tebbit’s comments in the Guardian, (28th April), remarked that: “the notion that the BNP might be considered left-wing shows the political vacuum that Labour has created. Not that many of those who will vote BNP next week want to nationalise the commanding heights of the economy. Rather, alienated from their traditional party by its shameless plutocracy and neglect of its core support, some white working-class voters will opt for a party that offers easy lies about their plight.” Suggesting that BNP support is rooted in the failure of mainstream reformism, Jeffries continued: “Blair may not be responsible for populist racism, but he and his party are responsible for putting despair in place of hope from politics for many, and thus making the election of racists likely in several British towns.”

Considering the views of the Labour and Conservative parties on asylum and the former’s part in so overtly upsetting the Islamic world in recent years, their concern for the apparent rising support BNP does seem a mite misplaced. Labour and the Tories may well abhor the policies of the BNP, but have been unsuccessful in confronting them where they have made significant political gains because to do so would mean acknowledging the shortcomings of a system they champion and which gives rise to the politics of race and hate.

The BNP is more the product of the total failure of all the reformist parties to make capitalism a fit society to live in. And this is not really the fault of the mainstream parties, for they are controlled by the system and not vice versa despite their claims and promises. When capitalism fails to deliver, when despondency and shattered hopes arise from the stench of the failed promises and expectations that litter the political landscape, is it any wonder that workers fall for the scapegoating bullshit of fascists and the quick fix they offer?

The hundreds of thousands of misinformed workers who fell for the BNP spiel in May are the products of the demoralising system we know as capitalism, deluded into thinking that neo-nazi solutions to social problems – which they have been led to believe are largely rooted in the colour of a person’s skin – would suddenly improve their miserable lives. In truth, a shortage of council housing and poorly maintained housing estates, low wages and pittance benefits are no more the fault of asylum seekers than, in fact, the mainstream parties who mistakenly believe capitalism can be run in the interests of the workers. At the end of the day the BNP simply put together a better package of lies and, just like the other reformist parties, promised voters little more than extra space at the trough of poverty – and tens of thousands, their minds numbed by the politics of reform fell for the scam.

John Bissett

Exporting Crime (2006)

From the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The witch hunt against ex-prisoners from abroad shows that xenophobia is now more than ever official policy

It was in a desperate attempt to erase from the voters’ consciousness the idea that his party would ever be indulgent towards law breakers that Tony Blair and his opinion sculptors chiselled out the pledge that a New Labour government would be “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime”. That smooth phrase covered just about everything as far as crime went and it opened the way to a succession of Acts of Parliament which brought in new laws, regulations, surveillance and intrusions. Anti-Social Behaviour Orders had the effect of making many offences imprisonable when they had not been before. Procedural restraints on courts were relaxed to encourage offenders to plead guilty when they were innocent. New prisons have been opened in an attempt – unsuccessful as it happens – to gobble up those who fell foul of Labour’s new penal policies. If all this had any real effect on the crime figures it has not been persuasively obvious but in any case the idea behind it all was to convince the voters – who are so often the sufferers from crime – that, whatever the truth of the matter, New Labour was doing something about it; given time they would eliminate it altogether.

But a serious problem with snappy, headline-grabbing slogans – Homes Fit for Heroes, You Never Had It So Good, The Pound in Your Pocket – is that capitalist society has a nastily remorseless habit of undermining them. When that happens the slogan ceases to be voter-seductive and becomes instead a repellent embarrassment. This has been the case over the government’s record on deporting offenders who are foreign nationals on their release from prison. It did not sit easily with Blair’s promise to be tough on crime, that such people should be free; the implicit fear was that they would use this freedom to commit other, perhaps even more serious, offences. As the media frantically dug for evidence, Home Secretary Charles Clarke admitted that at least five of the released foreign prisoners had committed further drugs-related and violent offences; two others had been accused of rape, although in one case the charge had been dropped through lack of evidence.

Somalia

Most damaging of all was the case of Mustaf Jama, who came here as an asylum seeker from Somalia and for that reason was not sent back to that country when he had served a three-year jail sentence for robbery. Jama is one of the prime suspects for the murder of the police officer Sharon Beshenivsky in Bradford. He cannot at present be charged with this murder because he seems to have fled to Somalia, although the fear that he would have been killed if he had been sent back there was enough to keep him in this country. Predictably, this fuelled the tabloid hysteria and encouraged the fantasy that the country was infested with foreigners who were using their early release from prison to rack up even more offences. The uproar became so loud and insistent that it cost Charles Clarke his job; in spite of Blair’s ritualistic assurances of boundless and never-dying confidence in him, Clarke was re-shuffled out of the Home Office and onto the back benches.

Another ritual was the official response to the pending storm of publicity. Last summer the Home Office admitted that there were some 400 released prisoners who under government policy might have been deported. But recently, in response to the determined chiselling away of the governmental wall of denial by the media and MPs, this figure was raised to 1023 – some of them convicted of murder, rape or child abuse. For a short time Clarke said that about 90 of these had been convicted of the “most serious” offences but one of the first actions of his successor John Reid was to raise this estimate to 150 and to elaborate by saying that to include those sentenced for robbery would put the total into “hundreds”. Almost by the day, the situation looked worse for the government. It is as well to bear in mind that this mess – partly a cumbersome, doomed attempt to distort the facts and partly a deliberate attempt to conceal the truth – was the work of the Home Office, which is so prominent in composing and enforcing the laws which are designed to instruct the rest of us in how to behave as the underclass in this society. The exposure of the concealment and the deception must have contributed to the Labour Party losing so many council seats in the recent local elections and perhaps, through the stimulation of a whole clutch of dangerous prejudices, to the relative success of the BNP.

Brixton

When he was Home Secretary in the 1960s the late Roy Jenkins said that it would be unacceptable for the prison population to reach 42,000. Now it is fast approaching 78,000 which, although there are many more places available than there were in Jenkins’ day, is the officially defined maximum. The Prison Reform Trust has stated that of the 741 prisons 142 are occupied above the limits of health and safety. An ex-governor of Brixton, which is a typically hectic, stressful London prison, has said that too many people are being given custodial sentences; these were the words of a man whose reputation was as an unusually perceptive and humane holder of his office. However, during his time at Brixton a few prisoners managed to fiddle their way into an evening’s freedom; the matter came to light when they were apprehended trying to wangle their way back inside in time to avoid detection. It was the end of Brixton’s unofficial evenings at liberty and, when the outraged laughter had died down, of that governor’s regime there.

Attempts to explain the increase in the prison population are soon confronted with the fact that the property rights of capitalism make for a huge cobweb of repression and denial of access to human resources. Within that, as symptoms of class society, there is the fact that the incidence of crime can go up or down in response to a number of influences. One of them is that working lives and survival are as stressful, if not more so, than they have been for a long time. Another is that New Labour rhetoric about getting tough on offenders has resulted in stricter conditions on Community Orders and the courts, responding to the urgings from Downing Street, using prison sentences more often than in the past. Then there is the fact that female crime has increased, so that more women are going to prison. And there is the rise in custodial sentences on foreign nationals who come before the courts. Over the past five years this figure has increased by 75 per cent, while that for British nationals has gone up by 11 per cent.

The foreign nationals in British prisons originate in over 160 countries, among them Jamaica, Somalia, Afghanistan, Algeria. These are countries notable for violence and social instability. In some cases – for example Somalia and Sierra Leone – there are problems in deporting released prisoners because it is too dangerous to fly there. Jamaica is described by Amnesty International (and other organisations) as a place where “Violence and crime are rife (and where) Police officers are allowed to kill with impunity”. United States Embassy staff in Jamaica are officially advised to avoid the inner city area of Kingston and of other towns and not to use public buses. Unsurprisingly, some of the people who come here from these strife-torn places bring their own strategies of survival, which might entail breaking the law here. Drug offences – mainly trafficking – account for about 60 per cent of the prison sentences and for 80 per cent of women prisoners, many of whom have harrowing stories to tell, of the poverty and fear in their home country which persuaded them to accept the hazardous role of smuggling in the drugs. It is a sad, tragic picture which is not relieved by vengeful punishment.

Delusions

New Labour’s response to this situation is to take powers to deport released prisoners wherever possible – they plan to make this an automatic procedure in future – which may relieve some very short term problems as it enables the government to pose as taking drastic measures which will reduce crime at a stroke and so boost their chances of being returned at the next election. But it takes no account of the fact that other countries can return British nationals (there are some 800 in EU jails at present). It will not affect the level of crime here by British nationals, which has proved impervious to government policies, because crime, like private property, poverty, repression, is endemic to capitalism. The policy of trying to export foreign criminals is presented as something considered, effective and durable when in fact, apart from stimulating some of the nastier delusions such as racism and xenophobia, it is another panicky episode of exhausted futility.

Ivan

Japan: A woman for Emperor? (2006)

From the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

No male heir born in 40 years sparks a debate about bringing “gender equality” to the Japanese monarchy. What is the role of the Japanese monarchy? Would a female monarch be a step forward?

Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi is an unlikely advocate of women’s rights. But earlier this year the well-coiffed leader was keen to promote gender equality. Not for all women, mind you, or even a few, but rather a four-year-old girl known as Her Imperial Highness Princess Aiko. He supported an effort to revise the Imperial House Law that would allow her to “ascend” to the throne one day. Why this concern for the plight of royal women? Well, the fact that no male heir has been born for the past 40 years might just have something to do with it. Unless something is done, or a prince is born, the monarchy faces the prospect of withering away.

Koizumi responded to the succession crisis by setting up an advisory council in late 2004, which issued a report recommending that women and their descendants be granted the right of succession. The proposal had strong public backing and seemed uncontroversial, this being the 21st century. So it came as a surprise when right-wingers mobilized to oppose the reform. Considering that the reform was intended to save—not abolish—the monarchy, it seems strange that these “traditionalists” (to use a charitable term) are dead-set against it. But there is a certain logic that underlies their stance.

Some commentators have explained the fierce opposition to the reform as stemming from sexism, pure and simple. In a February 23 Asia Times article, J. Sean Curtis argued that the opposition to the reform, which he views as “a significant leap forward” for gender equality in Japan, “exposes the deep-seated anti-female bias at the heart of the Japanese establishment.” Certainly, those opposed to the reform are sexists. But in this case their motivation is not merely to keep women in their place, but to keep all Japanese workers in their place.

Above all, they treasure the monarchy as a valuable means of fostering nationalism. Their concern, often explicitly stated, is that casually throwing away one long-held dogma could threaten the entire ideology surrounding the “imperial household.” Suddenly admitting the triviality of male lineage, after harping on its importance for centuries, could raise other doubts, including the question of why a monarchy is even necessary. Monarchy enthusiasts found it hard enough to accept the idea that the emperor is not a deity, which Emperor Hirohito admitted in 1946. And some still haven’t let go of this idea, as reflected in Prime Minister Mori’s comment, in 2000, that “Japan is a divine nation, with the Emperor at its center.” Today, they are unwilling to make further sacrifices.

In particular, the traditionalists cling to the notion of an unbroken “eternal” line of succession on the paternal side stretching back 2,666 years. Starting on February 11, 660 B.C., to be exact. This “bloodline” is said to be the longest in the world and the very essence of Japan. Perhaps psychology can account for the odd fixation on length, but there is also a social explanation. The idea of continuity is comforting to the rulers of Japan. They have a vital interest in convincing workers that class-divisions will always exist—as symbolized by a distinction between royals and commoners. At the same time, almost conversely, the monarchy conveys the idea that all Japanese are part of a family headed by the emperor that transcends class. Of course, the “facts” mobilized to support this comforting and useful notion are not so convincing.

First of all, outside of Nazi scientific circles, anyone who harps on the importance of blood in relation to genealogy, not to mention its purity, is regarded as a fool. Even if “blood” is a synonym here for DNA, considering that every child is the product of a man’s sperm and woman’s egg, it is hard to see why the male side of this equation should be fixated on.

Turning from biology to history, the claims of the traditionalists hold up no better. The figure of 2,666 years is based on the first recorded histories of Japan, Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan). Both texts are a mixture of myth and historical fact, written in the early eighth century at the behest of the imperial family to boost its prestige. Given this patronage, it is not surprising that the authors were prone to exaggeration. Not only is the length of the imperial line stretched out considerably, but the origin of the Japanese monarchy is actually traced back to a sun goddess named Amaterasu. Those who rely on facts, rather than historical fiction, generally think that the first “emperor” (tenno) appeared some time around 400 AD. Unfortunately, carrying out such archeological research in Japan is impeded at every step by the Imperial Household Agency, which restricts access to tombs and artifacts.

The first emperors, whenever they existed, were hardly social types unique to Japan. Similar despots emerged throughout the world, as an early manifestation of class divisions. (In fact, there is speculation that the imperial family is of Korean origin.) And if older is better, as jingoists in Japan insist, they would have to bow down to lands where these religious/political leaders scratched and crawled their way to the top many centuries earlier. Granted, as our jingoists would surely point out, the Japanese monarchy stretches all the way to the present. But this is only because the emperor was grafted on to subsequent modes of production, whereas despots in other lands often had the good grace to exit the historical stage after playing their roles. The name tenno may remain—although even it was only coined in the eighth century—but the person bearing this title has been shaped by the times, tossed back and forth by the tides of history no less than the “commoners.”

Traditionalists speak of the imperial family as the core of the Japanese nation, but apart from the early centuries of real power, emperors have functioned primarily as figureheads. During the feudal Edo Period, for example, it was the Tokugawa clan, based in Edo (Tokyo) that ruled over a network of fiefdoms, while the Emperor rusticated in Kyoto. Some have argued that the 1868 “Meiji Restoration” (capitalist revolution) marked the emperor’s return to real power, but despite the emperor taking on new ideological significance under capitalism, his role has remained primarily symbolic; first as a unifying symbol wielded by the revolution’s leaders to forge a modern nation-state, and later as a bulwark against calls for greater democracy and as a tool to mobilize workers to fight imperialist wars. Even if we accept the argument that some emperors, most notably Emperor Hirohito, played an active political role, this does not deny that the ruling class as a whole utilized the emperor as a useful ideological tool.

Since the light of such historical facts erodes their cherished myths, the traditionalists’ campaign against the reform has relied heavily on scare tactics. The rank-and-file have been told that a female emperor would be more susceptible to manipulation by politicians or that “Japanese culture” is incompatible with a man playing second-fiddle to his empress wife. And their Japanese blood really boiled when former trade minister Takeo Hiranamu depicted a nightmare scenario, in which Princess Aiko becomes the reigning empress, “gets involved with a blue-eyed foreigner while studying abroad and marries him” so that their child becomes the emperor. Here we have Mein Kampf in reverse, with an “Aryan” peeing in the sacred gene pool.

Most of their energy was focused on attacking the reform, but the traditionalists did manage to offer a few solutions as well. One was to swell the ranks of royal welfare recipients by reviving the status of royals who were stripped of their titles after the war. The emperor’s cousin, Prince Tomohito, offered a more cost-effective solution. Quite unburdened by new-fangled notions of equality, he suggested the reintroduction of concubines, whose wombs could service the needs of crown prince and nation alike.

But before other solutions could be offered, the debate suddenly came to a halt in February. Whether they realized it or not, the opponents of reform had an ace up their sleeve in the emperor’s mustachioed second son, Prince Akashino. While the debate was raging, he set aside his research on catfish (I’m not joking!), to attend to a vital matter with his wife, Princess Kiko. The royal couple, already parents of two teenage daughters, announced that a third child is due in September. This revelation immediately silenced talk of reform—although the birth of another girl might rekindle interest in gender equality.

Compared to the insincere reformists, the traditionalists are refreshingly principled. They have little use for equality in general, not to mention gender equality, and do not conceal this fact. This is reflected in other efforts they are making to mold society, all supported by Koizumi, such as: revising the history textbooks so children “feel good” about Japan, forcing schools to display the national flag and students and teachers to sing the national anthem, encouraging politicians to visit the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine, or revising the Constitution to cut out the bits about democracy and human rights. Their message is simple: “Obey!” Although it remains to be seen whether this prewar template of nationalism, centered on the emperor, will be effective.

We have looked at unprincipled “reformists” and block-headed traditionalists, but what are we to make of those who genuinely saw the reform as a step, or even a leap, forward for gender equality? Can an institution based upon inequality become a beacon for equality between men and women?

Just posing this question highlights its absurdity. But more importantly, this view of an empress as a positive role model implies that achieving gender equality is primarily a matter of changing people’s way of thinking. This ignores the relation between the social system (capitalism) and the way people think and act. The continued existence of discrimination against women throughout the world suggests that there is such a relation. There is not space here to fully explain this, but in part gender discrimination stems from the general interest of capitalists to divide the working class, and the tendency of employers to hire a man over a woman if childbirth or raising a child might interfere with work.

To be fair, capitalism has contributed to gender equality by bringing large numbers of women into the workforce, to be exploited along with their male coworkers. And states are willing to introduce legislation to protect women’s rights when gender discrimination itself negatively affects the smooth functioning of the profit-making system. In Japan, for example, there is alarm over the extremely low birth rate. Unless the state opens the doors to foreign workers, which it is reluctant to do, it may have no choice but to improve working conditions so more women can continue working after childbirth. If this does occur liberals will be ready to supply the flowery rhetoric, but the fact remains that the state would be acting in the common interests of capitalists, not because their “way of thinking” suddenly changed. It is also worth remembering that the state giveth, and if conditions change, the state will gladly taketh away (or at least curtail) any right — whether it be health-care and pension benefits, shorter working hours, or women’s rights.

And even if capitalism could be reformed to eliminate gender discrimination forever, we would still be left with the inequities of this system. Capitalist equality is limited to the relation between buyers and sellers of commodities. Workers, as the sellers of labor-power, are also granted this right (although few commodity owners are swindled so regularly). This marketplace equality, however, conceals inequality within production, where workers have no choice but to work under, and enrich, the owners of the means of production (capitalists). Under this system, gender equality is nothing more equality between men and women as wage slaves. And even this remains a unfulfilled dream.

Socialists are serious about achieving equality—between men and women, and between all human beings—and recognize that true equality can only be achieved when humanity bids farewell to capitalism.

MS

We Want Real Food (2006)

Book Review from the June 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘We Want Real Food’. By Graham Harvey, (Constable £9.99)

Criticisms of food production usually concentrate on the supermarkets: with their emphasis on selling homogeneous produce and driving down the prices they pay to the producers, they play a major role in depriving consumers of healthy and tasty food. The fast-food industry is also attacked for its bland tasteless pap. In this book, though, Graham Harvey points the finger of blame at the companies that produce artificial fertilisers.

It is true that life expectancy is far greater than it used to be and that diseases like TB and cholera are almost things of the past in Britain. But degenerative diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis are reaching epidemic proportions. Harvey ascribes this to a change in the make-up of the soil, owing to the increased use of nitrogen compounds in fertiliser, which itself has been pushed by the companies who make big profits from selling the stuff.

Traditional farming exploited the minerals in the soil that contributed to a healthy lifestyle, but modern methods have relied more and more on chemical fertilisers that destroy these nutrients. According to one study, for instance, carrots lost 75 percent of their magnesium and copper between 1941 and 1990.

Minerals have various roles in protecting and promoting human health: copper, for instance, is important for the functioning of the liver, brain and muscles, while selenium protects against the onset of a number of kinds of cancer.

Harvey’s solution is a programme to reintroduce these crucial minerals to the soil. But this will face a problem: “For the best part of half a century, the chemical industry has effectively vetoed every attempt to remineralize over-worked soils and restore the health benefits to everyday foods.” So “What’s needed is leadership – from farmers, retailers or politicians.” Effective government legislation could supposedly promote sensible agriculture and hence healthier and tastier food. But food production would still be at the mercy of the profit motive rather than be aimed at satisfying human need.

Assuming that Harvey’s science is on the right lines, he makes a convincing case for changing the way in which agriculture is organised, but the problem is that this cannot be divorced from how society as a whole is run. His website at http://www.wewantrealfood.co.uk/ is also of interest, though we wouldn’t recommend bothering to write to supermarkets asking them to change their ways.

Paul Bennett