Halo, Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo Column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Actor Brian Cox: ‘the Bible is one of the worst books ever’ (MailOnline 30 April).

*****

’Right’, said Om. ‘Now…listen. Do you know how gods get power?’ ‘By people believing in them’, said Brutha. ‘Millions of people believe in you’.

‘People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?… But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn’t in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a better job of it… Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere. This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn’t looking in the same way that Boy Scouts’ Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country’ (Small Gods, Terry Pratchett).

*****

A website going under the name of Islamic Socialism (Marxist Leninist) offers the following oxymoron positing that religion and socialism go hand in hand:

‘We are Islamic Socialists because we are Muslims first and socialists second. Our main beliefs are Allah is one and that Muhammad (PBUH) is his messenger. Second to that is opposition to capitalism. To oppose capitalism is no less than to fight in the cause of Allah… the only answer is an Islamic Socialist society following Sharia. A state for the Muslims that follows in accordance to Sharia and opposes a financial minority growing off the backs of the majority through social revolution and the regulation by a religious vanguard’. Straight from the Lenin playbook, with a twist.

*****

Joe.co.uk. 14 May, carries an article quoting research from an American University which posits that, ‘children raised without religion were “less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian. And more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.”’ More confirmation of the socialist view that religion has a negative effect on humans.

*****

Praise the Lord and pass the loot! Yet another American Evangelist making a very nice living thank you by selling the buy-into-religion-and-win-the-lottery falsehood. He’s correct however that poverty is a misery suffered by many across the world. That, however, is down to the present social system. The solution isn’t to make preachers rich, it’s the abolition of capitalism. ‘Televangelist and prosperity gospel preacher Jesse Duplantis, who has an estimated wealth of twenty million dollars, has called poverty a “curse” and said his wealth – which includes a private jet and a 40,000 square foot mansion – comes from being “blessed” by God’ (The Christian Post, 29 April).

*****

News from the National Secular Society, 21 May, that the 2022 census showed that results from the 2022 Scottish Census found that ‘51.1% of people in Scotland have no religion. In 2011 the figure was 36.7%.’ Slàinte Mhath!

DC

Tiny Tips (2024)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The gap between rich and poor has widened particularly in countries that have become more integrated into the global economy, such as China, Russia and some Eastern European countries…. ‘The influence of globalization on income inequalities worldwide was greater than we had expected’, summarizes Valentin Lang, junior professor of International Political Economy at the University of Mannheim and author of the study. ’We were particularly surprised that these differences were mainly due to the gains of the richest and that the lower income groups benefited little or not at all’. 

(ZeroHedge)

Still, over the years the men have been re-considering many of the customs they took for granted in their youth. This includes even female genital mutilation – which is practiced on daughters as a rite of passage. ‘We’ve noticed that it makes our girls weak’, says Lengees. With hindsight, Lengees says he wishes he could have traded his past Moran life for an education. ‘Look at this phone my children gave me’, says Lengees, holding it out. ‘I only know how to press this button to answer it if someone is calling me. I can’t even call out.’ Being illiterate, he says, ‘is like being a deaf person. You don’t understand the language people are using. It’s like you’re not even fully in the world’. 

(NPR)

….Topham noted how the Smurfs live in a Kibbutz-like farming community and rely on self-sufficient methods of means and production. Moreover, the Smurfs coexist happily without using money, sacrificing themselves for the greater good of the community.

(Movieweb)

‘New study in Nature confirms that if we want to avoid the next pandemic—we should stop destroying biodiversity, heating, and polluting the planet’, Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, who leads the World Health Organization’s climate change unit and was not involved with the study, wrote on social media. ‘Just one more reason to go for a greener, healthier future’.

(Common Dreams)

Salman Rushdie says free Palestinian state would be ‘Taliban-like'.

(Middle East Eye)

‘Millions of children across the country do not have anywhere safe and decent to call home. These children are living without space to study, play or even have a good night’s sleep; while their parents struggle to afford essentials like food and clothes’. 

(wsws.org,)

It is a system driven not by human needs and wants, but by the pursuit of profit that has no end. This system has only been around for a few hundred years. But in that short time it has reshaped the world with new technologies, infrastructures and innovations. This has given us the potential to truly meet the needs of everyone, to give everyone a life of freedom and fulfilment. 

(Communist Future)

The US government is currently considering a reclassification of Vietnam under the US Tariff Law as a “market economy,” which would provide Vietnam major economic benefits, even though Vietnam does not satisfy basic labor rights standards. 

(Human Rights Watch)

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

SPGB July Events (2024)

Party News from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Cooking the Books: UBI no solution (2024)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We’ll need universal basic income — AI “godfather” . The godfather in question was Professor Geoffrey Hinton, so dubbed because he was a pioneer of neural networks on which AI is modelled. He told BBC Newsnight that a scheme ‘giving fixed amounts of cash to every citizen would be needed because he was “very worried about AI taking lots of mundane jobs”. ( …) He said while he felt AI would increase productivity and wealth, the money would go to the rich “and not the people whose jobs get lost and that’s going to be very bad for society”’.

It’s a common view: AI will lead to mass unemployment with a consequent reduction in paying demand; the remedy to this is ‘the government paying all individuals a set salary regardless of their means’. This would both sustain paying demand and reduce inequality.

But it is not a new idea. The same analysis and the same proposal were made sixty years ago, but in relation to ‘cybernation’, a word that has dropped out of common use but which means ‘the control of an industrial operation or task through processing of information with a computer’. In March 1964 a group of left-wing intellectuals formed an ‘Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution’ and drew up a report for presentation to President Johnson. One of these revolutions was the ‘cybernation revolution’.

They argued that ‘the rate of productivity increase has risen with the onset of cybernation’ and that ‘an industrial economic system postulated on scarcity has been unable to distribute the abundant goods and services produced by a cybernated system or potential in it’. To remedy this, they proposed:

‘. . . it is essential to recognize that the traditional link between jobs and incomes is being broken. The economy of abundance can sustain all citizens in comfort and economic security whether or not they engage in what is commonly reckoned as work. Wealth produced by machines rather than by men is still wealth. We urge, therefore, that society, through its appropriate legal and governmental institutions, undertake an unqualified commitment to provide every individual and every family with an adequate income as a matter of right’ (tinyurl.com/3362249j).

They were in effect saying that capitalism had solved the problem of producing enough for everyone but had not solved that of distributing it. Theirs was a proposal as to how capitalism could do this. Johnson of course took no notice of their report. Cybernation continued but there was no consequential massive increase in technological unemployment. So where did they go wrong?

One reason was assuming that mechanisation (of which automation, cybernation and now AI are instances) takes place as soon as it just becomes technologically possible. Under capitalism it is only applied if it is cheaper than having the work done manually or by some already established machine. This slows down technological progress.

Nor does technological progress come in all at once but spreads only slowly. Overall productivity does increase but only at a fairly modest rate (averaging around 2 percent a year). This gives the economy time to adjust. There is some technological unemployment but new employment opportunities (though not necessarily for those displaced) open up as capital accumulation proceeds.

Paying a basic income to everyone while maintaining private ownership of machines and production for profit won’t work, because it would undermine both the profit motive and the wages system, two essential features of the capitalist system. The money to do this could only come from taxes and taxes ultimately fall on profits, reducing the incentive that drives capitalism. It would undermine the wages system by reducing the economic pressure on the excluded majority to work for an employer to get money to buy what they need to live.

Capitalism is inherently incapable of solving the problem of distributing enough for all.

Remembering and forgetting (2024)

Book Review from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Red Memory: the Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution. By Tania Branigan. Faber & Faber. £9.99.

The Cultural Revolution lasted officially from 1966 to 1976, with the first couple of years being the most violent and disruptive. Perhaps two million were killed and thirty-six million ‘hounded’ in some way. It is not possible to understand China today, says Branigan, without understanding the Cultural Revolution. Her concern here is not so much with what happened then as with how it is remembered (or not) nowadays.

It is generally viewed as Mao Zedong’s way of destroying opposition within the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, and people denounced family members and others for supposedly taking the ‘capitalist road’. The first victim in Beijing was a teacher battered to death by her pupils. Her husband documented her death, but the Red Guards responsible were never charged, presumably because they had connections with powerful people. But there were factions within the Red Guards, and some were later criticised and jailed.

From 1970, many Red Guards were sent to the countryside to live and work in communes (this included the present ruler, Xi Jinping). This is probably the only part of the Cultural Revolution that is still regarded in a positive way, viewed by many as ‘fresh air, comradeship and honest toil’, even though many young city-dwellers died while living on communes. Mostly, though, the events have been banished from public memory, although a number of memoirs and novels dealing with it were published in the years following. But this came to an end, and it now receives little coverage in textbooks, which certainly do not refer to the murders and suicides that took place. Unlike the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, references to the 1966–76 period are not completely taboo, but they are carefully controlled. The CCP later described the Cultural Revolution as a catastrophe.

A museum dealing with the Cultural Revolution was set up, by a wealthy private individual, in the small southern town of Shantou, though it was later shut down. Amazingly, there are a number of Cultural Revolution restaurants, where waitresses wear Red Guard uniforms. These, says Branigan, are ‘serving up tragedy as farce’.

The days of Red Guard terror are over, but China remains a country where people have little freedom and an authoritarian regime is in charge. Xi has enormous personal power, the families of dissidents are punished and their children may be expelled from school, and the state tries to control people’s beliefs and emotions. Normal discussion is not tolerated, and of course it is now far easier to gather information on people. One apparently unrepentant Maoist tells Branigan that in today’s China, ‘eighty-five per cent of ordinary people can’t afford to buy a home or get medical care or education’.

A well-researched study of how rulers can manipulate the ruled and even impose amnesia.

Paul Bennett

A socialist future? (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many organisations standing candidates in the General Election is the newly founded Communist Future (see their no-frills website at communistfuture.com, which includes their manifesto). They are contesting just one seat, the Manchester Central constituency.

They say in their manifesto that the working class are those who have to work for a wage. Capitalism cannot achieve the potential of giving everyone a life of fulfilment, as a small minority own most of the resources needed to produce and distribute goods and services, resulting in crisis and instability. Instead of capitalism, they stand for a society with no class system: the means of production should be the shared property of everyone and be democratically managed. The communist future will be ‘a society of freedom and fulfilment for all, a setting free of human potential.’

This all sounds very promising, and is on the same sort of lines as the case of the Socialist Party, though it would be good to hear a bit more about what their future society would involve, such as implying the ending of wage labour. On the other hand, Communist Future do express support demands for reforms, such as controls on rents and reduced working hours, though accepting that these can only provide short-term gains. They also support ‘demands that promote political freedom’, including an end to the House of Lords and the monarchy. They say they are not standing in the election in order to do things for people.

So they could certainly say more about the kind of society they want, and their advocacy of reforms is a sticking point. But it is certainly encouraging to see such an organisation making its voice heard.

Paul Bennett

Small change (2024)

From the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington North used to be the sort of quiet Labour safe seat where the staff could weigh the Labour vote and all go home. The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Corbyn has turned it into a place where national politics is played out.

With his campaign as an independent candidate (noticeably, he has not used his ‘Peace and Justice Foundation’ to create a new party, nor joined in with any other left party), Corbyn was early out of the blocks with leaflets delivered by volunteers: ‘Corbyn, an Independent Voice for All of Us’.

This was his chance to put out an uncompromising personal manifesto, freed from the shackles of Labour Party compromise. But the only time socialism is mentioned in the whole leaflet is an endorsement from a member of the Jewish Socialist Group, though only in that group’s name. Given how central Corbyn’s support for Palestine is in his personal politics (to the extent that it was the core of the antisemitism smear used against him) this is the only reference to the Gaza conflict, and it is a reference only to Corbyn’s call for a ceasefire.

The list of policies (broad strokes as befits a leaflet) are for a more equal society, housing for all, a greener Islington, fully public NHS and peace and human rights. No mention of common ownership of the means of production.

Of course, a well-established candidate has the right to stand on their record; and Corbyn does, listing the campaigns he has been involved in over the years, like standing up for the local hospital, saving the number 4 bus, and turning a disused space into a park. All laudable local things.

It is a failure of an opportunity to make a case for socialism if that was his priority, and what we are left with is a clear case that what Jeremy Corbyn has always stood for is campaigning for small changes. Win or lose, this leaflet is his political testament.

Pik Smeet

50 Years Ago: Fascism, violence and the Left (2024)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday 15th June in London the National Front held a march to a meeting to protest against an amnesty for illegal immigrants. An attack on the march was made by left-wing groups, culminating in a battle with mounted police in Red Lion Square, and a young student was killed.

The inevitable accusations of “police brutality”, the headlines and questions in Parliament ensued. All this followed the National Union of Students’ resolution to prevent “fascists” and “racists” speaking. On 18th June the International Marxist Group announced that unless a July march of Orangemen supported by National Front is banned, it will attack that too.

The policies and attitudes of the National Front are detestable. So are those of the International Marxist Group and its collaborators. The latter include the Communist spokesmen for the National Union of Students who have expounded its policy of forcible suppression, and the Labour fools in the scarcely-known but ill-named “Liberation” group.

Their assertion is that unless “fascism” is crushed we are in danger of the rise of a dictatorship party, which would suppress democracy and persecute its opponents and those it did not favour. If that danger exists it is represented equally by the IMG, the Communist Party and other organizations of the left. What is THEIR aim? To suppress democracy and put down rivals.

Like the Communist Party when it made a policy of attacking British Union of Fascists marches in the nineteen-thirties, IMG hope to obtain support by posing as the defenders of freedom. But the CP’s policy then did not apply only to fascists. At one period Labour Party meetings were ordered to be broken up. At other times our own meetings have been shouted down and disrupted. Make no mistake about this: these protesters are not Marxists or liberationists or democrats, but power-seekers wanting to suppress whoever disagrees with them. (…)

The problem for the working class is not fascism but capitalism. Racism and other forms of oppression are symptoms of it. Socialists feel as strongly as anyone about them; and we know the solution of them to be the abolition of the capitalist system and its replacement with Socialism.

[from Editorial, Socialist Standard, July 1974]

Action Replay: Best foot forward (2024)

The Action Replay column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the professional cyclist Lizzy Banks decided to retire from the sport, although UK Anti-Doping found that she was in no way responsible for the traces of banned substances found in a positive doping test. However, her life had been ‘torn apart’ after she was suspended for ten months, during which the prospect of a two-year ban hung over her, even though nobody claimed that she had knowingly taken the drugs. The ordeal had cost her around £40,000, quite apart from the mental stress.

Drugs are banned in sport, precisely because they work and can improve performance, sometimes markedly so. An endurance sport such as cycling is particularly prone to doping. As the Banks case shows, athletes are susceptible to being charged even though innocent. They may have to be very careful about what they order at a restaurant or coffee shop in order to avoid ingesting something that’s banned, and have to set aside an hour each day when they may be randomly tested.

And there is a backlash, with proposals for a so-called Enhanced Games to take place sometime, somewhere, with no rules against doping in place. This is intended as a kind of rival to the Olympics, though it is not clear if it will ever get off the ground. The website enhanced.org describes it as ‘the Olympics of the future’, and claims that sport is safer without drug testing.

Of course, all sportspeople go to lengths to improve their performance, from becoming fitter to adopting better techniques of whatever kind. They may also use better equipment, but this can lead to problems too. In 2020 World Athletics banned the Alphafly running shoes produced by Nike, which had carbon plates and sizeable midsoles and were claimed to increase speed (eg, in marathon running) by 3 percent. Athletes wearing them had dominated medal-winning at some events.

Such kit is sometimes described as ‘technological doping’, and the World Anti-Doping Agency can ban items considered to be ‘against the spirit of the sport’. For instance, a swimsuit that increased buoyancy was banned in 2009 by swimming’s governing body. Nike has since created a revised Vaporfly shoe that seems to have gained official acceptance; it costs £200 or more. Tennis rackets may be claimed to be ‘the best’, and the interpretation of this will vary depending on a player’s ability.

Sportswear companies of course compete against each other to produce and sell the most supposedly efficient shoes and so on. Competition in the capitalist marketplace echoes that in the sports arena. Sometimes the line between what is deemed acceptable and what is not can be very uncertain and maybe arbitrary.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: A chance to vote for socialism (2024)

Editorial from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the coming General Election, you’re being asked to vote for parties who all have the same way of looking at things. They all support the continuation of the present system of money and wages, buying and selling and production for the market rather than for human need. There are marginal differences between them as to how this system should be run, for example with more or less control or ownership by government rather than by private companies or individuals.

But whichever one of them comes to power, the same thing always results – crises of one kind or the other, damage to the environment, wars causing death and suffering in various parts of the world, and in the UK many people going without even the basics of food and housing. This is in a country – and a world – that could produce abundance for everyone and easily satisfy the fundamental interest shared by everyone – a secure, comfortable life for ourselves and our families.

But this is not possible – and never will be possible – in a world where a tiny minority of people possess the vast majority of the wealth, governments run this system and the vast majority of people have to be satisfied – if they are lucky – with just getting by.

Voting for any of the established parties in the forthcoming election will not help to change this and in fact will just mean more of the same. But the election will nevertheless give you the opportunity to register your opposition to the existing system of society by voting, in the two constituencies the Socialist Party is contesting – see page 5 – for the Socialist Party candidate and, everywhere else, for none of the candidates or parties who are standing but by writing ‘Socialism – a world of free access’ across your ballot paper and doing this in your thousands.

When enough people are prepared to do this and take democratic action to bring the new system of society about, we already have, with modern means of communication and technology, the means to give everyone on the planet a comfortable life in a society of voluntary cooperation and planned abundance. This will be a society of free access to all goods and services, without buying and selling, without markets, without leaders and without frontiers – a society where people co-operate freely and produce what is needed to satisfy everyone’s needs.

STOP PRESS: News just in for 4 July elections (see your area for a detailed breakdown). Overall confirmed results are as follows: Capitalism has won an overall majority, while capitalism also came second and simultaneously trailed in third place. Stand by for our special in-depth analysis on the hugely positive differences this result will make to your life and the future of the planet, but don’t hold your breath as there won’t be any.

Alice in Labourland (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Earlier this year, curious about how many Labour MPs agreed with the wording they carried around on their membership cards, and what they actually understood their Clause Four to mean (what for example, is common ownership of the “means of exchange” all about?), our Media Dept sent each of them a copy of our Object, written incidentally before the Labour Party was even formed:

“The establishment of a system of society based upon the
 common ownership and democratic control of the means 
and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by
and in the interest of the whole community.”

We asked them three questions:

1. Do you regard the above object as being a desirable political goal?
2. Do you regard “common ownership ” as a socialist objective?
3. On what basis do you see your political position as differing from the above Object?

We also challenged each of them to debate the issue of common ownership and democratic control. Not surprisingly, perhaps, not a single one was prepared to take us on. Common ownership has never been on Labour's agenda after all, in spite of Clause Four. In fact we began to wonder how many of them, before the current “modernisation” of the Labour Party, even knew they had a Clause Four, never mind what it meant. 

As for how they now thought Clause Four stood up against our Object, we didn't really expect too many replies demonstrating a clear understanding of socialist ideas from a party which is gearing itself up to run British capitalism, and if we expected muddy thinking and evasive answers, we were not disappointed. Few of the replies received dealt directly with the questions asked, and from those that did, it is clear that “common ownership” in the Labour Party is a wonderfully flexible and adaptable term.

It can mean literally common ownership (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice); or it can mean state ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a democratic system where goods are produced to satisfy human need (as long as it’s expressed as an ideal only, and not intended to be put into practice) or; it can mean—State ownership and control by a small elite. It can mean a noble ideal which Labour has steadfastly and unflinchingly advocated (but it doesn’t), or it can mean, er, state ownership and control by a small elite.

As Lewis Carroll put it: “When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less."

A few of our would-be political leaders demonstrated a similar talent for childlike fantasy. As John Marek MP so eloquently put it: "common ownership to me can mean many different things”. John Gunnell agreed: "common ownership can take different forms and it is not practicable for all the means and instruments of production to be in common ownership.”

Keith Hill thought that “democratic control, but not exclusively common ownership, is a desirable political goal". And Max Madden's response was a two-page speech, the climax of which was “we need imagination and innovation to devise new ways of administering public control. . .”.

Austin Mitchell considered that "Democratic control is desirable, common ownership is another matter”, he felt the need however to add- “I wouldn’t have wanted to change Clause Four and regard the whole business as a waste of time, but if the Leader decides to throw himself off a cliff, the Party has no alternative but to catch him”. Catch him? Most of them in their eagerness to get their hands on the spoils of governmental control are lining up like obedient, well-trained lemmings just waiting for the order to jump.

Chris Mullin suffered from a different delusion. Just like your average Daily Mail reader, he was under the impression that common ownership has already been tried somewhere: “I agree that a society based upon common ownership is a wonderful ideal. The only difficulty is that it has proved catastrophic in all the countries where an attempt has been made to introduce such a system”. Where on earth could he be thinking of? Surely not the corrupt state dictatorships of Russia, China, etc?

Mike Gapes found our letter “rather irritating” and wouldn’t answer the questions. John Cummings also seemed rather irritated. He preferred not to tell us what he thought because: “I feel that the Labour Party’s constitution is a matter for Labour Party members alone to decide”. Now there’s a novel idea, ordinary Labour members being given a say on decisions regarding their Party’s constitution! Whatever next?

Bryan Davies was honest enough to admit that “the establishment of a system of society based on common ownership is not a realistic objective for a Party seeking to obtain power” (and presumably not once they’ve got “power” over us either), but isn’t this precisely what Labour have been telling us they stood for all these years? Bob Ainsworth certainly knew what he wanted if he got into power: “a strong market economy helped, encouraged and regulated to operate in the public interest”. (Isn't that what they promised last time?)

Poor old Tony Benn, daft as ever, missed the whole point of the three questions. His response was: “'Thanks for your letter. I don’t want to see Clause 4 changed either.” Perhaps in a moment of wild optimism he thought our object was Clause Four.

Labour supporters intending to put their trust in this lot. should consider another piece of Lewis Carroll advice: '“Would you tell me please, which way I ought to go from here?” ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat’.”

Labour, by the admissions of their own MPs don't even understand what "common ownership” means, never mind stand for it, and have nothing to offer but empty rhetoric, promises and a meaningless replacement for the meaningless Clause Four. The rules at both the Mad Hatter Tea Party and the Labour Party are the same: “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today”, or to spell it out even more clearly: "Have some wine,” the March Hare said in an encouraging tone. Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea.' I don’t see any wine,' she remarked. 'There isn't any,’ said the March Hare.”

Is it just a coincidence that Labour’s policy and promises come straight from Alice in Wonderland. Finally, before we leave the subject of Alice, this is how Alice Mahon MP replied to the above questions:

1. Yes, it's an admirable goal and one 1 share.
2. Yes, common ownership is an obvious socialist objective and one I hold very dear.
3. None.

So, what on earth is she doing in the Labour Party? We would strongly advise this particular Alice, and anyone else holding up the Labour bottle marked "drink me” to check out the contents a bit more carefully.

Nick White

Levellers or Diggers? (1995)

From the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the end of April a few hundred demonstrators occupied the site of the old Wisley airfield near George’s Hill, in Surrey. This was where, in 1649, the Diggers had set up a communist community with the aim of starting a movement to make the Earth “a common treasury for all” again. The demonstrators called themselves the “New Levellers”. this was appropriate because, like the original Levellers (but unlike the original Diggers), they were demanding a reform of the laws governing land ownership and use rather than the abolition of private property, as the leaflet we distributed pointed out.

Many of the Levellers of the 1640s, being inexperienced in rebelling against the injustices of the market, and yet to recognise the incompatibility between FREEDOM and PROPERTY, sought to reform and make just property relationships. For example, the Leveller leader, Lilburne, in March 1648 wrote that the Levellers had “been the truest and constantest asserters of liberty and property (which are quite opposite to communitie and levelling)”.

THE TRUE LEVELLERS were the Diggers. Their ideas can serve as an inspiration to those of us in the 1990s who detest and reject the iniquities of the commercial system. The Diggers stood not for state ownership but COMMON OWNERSHIP: “The earth with all her fruits of Corn, Cattle and such like was made to be a common Store-House of Livelihood, to all mankinde, friend and foe, without exception” (A Declaration From the Poor Oppressed People of England).

Where all wealth is commonly owned there will be no need for money. In the above-quoted Declaration the Diggers proclaimed that “we must neither buy nor sell. Money must not any longer . . . be the great god that hedges in some and hedges out others . . .” Production must be solely for use and all people able to take from the common store on the basis of FREE ACCESS. As Winstanley explained in his Law of Freedom: “As everyone works to advance the Common Stock so everyone shall have a free use of any commodity in the Storehouse for his pleasure and comfortable livelihood, without buying and selling or restraint from any”. This is a wonderful and compelling socialist vision of a society where all things in and on the Earth are the common property of all; where all people give according to their abilities and take freely according to their needs; where money and other time-wasting features of property relationship are done away with. It is a practical alternative to capitalism’s property mania.

Modern Tory defenders of property assert that owning things makes us free. This false equation between liberty and property was spread by the 17th defenders of property power, and was also accepted by several well-intentioned Levellers, just as it has been by subsequent leftists who have feared to break with the ideas of THE MONEY SYSTEM. In truth, property and money make us unfree. As Winstanley stated: “True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the Earth”. Those in Britain living beneath the poverty line and the millions in the world dying from starvation should see the sense of that.

Socialists must learn from the wisdom of our Digger predecessors and have the boldness to state the case for A MONEYLESS WORLD SOCIETY – a case now more materially feasible and globally urgent than ever.

Press Exposure: Make Your Excuses and Leave (1995)

The Press Exposure column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the Richter scale of blatant deception it does not come up to George Orwell’s Newspeak but it is a pretty impressive misnomer, for a newspaper which carries very little proper news and which pays scant attention to what goes on outside these shores to be called the News Of The World.

Not that that has ever worried the people who own it or edit it. Their yardstick for the success or failure of the paper is how much it is talked about in the pubs on a Sunday. And as it has a circulation approaching five million—which means a probable readership of nearly 15 million—it is a fair bet that whenever people are in alcoholic bondage on Sundays there will be some discussion of the News Of The World's latest account of the roller-coaster sex lives of the royals or TV soap stars or famous sportsmen or obscure clergymen.

Of course it might be that the people leaning up against the bars will find other things to interest them. Like the recent WHO report that every year 12.2 million children under five die "because they are poor". Like the training now being given to Job Centre staff to deal with an expected upsurge of violence from claimants made even more desperate by cuts in benefits. Like the revelation that since peace broke out in 1945 there have been three crises in which America and Russia were on the brink of all-out nuclear war. But that is the real world of capitalism, in which the News Of The World has only a limited interest.

Getting close

The paper was born in 1843 and has always been noted for peddling the more sensational style of journalism, giving the full treatment to the likes of Jack the Ripper and Dr Crippen. Aristocratic divorces were a convenient way of catering for its readers’ assumed need for respectable sexual titillation. All of this was driven by the paper’s belief in itself. Emsley Carr, who edited it for 50 years, once asserted that it was ". . . always right. Nothing we did could ever be wrong".

This confidence had something to do with the News Of The World’s knack of getting close to its readers. Free insurance was one way of doing this; another was a missing person’s service (often aimed at funding someone who stood to gain from a will). Most famously of all. it ran the John Hilton Advice Bureau (Hilton was a professor of industrial relations at Cambridge) which helped with readers' problems on pensions, insurance, rent and the like and took up many cases. The spin-off was not just in publicity and higher sales but the fact that the Bureau sometimes opened up an avenue of investigation which could lead to a tasty story. For the News Of The World being close to its readers paid off; in the 1950s its circulation exceeded eight million.

But the readers need to be not only titillated. They had also to be shocked, frightened, amused, outraged—if possible all at once. Too often this has been manipulated by the selective exposure of someone who has been through the courts for sexual offences. It matters little that in so many cases the offender has themself suffered sexual assaults; in the columns of the News Of The World they are less than human— "fiends" or "beasts" or "perverts". And when they leave prison the paper continues to pursue them, protesting hysterically at wherever they live or whatever job they find.

Making excuses

The paper’s preoccupation with crime, the pornography of which they pretend to legitimise, has led it into some contradictory stances. On the one hand they make a lot of denouncing criminals, at times offering rewards for information leading to the conviction of a murderer. On the other they can befriend the notorious "acid bath" killer Haigh and pay for his defence in court after he had given them exclusive rights to his memoirs. More recently this preoccupation has reached the pitch of an obsession to including “dole scroungers’’ who must seem, to the News Of The World readers in the pubs, to be infesting the country and threatening to bring down the Stock Exchange. Lloyds and the money market with the rest of capitalism's class structure.

This obsession might be taken more seriously if the paper had a stronger reputation for respecting the truth. For example in 1991 it ran a story about Clare Short, the Labour MP who was campaigning against the cult of Page Three girls. This story was about a classified advertisement in Tribune which suggested that readers might like to send for a selection of "granddad’s naughty pictures"—the nature of which can easily be imagined. The News Of The World presented this boring, insignificant item—it could hardly be called news—as if Clare Short was in some way responsible for the advertisement when in fact her only connection with it was that she was a Tribune reader.

The sort of "exposures" the paper excels in are normally of some type of prostitution—the wilder and more bizarre the services on offer the better. So carefully have these investigations been arranged and reported that they have added a new phrase to the usage of English. The story begins when a reporter poses as a punter and. as what might be called the crunch approaches, has to extricate himself, complete with hidden tape recorder, from a potentially embarrassing—even dangerous—situation. Breathless readers are told how it is done: "I made my excuses and left."

Since 1968 the News Of The World has been owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is not renowned for upholding high journalistic standards, especially when the lower the standards the higher the sales. Before Murdoch took over, between 1891 and 1970 the paper had six editors. After Murdoch arrived, from 1970 to 1993 there were 23. Perhaps this is part of the paper’s proud boast (it was, after all, an advertising slogan) that All Human Life Is There.

But—all human life? The poverty, famine. fear and disease which is what human life is under capitalism? The futile, posturing leaders who the News Of The World urges us to support according to the whims of its proprietor? The corruption and cynicism of a social system which exploits and degrades its useful people and assumes that they will suffer it all. provided they have a weekly helping of malicious rubbish to wash down with their booze on Sunday?

Time to leave. And no excuses. 

Ivan

Blogger's Note:

The News of the World finally shut up shop in 2011 after the fallout from the phone hacking scandal.

These Foolish Things: It takes your breath away (1995)

The Scavenger column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

It takes your breath away

Orimulsion is a cheaper fuel for electricity power stations. It is based upon bitumen and is imported from Venezuela. Since it has been used at Merton power station, near Ramsgate, asthma attacks in the area have quadrupled. Because it is cheap there are plans to introduce it at a number of other power stations.

So what's new?

They throw the most lavish parties. Last year they air-freighted more than £13 billion in cash into the country to satisfy the popular demand for foreign currency. Their offices are already extravagant temples to Mammon. But now Russia's bankers want more.

With the Kremlin’s help they arc amassing enormous political power. In short. Russia's new plutocracy can boast of wealth and influence to rival the Medicis or the Rothschilds. Sunday Telegraph 16 April.

Current account

In the first five years of private operation, the regional electricity companies accumulated £1 billion surplus funds, instead of reducing charges to customers. Professor Stephen Littlechild, the highly-paid regulator appointed to prevent such excesses, either knew nothing about this or chose not to take any action. Whichever was the ease, he was useless.

The Thatcher nightmare

House prices have fallen by 25 percent in real terms since 1990 and experts believe that they have much further to fall. Over a million people in Britain arc caught in the negative equity trap, where they currently owe an average of £7.000 more in mortgage repayments than their home is worth on the market. Apart from the debt burden, this makes it extremely difficult for them to move house. During Margaret Thatcher’s rule, with her campaign for a “home-owning democracy” and income tax relief on mortgage interest payments, house prices doubled in seven years. Now the market is swinging back again.

True Brits

National Grid, the electricity transmission company being privatised, has avoided paying almost £2m in tax by setting up a financial arm in Dublin.

The company ladled £160m of its cash flow into the tax avoidance scheme before the government stepped in to make the arrangement less attractive.

A National Grid spokesman yesterday confirmed the existence of the "special purpose” firm and defended it as: “a tax-efficient way of managing the company’s money which is our duty on behalf of the shareholders. It is part of our treasury function, and normal practice for UK companies that have big cash flows” Independent on Sunday, 2 April.

The Scavenger

Whispering Sweet Nothings (1995)

The A Word in Your Ear column from the June 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blah, blah; blah, blah; Blair, Blair. This column has decided that a change is as good as a rest and it is time to commit ourselves to utterly platitudinous cliches. Away with this talk of bosses, wage slaves and unseemly class struggles. What politics needs today is a good dose of empty rhetoric—and by Jove, we’re out to let you have it, bang between the eyes (as our role models, the boxing commentators, say).

A political cliche in the hand is worth two in the bush, and a stupefying slogan in time saves nine.

Perhaps there is some truth in the observation that most political speeches these days read like the outpourings of a cheap word processor which has been deprived of human contact, but let none be deceived that cliches are a recent invention. Even before the inane banalities of Major Clinton and Paddy Blair, creative depths were reached by orators of old whose capacity for saying nothing was in direct proportion to what they had to say.

Take Hitler, for example. By most historical accounts this “evil genius” had verbal powers which could hypnotise a crowd faster than Churchill could down a litre of brandy. In fact, Hitler was a transparent nutter, a loud-mouthed cliche-merchant who, without the musical build-up and the theatrical setting would have been regarded merely as an out-of-work painter with an irreparable groin injury. Watching newsreels of Hiller’s rants, as well as those of Mosley’s pathetic echoes, is an invitation to a cliche-spouting competition. Take away the mass unemployment, hyper-inflation and defeat in a recent world war and Hitler's platform at Nuremberg would be about as popular as the Catholic Evidence {sic) League in Hyde Park on a drizzly Sunday. Or take Thatcher. (Take Hitler, take Thatcher. . . take the bloody lot of them.) another sufferer from chronic verbal diarrhoea. Takeaway the TV cameras, the specially-invited audiences and the VIP label and put Maggie on a platform in any high street in Britain; she wouldn’t last ten minutes. Which is nine minutes longer than her successor would last and longer still than Reagan who reportedly went through the entire 1984 presidential election campaign without responding to a single spontaneous question.

Cruel commentators have labelled New Labour’s new-look, brand-new, extra-new-ingredients, we’ll-swap-four-of-your-old-claws-for-one-of-our-new-ones Object as being a bit. . . er, wordy . . . and, well, empty. Hot air, to be precise. The Blur leadership need not feel slung by such criticism, for in committing themselves to such apple-pie platitudes they are merely following a long-preserved record of cliche, going back to their party’s founder. Defining socialism in June 1896, Keir Hardie surely surpassed even the new Clause Three-And-A-Quarter when he explained it to mean “brotherhood, fraternity, love thy neighbour as thyself, goodwill towards men, and glory to God in the highest”. Now, that is what you call a relentless commitment to unadulterated cliche.

So what if almost everything that every politician says sounds the same? Has it not occurred to Generation X, whom the sociologists tell us are characterised by a universal disdain for politicians, that they sound the same because they stand for the same thing? Try selling Coke and Pepsi without, after a while, descending to cliches about fizz, bubbles and cold soda on a hot day. Nobody accuses Pepsi ads of dwelling on the obvious merits of ice-cold drinks or Kellogg of talking too much about breakfast instead of lunch, or Punch and Judy of pursuing the same boring quarrel when they could always go to Relate and patch things up. So why expect defenders of a social order which should by rights have been put on the scrapheap with the Hillman Minx to have anything original to say?

It is high time that voters stop bleating about the cliched vacuity of those who seek to lead them and realise that secondhand tripe is quite good enough for anyone seeking to be led. Or, to put it another way, "You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it think”,

Steve Coleman