Socialist Sonnet: No.192 Reform (2025)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog 

 

Reform

The ballot box hold such great potential

To become the means of a real solution,

A decisive, conscious revolution

That has no need to invoke the martial.

The commonweal is ill-served by violence,

Which just spawns reaction and bitterness.

But, for votes to count, voters must address

Themselves collectively to an immense

Change in their political perspective.

No more tinkering reforms, or leaders

Of the left, right or centre, no breeders

Of false hopes: simply, do not self-deceive.

New parties arise and governments fall,

Yet, the day after, nothing’s changed at all.

 D. A.

Proper Gander: Lessons from Adolescence (2025)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A little over a year since Mr Bates vs The Post Office reminded us that TV drama can still have an impact, Netflix’s Adolescence has also shaped debate in Parliament, online, in the media and round the proverbial water cooler at work. Adolescence has been particularly resonant because the issue of violence from young males which it raises feels both more emotive and widespread. The story centres on a 13-year-old boy who is accused of stabbing a girl from his school. Each episode covers an hour at intervals after the murder, with the first showing Jamie’s arrest at his home. Episode two follows the police’s initial visit to the children’s school, the third is a conversation between Jamie and a psychologist some months afterwards and the last episode looks at how the rest of his family are managing over a year later. The performances from Owen Cooper as Jamie and Stephen Graham as his father Eddie are particularly gripping, with Graham also co-creating and co-writing the series. Impressively, each episode was filmed in one continuous take, which must have involved intricately structuring and choreographing the scenes to get the camera and the actors in the right places at the right times.

The drama gives less emphasis to the details of the murder than to the circumstances around it, gradually bringing out the combination of reasons behind Jamie’s actions. His family isn’t portrayed as dysfunctional apart from his father’s anger, described as a generational trauma passed on to Jamie. His own anger is shown sparingly and as being fuelled by online culture. The ‘manosphere’ to which Jamie is drawn, of emojis, incels, influencers and abusive messages has led him to a view of women which leads to his crime. The script tends to understate the causes: Jamie is outwardly ‘normal’ rather than obviously aggressive. Online discourse isn’t explored in detail, other than several brief scenes where aspects of the ‘manosphere’ are mentioned, hinting at its links with far-right ideology. The meanings behind kidney bean emojis and ‘taking the red pill’ explained by the teenage characters would have been new to many viewers. An effect of this is to tell parents that they may not have understood the nature of online cultures their children are being tempted into, and how this can almost casually slide them into violence. In some ways, this is a modern version of past moral panics about the influence of horror comics, video nasties and computer games on young people, although this feels more serious, given today’s climate with the rise in knife crime and misogyny.

Much of the discussion sparked by Adolescence has concentrated on ‘toxic masculinity’, rather than another factor in what influenced Jamie. His school is depicted as a grim and tense place for children to learn in, taking into account that the scenes there are set only a few days after the murder. The teachers are depicted as policing behaviour more than teaching, while the regimented routines and drab walls aren’t much different from those of the police station or detention centre seen in other episodes. Our society’s institutions and environments encourage and reinforce alienation, with Jamie representing its extremes.

Adolescence isn’t a case study, although because it’s fiction perhaps it can be spoken about more openly than real cases. Its release was certainly timed well to contribute to a broader debate. In the same month, former England football manager Sir Gareth Southgate, giving the BBC’s annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture, said that today’s young men need more wholesome role models rather than ‘callous, manipulative and toxic influencers’ online. Also in March, the Centre of Social Justice published its Lost Boys report which describes an increasing divergence between the future prospects of boys and girls, with girls now more likely to later have higher qualifications and higher-paid employment.

Various right-wing vloggers (and Elon Musk) opined that Adolescence is liberal-lefty propaganda which demonises white males and distracts from the proportion of stabbings committed by black youths. Their dislike of the drama is presumably due in part to its criticisms of the ‘manosphere’ they represent. Right-wing commentators were also more likely than those on the left to say that it is being used by the government to justify legislation about regulating online activity. The Online Safety Act 2023 passed into law under the previous Conservative government, and its implementation is still in progress under Labour’s regime. The Prime Minister met with the series’ creators and backed MP Anneliese Midgley’s call for it to be screened in schools with the aim of helping to deter teenage boys from misogyny and aggression. Secondary schools are already obliged to include ‘Relationships and Sex Education’ on their curriculum and updated guidance to cover sexual violence is being planned. Even if the state’s approach of embracing the programme and saying they are taking action over the issues it raises is sincere rather than cynical, it’s still a better PR move than ignoring or disputing the drama.

Adolescence has, at least for a few weeks, connected together various attempts to address concerns about some young males. But to what extent can tightening up legislation about online activity or showing the series in schools or promoting different role models counter misogynistic violence? The context of the problem remains. Titling the drama ‘Adolescence’ points towards the root of the issue being with younger people, especially boys. However, the real cause is found with the social conditions which shape adolescence. Therefore deeper social change is needed, although this risks being ignored among the piecemeal reforms and proposals.

Mike Foster

Blogger's Note:

Mr Bates vs The Post Office was reviewed in the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Letter: “Socialism’s prospects have never been better” (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Socialism’s prospects have never been better”

In 1995 I moved to the ‘City of Three Revolutions,’ as St Petersburg was known in Soviet times, and lived there for ten years. Although my antennas were always up for signals of a socialist spirit, or even just the memory of one, they registered none. My reaction was to dive deeper into the history of the revolution. I began noticing things about it that were out of sync with my reading of Marx and Engels, like the fact that almost all the top Bolsheviks were from the upper class, not to mention that what they did to the workers they were supposedly leading to communism was far worse than what they had suffered under their old masters.

Lenin brought his Bolshevik Party to power on the cresting wave of the democratic workers’ councils in 1917. Then, with a few changes, he essentially restored tsarist autocracy. Freedom of speech, the press, and assembly were again suppressed, and the absolute power of a non-elected monarch, a dictator, reappeared along with a centralized bureaucracy. Under Lenin, the chinovnik-bureaucrat apparatus once more became the master of the land and of thousands of industrial enterprises. It included many tsarist bureaucrats, who, together with a few Bolsheviks, were the bosses in the ministries. Lenin’s bureaucracy blended with the tsarist bureaucracy and quickly adopted the same rules. Everything that upset or challenged the interests of centralized economic and socio-political life was eliminated.

Naturally, the USSR presented itself as socialist. From the standpoint of capitalists the world over, this was confirmed by the abolition of private property and the free market. For Soviet workers, however, their government, though endlessly spewing Marxist phraseology, was a harsh exploiter. The USSR had very little in common with socialism, if by this we mean a society without exploitation and classes. Abolition of private property and nationalization of the means of production are not socialism if the direct producers do not control the economy. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was not a union because Moscow ruled despotically over the regions. It was not soviet because the Bolsheviks eliminated the workers’ councils. It was not socialist as workers’ self-management was destroyed. And it was not republican because there were no free elections. Every word in this ‘USSR’ was a bald lie.

German and Dutch Marxists, including among others, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, Paul Levy, Franz Mehring, Otto Rühle, Anton Pannekoek and Herman Gorter, exercised an early criticism of the concept Lenin elaborated in his 1902 pamphlet What Is To Be Done? whereby a highly disciplined party of professional revolutionaries would ‘substitute’ for the working class and carry out a socialist revolution in its name. They insisted that socialism was not a party affair and argued that all political parties – even those identifying as socialist – are inherently bourgeois in nature because they always have a hierarchy with leaders who make all the important decisions and followers who do as they are told. The very idea of the political party was a violation of the credo and collectivist spirit of socialism.

For the longest time, I could not understand the phenomenon of well-off, usually well-educated, individuals leading revolutions, people like Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, Guevara, and Mao. The answer is self-evident, but it took me a while to realize this. Intellectuals have two routes to power. One is to join the establishment and work to preserve and extend it in the spirit of Niccolo Machiavelli. For the more daring or desperate, the other way is to lead a revolution and make the establishment theirs. Leftists, including Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists and other ‘ists’ have a special interest in state capitalism, are based on the exploitation of and rule over the workers, and make up capitalism’s ‘radical’ left wing.

Since the Paris Commune of 1871, the world’s workers have not discovered any other form of revolutionary organization than the council. Councils know no hierarchy, all decisions are taken collectively, and their representatives answer only to their members. This is the form in which the social-revolutionary workers’ movement has clothed itself – like the soviets that were shut down and swept away by the Bolsheviks in 1917-1921, and the similar elimination of workers’ councils (arbeiterrate) in Germany in the early twenties, the councils that were eliminated by the French ‘communists’ in 1968, Iran’s mullahs in 1979, and Poland’s apparatchiki in 1981, among many others.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels did not say, ‘Unite the workers of the world! They said instead, ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ Their audience were workers, not upper-class intellectuals with guilt complexes and political ambitions. Indeed, if they are to blame for anything, it is the sanguine hope they gave to so many that capitalism would spread across the planet and take root much faster than it did, along with the expectation that the victory of the proletariat, by virtue of its sheer size and majority alone, would be guaranteed and the world would finally lay the awful system to rest. In fairness to Marx and Engels, however, the first words of the Communist Manifesto, published in distant 1848, are: ‘A specter is haunting Europe.’ The confusion may be due to the pamphlet’s forward-looking last sentence: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’ It is now 2025, and there have never been more workers on the planet. Moreover, the hold on them of political parties is largely a thing of the past. The prospects for international socialist revolution have never been better.

Evel Economakis

Reply:

Obviously we agree with your criticism of the so-called USSR and of Leninism but —equally obviously —cannot agree that ‘the very idea of the political party was a violation of the credo and collectivist spirit of socialism’.

The historical figures you list seem to have meant parties based on the principle of leadership such as Lenin’s vanguard party and parliamentary Social Democratic and Labour parties that ask workers to follow them as leaders by passively voting for them. We agree with rejecting that kind of party but most (though not all, not Luxemburg for example) seem to have ruled out the possibility of a political party — as a party contesting elections with a view to winning political control — which ‘know no hierarchy, all decisions are taken collectively, and their representatives answer only to their members’. This is the sort of party we advocate. Such a party is necessary as workers need to organise to take control of the state if only to prevent it being used against them but also to coordinate the changeover from capitalism to socialism.

We have nothing against ‘workers councils’ as such as bodies that workers have formed from time to time under specific historical circumstances, but we don’t see them as a necessarily socialist revolutionary form. Not all the examples you list have even claimed that but advanced various trade-union type and political democracy demands. That said, workers will need to self-organise also in the places where they work to keep production and administration going while the workers’ party uses political control to end capitalist ownership of the means of production.

Editors

Cooking the Books: Prophecies about productivity (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Sky to cut 2,000 jobs at its call centres in pivot to AI’ (Times, 28 March) is a typical headline these days as generative AI (like ChatGPT) is applied to white-collar work.

In an experiment carried out by an American firm of management consultants in 2023, call centre workers using AI handled 13.8 percent more customer enquiries per hour than those without, business professionals wrote 59 percent more documents per hour, and programmers coded 126 percent more projects per week. Averaging these, they came up with a figure of a 66 percent increase in productivity from applying AI. This they described as a ‘big deal’ because this ‘equate to 47 years of natural productivity gains in the United States’. But they were not comparing like with like.

They took into account only the work-time saved at the last stage of production, ignoring the labour previously expended, which would include in the case of their experiment labour spent on developing, installing and maintaining the AI system. If this had been taken into account, the productivity increase would be much smaller.

That developing and installing AI involves considerable amounts of labour is illustrated by a Sky spokesperson saying that ‘it was making a multi-million pound investment in its Livingston site, near Edinburgh, as part of a transformation “to deliver quicker, simpler and more digital customer service”’.

As the November 1979 Socialist Standard explained:

In everyday language a motor car is said to be ‘produced’ by the workers who assemble it, and bread to be ‘produced’ by workers in the bakehouse; but the labour of these workers is only a part of all that required to produce cars and bread. As Marx put it: “We must add to the quantity of labour last employed the quantity of labour previously worked up in the raw material of the commodity, and the labour bestowed on the implements, tools, machinery and buildings with which such labour is assisted” (Value, Price and Profit, chapter VI).

Let us assume that the ‘previous’ hours of labour needed to produce a commodity are 80, and the ‘last’ hours are 20 — a total of 100 hours. Let us further assume that without additional investment, but merely by simplifying the last operation, it becomes possible to reduce the necessary hours from 20 to 10. It then takes only 90 hours in all, in place of 100. Productivity will have risen by about 11 per cent. But if ‘productivity’ is calculated — wrongly — on the last operation only, it will appear to have increased by 100 per cent. Would anyone be so foolish as to look at it in that way? Well, yes — it is happening every day.

A news item about the introduction of a new machine operated by two men instead of the former ten will be presented as ‘two men do the work of ten’, as if the making and maintenance of the machine did not absorb additional labour. So productivity in that example will be said, wrongly, to have been multiplied by five. (…) As Marx explained, the amount of labour that is saved is not the whole saving on the last operating process, but the difference between that amount and the additional labour required for the new equipment (Capital, Vol.I. Kerr Edition, pp. 426-7). This is the true measure of increased productivity.

The mistaken theories have been responsible for a continuous enormous exaggeration of the increase of workers’ output, and corresponding false assumptions about the growth of unemployment. (…)

The consequence has been that every advance in technology — the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, computers and automation — and now the silicon chip — has given rise to prophecies that enormous numbers of workers would soon be out of work permanently.

China (2025)

Book Review from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy. By Anne Stevenson-Yang. Bui Jones, 2024. xxii +149pp.

This book really is Chinese capitalism up close. Its American author, the mother of a Chinese family, spent over 25 years living in China between the 1980s and 2014, first as a journalist and then as an entrepreneur in publishing and software. This gave her experience of life in China both in its social dimension and, more relevantly to this book, in the economic twists and turns that followed the Mao era (late 1970s onwards) leading right up to the present day. She presents the knowledge gained from this experience in a fascinatingly detailed way and with a turn of phrase that makes it far more readable than any recent academic study of that country’s development.

Unlike many commentators who seek to differentiate China’s economic system from that of the West, she has no scruple about labelling it as capitalist, understanding that, even if the country is far more socially and politically coercive than Western liberal democracies, it still operates, as Western capitalism does, a system of production for profit which divides its population into two main classes, a small one of extremely wealthy people, whether private individuals or state bureaucrats, and a vast majority of others who are forced to survive by selling their energies to an employer (again whether state or private) for a wage or salary.

The ‘wild ride’ of the title refers to the various iterations Chinese capitalism has been through since the extremely backwards state-run capitalism of Mao’s reign (which by the way she calls ‘socialism’ – something we would not accept), and her analysis is detailed and compelling. She sees the ‘ride’, even if in many ways smoke and mirrors, as broadly progressive in the sense of bringing alleviation to poverty in China and, while the system remains politically authoritarian, of being less nakedly repressive than the previous era. However, she sees things as having gone backwards since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, both in terms of autocratic state control over the population and of state capitalism reasserting its primacy over private ownership of capital. And she is pessimistic about the chances of this changing any time soon. It should of course be added that other commentators on China take a different view and think the pendulum is more likely to swing the other way, ie towards the freer, more open exchange of ideas which tends to characterise advanced capitalist development and provides a better terrain for the spread of socialist ideas. But this remains to be seen.

Howard Moss

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The top 1 percent in the U.S … had a combined net worth of $49.2 trillion by the end of 2024. The combined value of almost 100 million U.S. homes during the same time was $49.7 trillion. 

(Newsweek)

‘Woke’ is not a precise, scientific term. But it typically refers to the attempt to combat forms of oppression – like racism and sexism – on the basis of identity politics, through means like quotas, changes to language, and raising awareness … ‘woke’ policies seek to ‘fight’ oppression on an individualistic basis, whilst completely jettisoning any idea of class struggle, or seeing oppression as being rooted in capitalist society. 

(The Communist)

Trucks carrying commercial goods, which are later sold in Gaza, are charged at least $20,000…while aid trucks are also subject to extortion before crossing to the enclave. Organi is a Sinai businessman, politician and tribal leader allied with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Organi’s name has become synonymous with unofficial profits made out of the suffocating Gaza blockade, particularly from desperate Palestinians attempting to flee the fighting. MEE last year revealed that Organi made at least $2m daily from Palestinians who left the Gaza Strip via the border crossing point with Egypt . . . 

(MEE)

While his crackdowns provoked outrage around the globe, Duterte and his brand of politics remained popular at home even after he left office. His daughter… riding on her family name, was elected Vice President in 2022 in a landslide victory alongside President Marcos Jr, himself the son of a former dictator who ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. 

(Time)

A ceasefire in Ukraine is not about peace. It’s about money, just as the earlier war was. As all wars are, ultimately. An acceptable ceasefire for Trump, as well as for Putin, will involve a carve-up of Ukraine’s goodies. Rare earth minerals, land, agricultural production will be the real currency driving the agreement.

(MEE)

Tren de Aragua’s growth surged as a result of mass incarceration policies that began under Venezuela’s former President Hugo Chávez and expanded under current President Nicolás Maduro. Incarceration rates began to increase in 2009 and were exacerbated by police raids deployed in 2010 in marginalized neighborhoods across the country. Venezuela’s prisons became filled with young, poor men. 

(The Conversation)

The preconditions for a communist or socialist society are (1) the development of a productive potential sufficient to support the reasonable needs of the population and (2) a clear majority who want such a society and understand what it entails. The SPGB’s position is that precondition (1) has been met a long time ago, but we are a long way off from meeting precondition (2). If and when we do have a class-consciousness socialist majority, there is nothing to prevent us from immediately implementing the new society. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to linger on with one or another form of capitalism a moment longer.

(Letter in Weekly Worker)

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

Halo, Halo! (2025)

The Halo Halo Column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is amongst the top ten American capitalist ‘opportunities’ (read scams) for becoming rich in the USA? One in particular is also popular in other parts of the world. Become a preacher. Grow a congregation. Rook them for as much money as you can.

At a Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Convention a preacher said it had cost him $2,000 to renew his ordination and license. Can y’all contribute toward that? Yahoo reported that he ordered the doors locked on the one thousand people there and demanded that they each give twenty dollars. And the same from the online audience. Nice work if you can get it, Rev. He’s quoted in the piece as justifying the action on the following grounds: ‘The truth is, when finances are being received in any worship gathering, it is one of the most vulnerable and exposed times for both the finance and security teams. Movement during this sacred exchange can be distracting and, at times, even risky. My directive was not about control it was about creating a safe, focused, and reverent environment for those choosing to give, and for those handling the resources’.

Chutzpah on a grand scale. Wonder if he had the American equivalent of Securicor waiting outside to safely carry off all the loot? Credit where it’s due, he’s merely following all those who recognised early on that religion offered power over the masses and oodles of boodle.

* * *

The Socialist Party is wholly in favour of free speech, even when religious nonsense is being propagated. That’s because we have a long history of refuting such hokum with empirical evidence. In the USA the First Amendment guarantees freedom of expression, and free exercise of religion except where it doesn’t.

In Kansas, according to AlterNet, the ‘Satanic Grotto, a group of Kansas religious anarchists’ wanted to hold a ‘black mass’ inside the Statehouse.

In a fine display of sensitivity, the SG noted that ‘The event would not be the full “black mass” the group normally observes because that would involve nudity, drinking and other activities discouraged at the Statehouse. There also wouldn’t be fire or anything used in the ceremony that might pose a physical risk to the public’.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property organised an online petition. It’s described in the piece as a ‘traditionalist Catholic advocacy group’. Private property, eh?

Surprisingly not, the Kansas Governor responded with ‘computer says no’.

The article author points out that encouraging deference to religion can lead to ‘true believers’ resorting to violence to end perceived blasphemy. His example is the attack on Salman Rushdie in 2022, who was left blind in one eye.

Jonathon Turley, a US First Amendment lawyer, said: ‘Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has announced that the government will be further cracking down on hate speech with a new working group tasked with defining “Islamophobia”’. The effort to crack down on “Islamophobia” could create a type of blasphemy standard if it encompasses criticism of the faith or its practices’.

DC

How we live and how we might live (concluded) (2025)

From the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from last month)

In a voluntary society without a monetary incentive, who would choose to do the dirty work? Wouldn’t people avoid it (surely that’s human nature)? And wouldn’t that have serious consequences for society?

Talk to an apologist for capitalism and you will almost certainly be told at some point that the system’s competitive private property structure is well adapted to meet the demands of ‘human nature’. According to capitalist apologists our ‘nature’ is self-interested and competitive. How do they know this? Well, they say, look around at the way people actually do behave. Competitive and self-interested behaviour is to be found everywhere. As socialists, we have no disagreement with that. In property-based societies like our own, selfish and competitive behaviour is ubiquitous.

But does that define our ‘nature’? In reality, we know this simple model of ‘human nature’ leaves a lot out. We can begin by drawing our apologist’s attention to Douglas Adams’s parable of the puddle: one rainy morning a puddle wakes up in a large pothole. It scans the world around it and is delighted to discover that the pothole is exactly the right shape to accommodate it, and the same is true for its companion puddles and their potholes. The puddle therefore concludes that the world has been designed specifically for the needs of puddles. We can apply this analogy to our current society and ask whether capitalism’s private property system has been designed to accommodate an intrinsically selfish and competitive ‘human nature’ as the capitalist apologist claims, or, on the contrary, whether the competitive and selfish behaviour we see around us, is a learned strategy for surviving in capitalism.

Wide range of capacities

If we look at human behaviour with a more inclusive eye, we can see that even in a capitalist society, people’s behaviour is not solely competitive and selfish, but is often deeply co-operative and generous. Modern capitalism itself consists of huge businesses which employ thousands of people all co-operating together. In our domestic lives, family members support each other, they help out friends with time and money, and they give generously to charitable causes at home and abroad. Donald Trump’s withdrawal of USAID, for example, while applauded by his ideological supporters, has also generated a large backlash as evidence builds of the deadly effects of withdrawal on the populations USAID previously supported.

Human beings are capable of self-interested and competitive behaviour, and also co-operation, kindness and generosity. Rather than ‘human nature’, it would be more accurate to speak of a wide range of ‘human capacities’. We then have to ask what determines which of our capacities predominates in an individual or in a particular society, and under what circumstances. Research in social psychology points to the fact that though we have a capacity for both co-operation and competition, both are socially learned behaviours. If a society is organised on the basis of property relations that isolate individuals and set them in competition with one another, then the best way for its members to survive in such a system will be to behave competitively. If society is organised to produce what we need co-operatively and without private ownership or the profit motive, then this is how things get done, and everyone learns and values much more co-operative behaviour.

At this point our apologist will still insist that even if we have a wide range of capacities, without externally imposed incentives like money wages, individuals will ‘naturally’ gravitate to doing pleasant or interesting tasks and to avoid unpleasant ones. If you ask most people would they rather do something they enjoy than something they don’t, we can probably guess the answer. But dirty work is not necessarily unenjoyable. Many people in the UK and elsewhere do dirty jobs for low wages. It is also the case that all actions have consequences. And those consequences may in themselves be pleasant or unpleasant. Very often actions we find pleasant to do have unpleasant consequences that we want to avoid and vice versa. Humans are not robots, but conscious beings that can estimate consequences and judge how they act on that basis.

Psychological needs

According to research in social psychology, humans have three psychological needs which motivate us strongly to act. We have a need for ‘relatedness’ with our fellows, a need for autonomy and a need to obtain mastery over our environment.

Relatedness: Human beings have never lived isolated lives. We are social creatures and we seek to act and live our lives in collaboration with others. Moreover, we commit ourselves to looking after those we identify and bond with. In capitalist society where the property-based employer-employee relationship divides us economically and forces us to compete, we do not go to work to provide for society in general, but for a wage in order to support ourselves and our families. Our ability to expend time and resources to care for others outside our narrow circle of family and friends is necessarily limited, and if it cuts into the time available for employment, comes at a cost to ourselves. In a socialist society of common ownership and free access, productive activity is not carried on directly to meet our own needs. Our needs are met freely, and we freely give our time to meet the needs of the community of which we are a part. In such a society the circle of those we act for and identify with widens dramatically. And because we have free access to the things we need, the time we give to others never affects our entitlement.

Autonomy: We are motivated to seek relatedness, but we are also motivated to seek personal autonomy, the ability within society to freely make our own choices and decisions. Autonomy is different from ‘independence’ which is a powerful buzz-word in capitalist apologetics. ‘Independence’ has to do with not relying on others. This means that autonomy, the freedom to choose, is compatible with our human need for relatedness, but independence is not. Although capitalist ideology often likes to deny it, our lives are wholly dependent on others, from our first breath to our last. Human beings as we know from experience have a capacity to dominate others. But we also have a powerful drive: a capacity to resist domination. We do not feel comfortable when others exercise power over our lives. People can only dominate us, however, if our society is organised in ways that allow some individuals to stand in the way of our access to the means of life, as occurs in capitalism’s wages system. Dominance hierarchies of this kind limit our freedom and control. A voluntarist society like socialism which is organised without a dominance hierarchy allows us much more autonomy (freedom) and relatedness.

Mastery: Human beings in general are strongly motivated to seek mastery. It may be that we want to become a better guitarist, to produce better carpentry joints, to write better poetry, to bake fancier breads, to become a better astronomer, to invent new technologies. Our drive to achieve mastery in our skills and knowledge often provides good illustrations of the activity/consequence relation discussed earlier. In order to achieve mastery of the guitar for instance, many people are prepared to put themselves through hundreds of hours of a monotonous and often frustrating learning process while painfully developing the calluses on their fingertips which allow them to play their chosen instrument. Satisfaction may be the end goal of our activity, but it may not at all be a feature of the activity itself.

Extrinsic motivators like money tend to suppress our intrinsic motivations for relatedness, autonomy and mastery. In a voluntaristic socialist society without dependence on an employer, we become free to make our own decisions about how we act and how we develop our skills. Without the blinkers of the wages system, which subordinates our actions to a narrow self-interest, we develop a much broader concept of our mutual interdependence. To the extent that some work, therefore, remains ‘dirty’, our much-extended sociability and a shared identity allows us to find value and meaning in contributing to the communal process of meeting our collective needs. And because we have much extended choice, there is also much we can do to eliminate ‘dirty’ work altogether or to make it more attractive.

Questions to ask

1. Is the ‘dirty’ activity necessary? Maybe we are happy to live with the consequences of not doing it. The consequences of certain mining activities for precious jewels, for instance, we might choose to live without.

2. If we can’t live with the consequences, is the work really that unpleasant? We often exaggerate how unpleasant some work is. Many people happily do work that others find ‘dirty’. The dirtiness of ‘dirty’ work is often an exaggerated response to a society that identifies ‘cleanliness’ with status so that we respond to this kind of work with exaggerated disgust. Some people find pleasure in hard physical work, even if it is in ‘dirty’ conditions.

3. If we cannot live with the consequences of not doing the work, and the work is genuinely unpleasant, can we do it a different way? In a socialist society, providing for human need means looking after ourselves in all our roles including that of producers.

3a) Can we make the work ‘cleaner’? A significant amount of ‘dirty work’ in capitalism is only dirty because it is more profitable to organise it that way than to clean it up.

3b) Can we mechanise the work, wholly or partly?

3c) Can we make it pleasanter, by providing, for instance, a better environment, better tools or better protective equipment?

3d) Can we share ‘dirty work’ around more, so that no one does it as a full-time occupation unless they want to?

3e) Can we make the task more sociable, obtaining satisfaction through working together as part of a self-managing team for a common social goal.

3f) Can we find resources and means of having fun while doing it? This may seem like a flippant suggestion, but, if so, ask yourself why? Human beings are a playful species. Under capitalism’s system of employment, time and productivity mean money for the capitalist, so we are taught to be serious in our jobs, to work hard, and to keep our heads down. In socialism, we decide how to balance the effort or unpleasantness of production against how much we think we need.

3g) Can we make the work creative or instructive so that those doing it can advance their knowledge and skills?

Capitalism or socialism?

So, what conclusions have we drawn in this series of articles? We have argued that capitalism is a system based on the employer/employee property relationship which isolates individuals economically from one another and forces them to compete at all levels of society, and that competition frequently spills over into all kinds of conflict, from domestic disputes to gigantic, mechanised world wars. It is the source of poverty, climate crisis, pollution and loss of species diversity.

Socialism, by contrast, is a system of free access, free association and common ownership of the means of production by the whole of society. It extinguishes the profit motive and wasteful competition, undercuts the private ownership of capital and releases a vast amount of labour power tied up, for instance, in the management of capitalism’s monetary system. It undercuts the motivation for greedy behaviour, turns work into productive activity, and laziness into leisure. It also eliminates the need for extrinsic incentives such as money and provides genuinely human motivations like relatedness, autonomy and mastery.

Hud.

SPGB May Events (2025)

Party News from the May 2025 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.

Obituary: Andy Malone (2025)

Obituary from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow Branch regrets to report the passing of Andy Malone at the age of 81. Andy joined the Socialist Party in February 1969 having previously been a member of the Communist Party from which he had resigned in 1965.

This was at a time of much activity in Glasgow Branch in which Andy became involved.

In 1973 Andy’s membership of Glasgow Branch ceased, but only because he went to live in New Zealand where he joined our companion party (SPNZ) there. On his return to Glasgow in 1979 he, of course, rejoined the branch and once again became involved in the work of the party.

He refused to be defined by his employment. Real life was what mattered: his family, his interests and the struggle to overthrow this vile system.

Andy was a scathing critic of the idiocy and cruelty of capitalism and always ready to challenge nonsense whenever he heard it, but he was also willing to have discussions with both those who agreed and disagreed with him. He was very generous with his time and resources. He was an avid reader of many subjects, including history, physics, biology, logic and science generally. Many party members and non-members alike benefitted from access to his vast knowledge and his library. If a subject came up in discussion, usually Andy would have at least some knowledge of it and at least one book about it!

Back in the days when the branch often had several outdoor propaganda meetings on a Saturday and one on a Sunday, Andy would often be at one of those meetings selling the Socialist Standard and other literature and discussing with members of the audience.

Some Glasgow members will remember, only a few years ago while leafletting at George Square, an amiable discussion they and Andy had with a group of Christians who had some misconceptions about both socialism and socialists. Later that day, Andy discovered some anarchists who turned up and a useful discussion and exchange of literature ensued.

Andy was also an enthusiastic and accomplished chess player. His main use for computers was not as a general purpose problem solving machine, nor even as a word-processor, but to check out and assess the latest chess programs.

His contribution to the cause of socialism was outstanding, but his regular attendance at our social events has also given branch members many treasured memories. This is a sad time for all who knew him but especially for his wife Jean and all his family, friends and neighbours.

We will all remember him with great affection.

JC

50 Years Ago: The Common Market: in or out – does it matter? (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the first time in British History—a referendum. A device often used in other countries; Norway voted in such a manner to keep out. This vote, largely favoured by the anti-marketeers in the Labour Party, will resolve the decision for the Government. Mr. Wilson, when recommending the terms said “This is one of the most important parliamentary occasions in our history”. Not so. The British people are only being asked to endorse the continuation of capitalism, in or out, and they do this at every General Election. As yet, they continue to give this endorsement.

To remain in or get out has produced a weird assortment of protagonists. IN – Mr. Wilson and some members of his cabinet ally themselves with Mr. Heath, Maudling, the Liberal Party, the Confederation of British Industry, the Farmers’ Union and generally speaking ‘big business’. OUT – this includes an even weirder assortment. The Communist Party, Enoch Powell, Benn, Foot, Shore, the National Front and the TUC. (…)

How you will vote is your concern. We tell them to stuff their referendum. The real issue that the workers should tackle is Common Market or Common Ownership.

We and our sympathisers will vote. We shall register on our papers our commitment for Socialism. The question you are being asked to answer – In or Out – is of no concern to members of the working class. Whatever the outcome of the vote, Capitalism will continue. And continue it will until you and a majority like you take the revolutionary step of deciding to abolish capitalism in all its forms and to bring into being a new society. (…)

Away with all the trappings of capitalism – tariffs, customs duties, monetary union, competition, buying, selling etc. Vote for nothing but Common Ownership.

(From 'The Common Market: In or out — does it matter?' by Cyril May,  Socialist Standard, May 1975)

Action Replay: Net income (2025)

The Action Replay column from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the August 2024 Action Replay we wrote about the struggles of players in the lower reaches of professional tennis.

But it’s not just those below the top echelons who need support. The Professional Tennis Players Association (www.ptpaplayers.com) aims to ‘Provide protection and support for players and advocate for their best interests’. It focuses on the top 250 singles players and the top 100 doubles players (men and women in both cases), but claims to service players of all rankings, and aims to extend this to cover junior and retired players too. Mind you, it is probably lower-ranked players who would be most in need of the association’s support.

Among other things, PTPA offers free legal aid to players involved in anti-doping and anti-corruption cases, provides medical opinions and recommendations, offers resources to support players’ mental health and (most importantly, no doubt) enables players to receive discounts at Hilton hotels.

Recently, the PTPA began legal action against the sport’s various governing bodies (BBC Sport, 18 March). There are allegedly too many tournaments, which many players are effectively forced to enter. Moreover, players do not receive a large enough percentage of the revenue generated by the top tournaments. According to the PTPA Executive Director, ‘players are trapped in an unfair system that exploits their talent, suppresses their earnings, and jeopardises their health and safety.’

The top twenty men’s and women’s players recently asked for more prize money in the four biggest tournaments, the Grand Slams. Losing in the first round at Wimbledon earns a player £60,000, but many lower-ranked players still struggle to get by. In the year to July 2023, the All England Club (which runs Wimbledon) had an operating profit of just under £54m, but ninety percent of that was paid to the governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association. Zheng Qinwen, the world number eight, said ‘increased prize money would be particularly welcomed by lower-ranked players, who can struggle to make ends meet at other times of the year.’

PTPA is rather different from most trade unions, and many professional sports have unions for players; for instance, the International Federation of Professional Footballers (FIFPRO) consists of sixty-six national players’ associations. All of which shows that even those better off than most people still need to have their interests protected against the powers-that-be of one kind and another.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: Why tariffs are not an issue (2025)

Editorial from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Tariff Reform, Free Trade or No Trade? The Fiscal Fraud Exposed’ was the front-page headline of the Socialist Standard in May 1910. It could be today too.

Britain was then a free-trade country with no tariffs on imports. This was the traditional policy of the Liberal Party, then in office, dating from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1844 which had taxed imports of wheat and other cereals, resulting in higher rents for landowners and so lower profits for capitalists. By the turn of the century, however, British metal manufacturers were feeling the effect of competition from German and American producers and the cry went up for their profits to be ‘protected’. A demand taken up by the Conservative Party as ‘tariff reform’.

Both sides canvassed working-class support for their policy, employing the same specious arguments which we are hearing again today. The Free-Traders’ main argument was ‘cheap food’, that if tariffs were imposed then the price of food would go up and people would be worse off. Today, Trump’s opponents are saying that his tariffs will harm workers by putting up the price of computers, smartphones and clothes. The Tariff Reformers argued that a tax on imports would help preserve jobs in heavy industry and reduce unemployment. Trump, in photo ops with hard-hatted car workers and coal miners standing behind him, is employing the same argument, one that has attractions for the workers concerned and is often supported by their trade unions.

An increase in the cost of living and job security are matters that workers have to worry about. But tariff-free trade does not make workers better off and protective tariffs cannot ensure job security.

Wages reflect the money cost of creating and maintaining a worker’s labour power and tend to go up and down in line with the price of the basket of goods and services they need to do this. If the cost of living increases so, eventually, will money wages (the quicker, the more workers take union action to press for this). And vice versa.

Employers don’t employ workers to provide them with a job but to make a profit out of their work. They are always under competitive pressure to keep costs, including labour costs, down. One way of doing this is to install more up-to-date machinery that enables a worker to produce more in a given period of time. Which results in fewer workers being employed. This process continues even behind tariff walls.

Whether or not there are taxes on imports, workers remain economically dependent on those who monopolise the means of wealth production and have to work for them for a wage that is less than the value of what they produce or provide. Their interest lies in ending this situation by making the means for providing what society needs common property under democratic control.

Then there will be ‘no trade’ because what is trade but the exchange of products between separate owners? With common ownership it cannot exist. What there will be is the simple moving of products from where they are produced to where they are needed, a question of logistics and not a question of buying and selling — or of tariffs and other taxes.

Socialist election activity (2025)

Party News from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party stood four candidates in the local elections at the beginning of May. Below are their election addresses

Kent County Council Election Folkestone

Human needs or profit first?

We live in an economic system, capitalism, that ensures nothing gets built or created unless someone, somewhere expects to make a handsome profit. Human needs come very much second.

That is why Folkestone’s stunning harbour is going to be submerged in ugly blocks of concrete and glass. They are built, not for the needs of local people, but to make a profit for the developers and the owners of the land. No surprise there. That is how capitalism works.

All around us everything crumbles, from schools to libraries and social services, even as the vast wealth of a tiny minority continues to increase. And this will go on so long as we keep voting for political parties which think this absurd and cruel system can be reformed.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has for the last 120 years advocated a quite different society built on the common, democratic ownership of the planet and its resources. A society in which every one of us gets to participate in decisions like the building of new houses, the planting of crops, how we get our energy. A truly human society where sustainable decisions are made based on human needs and the need to maintain a healthy planet.

At current levels of science and technology the earth can easily provide an abundance of resources for everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life. Then there will be no need to artificially ration the necessities of life with money. We will contribute our physical and mental labour freely and take freely from the common store.

That will need a world revolution. And every revolution starts somewhere. Why not Folkestone?

If you agree VOTE SOCIALIST.

Gloucestershire County Council elections Stroud

Capitalism or Socialism?

This might be the last Gloucestershire County Council Election. The government seems intent on reorganising the County and District Councils. This will result in fewer representatives and a concentration of strategic power in the hands of a regional Mayor.

This is democracy in the capitalist system: a choice between candidates for office with only marginally different sets of policies. Once elected those in office can tinker with the system but not the rules of capitalism: those without wealth are beholden to those who do, profit comes first not human needs, and can’t pay – can’t have.

But what can we do? Unlike the architects of local government devolution, socialists believe not that there is too much democracy, but that there isn’t enough. The rules of capitalism have not been in place for all of human history and we don’t need them in future. Getting rid of the rules of capitalism and creating a real democratic future can’t be brought about from above. It has to come from a majority of people.

You can show support for real democracy, socialism, by voting for the Socialist Party of Great Britain on May 1st.

Socialism is a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless society or, a democracy in which free and socially equal men and women co-operate to produce the things they need to live and enjoy life, to which they have free access: ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’.

The Socialist Party is like no other political party in Britain. It is made up of people who have joined together because we want to get rid of the profit system and establish real socialism.

Our aim is to encourage others to become socialist and act for themselves, organising democratically and without leaders, to bring about the kind of society that we advocate.

We are solely concerned with building a movement of socialists for socialism. We are not a reformist party with a programme of policies to patch up capitalism.

If elected, Piers Hobson will work for socialism at every opportunity, vote on issues according to the democratic decisions of his branch of the Socialist Party and always be for socialism and nothing else.

Lambeth Council by-election London

Real change, not damage limitation

Fellow workers,

They call it democracy but it’s nothing of the sort.

Labour didn’t even want this by-election. They’d rather stitch it up behind closed doors than face a real challenge. This isn’t about serving the people, it’s about protecting their grip on power. Councillors are parachuted in, selections are stage-managed, and decisions are made long before you ever see a ballot paper.

Meanwhile, rents rise, wages stagnate, benefits are cut, food banks multiply and estates are handed over to developers. Labour’s record in Lambeth is clear enough.

Now they ask for your vote again. So do the Greens, Lib Dems and others who promise change but only offer better management of a system built on exploitation. They won’t end your problems. They won’t challenge the class system. They won’t stop capitalism — they serve it.

No confidence in their system. No votes for our bosses’ parties.

Until we end capitalism, nothing changes.

That’s why the Socialist Party is standing in this election. Not for tweaks or token reforms, but for real change. Common ownership, democratic control, production for need not profit.

If you want that, you can show it by voting for the SOCIALIST CANDIDATE.

May-Day and the Socialist Standard (2020)

As I've just reposted a 2016 May Day message from the Socialism or Your Money Back blog, I may as well also take the opportunity to repost below a 2020 post  from this blog. Sadly I never did follow up on the promise to provide an expanded version of this piece. Maybe next year . . .

May-Day and the Socialist Standard (2020)

One of those rare good ideas you get when it's too late in the day to fully implement them.

Today is International Workers' Day and, in years gone past on the blog, it has usually meant a random smattering of May Day articles or editorials from old Socialist Standards where, to be honest, there can be an overall tone of repetition and general gloom whatever the decade. However, it struck me this morning that the blog is so far ahead in breaking the back of fully digitizing the Standard, that it is now in position to start pooling together articles around a general theme for the attention of the random reader.

"Breaking the back" is, of course, a bit of an overstatement but a good place to start such an endeavour would be the various May Day messages that appeared in the Socialist Standard over the years. Though in 2020, it's hard at times to fully comprehend the significance of May Day for the organized working class, back in the day it has to be understood that May Day was a day when all unions and radical groups would make that extra push in both celebrating the day and seeking to communicate their message to a wider audience than usual. 

The SPGB was no different in that regard, and it was usually the case that the May Socialist Standard would be the issue in any particular year where the print run for the Standard that month was at its highest, and it was expected that the May issue would quickly sell out (no jokes at the back, please!).

I'd love to be able to provide a full list of Socialist Standard May Day articles from its exhaustive history but, as I stated at the beginning of this ramble, this idea sadly came too late for May 2020. However, it will be something I will be working on in the coming month(s) and, who knows?, short of the final breakdown of civil society à la Cormac McCarthy's The Road or *cough* a Socialist Revolution (are you still laughing at the back?) there should be a definitive list for May 2021.

In the meantime, linked to below is the Socialist Standard May Day messages for the period from 1904 to 1918. If you read them in sequence, you will note that the initial enthusiasm and hope for Socialist Revolution just over the horizon is gradually seeping away in May Day messages even in the SPGB's early years of its history. That's fine as far as I am concerned. Why pretend? Why kid your readers on with fake boosterism about how it's all about one final push, and we'll at last have possession of the bakery? The SPGB was quickly aware that the writing was on the wall for the Second International pre it's final capitulation in 1914, and it's to its credit that it didn't try to sweeten that pill.

As you will note from below, not all May Socialist Standards from this period carried a May Day message within its pages. I guess I'm especially surprised that one is absent from the very first May Socialist Standard (1905) but, in mitigation, I would point out that a big portion of that issue was given over to reporting the SPGB's first Annual Conference. It was initially surprising to discover that there were no explicit  May Day messages from the war years but it maybe reflected the mood of both the Party and the country at large. For Socialists, the wider Labour Movement had failed a major test of principle in 1914, and perhaps it was not felt that a May Day message would carry the same weight as it would in 'normal' times.

For this reader, the May Day message from the 1912 issue is especially powerful, and I would hazard a guess that its unnamed author was A. E. Jacomb. He just had a certain style and tone of authorial voice that set him apart from other Socialist Standard writers during this period.

It was not all doom and gloom for that period. May Day carried a double significance for Socialists; it was also considered the semi-official opening day for when Outdoor Speaking would kick in again at full throttle. The more clement weather meant that once again there were SPGB speakers all over London and its environs, putting forward the socialist message at speaking pitches on street corners' and in public parks. We sometimes forget that for the early decades of the SPGB the outdoor meeting carried so much more weight and significance for popularizing and propagandizing socialism. Sadly, that lost history is not always captured in the pages of the Socialist Standard or in the SPGB's pamphlets.

If I've missed any Socialist Standard May Day messages from this period, please let me know in the comments section.

Happy May Day! Happy International Workers' Day!

• 1906: May 1st, 1906.
• 1907: The Significance of May Day.
• 1908: A Word in Season.
• 1909: May-Day.
• 1911: Our Motto For May Day.
• 1912: A May-Day Message.
• 1913: A Deadly Parallel.