World View: China – fighting back (2002)

From the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The leaders in China no longer even pretend to make Marxist noises – they are too busy trying to oversee the country's fuller integration into the world capitalist system. Despite the rate of growth in the Chinese economy, this is no easy task, and moreover China's workers need to be kept in their place as well, since capitalism inevitably produces resistance on the part of the exploited.

It is easy to underestimate the extent of China's involvement already in global manufacturing: the country now produces half the world's toys and two-thirds of its shoes, for instance. In December 2001 China became a member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), part of the system set up by the major capitalist countries to try and ensure that the world economy operates without slumps and on the basis of “free” trade. Chinese imports and exports should increase, but under WTO rules, government subsidies to many industries will have to be phased out and various tariff barriers reduced. The Chinese government accepts that the 10th Five Year Plan (2001-5) will involve much economic disruption, including at least three million workers – and possibly far more – being laid off from state-owned companies. The benefits of all this will accrue to the 0.6 percent of the population who own private businesses and the 2.6 percent who are top government officials, not to the ordinary workers.

A number of recent reports have emphasized the resentment felt by many Chinese workers at the way they are treated and the way their bosses line their own pockets. In the north-eastern city of Daqing, once presented as a model for industrial development, workers at a petroleum company have been staging a sit-in to protest against a buy-out package. Oil production has been reduced, as more oil is imported and the main oil company gets listed on the Hong Kong and New York stock exchanges. Elsewhere in Daqing, a construction company simply told its employees not to come to work, as there was no money to pay them. The were not sacked, so had no chance of receiving state benefits. To make ends meet, some were forced to sell vegetables in street markets. They have staged demonstrations, but have not linked up with the oil workers, as they know little of what is happening elsewhere in the city. The government-controlled press, and the lack of any real workers' organisations, make cooperation among different groups of workers very difficult.

Elsewhere, disputes at work are reaching staggering levels, as can be seen from a few examples. In the large city of Shanghai, the number of disputes has increased by 40 percent a year. In February 2000, over 20,000 miners in Liaoning province attacked government buildings and fought with police for three days, as a response to the mine where they worked going bankrupt and their being offered an unacceptable redundancy package. In January 2001, hundreds of workers from a chemical company in Jilin province that was being shut down blockaded a major road for three days in freezing temperatures. But again, these actions tend to be taken in isolation from each other.

In the “Special Economic Zones”, especially in the south of China, overseas companies have been lured in by the promise of tax breaks and cheap labour. The result has been the creation of sweatshops for the likes of Nike, where working conditions are as bad as anywhere in the Philippines or Indonesia. Such places are death traps, with minimal fire precautions and emergency exits often being locked shut. This is the kind of freedom that the advocates of free trade are really talking about. But operating in China can present unexpected problems for overseas companies: for instance, the Italian sportswear manufacturer, Diadora, set up a factory in central China, only to find it often producing more than they had ordered and selling the surplus to local shops at lower prices.

In addition to cheap labour power, the earth's capitalists are attracted by the prospect of China as a market – who can ignore the chance to get at a billion potential new customers? Big US-style shopping malls now exist in most cities, and international brands are well-known. At an elite level, China is the world's largest importer of French brandy. The market for personal computers is growing rapidly, and one prediction is that by the end of 2002 China will be the second largest market (after the US). Apple, who currently have just 0.2 percent of this market, are frantically trying to improve their market share.

Socialists have long pointed out that the Maoist victory of 1949 was not socialist, that ordinary folk were not in charge of the so-called People's China. Surely nowadays nobody can deny that China is just another capitalist country.

Paul Bennett

When Adam Delved and Eve Span (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Adam Delved and Eve Span: A History of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. by Mark O’Brien, New Clarion Press, Cheltenham, 2004.

The publishers say that “the aim of this book is a modest one”, and there are in fact only 86 pages of text. Nevertheless, O’Brien describes the revolt, and its background and origins, in reasonable detail. Of the author, the publishers state that he is a “lifelong socialist and trade unionist”, and then give the game away by adding that “he has stood twice as a Socialist Alliance candidate in Liverpool”. And it does show in parts of his narrative.

   

By the end of the fourteenth century, feudalism was breaking down. The plague earlier in the century had decimated the population, with between a third and a half dying. Many former peasants moved into the towns. Artisans and others demanded, and often achieved, higher wages. The government attempted to keep wages down by law, but with little success. The Church was in crisis, and was corrupt. Jon Wycliffe and, to a greater extent, priests such as John Ball, preached a kind of primitive Christian communism: hence, when “Adam delved and Eve span, who was then a gentleman?” And, moreover, the Hundred Years’ War with France was crippling the English state. The government attempted to increase the poll tax by three groats. As O’Brien comments, “England was seething with unrest.”

   

By 1381, a peasants’ revolt was inevitable. All over Essex and Kent and, later, beyond the peasants and their supporters organised their army, first  taking Rochester Castle. John Ball had, for some time, been sending letters as well as travelling from town to town, preaching rebellion couched in allegorical and religious sentiments. Wat Tyler, until then unknown, organised an army of probably 30,000 peasants who, on 12 June, arrived on Blackheath, south of the Thames.

   

O’Brien details the taking of London, the capture of the Tower and the attempts of the government, and the king, to placate the peasants. A number of aristocrats and government officials were captured and then beheaded by the rebel army. The showdown between Tyler and the king and his representatives occurred on 14 June, at Mile End, when Tyler was stabbed and, shortly after, taken from St. Bartholemew’s Hospital and beheaded.

   

Meanwhile, as O’Brien writes, the revolt had been spreading throughout Kent, Essex and East Anglia. But by this time, the government had been able to cobble together a few hundred disciplined troops. There were battles in Cambridge. Rebels gathered in Billericay in Essex, but were soon forced to retreat to Colchester. As O’Brien notes, by 15 June, “the revolt was in full flow”. In Norfolk, events were proceeding apace. Incidentally, on the same day that Geoffry Lister mustered rebels on Mousehold Heath near Norwich, on 17 June, my ancestor Thomas de Newell of Craneworth in  the Hundred of Mitford, was indicted for “depriving John de Harlyngg and Adam Galyon of their goods and chattels”. He was, like many others, almost certainly hanged or beheaded.

   

Inevitably, as Mark O’Brien demonstrates, the government won the day and defeated the peasants in battle. The chronicles of the time tell of the execution of 7000 peasants “by the axe and the noose”. Reliable estimates have since reckoned the final toll to be about 2000.

   

What then was the outcome of the revolt of 1381? O’Brien says that it played a decisive role in putting an end to villeinage and the economic base of feudalism in England. It further weakened the power of the Catholic Church. In more recent times, it captured the imaginations of historians as well as writers such as William Morris, who wrote The Dream of John Ball, and whom O’Brien quotes. He also mentions a number of works written by Stalinist and Trotskyist writers, although he does not appear to be conversant with a much longer fictionalised account, English Episode, by Charles Poulsen written in 1946. For those interested further in the revolt and its background, I would recommend G.M.Trevelyan’s England in the Age of Wycliffe despite his “Whiggish prejudices”.

Peter E. Newell

Building profits versus building homes (Part 1) (1984)

From the Winter 1984 issue of the World Socialist

1. THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY UNDER CAPITALISM

Housing is one problem of capitalism which has been a constant source of difficulty and is part and parcel of working class life. Few members of our class escape some aspect of housing trouble.Whether it is the complete crisis of homelessness, or the stress involved in keeping our homes through paying rent or repaying a loan. Most members of our class live in relative poor housing, some of which is within the bounds of adequacy, while the rest reflects the worst in living conditions.

Our quality of housing acts as good guide to the degree of suffering associated with the many other problems inherent in our class position such as bad health, poor nutrition and inadequate education. We can therefore accept that the problem of housing reflects the problems of capitalism. Accepting this, it is logical to assume that the solution to the housing problem is only attained through the solution of the problem of capitalism.

In the beginning an investigation into housing difficulties, one simple observation should help us overcome our surprise at the absurd nature of our findings: that production under capitalism, not least the production of buildings, is based on he ability to achieve a profit and not to fulfil human needs.

A HOUSING SHORTAGE?

The first fallacy to dismiss is the belief that “housing shortage” is the beginning and end of the problem. As it so happens, there is currently in some areas of the world severe “housing shortage” and this has been the case at different times throughout history. This is not however the source of the problem, because if it were it could be logically assumed that there was some intrinsic inability of society to meet the housing needs of its populus. It has had plenty of time and resources to do so , so this is clearly not the full story.

The problem in the economically developed parts of the world is one of “allocation”. In other words, how best the housing stock is to be distributed to meet human requirements. A scant observation shows that the ability to pay is the deciding factor in gauging the standard of housing to which you are entitled. A walk around the slum areas of your city will tell you that it is the elderly, the mobile poor and the immigrants who are concentrated in the poorest housing stock. It is no coincidence that these lowest financial groups live in the poorest housing conditions; housing conditions which least meet their needs—the elderly with no care facilities, and young children in high-rise flats. It is also important to realise that this group and others such as the homeless, mental patients and ex-prisoners—those who make the poorest section of our class—have little chance of housing themselves, and must accept “being housed”. The limitation on their freedom puts them in a more degrading position than the urban poor in the shanty towns of Latin America and elsewhere who have at least built their own homes, even though living in the most incredible poverty.

NO INHERENT INEFFICIENCY

Another fallacy which tends to cloud our conception of the issue is that which suggests that the housing problem has its basis in the inefficiency and lack of organisation of the building industry. It is true that this industry is not generally well organised in relation to output and the workers employed there; it is also true that at times it can operate in an inefficient manner. The fallacy is however that this is a cause of the housing problem rather than, like the housing problem itself, an effect of an inefficient and unrealisable social system. How can the construction industry possible be efficient when it is subjected to the demands of profitability in a system which produces an uneven flow of work, conflict between employers and employees, and most importantly, the fact that buildings which create the greatest profit in construction are usually the least socially useful and therefore take preference over housing?

In most of the economically developed parts of the world, the construction industry represents (if not the largest) one of the largest employers. Indeed if we include those involved in related industries such as building materials, the number of directly employed and dependent employed increases dramatically. In this current recession the economic stringency is clearly affecting the industry. With inflation of home prices coupled with the wage restraints of workers, our ability to buy property has been depleted. Of greater effect is the reduction of public spending of governments, as they are substantial clients for new buildings. In cases like American, most European countries and Britain, the government constitutes up to half of the building trade clientele. All these things have allowed for substantial unemployment in the industry: in many countries at any given time there is up to 12% unemployment, in this industry alone. This means that we have a situation where people still need housing while those who can build that housing are unemployed because of the economic recession. This is the best illustration against the argument of "house shortage" and it was shown in its most ironic form in Britain in the mid-1970s.

The National Federation of Building Trade Employers represents the largest private firms in the sector in the United Kingdom. In 1976 they initiated a campaign costing a quarter of a million pounds with the title of "Let us Build". The President of the Royal Institute of British Architects led the delegation of employers to the Prime Minister in an appeal for building work. So here was a situation where those who knew the business realised there was no shortage of workers, no shortage of materials, and no shortage in the demand for building work; there was however one thing missing—finance. Of course, these Building Trade Employers were not motivated by anything other than the threat to their profits, but their action did display the real source of the problem.

UNEVEN FLOW OF WORK

The building industries suffer the inevitable slump and peak cycle of capitalist society and therefore suffer the response of the owner of wealth to these trends. The study of building activity acts as a thermometer to the health of the capitalist economy.

Capitalists will, when profitability is high, move surplus value into fixed capital projects such as machinery, equipment and not least buildings. This opportunism of the possessors of capital is a good sign for the building industry and they have little difficulty in finding the resources, men and material, to meet the awakening demands. All is rosy in the garden. Conversely, when profitability is low for the capitalist, particularly the industrialist, in other words in times of economic depression, the first area to be abandoned is that of capital transfer into fixed capital projects. This is equally true of government activity as postponement or cancellation of construction is the easy, obvious way for a government to cut back on its spending. Furthermore, and of much more importance from a supply point of view, in a depression builders ignore housing construction to concentrate on the more profitable area of large building projects, often those of least social necessity.

The nature of the industry diminishes its ability to either prepare for or cope with the advent of slump economic conditions. The overwhelming majority of building firms are very small with 60% employing less than 8 people (taking European countries and America as studied areas), with only the top 2% each employing over 1,000 people. This reflects many features of the industry like localisation, the necessity of specialisation; and most importantly the necessary financial commitment if contractors are to take on the very large contracts. It is relatively easy to start a small building form as the initial capital outlay is low due to the low level of mechanisation and the number of hire firms for the more costly necessities such as mixers, scaffolding etc. All this means is that the small firms concentrate on small sites jobs, improvement work and similar projects. The other side of the coin is the traditionally high tendency for bankruptcy in building firms and in many countries up to a quarter of all industrial bankruptcies can be expected to come from building firms. All this reflects the fluctuation in the demand for building work and is not a general reflection on the inefficiency of these firms to do a good job. One major consequence is that this fluctuation of the building market means that most building firms hire and fire as demands dictate.

The type of unpredictable fluctuation suffered by the building industry puts it in a much more precarious position than most other areas of capitalist commodity production. It tends to attract peculiar action from an economic point of view. For example, one would expect (purely from the economic criteria of capitalism) that if there is inefficiency in an area of production increased investment would be undertaken to improve the productivity of labour. But, as this does not occur due to the accentuated fluctuation in work flow, we see a trend where, in most capitalist countries, the construction industry accounts for up to 8% of the Gross Domestic Product whilst only employing about 4% of all capital employed in production and service industries.

ROADS BEFORE HOMES

The conflict between profitability and human requirements is displayed in abundance in the construction sector. So what is the source of this conflict, how does it manifest itself, and most importantly, what is its effect on a basic human requirement—housing?

Although the methods employed in the building of houses are moving away from the traditional techniques to become more of an industrialised process, it has not been to a sufficient degree to tempt the big investment and concentration of resources from the large building contractors. Since the last world war, the major incentive for firms to put their profits back into fixed capital projects has been in civil engineering. Not coincidentally, this has been the area of the highest productivity in the same period; putting a nail in the coffin of the inherent inefficiency argument.

This trend has its roots firmly fixed in the evolution of capitalism. Contracts grew bigger with post-war development and the growth of motorways and high-rise buildings and the like. These contracts meant big capitalisation and therefore the big firms came into their own. These firms had the ability to invest in the heavy plant machinery necessary to take on these mammoth contracts and dig the foundations and understructures of the tall buildings. The large firms capable of such investment had a degree of monopoly in the new emerging sector where annual turnover and profits were attractive. This is the more productive sector. The only attraction left in housing for the big firms is in industrialised housing or the possibilities of land speculation in areas for home building, as the high cost of the specialised trades in traditional housing is unattractive to these firms. These large firms can also afford the expense of mobility to search for new and more profitable investment areas. The Middle East is an example of such an area, although indications are that there is currently a reduction in available projects there.

So what is left for the house building sector? The small-time builder picks up repair work and extensions and other small jobs connected with house maintenance. This is the life blood of the small one or two-man firms which might employ a couple of workers on a short-term basis as demand dictates. These types of small forms rarely get beyond this stage and few get the opportunity to become tender competitors in the speculative housing market. The larger firms are better able to meet the demands of the system-building of large housing projects, with the financial ability to buy large areas of land and to keep a large work-force of tradesmen occupied, as many have many houses at different stages of production. This type of housing is common to us all and is a feature of the large estates in the cities we live in. The result is large areas of monotonous housing similar and unimaginative. They quickly become modern slums with vandalism and miserable lives common features. The cause is commonly put down to being the disassociation of the designer to the building process, poor management practices and the inefficiency of competitive tendering, but this is just another way of saying that the job is completed in as short a time as possible as cheaply as possible, to ensure the maximum profit. 

NO WAY OUT WITHIN CAPITALISM

The relationship between the housing problem, the building industry and our economic system has hopefully become clearer. The facts tell us the industry suffers many problems which have been related to one thing: the contradictions and conflicts of the system of capitalism. It is us as members of the working class who best know the problems we go through in order to acquire and keep the place we live in and the standard of accommodation we are subjected to. From this experience it is abundantly clear that the provision of housing is not related to our needs. The facts also inform us that capitalism prevents this from happening because of the economic obligation forced on those who do the building. No one decides we should live in slums.

If our slums are a product of the inability of the building industry to supply to us the type of housing we want, then this is because the building industries are clearly responding instead to the realities of capitalism. That reality is the profit motive and the cost is that human needs will not be met. This will continue for as long as this system continues and you will suffer your housing conditions and be aware of the housing conditions of the rest of our class as long as this system continues.

Brian Montague (Ireland.)

Link to Part 2.

Shot at dawn (1985)

Book Review from the December 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the Sake of Example, Anthony Babington (Paladin £3.95)

A festival of glory greeted the First World War. All over Europe young men scrambled and wheedled to enlist in the armies and young women to give them a rousing send off. It did not take long for the dream to die—in the mud, the shellfire, the machine guns raking the wire, the indescribable deaths. It was, to be sure, more than human bodies and minds could bear; those who did stick it out managed through some trick of stoicism or more murderous frenzy called courage. A few did not have the knack and tried to opt out of the carnage. Which could be very serious for them; if they were caught they were liable under military law to execution, as happened to 346 British soldiers.

Their "crime: was, in the vast majority of cases, "desertion", with other offences such as "cowardice" much less common. Some of these men were reservists who had been recalled to the Army in 1914. Others were enthusiastic volunteers in Kitchener's New Army, which was all but liquidated on the Somme in 1916. Some were described by their commanding officer as "worthless" because of their consistent inability to strait-jacket themselves into military routine. One or two had been vagrant before joining the army, for them, at least, the outdoor life presumably held no problems but the repressive disciple did.

In many case, however, the executed men could not, even by British military standards (which in 1914/18 were particularly fierce, compared to those of other countries and to those imposed as recently as the Boer War) be described as cowards or slackers. They had endured years of trench warfare without cracking, until an especially horrible experience like being buried alive or having a companion's brains shell-splattered over their face. But the concept of shell shock was not popular. Medical examinations of the "offenders" were not an automatic part of the proceedings and in any case they could be contemptuously cursory: "There's a fellow here who ran away from the trenches. They are going to shoot him and they want me to say of he's responsible. I shan't be long" was how one doctor put it.

The field courts martial were hurried and incomplete affairs, for the defendant rarely had any adequate representation, such as might have been allowed in any magistrates court, and it was not unusual for no defence at all to be offered. A particularly inhuman procedure prevented the court announcing a guilty verdict straight away; instead it was passed up through the various layers of command, each one making  a recommendation even though they might have no direct experience or knowledge of the man. The final decision rested with the commander-in-chief who very often sent the soldier to execution, not on the circumstances of the case, but on his perceived need for a deterrent example.

Anthony Babington is a circuit judge; during the last war he was twice wounded and obviously sees no reason for fundamentally questioning a social system which requires workers to fight and kill each other to settle a dispute concerning the interests of their ruling class. What worries Babington are the peripheral issues, such as the long-distance bellicosity of those staff officers and the bigotry of doctors who ignored their Hippocratic oath in the interests of the war machine.

Babington's reasoning is flawed by the fact that war is not humane. By no rational process does a person attack and kill someone they have no contact with nor knowledge of. The discipline of a military life is designed to stamp out rationality under the boots on the parade ground, the uniforms, the saluting, the "regimental traditions". To deviate from that can be a threat to the whole grisly edifice, in the past often leading to the firing squad. Nowadays it is more likely to bring down a barrage of mental conditioning into an acceptance of the inhuman demands of capitalism.

For the Sake of Example is an unrelievedly gruesome illustration of the inherent madness of 1914/18, which should not persuade anyone to think that the subsequent wars have been any more sane or acceptable. Perhaps one of the unhappiest aspects of it is that all people at such times are under orders to behave as they do. They are—and what, under capitalism, could be more absolving?—only doing their job.

Ivan

The United States and imperialism (1986)

From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist

The history of US imperialism dates back to the times of the foundation of the nation. Whether making and breaking treaties with various American Indian tribes and "nations"—expropriating their lands—or in adventures in far-flung oceans and climes, US capitalism went all-out from its beginnings in muscling its way into world business and, in pursuit of such ends, into the internal affairs of other nations. To be sure, that is not exactly how such activity was always explained by the official moulders of public opinion. Like ruling classes everywhere, the capitalists of the United States were aided in their expansionism by their educational and religious henchmen who found high-sounding moral justification for their nation's conquests. It must be admitted, though, that the primary motivation has been amply clarified by at least some US historians (as well as by some politicians in their more honest moments—see "Foreign Policy for Beginners"). As a case in point it will be instructive to quote directly from The Rise of American Civilization by Charles and Mary Beard (1927):

The revolution wrought by steam and machinery was by no means limited in its effect to factory districts, corn fields, cotton plantations, and mining camps. It widened the borders of economic empire by the expansion of American commerce into the Far Pacific. Though obscured to the vulgar eye by the dust of domestic conflict, the construction of that commercial dominion went forward rapidly from the foundation of the republic. The very year after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at Yorktown, the Empress of China, fitted out partly at the expense of Robert Morris, merchant prince and 'financier of the American Revolution,' sailed from New York to Canton, carrying the American flag into the midst of the Dutch and British pennants that fluttered in the breezes of Chinese waters. Before the Fathers completed the framing of the Constitution, at least nine voyages had been made to the Far East by enterprising Yankees.

And the Beards continued their interesting disclosures:

In the year of Washington's inauguration, ten ships from Salem plowed the waters of the Indian Ocean. Before he delivered his 'Farewell Address,' warning his countrymen against foreign entanglements, American captains were at home in the ports of China, Java, Sumatra, Siam, India, the Philippines, and Ile de France. In 1979, the date of his retirement to Mt Vernon, a crew of thirty boys, the oldest not over twenty-eight, took the Betsy, a boat of less than a hundred tons, on a voyage around the world by way of the Horn, Canton, and Good Hope, netting on an outlay of about eight thousand dollars the neat profit of a hundred and twenty thousand. (I, page 661) 

The World Socialist Party (US) has for many years recommended the Beards' Rise of American Civilization as an excellent source for information on the material factors influencing US history. They were not socialists but they did as much, if not more, than most professed socialists (and/or communists) in this country to straighten out the generally mistaken views on subjects such as the causes of the American Revolution, the Civil War and the real reasons behind Wilson's switch on World War I which brought about US entry into that shambles only  some five months after he had been reelected in a platform accentuating the slogan: "He kept us out of the war!" Having been written in 1927, this book does not go much beyond World War I but the Beards did manage, during their lifetime, to bring their chronicle of US history up to the times of World War II with their Basic History of the United States.

MODERN OVERSEAS ADVENTURES

It would not be possible within the scope of an article to list the instances of US imperialist adventure throughout its history completely. At least some of the oldest among the present population are no doubt passingly familiar with most of the thrusts of US military power in defense of her imperial interests - not all of which have been successful - since World WarI. There must be a few, though, who have not been made aware of US "meddling", overtly and covertly, into the affairs of the nations of Southeast Asia and, particularly, the countries of Central and South America . From the time of Fidel Castro's "conversion to Marxism" and embrace of and by the Soviet Union there has been hostile, even at times, violent, reaction by officialdom in this country and indeed, wherever purported Marxists gained or even threatened to gain control in the Americas. Were it not for the Nixon and Reagan flirtations with the head dispensers of Chinese "marxism", one might at least suspect that the basis of this hostility toward leftist regimes in Latin America is truly ideological.

The truth, of course, has to be otherwise. The hostility is obviously based upon the threat to important US capitalist interests by left-radical nationalists in those countries. As is well known, even if the knowledge is sublimated, as it usually is, by the more conservative-minded among capitalism's apologists, bourgeois antipathy towards Bolshevism has not been carved in stone. There have been many occasions since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 when US, British, and other heads of the more traditional variety of capitalists have heaped encomium on the heads of the Soviet dictators. Particularly this was true during most of those years of World War II when Western Capitalism was allied with Bolshevik State Capitalism and when the topmost political leaders of Britain and the US hailed Joseph Stalin as a contemporary "genius". In fact, had Stalin not lived on into the period of "Cold War", reverting to his status of "monster", he would quite likely still be depicted in US school texts as the savior of Russia.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS NOT IDEOLOGIES

In any case. one thing should have been made clear since the times of World War II: it is not professed ideological differences between nations that propel them into open warfare against one another. It is, rather, the fact that their economic foundations and the basic philosophies that arise from them are all but identical, notwithstanding some differences in nomenclature and that they are, at least temporarily, threatening one another's imperial interests. Both Hitler and F. D. Roosevelt put it succinctly: Hitler with his "Germany must expand or explode" and Roosevelt's "Our frontier is on the Rhine".

What should be emphasized, though, is that "anti-imperialism" is, or should be, regarded as of no concern of the working class of either imperial or subject nation. It is just another red herring injected into the class struggle, whether with deliberate intent of confusing or through simple ignorance on the part of the propagandists. The cause of mass poverty, insecurity, and war, is not imperialism but the very relationships themselves of capitalism - wage labor and capital.

Harry Morrison (USA.)

FOREIGN POLICY FOR BEGINNERS

"We want a foreign market for our surplus products."

- William McKinley, 1880's

"In the interests of our commerce  . . . we should build the Nicaragua canal, and for the protection of that canal and for the sake of our commercial supremacy in the Pacific we should control the Hawaiian islands and maintain our influence in Samoa  . . . The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their present defense all the waste places of the earth. It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race."

- Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, 1890s

"It seems to be conceded that every year we shall be confronted with an increasing surplus of manufactured goods for sale in foreign markets if American operatives and artisans are to be kept employed the year around. The enlargement of foreign consumption of the products of our mills and workshops has, therefore, become a serious problem of statesmanship as well as well as of commerce."

- State Department 1898

"Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even of the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process  . . . the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down."

- Woodrow Wilson, 1907

"The real reason that the war we just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her and the reason why some nations went onto the war against Germany was that they thought Germany would get the advantage of them."

- President Woodrow Wilson, St Louis, 1919

" . . . our general diplomatic and strategic position would be considerably weakened - by our loss of Chinese, Indian and South Seas markets (and by our loss of much of the Japanese market for our goods, as Japan would become more and more self-sufficient) as well by insurmountable restrictions upon our access to the rubber, tin, jute, and other vital materials of the Asian and Oceanic regions."

- US State Department, 1940

"The real stake in this war is sea control, is the domination of the avenues of world trade."

- United States News, Sept. 13, 1940

"There never was a war at arms that was not merely the extension of a preceding war of commerce grown fiercer until the weapons of commerce seemed no longer sufficiently deadly."

- General Hugh Johnson (1882-1942)

"As you know, we've got to plan on enormously increased production in this country after the war, and the American domestic market can't absorb all that production indefinitely. There won't be any question about our needing greatly increased foreign markets."

- State Department official, April 1944

"In May of 1962, we stand at the great divide; we must either trade or fade. They (the Russians) are ready to take and sell any area in which we leave a gap. And we do not intend to give way."

- President Kennedy, May 4 1962

"What is the attraction that Southeast Asia has exerted for centuries on the great powers flanking it on all sides? Why is it desirable, and why is it important? First, it provides a lush climate, fertile soil, rich natural resources, a relatively sparse population in most areas, and room to expand. The countries of Southeast Asia produce rich exportable surpluses such as rice, rubber, tea, corn, tin, spices, oil and many others . . . "

- Kennedy's Undersecretary of State, U. Alexis Johnson - Early 1963

"My approach to Africa is in some ways like the Japanese approach to Asia, and approach is not necessarily humanitarian. It is in the long-range interest of access to resources and the creation of markets for American goods and services."

- U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, 1977

Source: Daily Battle, Berkeley, California; Socialist Party of Canada leaflet

Editorial: Rockefeller's roast. (1914)

Editorial from the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

For six months past the miners employed by the Rockefeller interests in Colorado have been out on strike against the truck system, and for the right to live where they pleased, and to be attended by their own doctors.

Starvation and misery, together with much brutality on the part of thugs, were endured stoically by the strikers, but they were eventually turned out of their "homes," owned by the Rockefeller Mining Company, and forced to erect tent colonies in the wilds.

Rockefeller was appealed to by the Miners' leaders to go to arbitration, but he was adamant against any alteration in the status quo.

Eventually one million dollars were voted for a Special State Militia, to be used against the miners; and according to the evidence of a Captain Carson, a large percentage of the "militia" were also hirelings of the Mining Company.

Machine guns were brought into play, and to make things look black against the miners, arms and ammunition were hidden in the vicinity of the latters' tents.

At the end of April there took place one of the bloodiest events in the annals of industrial warfare. The forces of "Law and Order," not content with allowing militia men to outrage the workers' daughters and beat all the workers they could find, were determined to wipe the strikers out of existence.

The Gatling guns were trained right on to the tents in Ludlow City whilst the women and children were asleep in bed. Explosive bullets were used and other means of civilised effort. The horrors of that day are almost indescribable, but the plain fact is that, with the dead and dying hopelessly intermingled, the soldiers made paper torches, dipped them in Standard Oil, and set light to all the tents.

A hundred men, women and children at least were either murdered by gun, suffocated by smoke, or literally burned to death.

The story of the charred bodies of a score of little mites is awful reading indeed, as is also the news that dozens of women in the Tent City were expectant mothers, one woman actually giving birth to a child whilst the conflict was raging.

The Coroner's Jury have "found" that the responsibility for the murder rests with the State Militia, but, of course, no further action has been taken.

These are the barest facts indeed in the callous murder of our fellow-workers in the land of the Almighty Dollar. It shows the most dull-witted worker how similar is the conduct of the class war by the masters all the world over. It vividly recalls the slaughter of the miners in the Lena Goldfields to mention one instance.

Rockefeller jun., before the Congressional Committee in New York, declared that his father owned 40 per cent. of the stock but took no part in the working—only in the plunder. He said that they had too many interests to know what went on, but if the miners attempted to restrict the Company's liberty they would shut down every mine in Colorado.

Such is the policy of No Compromise preached by the masters. Stop our liberty to roast some of the worker's children alive and we will starve the rest.

Rockefeller virtually owns the Cavalry Baptist Church in New York, and there were many demonstrators against him there. But here again armed force was used to brutally illtreat the defenders of "the lambs of God."

Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the friends of our murdered fellows in Colorado. We urge upon them to learn well the blood-sealed lesson of class hatred taught them by the masters; let the toilers of America steep themselves in a knowledge of the class war, and act always with that for their guide. No Compromise; No Quarter, politically and economically, must be the burden of their song. Thus only will vengeance for the vampires' victims be secured.

Further Reading:

Witness at Ludlow by Sam Orner

Letter: A nail in the coffin (1995)

Letter to the Editors from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Comrades,

I was born in 1900 and am four years older than the party. I became a socialist after hearing Alec Shaw destroy Peter Kerrigan [of the Communist Party] at an outdoor debate in Clydebank in 1928. Since then I have voted by writing Socialism across my ballot paper, although in recent years through old age I have not bothered. But recently I was able to vote for a socialist for the first time in my life. Although I had to be taken in a wheelchair and the effort may well have killed me, I feel as if I have finally hammered a nail into the coffin of Capitalism. I feel as if the ice age is over and the next century will be ours.

By voting and reading a comment in the Standard by Steve Coleman "we are a movement not a monument" I feel rejuvenated. Some time ago I was given a book called The Monument which claims to be a history of the SPGB. The author says this is not an official history as he did not have access to the party's records. The book is therefore anecdotal and relies heavily on the writer's memory (or imagination). An example of the dubious nature of this information is the tale of Glasgow branch voting to expel John Higgins for bringing a gas mask to a branch meeting during the war.

This statement caricatures the men and women who were stalwarts in the struggle for socialism in those days. There is no other comment in the book about Glasgow comrades which leads me to think that Mr Barltrop has never been there.

Jimmy Brodie was a joiner, like myself, and he used to give history and economics classes during the lunch hour on whichever boat we were working on. The steel bulkhead was the blackboard (the location was changed daily to avoid the gestapo) and the socialist message remained on the walls for weeks. These classes were attended by hundreds of workers and the debates engendered carried on into worktime much to the consternation of foremen and managers. Not to speak of the Commie second fronters.

It took a lot of guts to advocate the socialist case in the emotional climate of the 1940s. Tommy Mulheron was prominent in the dock strike. Alec Shaw in Howdens. Joe Richmond an apprentice where I worked organised a strike in 1943 which brought the firm to its knees. In spite of Union opposition the apprentices won.

My branch of the union had lots of socialists, Willie Travers, Joe Richmond, Jimmy Craig, Eddie Hughes, John Fitton, Jimmy McGowan, Willie Henderson, so that it became known as the Socialist Sixth. These men were indefatigable exponents of the Socialist case, some of them were speakers for the party, but all of them were influential in the Union. The Socialist Party has never had leaders, it has no need of them. But it has had its heroes and been all the stronger and richer for them. This book, The Monument, diminishes these men whose worth is greater than all the Maxtons, Bevans, Pollitts and Gallachers, whose names are still revered by many workers today.

The present Socialist Party stands on the shoulders of those who have gone before and should give credit to the breadth and depth of those shoulders. Surely, approaching its centenary, the party can write an official history, not only of the party but the whole world wide Socialist movement.

Do not leave it to the Barltrops of this world. Do not let our heroes die without trace if left to word of mouth they will become as myth and legend, more fantasy than fact, and spawn books like The Monument which does the Movement a disservice.

I am now 94 years old and must be one of the last of my generation. I grieve that my old comrades have died unsung although they were heroes all.

Yours for the Revolution,

Paddy Small, Glasgow

Reply:

Thanks for your comments. And thanks also to all the other Socialists - supporters and sympathisers as well as Socialist Party members - who contributed the money (£22,286, to be precise) that enabled us to put up a Socialist candidate in Glasgow and three other seats in last year's Euro-elections and to get a socialist leaflet distributed to one million households.

Editors.

Old Fallacies—a look at International Communist Current (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The organization called International Communist Current is a mixture of perceptiveness towards some aspects of capitalism, blindness to others, and a belief in long-exposed fallacies. It recognizes that nationalization is state capitalism, that the so-called national liberation movements are anti-socialist and that Russia, China, Cuba, etc. are "just so many capitalist bastions" — "There are no socialist countries on this planet".

ICC claims to be Marxist but shows no appreciation of Marx's analysis of capitalism's economic laws. Politically it belongs to the early 19th-century world of Louis Blanqui (originator of ICC's slogan "Dictatorship of the Proletariat") and the young and inexperienced Marx and Engels. It rejects the mature Marx's view of the necessity to gain control of "the machinery of government, including the armed forces", and offers instead confrontation with the state power and "world civil war" to be waged by "armed workers' councils" (see ICC pamphlet Nation or Class). 

A basic difficulty about establishing Socialism is that such a social system, involving as it does the disappearance of buying and selling, wages and prices, and the coercive state, could only be operated if the mass of the population understood and wanted it and were ready to accept all the new responsibilities of voluntary co-operation that would rest on them. If the working class as they are at present, most of them attached to capitalism, preoccupied with wages and prices, wage differentials and trade-union demarcation lines, and dependent on management direction and trade-union leadership, were suddenly faced with Socialism there would be chaos and no alternative but to return to capitalism.

Two solutions were offered. One was the Blanquist and early Marxist view—a transition period during which the mass of the population would be "educated to Socialism". This is the ICC policy. The other, the mature Marxist, view was stated by Engels in his 1895 Introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France:

“The time is past for revolutions carried through by small minorities at the head of unconscious masses. When it gets to be a matter of the complete transformation of the social organisation, the masses themselves must participate, must understand what is at stake and why they are to act. That much the history of the last fifty years has taught us.”

And again, referring to France:

“Socialists realize more and more that no durable success is possible unless they win over in advance the great mass of the people, which, in this case, means the peasants. The slow work of propaganda and parliamentary activity are here also recognised as the next task of the party.”

ICC rejects the Marxist idea of socialists gaining control of Parliament on the ground that Parliament is nothing but "mystification of the working class". Of course defenders of capitalism use Parliament to mislead the working class, just as they use religion, sport and the bogus economic theories of J. M. Keynes. They can do this only because the workers lack socialist understanding—which fact ICC fails to see. It thinks that if non-socialist workers spontaneously throw up workers' councils these can't be "mystified". Experience has shown how wrong ICC is. Lenin, in State and Revolution, complained that his political opponents had

“managed to pollute even the Soviets, after the model of the most despicable middle-class parliamentarians, by turning them into hollow talking shops.”

ICC greatly admire the Workers' Councils set up in Germany after the first world war. At the Workers' Councils National Congress in 1918, and again in 1919, they were bamboozled by Social Democratic politicians into voting their support for the Social Democrat Government, which government then sidetracked the Councils and used state forces to crush resistance.

The argument that because the franchise has been used to trick the workers they should not use it was sensibly answered by Marx in the preamble he wrote for the French Workers' Party. In it, he commended transforming the vote "from a means of duping, which it has been hitherto, into an instrument of emancipation".

As ICC are not going to wait until there is a socialist majority, they have to find some other spur to working-class action. Like the young Marx and Engels, and like the British Communist Party in the 1930s, they find it in capitalism's periodic crises and depressions which stir up discontent about unemployment and falling living standards. But, as Engels pointed out in a letter to Bernstein (25th January 1882), when the depression passes and production and employment expand again "returning prosperity also breaks the revolution and lays the basis for the victory of reaction".

Are depressions permanent?

ICC think they have an answer to this. They say that the present depression is permanent, that it throws up problems the capitalists are impotent to deal with, and that capitalism cannot afford any more concessions to the workers. The great changeover is supposed to have happened in 1914, after which capitalism became "decadent", ICC evidently does not know that all these themes are almost as old as capitalism itself.

In every one of capitalism's depressions there have been people, capitalists as well as workers, who have been convinced that it would be permanent. In the "Great Depression" of the last quarter of the 19th century, which lasted for twenty years, it was widely believed. Lord Randolph Churchill, shortly before he became Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared in 1884: "We are suffering from a depression of trade extending as far back as 1874, ten years of trade depression, and the most hopeful either among our capitalists or our artisans can discover no signs of a revival . . . Turn your eyes where you will, survey any branch of British industry you like, you will find signs of mortal disease."

Even Engels in 1886 temporarily abandoned Marx's view of crises and announced a theory of "permanent and chronic depression". Marx's own view was tersely summed up in his statement: "There are no permanent crises."

ICC's example of the supposed impotence of the capitalists to deal with a problem relates to inflation. In International Review No. 10 (page 10) ICC says that “the bourgeoisie" is equally terrified of more inflation and of ending inflation by "restriction of credit". From which it is evident that ICC does not understand the cause and purpose of inflation, rejects Marx's demonstration that inflation is the result of excess issue of inconvertible paper currency, and has—like the Labour Party—fallen for the Keynesian nonsense about the supposed consequence of expanding or contracting credit. Inflation, like free trade, is just a way of operating capitalism. It suits some capitalists and not others. Inflation serves the interests of borrowers, including industrial capitalists, who take up loans and repay them later in depreciated currency.

Inflation and Credit

Inflation, at least for a considerable period, also enables many employers to get away with paying reduced real wages. Deflation, on the other hand, suits financial interests and lenders. If and when inflation reaches dangerous levels, or when those who favour deflation get their way, inflation will be curbed or ended as it has been on scores of occasions in the past, in this and other countries.

Marx showed what he thought of the people who held ICC's superficial view about credit.

“They looked upon the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic changes in the industrial cycle, as their cause.” (Capital Vol. 1, p. 695, Kerr edn.)

To show that capitalism is not what it used to be before 1914, ICC points to recent falling production and living standards, and rising unemployment, but this is what has taken place at the beginning of every depression for nearly two hundred years.

Capitalism did indeed change in 1914. As Professor E. H. Carr puts it, up to 1914: "Britain was the pre-eminent Great Power, and the directing centre of the worldwide capitalist economy." Now the industrial and military centres of power have shifted to New York, Moscow and Brussels; but this has not altered capitalism's economic laws or introduced a new "decadence".

ICC's belief that since 1914 capitalism cannot afford to make concessions to the workers is belied by the facts, and betrays a failure to understand the economics of capitalism. The capitalists (supported by ignorant or servile academics) have always "proved" that they could not afford to concede anything, as for example giving up the twelve-hour working day and the employment of small children: but the concessions have continued since 1914 as before, and particularly since the second world war.

As output per head of the workers increases (a process speeded-up during the present depression) of course the capitalists can afford to let the workers have some of the increase—as ICC will discover when the depression lifts and in the programmes at the next General Election.

Regarding "the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", ICC admit that during their prolonged "transition period" the dictatorship will be operating capitalism all over the world (see Nation or Class). They have, however, not seen its implications. How will the dictatorship deal with the next normal capitalist crisis and the strikes that will accompany it? Will they have an "incomes policy"? or suppress the unions?

The peasants are not to be allowed to share in governmental power. What if they seize the land? And what will the ICC dictatorship do when workers, discontented with the effects of capitalism, carry on ICC policy and set up "armed workers' councils" to fight the dictatorship?

All of ICC's assumptions about capitalism are wrong; but let us suppose that they are right. Suppose that a minority of workers sets up armed councils all over the world, and suppose (absurd as it is) that they could win against the massive combined armed forces of all the world's governments, and suppose they succeeded in setting up their world dictatorship—what would have been gained? The problem of winning over the mass of the population before Socialism could be established would still be there, its completion put back a few more years by ICC's unnecessary and useless war.

Edgar Hardcastle

A Cassette tape recording of the recent debate between I.C.C. and the SPGB is available from H.O. price £1.60 or 50p to hire.

A Lack of Imagination (2014)

From the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

We look at what a capitalist corporation imagines 2050 could be like. But will it if capitalism continues?

‘Imagine 2050’ is the title of a joint report recently dreamt up by the environmental services multinational Veolia, and partnered by a group of economists ensconced in the British citadel of capitalist ideology – the London School of Economics. Veolia’s vision of the future describes ‘one future city in which system-level planning has created a dense, resource-efficient society characterised by collaborative consumption, shared ownership and local self-reliance’. Vague; but sounds kind of nice.

Telescoping the reader’s imagination the storyline continues: ‘The 2050 home includes a kitchen where waste is sorted by nanoscopic robots and food packaging that is designed to degrade in line with sell-by dates. Waste from the bin-less home will be collected via a pneumatic network, by an underground network, and transferred to treatment facilities. This 24/7 waste collection service will reduce the presence of vehicles in the city, helping to cut greenhouse gas emissions.’

And it doesn’t end there for these lucky urbanites as their homes will also feature, ‘ultrasonic baths, self-cleaning surfaces and water purification based on systems found in plants and bacteria’. And they’ll also enjoy, ‘3D printers and new paints and materials optimising natural light and improving energy conservation’ (edie.net).

Enter the LSE economists and their unwavering quest for a ‘better capitalism’. One that is civilised, caring; even cuddly. Slightly shrewder now since Her Majesty’s 2010 visit to the citadel when they were at a collective loss to explain her probing question on why the prevailing depression had occurred, and why were they unable to predict it? A tad wiser now? Perhaps they’d flicked through a history book of the last century or two which would reveal that slumps and depressions are endemic to capitalism. As are wars, mass starvation amidst plenty, and gross social deprivation. So ‘Imagine 2050’ adds a one sentence rider that, ‘models a scenario in which disparate and unregulated development has led to a resource-hungry urban sprawl where private consumption and ownership is prioritised over long-term communal thinking’. Sounds familiar? Yes, that’s right; it’s where city-dwellers the world over live right now.

Veolia: profit from water
It’s wise under capitalism to give some thought to who you enter into partnerships with. The LSE’s partner, Veolia, has an interesting past. Its origins lie in an 1853 royal decree by Napoleon III creating its capitalist foundations in a company called Compagnie Générale des Eaux [CGE]. Turning water into a commodity through the human labour necessary for a network of reservoirs, filtration and piping, CGE initially supplied water to Lyon, and then obtained a 50 year concession to supply water to Parisians. Profits gained through surplus value gushed so that in 1976, a new, ambitious CEO, Guy Dejouany, branched out into other market sectors. Through a succession of takeovers of companies as diverse as waste management through to the media came the creation of Vivendi Universal, Vivendi Environment, and finally the catch-all name, Veolia. And there was a sound reason for the change of name. It’s wise to distance yourself from a bad name, and Vivendi had become synonymous with bribery and fraud.

During 1996, five out of 13 directors on the board of Vivendi were under investigation for corruption. In 1997, Vivendi executives colluded with civil servants to channel illegal commissions of up to $86 million- primarily to Jacque Chirac’s party (the RPR) from public contracts worth $3.3 billion. Italian courts sentenced the Milan City Council president to three years in prison for accepting a $2 million bribe from a Vivendi subsidiary during bidding on a $100 million contract. In 2002 a Vivendi CEO was convicted of fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (corporatewatch.org). There were several other high profile allegations, but when you have allies at the centre of financial and political circles accusations generally evaporate.

In 2003 Veolia Environnement S.A was created and headquartered in Paris. It had grown into the biggest water service company in the world. Waste management, energy and transport are its other interests in a business that in 2012 encompassed 48 countries, employed 318,376 people who provided takings set at €29.4 billion. Veolia’s business model was succinctly revealed when its CEO said, ‘Many of the best performing contracts are those where a private operator assumes the operational and commercial risks, but not the major capital expenditures’ (fwwatch.org). Underlying this is the unspoken, always denied, premise that corporations expect governments to pick up the bill for those capital expenditures. Ideological support from economists and an array of apologists for capitalism underpin the ease with which corporations like Veolia gain profitable contracts in the name of privatisation, market efficiency, and the ubiquitously touted ‘ownership society’. Avoiding major capital investment, leasing assets and simply collecting revenues ensures profits flow like water from a tap.

Like all capitalist enterprises Veolia’s principal goal is to maximise profits to ensure shareholder returns. Veolia’s strategy to attain that goal has a history of imposing, ‘lower wages and reducing retirement, health care and other benefits; break contracts; enforce lower work standards detrimental to workers and the community; and reduce the workplace environment to levels below safety standards’ (workers.org). Not content with that in the name of the ‘ownership society’ Veolia uses, ‘other cost cutting measures (inadequate testing, treatment and maintenance), illegal dumping and processing of toxic material. Problems range from service outages, to illegal sewage discharges, to safety hazards, explosions, neglected equipment, and lower water quality’. There are multiple incidents reported globally concerning Veolia’s corporate strategies. Mismanagement of the water supplies has seen scores of law suits and non-renewal of contracts. Even in Veolia’s own backyard of Paris, after 25 years, the city decided, ‘not to renew its contract with Veolia in order to stabilize water rates and save money – which it has’ (corporatewatch.org).

How many will benefit?
‘Imagine 2050’ ends with a piece of advice from LSE senior research fellow for LSE Cities Dr Savvas Verdis: ‘A circular economy cannot be built piecemeal, a systems-wide approach is essential’. Obviously, given their partnership with Veolia the LSE economists imagine that this nebulous circular economy is possible under capitalism utilising corporations like their partner. To encourage businesses to become involved in this business idea Circular Economy 100 has been founded. Knowledge of who they’re dealing with resonates with their mission statement: ‘The Foundation has created the Circular Economy 100 programme to support business in unlocking this commercial opportunity and to enable them to benefit from subsequent first mover advantages (ellenmacarthurfoundation.org). Which translates as: There are profits to be made, but you have to get in quick before they dry up.

Marketing and PR reports seek to hide the truths beneath the carefully worded gloss. Which is precisely what  ‘Imagine 2050’ does. Globally, 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, 2.6 billion people have no access to basic sanitation. In addition, 2 million children die annually due to easily preventable water borne diseases, and approximately 5000 children die from preventable diarrhoea-related diseases every day. Veolia recently wrote to the Human Rights Council’s independent expert of its efforts to help poor areas of the world and ‘boasted about how it has expanded water access, particularly to those living in remote areas’. However one month later, ‘it told credit analysts on Wall Street that it prioritized ‘financially sound clients’ in dense urban areas’ (corporatewatch.org). And if the urbanite can’t pay Veolia’s bill? ‘An employee at Veolia in France has been sacked for refusing to cut off the water supply to poor families.The man, named in the French media only as Mark, had been employed at Veolia for 20 years but was handed his dismissal letter on April 4th for his refusal to implement the cut-offs following the non-payment of bills’(thelocal.fr/19 April).

UN-Habitats research reveals that the world’s slum population has already grown by 75 million in just three years. And by 2050, expectation is that one in three people will live in urban slums. How many do you believe will benefit from the technology described in Imagine 2050?

PR has another purpose. To create a ‘feel good factor’. To beef up confidence in the future. It doesn’t just try to sell you the commodities, it sells you hope. Fortunately, you can only stack bullshit so high before everyone realises it stinks. Ideologists like the LSE’s economists like to tell us that there is no alternative. Capitalism is eternal and everlasting. They seem incapable of unlocking their own imaginations from the prison of capitalism’s markets. But the technology that they describe in Imagine 2050 is helping to shape people’s thinking and provide the nails for capitalism’s coffin. Those technologies and many others are already in development. A barrier exists for the vast majority to those technologies. And that barrier is capitalism. Jamming its grubby little fingers into the dam are apologists like the LSE’s economists. And the nicest thing that can be said about them is that they lack imagination.

Andy Matthews

Autonomist Leninists (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Storming Heaven. Class Composition and Struggle in Italian Autonomous Marxism. Steve Wright. Pluto Press.

“Autonomist Marxism”, what is that? If you can plough through the first hundred pages of the rather abstruse views of some tortured Italian intellectuals, this book will help you discover that it is, or was in Italy in the 1970s, a variety of Leninism rather than Marxism. Its members regarded themselves as a vanguard of intellectuals seeking to relate to the “working class” and to help them in their struggles, but who were trying to work out exactly who the working class were.

   

Starting out from the “workerist” (“operaismo”, their own description) position that the working class were the manual workers in big factories, some of them eventually reached the conclusion that the working class were everybody forced to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage or salary (though still apparently not including themselves). Unfortunately, this correct conclusion was tied to the view that the immediate enemy of the working class was the state as the collective capitalist and that the “class struggle” was therefore a violent struggle against the state.

   

Some took this literally and went in for bombings and shootings. Naturally, the state fought back and a number of them ended up in jail, including some the state didn’t realise were only posturing. Their theory of the state also led them to mistakenly see the way to working class emancipation as being not the abolition of the wages system, i.e. of the buying and selling of labour power and of buying and selling generally, but instead that everybody should be paid a “social” or “political wage”, a variant of the “citizen’s income” advocated by the Green Party and various currency cranks in Britain. Hardly Marx’s view.

   

This said, some interesting, though highly controversial, ideas did emerge from all this. For instance, that the technology and productive methods introduced under capitalism are not just neutral but adapted to facilitate the exploitation of the working class and so cannot simply be used unchanged in socialism; that all workers, including housewives, contributed, collectively, to the production of surplus value so that any distinction between “productive” and “non-productive” workers was impossible; and – what is the distinguishing feature of those, mainly outside Italy these days who call themselves “autonomist Marxists” – that “so-called economic laws had to be rediscovered as political forces, behind which lay the motor of working-class struggle” (p. 84).

   

To deny that there are any objective economic laws of capitalism is of course to go too far, even though working-class struggle is an essential element in, for instance, determining the level of wages. It is in fact to open the way to reformism, to the view that these can be overcome within capitalism if enough political pressure is applied, whether by parliamentary action or, as advocated by the Italian Autonomists, industrial or violent action.

Adam Buick

Do we need money? (2005)

From the November 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

It sounds like a silly question, doesn’t it? Of course we need money: we need it to pay our rent or mortgage, to buy food and clothes, to purchase cinema tickets and DVDs, and so on. There’s no question that, with the world organised the way it is, we do need money, and we couldn’t live without it. Credit cards and cheques make no difference, they are just different ways of paying by money, so that we don’t have to carry huge amounts of notes and coins around with us.

But let’s step back a bit and ask ourselves, why do we need money? It’s because we can’t get hold of the food, clothes, tickets or DVDs, or occupy our house or flat, unless we have the money to pay for them. We can try to take food or whatever without paying, but if we’re caught we will very soon be told that this is theft and it’s against the law, and we’ll be punished for it in some way. Basically, it has been decided (but by who?) that people in general cannot get hold of things (more formally, cannot gain access to them) unless they pay. The payment transfers ownership from the shop or supermarket or manufacturing company to the customer. Once you’ve bought something, you can then do more or less what you like with it.

So the money is just a means of saying ‘This is mine, not yours’. And that’s what the shop is saying too: ‘Unless you pay us, you can’t use this.’ Now, from some points of view, this is a strange way of going about things. In the first place, some areas of our lives aren’t arranged like this at all. Many people do things for other people — lend or give them something, or perform some service — without expecting any payment: they do this out of friendship or for their neighbours or family members. Furthermore, not everything we want to have access to requires payment. Usually we can all go to the local park without having to pay to get in. Many towns have free shuttle buses to transport people around the town centre, or to and from the local railway station. But try to travel on the train without a ticket and you’ll be in trouble.

However, let’s just imagine that the world was run differently, that everything was free (though in that case the concept of ‘free’ presumably wouldn’t mean anything!). Suppose you could go to the supermarket, collect the food you wanted for yourself and your family, and then just leave without having to queue at the checkouts. You’d probably choose the best-quality food without having to worry about its cost. In fact, since nobody would have to buy cheap and nasty food, all the food available would be top quality. There’d be no point in taking more than you needed, because you’d always be able to go back and get more if you ran out, and it’s just wasteful (and, in fact, daft) to take lots of milk and bread, say, if you know you won’t be able to use them.

This probably sounds like quite a good idea, but would this same principle work with clothes rather then food? Wouldn’t people just want masses of clothes, and always from the top designers and brand names? Well, let’s just think a bit about the implications of a world without money along the lines I’ve just begun to describe. Nobody will be able to show off by flaunting an expensive dress or tie, and nobody will want brand names or designer labels since anyone can have them (if they still exist) so a brand name won’t mean anything. Quite probably people will still want to look smart and attractive, but this won’t be by wearing clothes that ‘cost a fortune’. And like food, there would be no point in having lots of clothes lying around in a wardrobe gathering dust: people would just take from the shops or warehouses what they wanted for their personal use, not what would be intended to impress others. Also, since nobody would profit from selling more clothes, there would be no relentless pushing of new fashions each year.

So it’s not difficult to imagine a world without money, a world where what people consumed and enjoyed would not be limited by the size of their wage packet, where everyone could gain access to the best of everything. But again, questions arise. Would there, for instance, be enough to go round? Well, think firstly, about how much effort, and how many people’s work, goes into money and all its paraphernalia. It’s not just the shopworkers whose work is mainly or entirely concerned with money. There’s everyone who works for a bank or insurance company, who deals with accounts and prices, who issues or collects tickets. In a world without money, these people and many others (those who manufacture guns, for instance) would devote their labour to producing goods that people need. The money system doesn’t just prevent people gaining access to what has been produced, it also seriously reduces what is produced.

But then again, would people work in a world where there was no money and they were not getting paid? Yes, they would. The alternative, after all, would be a life of idleness, which may be great for a two-week holiday period every summer but soon becomes very boring. Work, too, would be made as enjoyable as possible, which means it would be safe, satisfying and fun. People would enjoy working with each other, never doing one kind of work for too long but appreciating the variety that can be provided. Producing useful things is pleasant in itself.

You can see that a world without money wouldn’t just be like today except that there would be no price tags on anything. Rather, it implies a completely different way of organising things. For a start, production would be carried on for use and not for profit. This means goods would be produced because they satisfied people’s wants and needs, rather than because they produced a profit. In such circumstances, dangerous, unhealthy and shoddy goods would never see the light of day, as there would be no reason to produce them. In addition, the factories, offices and land would not be the exclusive property of a small number of millionaires, which is what happens now. Instead, they would be owned by everyone (which is equivalent to saying they would be owned by no one). And they would therefore be controlled by everyone, not by a small bunch of owners.

But it doesn’t stop there. There would be no need for governments either, because governments exist to run the system on behalf of the small number of people who own the lion’s share of the wealth. It’s the government, for instance, that runs the police and court systems that will teach anyone who takes without paying a lesson about who owns what. Along with governments, there’d be no countries either, because the division of the world into countries simply suits the interests of the owners in particular parts of the world. Nor would armies be needed, as they fight for the owners against the armies of the owners from other countries, in disputes over access to raw materials like oil.

A world without money also means a world without poverty, because that’s the flipside of money controlling access to things. ‘No money, no chance’ is the current motto, but one that results in the obscenity of destitution and starvation in a world that could easily provide plenty for all.

So doing away with money would also mean doing away with governments, countries and armies, as well as the division into rich and poor. We, the human inhabitants of the planet, don’t need money — it gets in the way and stops us from enjoying this world and what we could make of it. One word for the world without money is socialism, but it’s not the name that matters, it’s the idea. If the idea sounds attractive to you, then you should find out more about the Socialist Party and our views.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Against ‘Redistributionism’ (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 5 December there was an interesting meeting in New York organised by the Marxist-Humanist Initiative (MHI) and Internationalist Perspective (IP). It’s on YouTube at http://tinyurl.ms/yvwx Like us, the four speakers all argued that the populist policy advocated by trade unions and leftwing demagogues of redistributing income from the rich to the working class was not a way out of the crisis.

Anne Jaclard (MHI) pointed out that this was a typical example of trying to reform capitalism to make it work in the interest of the working class, but this could not be done. Pursuing it was not just futile but a diversion from acting to get rid of capitalism. Redistributive politics, or ‘redistributionism’, was a view that needed to be combatted. This was not to say that workers should not try to get more under capitalism; that was part of the class struggle.

Sander (IP) said that the mistake of the ‘redistributionists’ was the common one of assuming that the aim of production today was consumption whereas it was the production of goods not as such but as value with the aim of accumulating more and more of it. Diverting value which otherwise would be invested by capitalist firms in production would lead to inflation as the goods on which to spend it would not get produced.

Andrew Kliman (MHI) presented the classic case against ‘underconsumptionist’ theories of capitalism, pointing out that what the workers could not buy could be bought by capitalists whether to consume or to invest in production. That workers could not buy back all they produced could not be the explanation of capitalist crises as this was the case also in boom times; in fact, if this was the case capitalism ought to be in a permanent slump and should have collapsed long ago. The mistake was to see ‘consumption’ as just what the workers and capitalists bought to consume, whereas ‘effective demand’ also included what the capitalists invested in production. It was changes in this, as the rate of profit went up or down, that determined capitalism’s boom/slump cycle. He denied that there had been a shift of income from workers to capitalists in the period leading up to the outbreak of the slump in 2008 and that this was its cause. He claimed that working class living standards had not fallen during this period. The only way out of a slump, he said, was a devaluation of existing capital that would restore the rate of profit.

McIntosh (IP) disagreed that working class living standards hadn’t fallen in the decades up to 2008 but agreed that the only way out of a slump was a devaluation of capital. It was not the redistributive policies of the New Deal that had ended the slump of the 1930s. According to him, it was the Second World War and the massive devaluation of capital through its destruction that did this. The way-out for the working class was not an attempted redistribution of income in their favour (as now being proposed by the new Mayor of New York De Blasio as well as unions and the Left), but an end to production as value. He was in favour of workers struggling for higher wages but whether wages were high or low, they still involved exploitation. What was needed was production directly to meet human needs and so the end of value, money and wage-labour altogether.