Material World: Body Parts (2015)

The Material World Column from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

In capitalism, anything can be sold for a profit, including human beings. The sickening trades in humans whether as bonded labour or sex slaves is still prevalent. Selling body parts is now a normal everyday business. Organs Watch conservatively estimates that at least 10,000 kidneys are sold each year and generates an illicit profit of around a billion dollars a year. Organ trafficking is the commercialisation of medicine: more transplants mean more profit. Everything that is happening is a ‘donation’, but in real life, it is selling and buying.

This buying and selling transplant organs is illegal almost everywhere yet the trade persists, as a result of two major flaws in the transplant system, according to experts. First, the law does not prohibit anyone from billing for the services involved in transplanting organs. This provides doctors and hospitals with a financial incentive to perform transplants, while the costs of the organ are absorbed into the larger transaction and easily hidden from view. The second flaw is the practice of making organ donation anonymous. You can buy an organ without knowing where it came from, and it thus becomes mere tissue rather than part of a human being. Anonymity does not merely dehumanise donors; it also endangers them by making it easier for buyers and brokers to escape accountability for deaths and injuries.

The organ trade follows a clear pattern: rich people buy the organs, and poor people sell them. Organ trafficking depends on several factors. One is people in distress. They are economically disadvantaged. On the demand side are people who could die if they don't receive an organ transplant. Then there are the well-connected organ brokers, who arrange the deals between sellers and buyers. Well-equipped clinics and medical staff are needed. Unlike other forms of trafficking, the organ trade unites the respectable from the highest levels of society, such as laboratory technicians and the surgeons with the disreputable of the lowest strata of society – con-men and criminals, those brutal enforcers who make sure that ‘willing’ sellers actually lie on the operating table once it is realised by them what is actually entailed and they begin to understand how they have been cheated.

Few are informed or educated enough to give consent. They do not comprehend the seriousness of the surgery or what they are likely to face in respect to the possible incapacity to resume their normally physically demanding jobs. Organ brokers have told them the fairy tale of ‘the sleeping kidney’: one kidney sleeps, the other kidney works, so people don’t need two kidneys. Doctors wake up the sleeping kidney and take away the old kidney to give it to the recipient. Those selling their kidneys often receive more invasive surgery than necessary because buyers want to avoid extra expense. Many donors will have unnecessarily long scars of about 15 to 20 inches on their bodies, not knowing that if the brokers or recipients paid just a little bit more, the surgeons could have used laparoscopic surgery, which requires an incision as small as 3 or 4 inches.

Doctors say a kidney operation is a routine procedure; it saves a life and there is no harm to the donors. The whole recruitment of donors is a package of deception, manipulating the uneducated poor. The middlemen beyond taking large profits, encourage the trade by assuring buyers that the transaction is conducted ethically and that the medical benefits justify what would otherwise be seen as exploitation.

‘The crimes are covered up,’ Scott Carney writes in his book The Red Market ‘in a veil of altruistic ideals.’ Carney estimates he is personally worth $250,000 if he was sold for body parts. ‘. . . bodies are unquestionably commodities . . . As a product, bodies aren't assembled new in factories filled with sterile suited workers; rather they are harvested like used cars at scrap markets. Before you can write a check and pick up human tissue, someone needs to transform it from a tiny piece of humanity into something with a market value . . .’

There are those who will say ‘so what?’ And in a world where money can buy anything, and everything is fair game for profit-makers, what's to stop people from turning human parts into another commodity? In a world that is governed by the principle of supply and demand, where those with money can buy anything, the inevitable result is a world in which rich recipients look for markets where they can buy body parts. The sad reality is that some poor person somewhere in the world will be forced to sell.

Capitalism can indeed be described as being vampire-like, sucking the life out of the poor, imagery often used by Marx.

ALJO

Let’s Stand Together for a Better World (2015)

From the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever felt voting was a waste of time?

Usually, this is true, because the big parties support the current system. They change a few laws, shift money around; but in the end profits always come first and those on top stay on top.

Is this the only way?  We can put space probes onto comets, restore sight to the blind and perform triple heart bypass operations:  we have the brains to sort out a better system, one where we will be producing to satisfy people’s needs not for profit, where no one has to live in poverty while an elite are wealthy beyond imagining.

The Socialist Party believes in a society of cooperation, in helping each other, not exploiting our neighbours. We believe that power should be shared, not  in the hands of a greedy few.

Who controls how much you are paid, where you work, when you work or even if you work? Who decides how much it costs you to live where you are? You probably have almost no say in any of these issues which have a big effect on you. But what can you do about it?

Those who benefit from the present system would have you believe there is no alternative. It helps them if you believe it – although it does nothing for you.

You don’t have to believe you are powerless.  If you choose not to support this any more and vote socialist you will be one of an increasing number questioning the system.  You will be signalling your consent to a world cooperative society where wealth is produced and owned in common and freely shared according to need. A truly democratic society where decisions are made for the common good rather than for the gain of vested business interests. Where you have as much say as the next person regardless of position in life or occupation.

We have seen the world over that when an idea has the support of the majority of the population, nothing can stop it. To send a signal that you want this, vote for the Socialist Party candidate, and then come and join us, not to mend the current system but to build a movement strong enough to end it.

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The Socialist Party will be standing ten candidates in the coming general election, more than we have ever put up before. Half a million leaflets will be distributed in total in the chosen constituencies, which are:

Brighton Kemptown: Jacqueline Shodeke

Brighton Pavilion: Howard Pilott

Canterbury: Robert Cox

Easington: Steve Colborn

Folkestone & Hythe: Andy Thomas

Islington North: Bill Martin

Oxford East: Kevin Parkin

Oxford West & Abingdon: Mike Foster

Swansea West: Brian Johnson

Vauxhall: Danny Lambert

If you wish to help out in the campaign email us at spgb@worldsocialism.org or phone 02076223811 or text (only) 07732831192. We will put you in touch with the local branch election committee.

If you wish to help financially please make any cheque out to “The Socialist Party of Great Britain” and send to 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN. Alternatively, you can use paypal (go to our website http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/ and scroll down to the bottom).  Electoral law compels us to check and record any donations of over £50 but not for those of £50 or less.

Obituary: Dick Donnelly (2015)

Obituary from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many members of the World Socialist Movement will be saddened by the passing of Dick Donnelly. For 58 years he was a speaker, organiser and writer for the Socialist Party of Great Britain and was contributing to the Socialist Standard to the very end, including last month’s ‘Voice from the Back’ column.

He was only a teenager when he was introduced to socialism by the family lodger who was, luckily for us, a Party member, and when Dick finished National Service in 1957 he joined the Party. This was at a time when the Party and Glasgow Branch were at a low ebb. After WW2 public interest in politics had never been greater but during the post-war reconstruction the public's interest in politics eventually turned into apathy.

However, Dick's determination not only revived the Party in Glasgow but he helped get it involved in more activity than ever before. Three parliamentary and numerous city council elections were contested, huge amounts of Party literature were sold door to door, far more outdoor and indoor meetings were held and Dick was the driving force behind it all.

He soon became a first-class speaker, especially outdoors where he was in his element. Even people who may not have been much interested in politics came to hear him because they liked his quick wit and caustic humour. Dick was as much an entertainer as a propagandist and his wit gave him the ability to drub hecklers, especially political opponents. An example of this was at an outdoor meeting in Glasgow when a large number of aggressive Communists were in the audience. Dick ridiculed and exposed their Party and its hypocrisy to such an extent that by the end of the meeting the aggression had turned into sullen silence.

During the 1960s and 70s Dick's speaking made him so well known in Glasgow that people recognised him in streets and pubs. It was the same in Edinburgh where he had often spoken at meetings at The Mound. This was a large open space in the very heart of the city and was Edinburgh's equivalent of Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park in London. Dick addressed big crowds at The Mound, especially during the Edinburgh Festival when many overseas visitors could hear the case for socialism and it always got a sympathetic hearing. He made a big enough impression to be interviewed at The Mound for BBC TV and when it was screened Dick performed like a seasoned professional.

Dick spoke at meetings the length and breadth of Britain. Nowhere was too far and he even travelled from Glasgow to the deepest south west of England to represent the Party in a debate with a local MP. Dick’s entire political life was devoted to the Socialist Party and he talked about socialism wherever he could, even in his British Rail workplace where he made many friends and even a few Party members. He always kept in close touch with them and they were affectionately  known as ‘The Railway Children’; a large number of them were present at the funeral.

Over the years Dick also visited comrades in New Zealand, Australia, America and attended the founding in Calcutta of our Companion Party in India. He just couldn't stop doing what he could for the World Socialist Movement.

The SPGB has never had any use for leaders, but what it has always had are members who made outstanding contributions to the Party and Dick Donnelly was certainly among them. His passing has left a huge gap in our ranks and he will be a hard act to follow. We extend our deepest condolences to his daughters Paula and Laura.

V.V.

Editorial: There’s a General Election Coming (2015)

Editorial from the April 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

There will soon be a General Election in Britain. We predict now with complete certainty that the Conservatives, Labour, Liberals, UKIP, etc, and the Green Party, will all be standing on programmes of keeping – not ending – capitalism. They will each dress it up differently, they will each claim to have different priorities, values, intentions and even policies.

But whichever ones succeed in getting the power they seek, they will not really be in control. Their actions will be determined by the needs of the market system which they accept, support, endorse and seek to run. The market system which exists to protect and increase the power and wealth of a tiny minority.

Ask any of them about a world without the capitalist system which is at the root of all of our problems, and they will cry in chorus, ‘no! it’s utopian! not possible! not now! maybe in a thousand years! we need to work within the system! we can change and improve it from within!’They have been saying this for a couple of hundred years and, not surprisingly, this system therefore still exists, with all the same problems it has always generated.

If you do not support this insane system of global destruction and poverty then do not vote for any of these politicians pretending to be able to tame the beast. The solution is production for need, not profit. Common ownership of productive resources, not private or state ownership. Genuine democracy, not the token democracy of one vote twice a decade between versions of the same sick joke.

At the heart of all our problems is the fact that a tiny handful of under 1 percent own and control all of the world's productive resources. It is run for them. None of these parties, including the Greens, Labour, Liberals, UKIP, etc as well as Conservatives, has the slightest intention of ending that fact or even discussing it. We therefore have to laugh at them all with the derision they deserve and take steps to organise for a better future.

Scrap Capitalism (2014)

From the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is time to forever scrap forever this cock-eyed system that takes from the poor and  gives to the rich; that preaches austerity for the 95 percent whilst the elite get yet richer; where millionaire leaders shed crocodile tears over poverty as they live in luxury. Somehow it has been sold to us that this is usual – moreover it is the only way to organise society, and it is good and healthy. You could not make it up.

We could share all the world. Scrap capitalism, abolish the monetary system and suddenly the playing field is not so uneven. We will not have achieved utopia but many of the idiocies of the current system will have gone: life will not be quite so problematic. No longer would the accountant who finds havens for the rich to hide their wealth to avoid tax earn a thousand times more than the carers looking after the health of your old aunt – because there would no longer be wages. No more wages slavery, just imagine. You’d be able to do what you do and be able to take what you need.

You will no doubt be told it’s mad and totally unachievable. But think what would have been said about the internet or triple heart bypass surgery 50 years ago. Human beings are incredibly intelligent – just look at how much and how quickly we can achieve things when we set our minds to it – and we in the Socialist Party are simply saying the world can be organised in a more intelligent way. It cannot be seen as either intelligent or necessary that most of the wealth of the world is given to so few.

All the other parties offer you some variant of what we have already – possibly a few more checks and balances. Sadly history shows that, whatever the government, the rich come out on top. We are here to say it need not be like this.

Howard Pilott

Never mind the ballots (2015)

Book Review from the February 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Sex, Lies and the Ballot Box'. Edited by Philip Cowley and Robert Ford. Biteback Publishing. £14.99

With the General Election fast approaching, expect a slew of books on this theme. Subtitled ‘50 Things You Need to Know About British Elections’, this is one of the first. The chapters are short (typically four or five pages) and are written in an accessible style by a variety of UK political scientists and polling gurus. Many of the familiar names are there: Rallings and Thrasher, John Curtice, David Denver et al.

Chapters range from analyzing tactical voting, identifying who really votes UKIP, the influence of social class on voting, and why ethnic minorities still tend to vote Labour. There is lots of interest here, though it is a shame the publishers decided they had to try to spice things up further by including some embarrassingly weak chapters by staff at YouGov about sex and politics (eg the alleged sexual preferences and fantasies of different party supporters).

Many of the arguments put forward build on previous research projects like the British Election Study that have uncovered an increasingly complex range of voting behaviour in the UK. This includes large numbers of people voting for split tickets, ie voting for different parties on the same election day, such as when a General Election and local elections coincide. It also involves a decline in voting based on class factors as defined by the sociologists, though with a noticeable rise in recent decades of geographical alignment behind parties – most obviously Labour in Wales, Scotland and the North of England, and the Tories in the South and East. This geographical ‘flocking together’ occurs even when social class, housing and other factors have been accounted for. Interestingly, it would also appear that the prevailing underpinning values of voters in Wales and Scotland, for instance, are not that different on most issues to those of people in parts of the UK that tend to vote Conservative.

In sociological terms, the voters with the most traditional ‘working class’ profiles tend now to disproportionately vote UKIP when they vote at all (with a particular concentration of UKIP support among elderly white men who are – or were – blue-collar workers who had left school at 16 or younger). By contrast, Labour now gets almost as much support in percentage terms from the top fifth of income earners in society as it does from the bottom fifth. Indeed, this finding was reflected in surveys at the last couple of general elections where it was found that Labour attracted noticeably more support from readers of the Financial Times than it did of the Express, with the Labour percentage of FT readers being not too far below those of the Sun.

In many ways it appears that considerable numbers of voters are now shopping in the proverbial postmodern supermarket where parties appear like clothes brands that are either trusted or tarnished. What perhaps doesn’t come out as strongly here as it might though is that this is not just a reflection of voters clustering towards the political centre, but of parties doing this too. Indeed, arguably the most noticeable change in politics in recent decades is that managerialism has replaced political ideology or argument – parties now make little attempt to convince people of a distinctive view. Instead, like a good salesman who can build rapport with clients by ‘mirroring’ their body language and speech patterns, parties compete on broadly the same ideological ground but try to convince electors that they are personally more trustworthy, effective and professional than their competition.

If this is all rather depressing, there are actually glimpses of hope here too. Political attitudes can often change in generational waves and the chapter on changing attitudes to race in the UK is a case in point. Here Danny Dorling discusses ‘when racism stopped being normal, but no-one noticed’. He shows that the percentage of electors who would be opposed to someone in their family marrying a person from another ethic group has declined from around 55 per cent in the 1980s to about 25 per cent today as the older generations where these views were most prevalent have now died off, and with very few of the younger generation now holding these types of beliefs. This trend has been mirrored in other countries like the US and is one indicator among many that people in the main Western democracies may still be economically conservative, but are more socially liberal – and in some ways enlightened – than they have ever been before.

DAP

Summer School 2015: New Perspectives on Socialism (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principles of revolutionary socialism were formed over a hundred years ago. Then,  capitalist growth was being fuelled by the technological and logistical developments   following the Industrial Revolution. Since then, the history of capitalism has been marked by economic peaks and troughs, two World Wars, the rise and fall of state capitalism, massive advances in science, and widespread shifts in culture and beliefs. The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that its original principles are still valid despite all these changes. This is because the basic structure of capitalism persists, regardless of  differences in the way it is organised.

But is this right? Has society changed so much that class structure and the role of the state are significantly different now compared to previous centuries? What effects have these changes had on class consciousness and the likelihood of revolution? And how should revolutionary socialists respond through their theory and activity? It’s always healthy to re-examine our beliefs, to see if they still apply to our ever-changing world. This weekend of talks and discussion will be an opportunity to take a fresh look at several important aspects of the socialist viewpoint.

Full residential cost (including accommodation and meals Friday  evening to Sunday afternoon) is £80. The concessionary rate is £40. Day visitors are welcome, but please book in advance. To book a place, send a cheque (payable to the Socialist Party of Great Britain) to Summer School, Sutton Farm, Aldborough, Boroughbridge, York, YO51 9ER, or book online through the QR code or athttp://spgb.net/summerschool2015.

E-mail enquiries to spgbschool@yahoo.co.uk

A Capitalist Tax Scam? Good Lord (2015)

The Halo Halo! Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just as the deadline for articles for the Standard looms and we start to panic, realising there is nothing newsworthy on the religious front to write about – it’s been over a week since the last human sacrifice to Allah, and we’ve not had a decent miracle from Jesus for ages, we remember the golden rule: have faith and the Lord will provide.

And he has done. The good Lord whom we have to thank for this month’s article is Lord Stephen Green. The Reverend Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint in fact who as well as being a C of E vicar, a Tory member of the House of Lords, current Minister of State for Trade and Investment, Chairman of the HSBC group from 2006 to 2010, and former chair of HSBC’s private bank in Switzerland whose clients included arms dealers, diamond smugglers and drugs runners, and which is now being investigated for tax irregularities in numerous countries, and who has inconveniently found himself at the centre of the scandal. And, oh yes, he’s also the author of a book on morality.

There’s nothing new about those who want to ram their morality down our throats finding themselves up to their dog collars in financial irregularities of course. Before the Rev Lord Green hit the headlines we had the Rev Paul Flowers, the drug-fuelled ‘crystal Methodist’, who also allegedly had an expensive weakness for rent-boys (one claimed Flowers ‘paid him £500 per night but still owes £1,000’) and who almost brought the Co-op bank to its knees.

On a lighter note, there was also a group of C of E vicars some years ago who, although they had complete faith in god, obviously didn’t altogether trust him as an employer and decided they needed the protection of a Trade Union. The one they joined was MSF, whose initials stood for ‘Manufacturing, Science and Finance’. We were pleased to see our fellow workers getting themselves unionised, but puzzled at their chosen union and wrote to the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time asking if, as their employment had nothing to do with manufacturing or science, could we assume the main interest was finance. We didn’t get a reply.

But back to the Rev Lord Green’s book on morality – Good Value: Reflections on Money, Morality and an Uncertain World. Here, for the benefit of any Socialist Standard readers wishing to be guided by the Rev Lord Green’s words of wisdom are a few extracts to steer you through any moral dilemmas you may have in managing your finances.

‘There will always be those who have not merely more than others’ he informs us. Some will have ‘more than they could conceivably need.’ And we can simply ‘shrug our shoulders’, or ‘we can hear the still, small voice of conscience’. This ‘reminds us – if we listen – that something is owed by the affluent. And a debt not paid is a debtor who is guilty’.

‘As individuals’ he assures us ‘we do not govern our behaviour simply by what is allowed by law or regulation. We have our own codes of conduct, and hold ourselves accountable’. And where in big companies does this responsibility begin? ‘With their boards, of course. There is no other task they have which is more important’ the former HSBC chairman assures us.

With such honesty and wisdom as this from our moral superiors how can we, or indeed, the banking system and the capitalists running the show possibly go wrong?

NW

Mixed Media: William Morris and His Legacy - Anarchy and Beauty (2015)

The Mixed Media Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The William Morris exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London was curated by Fiona McCarthy, author of William Morris: A Life for Our Time where she describes Morris's politics as 'Marxism with visionary libertarianism.'

For socialists, the exhibition contains a cornucopia of delights, and fleshes out what WB Yeats wrote in The Trembling of the Veil: 'I cannot remember who first brought me to the old stable beside Kelmscott House, William Morris's house at Hammersmith, and to the debates held there upon Sunday evenings, by the Socialist League. I was soon of the little group who had supper with Morris afterwards. I met at these suppers very constantly Walter Crane, Emery Walker, in association with Cobden-Sanderson, the printer of many fine books, and less constantly Bernard Shaw, and perhaps once or twice Hyndman the socialist and the anarchist Prince Kropotkin. There, too, one always met certain more or less educated workmen, rough of speech and manner, with a conviction to meet every turn.'

The portrait William Morris by GF Watts gives Morris a Dionysian quality, of which Yeatswrote 'a reproduction of his portrait by Watts hangs over my mantelpiece... its grave wide-open eyes, like the eyes of some dreaming beast... while the broad vigorous body suggests a mind that has no need of the intellect to remain sane.' When Morris lay dying one of his doctors diagnosed his fatal illness as ‘simply being William Morris, and having done more work than most ten men.'

Of special interest is the Gold tooled binding of William Morris's copy of Marx's Le Capital. Morris started to read Marx in 1883 and by 1884 'the book 'had been worn to loose sections by his own constant study of it' and had to be rebound. It is always a pleasure to see the Hammersmith Socialist Society red banner which dates from Morris's departure from the Socialist League to form the Hammersmith Socialist Society in 1890.

Roger Fry's Edward Carpenter is a portrait of the gay socialist who was a comrade of Morris in the SDF, and later joined Morris, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling in the Socialist League. Carpenter advocated free love, women's emancipation, and linked gay emancipation with social transformation. Carpenter lived openly with a working class lover near Sheffield for 30 years.

The oil painting of anarchist communist Prince Peter Kropotkin by Nellie Heath was commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of Kropotkin's scientific achievements. Oscar Wilde described Kropotkin as 'a man with a soul of that beautiful white Christ' (De Profundis).Significantly for socialists, Kropotkin concluded in The Wages System: 'a society that has seized upon all social wealth, and has plainly announced that all have a right to this wealth, whatever may be the part they have taken in creating it in the past, will be obliged to give up all ideas of wages, either in money or in labour notes.'

Bernard Partridge's portrait of Bernard Shaw reminds us that Lenin was right when he described Shaw as 'a good man fallen among Fabians' (Six Weeks in Russia, Arthur Ransome). Shaw was on the point of joining the Marxist SDF but instead joined the Fabian Society. Shaw's The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism was republished in 1937 and Hardy in the Socialist Standard wrote that Shaw's views were ‘essentially utopian – that there will be money incomes under socialism, and that the capitalist foundation can be made to support a socialist system of society.'

The iconic Gilman photograph gelatin silver print of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas is featured in the exhibition. Unlike Shaw, Wilde understood socialism, and under the influence of Kropotkin he wrote in The Soul of Man Under Socialism 'with the abolition of private property, then, we shall have true, beautiful, healthy Individualism. Nobody will waste his life in accumulating things, and the symbols for things. One will live.'

Socialist women comrades of Morris are featured in the exhibition such as the pencil drawing ofEleanor Marx by Grace Black. In The Woman Question Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling identified that ‘the position of woman rests on an economic basis’ with ‘no solution in the present condition of society’ but in socialism ‘the woman will no longer be the man's slave but his equal.' The carbon print of Annie Besant by Herbert Rose Barrand portrays the author of the 1888 articleWhite Slavery in London which described conditions of work in the Bryant & May match factory in London's East End and led to the successful London Match Girls strike.

William Morris and His Legacy: Anarchy and Beauty is to be recommended if only to give modern audiences an introduction to socialist ideas. As Morris wrote 'Our business... is the making of Socialists, i.e. convincing people that Socialism is good for them and is possible. When we have enough people of that way of thinking, they will find out what action is necessary for putting their principles in practice. Therefore, I say, make Socialists. We Socialists can do nothing else that is useful' (Commonweal 15 November 1890).

Steve Clayton

Flawed fairy tales (2000)

Theatre Review from the April 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Honk, The Ugly Duckling. National Theatre.

I was about fourteen when I first went to the theatre. It was 1945 and we went to see Aladdin at the Palace Theatre in Manchester. I remember the occasion vividly. After the dark, dank dullness of war, the theatre was ablaze with light and colour, and from the moment the band started to play I was enthralled. Of course it helped that periodically half a dozen high-stepping chorus girls would appear, with legs clad in shimmering silk that seemed to go on forever, and invite my intense, admiring gaze. The heroine was wistfully beautiful, the adults simply differentiated by dress, facial expression and body language as either good, bad or comic, and I was quickly lost in the excitement, the glamour, the giddy pleasure of it all, all these people on stage, real people not film stars, performing for us. I wanted it to go on forever.

Two years ago, when our eldest grandson was four, we took him to the theatre. It was not a success. He was too young (and probably too impressionable). The first appearance of Stinky Poo was enough. With rolling eyes and malevolent chuckle, Stinky Poo quickly had Tom hiding under his seat and after the interval he refused to return. Last year was much successful. Tom had seen a video of The Snowman and knew what to expect, but we were a long way from the stage and the impact of the live show was much reduced. Then last week we took him to the National Theatre to Hans Andersen's fairy story about the ugly duckling who turns into a swan, sat him near to the stage and watched and waited. Tom sat in rapt attention, eyes aglow, lost in . . . who knows what? And yesterday, in traditional theatrical fashion, he wanted to reprise the occasion. So my partner and Tom went through the plot and linked it to the twenty-odd scenes that are mentioned in the programme, and their associated songs. He says he wants to go again.

When I was a child there was little theatre for children, but now that children are significant consumers the market has responded accordingly. There are stories especially written for children to which "adults maybe admitted if accompanied by a child", small touring companies specialising in children's theatre, and lots of shows which, like films released under a "universal" certificate, are presumed to be suitable for both adults and children.

Honk is such a show. The National claim that it is suitable for anyone over six, but I'm not so sure. Certainly anyone over six would have no difficulty following the story, but on the other hand they certainly couldn't follow a script which contains many lines with clear adults-only significance. Most films, TV shows, books and theatre are of this kind. The demands of selling the product to a large audience mean that minority interests have to be sacrificed. The script for Honk is arguably less convincing than it might have been, because in trying to ensure wide appeal the writers have come up with something that satisfies neither children nor adults. But then this is how capitalism works. It's not the needs of people that matter, but the profits of the manufacturer.

It's easy to empathise with the ugly duckling. The emotions surrounding the duckling's experience—the insults, the abuse, the threat of physical assault—are not difficult to identify with. The duckling is despised because he is different. Hans Christian Andersen suffered a similar fate. "Gawky, dreamy, pale, weak, disliking the company and games of other boys, Andersen was relentlessly humiliated and bullied for much of his childhood." (Tim Goodwin, 1999.) Others are similarly despised and disparaged because of their colour, or sexual orientation, or beliefs, or accent, or whatever.

On another level, the duckling's world—the place where he is hatched and the farm where he hides—are metaphors for the hierarchical, bourgeois society with which Andersen was only too familiar; not least because he was at the bottom of the pile. As such Andersen's fairy story is based on a substantial social critique. The pity is that it is flawed.

The ugly duckling is eventually transformed into a swan, the implication being that it is to nature that we must look to if we are to know our destiny, and "that inborn qualities are more important than upbringing". However, The Ugly Duckling was written in 1842, long before the importance of environment on human growth and development had been empirically demonstrated. It must be doubtful whether Andersen would have written a similar tale today. After all it's one thing to write a fairy story which sees the lives of farmyard animals in human terms, and quite another to go on believing in the 21st century that nature is the significant determinant of human behaviour. Now that is a fairy story. An unhelpful, anti-working class fairy story, because it denies the possibility of change. No wonder the capitalist establishment is happy to feed Honk to children of all ages.

Michael Gill

The Algebra of Revolution (1998)

Book Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Algebra of Revolution. The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition. By John Rees. Routledge. £14.99.

We in the Socialist Party have always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards "dialectics" mainly because of the use that was made of it by the old Communist Party to justify its policy zigzags on the grounds that "progress proceeds through contradictions". On the other hand, it was a term used by Marx and Engels.

The concept was first introduced by the German philosopher Hegel who died in 1831. This was as part of his religious view of the world. However, shorn of the metaphysical mumbo-jumbo Hegel surrounded it with, dialectics means that, in analysing the world and society, you start from the basis that nothing has an independent, separate existence of its own but is an inter-related and interdependent part of some greater whole (ultimately the whole universe) which is in a process of constant change.

This is a fairly widespread view today (sometimes called "holism") and can even be said to have been incorporated into mainstream scientific method. "Holism", however, is only partly the same as "dialectics" as dialectics brings in another factor: contradiction. Hence Rees's definition that it is "an internally contradictory totality in a constant process of change".

Hegel was, in philosophical terms, an Idealist who saw social systems as being a reflection of the "spirit of the age" as he called the dominant ideas of the people living in them. Applying his theory to the development of society, he argued that social change came about as a result of internal contradictions within the "spirit of the age" leading to people developing a new such spirit and a corresponding new system of society.

Marx took over this idea of social development through contradiction but, as he himself once put it, he turned Hegel upside down (or rather put him back on his feet again) by making the basis of society, not the "spirit of the age" but "the way in which people are organised to produce society's means of life"; as this changed-through the internal contradiction of conflict between classes with antagonistic interests-so did the social system.

This of course is the materialist conception of history which Marx and Engels first worked out in 1844-45 in some notebooks published after their deaths as The German Ideology and which Marx summarised in the 1859 Preface to his A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy.

Rees's discussion of the influence of Hegel's ideas and terminology on Marx and Engels is competent enough. As to the others, our criticism would be of his selection of those to include in "the classical Marxist tradition". As a leading member of the SWP Rees is not in this tradition himself. Anyone who adheres to Lenin's theory of the vanguard party-which is such a fundamental departure from Marx's own view both of the intellectual capabilities of the working class and of how workers should organise to establish socialism-puts themselves outside the Marxist tradition. They are Leninists not Marxists.

This means that the last of those discussed by Rees to come into the Marxist tradition were Rosa Luxemburg (who Rees specifically criticises for not supporting a vanguard party) and Karl Kautsky. If the book had lived up to its sub-title, Lenin, Trotsky, Lukacs and Gramsci (the last two thinkers constructed convoluted philosophical defences of the supposed need for a vanguard party) would have been replaced by Joseph Dietzgen (who was the first to use the term "dialectical materialism"), Antonio Labriola, (whose Essays in the Materialist Conception of History only gets a brief mention because Trotsky happened to have read it) and Anton Pannekoek (author of brilliant criticism of Lenin called Lenin As Philosopher which Rees dismisses in a footnote). All three had interesting and relevant-and different-things to say about dialectics.

Adam Buick

Scarce Resources (2015)

Book Review from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir: Scarcity: The True Cost of Not Having Enough. Penguin £9.99

Scarcity is defined here as ‘having less than you feel you need’. This is applied not just to material goods and services but also to time-management and, less obviously, to dieting and loneliness. The basic idea is that scarcity can take over your mind, sometimes leading to a focus on an up-coming deadline that makes you more effective. But more often it can reduce our mental capacity, what the authors call our bandwidth, making it hard to take proper account of other matters. So if you are really busy, you may focus on urgent tasks, neglecting those that are important but not so urgent. And poverty may lead you to forget to take your medication.

The Socialist Standard is not a journal about how to deal with your to-do list or how to keep to a diet, so let’s focus on the book’s remarks on poverty. Mullainathan and Shafir argue that ‘the reason the poor borrow is poverty itself’. You might think that you don’t need the combined efforts of a Professor of Economics and a Professor of Psychology to tell you that, but in fact it is not quite as mundane as it appears. The point is that borrowing (often at high rates of interest) is not caused by predatory lenders, financial ineptitude or a common tendency to think about the immediate future rather than the long term. Poor farmers or market traders, in Africa or India for instance, borrow in order to tide them over periods when they have less income or bigger expenses, since they do not have enough financial slack to cope with shocks to their budget.

Various solutions are offered to these and other problems of scarcity. Give or lend people money at the right time to avoid problems with insufficient financial slack. Reduce the chance of people taking out ruinous payday loans by showing them the cost in dollars rather than in abstract interest rates. Or get employers to provide advances on wages.

But what is missing in all this is any real understanding of the causes of poverty. Mullainathan and Shafir note that half the children in the world live below the global poverty line, and that half the children in the United States will at some point be on food stamps. But they simply do not mention exploitation, the extent of inequality, the wealth of the super-rich or the feasibility of growing enough food for all. A proper study of scarcity requires rather more depth than is shown here. 

Paul Bennett

The Day Is Coming (1944)

Book Review from the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The above is the title of a book by William Cameron (MacMillan, New York). It is the story of a craftsman who commenced work in the 'eighties. The story finishes just before the outbreak of the present war. The book is divided into three periods: the first is concerned with the establishment of the Arts and Crafts Guild in the East End of London; the second describes the transfer and establishment of the Guild in the beautiful little old town of Westencote in the Cotswold Hills, where it flourished for ten years and then collapsed, killed by commercial competition: the third period covers the privations of the craftsman and his family back in London, and the way he climbed up to comfort again.

It is the life of a man singularly fortunate in the beginning who, immersed in the early crafts revival and in an almost self-contained community, loses contact with the world until he reaches middle age. Then, on the dissolution of the craft community, he returns to face the pitiless world of capitalist competition and cheap production into which he has difficulty fitting. He sinks for a time into despair, passes through the horrors of a great war, loses his treasured possessions, loses his faith in the possibility of social change, and, finally, accepts and fits into a cheap and nasty world for the sake of economic security. As an escape from the things that he hates, he builds himself a dream world of his own which goes back to mediaeval times. Into this world he retires in his leisure moments, letting the world of reality go by and accepting all its evil manifestations with an "of course and of course." In his old age the ominous rumblings that herald the impending catastrophe of 1939 set him searching for a safe place to live in the country, and he goes back to Westencote. But the town has become almost unrecognisable. The motor car, the aeroplane and the jerrybuilder have swept away the beauty he used to enjoy. The reaction drives him to the bottle, and in a drunken dream on the hillside above the town he is revisited by William Morris and the old circle of craftsmen, who show him a vision of the hell to which civilisation is heading, reproach him for his supineness, and urge him to take up again the struggle for social change lest the people, and their capacity for beauty and happiness, sink to utter destruction. Waking, he makes the great decision that converts him to a man again. 

Reading this book brings back to the mind memories that crowd of times long since gone by. The vigorous and youthful 'nineties, the beginning of the new century with its hopes and promise. 1914 and the shattering of a world; the hansom cab, the motor car, and the aeroplane; dreams, enthusiasms, and the starkness of reality. The author has told his story well, and his vivid descriptions of the East End, its people and its ways are excellent. So also are the criticisms of society, social movements and social products which are threaded through the book—sometimes with gentleness, sometimes with savagery, and sometimes with cynicism. It is a pity that nearly all the characters he has chosen to make these criticisms are the less cultured working men, thus giving some support to a false idea of the intellectual capacity of workers, which will inspire in some readers a sympathetic and patronising pity.

We would like to have given some representative selections from the book, but our restricted space will not permit it. We will, however, give one extract from the first few pages as a specimen.

The story opens with an account of a meeting held by the Socialist League on a foggy November night in 1887 in the East End. A beer crate is set up in the market place in the midst of fish, whelk, tomato, cabbage and old clothes stalls, and the meeting is accompanied by drunken brawls and the stall-holders shouting their wares. William Morris is the speaker, and his audience consists of a few poverty-stricken and decrepit people of the neighbourhood. To these people Morris addresses burning words, of which the following is an extract:-

France is arming and Germany arming! The whole civilised world rumbles with the threat of war on the most monstrous scale of modern times! At this period of crisis, this is the message of the Socialist League to the working men of England: Turn a deaf ear to the recruiting sergeant! Refuse to be dressed up in red and taught to form a part of the modern killing-machine for the honour and glory of a country which gives you only a dog's share of many kicks and few halfpence!

There are many other meetings, lectures and conversations in which Morris and others of his group express in forthright language their condemnation of present society and their propaganda in favour of a new social order from which poverty and ugliness will be banished. A social order in which the things that are made will be useful and beautiful and the makers will work happily because they will find joy in their work. One of the main threads woven into the story is a hatred of ugly, scamped, and shoddy work.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain appears in a few places in the story, and there are quotations from our principles and our 1914 War Manifesto. We are sorry that its chosen representatives should belong to the less cultured group to which we have already referred. They drop their aitches, put them in where they don't belong, and express themselves in language that does not suggest great reading. This does not convey a correct impression. The early members of the Party were bent on building a higher form of society and made great efforts under difficult circumstances to acquire as much culture as they could in all directions because they wished to be worthy of a place in the society they intended to build. A few of those active in the early days were Watts (a carver), Fitzgerald (a bricklayer), Anderson (a house-painter), Elrick (a civil servant), Gray (a railway clerk), Jacomb (a compositor), Kent (a commercial traveller), and Lehane ( we forget what he was except a wild Irishman!). Some of these men were genuine craftsmen. They did not use the pronunciation of Oxford or Earls Court, but plain, accurate and forcible English, and their aspirates were in the right place!

A further criticism we would make concerns certain remarks that could have been left out without marring the pictures of a character or an event—in fact, in places the picture would have been strengthened without them. We will give an illustration of what we mean.

When the Westencote community collapsed and the craftsman realised a dream had vanished and he would have to go back to the old grind, he packed up and then went for a walk up the hill for a last look back at the little own.

"He was glad May wasn't with him—or the children. He wanted no one. He sank down on the grass, and peered down into the great valley below. At that moment, if the most beautiful woman in the world had been lying naked with him in that lonely spot, he might have thrust her aside as a nuisance.
"'Might,' he thought with a grin, as he saw once again the bodies of the girls and women with whom he had shared adventures since his marriage." (Page 328.)

Imagine a man who has just seen the bottom fall out of his world having thought to spare such a grin. Curse, foam at the mouth, shake his fists at the sky—yes, but a sly leer? We cannot imagine it.

Again, after the birth of the craftsman's child, another craftsman said to him, referring to the former's wife :—

"She's a good cow, Arthur; just like my ol' missis. . . . A woman, Arthur, ought to be a good, well-fed cow. If she ain't—why, then, she's udderly useless!" (Page 294.)

Does it sound credible that a member of the Socialist League would talk like this at a time when woman's position in society was a burning question? 

For some peculiar reason, modern novelists who aspire to "Leftishness" feel that they must indulge in his kind of thing. Perhaps they fear a charge of squeamishness, or they are staking a claim for popularity: When it was necessary to shock the reader there was some ground for it, but modern readers are past shocking. Fortunately, Cameron has not allowed much of this to creep in, but we wish he had kept it out of this type of book altogether, as it is a blemish here and brings the reader up with a nasty jerk.

We make these criticisms because the book was well worth doing, is well done, and is well worth reading. It is a vivid and authentic picture of a vital section of the life of the last fifty years. It should stand the ravages of time.

Gilmac.

Cooking the Books: Saving Greek Capitalism (2015)

The Cooking the Books Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The new Greek Finance Minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has been variously described as a Marxist tinged with Keynes or a Keynesian tinged with Marx. He certainly has a knowledge of Marx.

A blog item of his from 4 April 2012, entitled ‘On Keynes, Marx and the value of models at a time of Crisis’, showed that he recognises that Marx advanced a theory that capitalism could recover from any economic crisis because these eventually created the conditions for a recovery.

‘What Marx did was to take the model of capitalism that had the most kudos in his time (i.e. the theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo) and show that, by their own criteria, and under the force of their own assumptions, even the most efficient, most competitive, corruption-free capitalism would, unavoidably generate crises. To show this, Marx strove to demonstrate that, even if all profits were automatically saved, capitalism would periodically fall in deep holes of its own making.’

However, Varoufakis went on to claim:

‘There is something important missing in Marx’s analysis of crashes and crises. What? The possibility that, when the ‘faeces hits the fan’, and some monumental, as opposed to run-of-the-mill, Crash occurs (as it did in 1929 and then again in 2008), capitalists will simply fail to play the game that Marx said they will. What game is that? Of investing in capital goods, production, labour, every penny they have accumulated as a result of past and present profits.’

But Marx did not make this distinction between ‘run-of-the-mill’ and ‘monumental’ crises. It might take longer but capitalism could still recover from a Crash with a capital C. Capitalism could always get out of the holes it periodically dug for itself -- and will until its gravediggers come along to bury it.

According to Yaroufakis, Keynes

‘instinctively understood something important about capitalism that Marx did not allow himself to dwell upon: that when capitalism digs a hole and then falls into it, it is perfectly capable of failing to climb out again. You see, the difference between Keynes and Marx was that Keynes believed in capitalism; he thought of it a little like Churchill thought of democracy (a terrible form of government but the best of all available alternatives). In fact, Keynes was eager to save capitalism from itself; to identify faults in its functioning and fix them so as to prevent crises from turning into implosions with the capacity to undermine its long term future. Marx, on the other hand, had an agenda for transcending capitalism (socialism, he called the ‘next’, more developed, phase)’.

Because he doesn’t think that the economic and political conditions during a big crisis are good for a socialist transformation of society, he argues that Keynes’s policy recipes should be tried to save capitalism from collapse so as to buy time for more favourable conditions for a changeover to socialism to emerge.

This won’t work. Surprisingly, Yaroufakis himself admitted this when he wrote in the same blog:

‘Marx was right: capitalism cannot be civilised by means of some benevolent government that applies the right dosage of fiscal and monetary policy at the right time.’

Another economics professor, who is advising the Syriza government, even understands what socialism involves:

‘The transition from capitalism to communism is necessarily related to the abolition of value form, i.e. money and commodity, and the form of enterprise’ (John Milios, The Critique of Political Economy as a Critique of the Left, Thesseis #101, 2007).

It’s not going to make any difference, though. The Syriza government won’t be able to civilise capitalism even if saves Greek capitalism.

Action Replay: Dulwich Hamlet F. C. and Ultras (2015)

The Action Replay Column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dulwich Hamlet F. C. are a non-league football team who play less than twenty minutes away from the head office of the Socialist Party in South London.

Vice magazine described them thus: ‘London's Left-Wing Utopian Non-League Ultras Are Reclaiming Football’ in the rather sensationalist title of their article (January 5). Ultras are football fans known for fanatical support and devotion to their club, primarily existing in Italian football. Ultras may use smoke flares, banners, wave flags, get involved in fanzines or instigate chants and songs at matches.

Like most, if not all, non-league clubs – at Dulwich, ticket prices are much more affordable than Premier League clubs. The fans at Dulwich call themselves the Rabble and, although the club has played since 1893, more recently some of the fans have been involved in creating a particular culture around the club.

Although the club is currently owned by a private company, the Hadley Property Group, a group of keen fans called ‘Dulwich Hamlet Supporters Trust’ seeks full or partial supporter/ community ownership of the club. The club culture commits to combating the prevalent homophobia in football, and the club’s players wore rainbow laces to this effect (the first non-league club to do so). The fans even publish their own website (dulwichhamlet.org), regular podcast ‘Forward the Hamlet’ and fanzine ‘The Moral Victory’ edited by Louis Daly.

A smaller group of fans, distinct from the Rabble, call themselves ‘the Comfast chapter’. The Comfast chapter, as with non-league Clapton F. C. ultras in North London, are more akin to famously left-wing ultras following F. C. St. Pauli in Germany. The Comfast chapter have slogans such as ‘Communism is inevitable’. Robert Molloy-Vaughan who runs Comfast was involved in a podcast called ‘This is Deep Play’ which was against commercialisation of football but described this as ‘For Future Football’ as opposed to the more negative ‘Against Modern Football’ slogan. However, Molloy-Vaughan does also write ‘football is actually a deeply flawed way of expressing yourself politically… [its] oppositional nature means you have guaranteed swathes ready to disagree with you no matter what you say, for tribal reasons.’

DJW