Hull Students Debate: Is Russia Capitalist? (1968)

From the March 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Can nationalisation be socialist? And should the workers put their trust in leaders? These two crucial questions were raised during a recent confrontation between a Socialist and a Trotskyist.

Over 50 students attended a debate staged by Hull University Marxist Society and titled "Is Russia Capitalist?" Yes, said A. Buick for the Socialist Party of Gt. Britain. No,  said Tom Kemp (economics lecturer at Hull) on behalf of the so-called Socialist Labour League.

Mr. Kemp opened. He said that there were those who thought Russia was socialist, those who found it an enigma, and those (including the Socialist Party) who maintained a "sectarian aloofness." He disagreed with all of these. He didn't think Russia was Socialist, and he denounced the Russian government's crimes against the working class. But, he maintained, these crimes were not caused by the nationalised economy. They were alien to it. He thought there was a number of features of capitalism which did not exist in Russia: a disproportion between production and consumption goods; a falling rate of profit; financial difficulties of the sort which led to the 1929 crash.

Referring to the recent sterling crisis and devaluation he commented: "No international speculation against the rouble could conceivably affect the Soviet government's policy in that way. That would be utterly fantastic." Mr Kemp also thought there was no expansionist tendency in Russia—at least not of the imperialist sort as in the West. The ruling bureaucracy, though it lived in high style, was not a class, as it was so limited by the political set-up.

Our comrade Buick began by defining Socialism: a world without frontiers, democratically controlled, where production would be for use, not for profit. The Bolshevik coup of 1917 was neither a Socialist revolution nor a working-class takeover. The Bolsheviks used Marxist phrases but were really descended from a long line of Russian insurrectionaries who were conspiratorial and elitist. Their ideas could be traced back to the Jacobins.

State control did not mean that there was no ruling class. There were several cases in history where state ownership had been a form of class rule. The Catholic Church in feudal times was a ruling group which was not hereditary, from which people could be easily dismissed, and which was not based on individual ownership. All the same, it was still a property system with class rule.

Buick said capital was not a thing, but a social relation. It meant there was wage labour, massive production of commodities and accumulation out of profits. All these existed in Russia, and so did the falling tendency of the profit state.

In the open discussion session, supporters of the "Communist" Party argued that the government had done all it could, considering Russia had been so backward. It was pointed out, however, that Socialists didn't say the government ought to have a change of heart. On the contrary, they couldn't introduce Socialism. Only the majority of the working class could do that, and the Russian workers still wanted capitalism, like most workers of the world.

Some economics students, apparently unused to political argument, seemed amazed that anyone should think the workers were exploited anywhere at all. Shouldn't entrepreneurs be rewarded? Buick pointed out that wealth was produced by human labour. In capitalism, profit was derived from paying workers less than what they produced. In Socialism there would not be a "fair return" to workers. On the contrary, wages would be abolished and all goods and services would be free.

One student thought Russia was an "anti-capitalist bureaucracy," because of its Leninist ideology. However it was explained that since 1917 the ideology had not determined the social structure, but had been continuously altered to suit current policies.

On the whole, the open discussion was very poor, despite the good attendance. Winding up, the speakers agreed that the argument was not just a matter of applying labels to Russia. Deeper issues were involved.

The debate showed up two of these issues very clearly. First, the Trotskyists are convinced that state ownership has something to do with Socialism. Second, they place great emphasis on the concept of an elite, the "leadership" or "vanguard," to whom the workers are supposed to turn in time of crisis, whereas Socialists say that since Socialism will be democratic it can only be established democratically—when it is the will of the majority.

As a result of the debate, there was a lot of argument among students, which is all to the good. At Hull a growing number of students realise that Russia is capitalist—though there are many other falsehoods to be fought.

People often point to the rather slow growth of the Socialist movement so far. But, although the Socialist case in its entirety hasn't a very big following, certain parts of it are gaining ground fast. The blaze of publicity in celebration of 50 years' state tyranny in Russia has given added impetus to the view that Russia is not Socialist, nor a "workers' state", nor bureaucratic collectivist—but state capitalist. To encourage clear thinking about Russia is to help the spread of this truth.

Steele.

The Underwhelming Theory of Underconsumption (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reformists are calling on workers to fight against ‘austerity’ (not capitalism), based on the flimsy old theory of underconsumption.

An economic theory can—and very often does—live on even after it has been debunked. Over a century and a half ago Marx exposed the fallacies underlying the theory of underconsumption, but the brains of living Leftists—as in a zombie film run backwards—continue to feed off that ‘undead’ theory. The most recent example of the doctrine’s continued influence can be seen in the views of the ‘anti-austerity movement’ on how to overcome the current economic crisis.

The theory of underconsumption posits that a root cause of crisis is the inability of workers to ‘buy back’ what they have produced. The spending power of workers, as represented in their wages, is far below the value of the commodities created.

So an obvious remedy, from this perspective, would be to boost consumer demand through government spending and wage increases. This would bring consumption and production back into a sort of equilibrium. Conversely, austerity policies are doomed to fail because they put downward pressure on consumer demand at the very moment it needs to be stimulated.

This viewpoint seems almost commonsensical. During a crisis, we can see examples of unsold commodities. And workers are well aware of their own limited spending power. The theory also appeals to anyone disgusted by the sight of the rich telling us to tighten our belts as they continue to live in luxury. No wonder that the theory of underconsumption is so compelling.

So what’s the problem with it?

That there is a problem with the theory might occur to anyone who considers why capitalists would not eagerly embrace a simple remedy for crisis that would have the added benefit of easing workers’ discontent. Are capitalists too greedy? Or just stupid?

All hail the consumer

As commodity sellers, capitalists obviously appreciate the merits of increased consumer spending. Producers of everyday consumer goods, in particular, would be able to sell more commodities if workers had higher wages. Any capitalist firm, in fact, would welcome wage increases that result in greater sales of its own commodities.

But the wages that a capitalist would like to see rise are those paid by other capitalists. Marx explains that capitalists would of course ‘like the workers of other capitalists to be the greatest possible consumers of his own commodity’ (Grundrisse). Higher wages for those workers is all fine and good. But no capitalist is eager to raise workers’ wages to benefit other capitalists. Whenever wages are raised it usually is the result of pressure from workers or the labour market.

The hypocrisy of capitalists only wanting higher wages for workers other than their own probably does not even cross their minds because those other workers are grouped under the reassuring mental category of 'consumer'. Apart from the capitalist’s own workers, Marx explains, ‘the whole remaining working class confronts him as consumer and participant in exchange, as money-spender, not as worker’.

Reformists might be encouraged when capitalists express approval for boosting consumer spending, spotting potential allies in their anti-austerity crusade. But capitalists are simply daydreaming about having more customers for their products, not fretting about the state of the working class.

The contrast between the capitalists’ deep and abiding love for the consumer, and their attitude toward their own workers, is stark. There is no room for illusions when it comes to the production process they oversee. ‘Every capitalist knows this about his worker,’ Marx wrote, ‘that he does not relate to him as producer to consumer and [he therefore] wishes to restrict his consumption, i.e. his ability to exchange, his wage, as much as possible’.

In the end, that attitude of capitalists toward their own workers is decisive—because capitalists are not in a position to influence the wages of other workers, whereas they are quite capable of limiting the consumption of their own workers.

For this reason alone, the ‘simple remedy’ peddled by advocates of the underconsumption theory is going to remain on the shelf like an unsold commodity.

The premise of profit

The basic reason capitalists aren’t going to buy the wage-raise remedy is that capitalism itself is premised, in an important sense, on workers’ ‘underconsumption’. That is, profit depends on the value of wages paid to workers being less than the value of the labour workers expend in production. If workers were paid enough to ‘buy back’ all the commodities they produced, the source of profit would dry up.

That doesn’t mean that capitalists are incapable of paying workers a ‘fair wage’. All that the term really means, when used in a precise way, is that workers have been paid a wage more or less equivalent to the value of their ‘labour-power’, a term Marx defined as the mental or physical capabilities that a worker possesses.

The value of labour-power, as in the case of commodities in general, is determined by the labour-time necessary to produce it. More specifically, labour-power’s value is determined by the value of the commodities (or ‘means of subsistence’) consumed by the worker to reproduce the capacity to work: such as food, clothing, and housing, as well as more intangible things like education. 

But the value of a workers’ labour-power and the actual labour the worker expends in the production process are two separate quantities (comparable when reduced to ‘socially necessary labour time’). Profit stems from the value of the labour expended in production being greater than the value of the worker’s labour-power. This exploitation of the worker’s labour is concealed by the wage form, where workers are paid ‘fairly’ (sometimes, at least) according to the value of their labour-power.

This brief excursion into Marx’s theory of surplus-value was necessary to refute the basic assumptions of the theory of underconsumption. Understanding the source of profit reveals that ‘underconsumption’ is hardwired to the capitalist system. Capitalism is a system of production for profit, and profit is only possible through the extraction of what is essentially ‘unpaid labour’. If this relative underconsumption is a problem, the only solution is to do away with capitalism.

Consumer demand is important in capitalism, certainly, but profit is the system’s lifeblood. No commodity—however useful to society—will be produced unless that production is a potential means to profit. An increase in wages is tolerated up to a point—but there is a limit beyond which capitalism will not go because relative underconsumption is integral to the profit system.

A cure for crises that would effectively drain the system of profit would be as useful to capitalism as the ancient practice of bloodletting was once to the sick.

Useful idiocy

Capitalists are not going to introduce policies concocted on the basis of the theory of underconsumption. But the theory is still useful to them ideologically.

In presenting underconsumption as a cause of crisis, rather than a precondition for profit, reformists suggest to workers that capitalism can be improved to the point where the system adequately meets their needs. They also blur the reality of class conflict by saying that capitalists, too, would benefit from the increased demand that wage raises would bring.

Capitalists shouldn’t mind too much that they are ridiculed by reformists for resisting this simple solution. Far better for workers to imagine that their problems stem from a few boneheaded billionaires, than from a profit system that can never meet their needs. The irony, of course, is that the reformists themselves are the system’s useful idiots.

Reformist ideologues also can be trusted to misinterpret the criticism that socialists make of their theory of underconsumption. If a socialist points out the real limits under capitalism to expanding workers’ consumption, as we have here, it sounds ‘defeatist’ to their ears—or even like an argument in favour of austerity.

So let’s make the following point quite clear: Socialists recognize the importance for workers to continually struggle for better wages and working conditions. As wageworkers, we know only too well how capitalists are exerting the utmost pressure in the opposite direction. To abstain from that struggle—the class struggle that continues and will continue as long as capitalism exists—would be suicidal.

But socialists aspire to more than just winning the fairest possible wage under an unfair system. We think that workers should not only resist the efforts by capitalists to drive down our standard of living but also organize ourselves politically to end capitalism. The reformists dismiss this standpoint as ‘unrealistic’.

But they are the ones who have lost touch with reality. They ignore the limits of capitalism. The basic problem with their standpoint is not that they call for higher wages or reject austerity, but that they pursue those aims while treating capitalism as if it were just a mechanism for producing social wealth, rather than a system powered by profit. They spread illusions about the nature of capitalism in offering the enticing idea that there’s a ‘win-win’ solution out there for workers and capitalists alike—a simple way to expand consumption while surmounting crisis.

The theory falls flat—squashed by the reality of capitalism. And the sooner workers recognize just how thin and lifeless this theory is, the better for the socialist movement.

Michael Schauerte

Proper Gander: Taken To Taskers (2015)

The Proper Gander Column from the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many of us get through the working day’s frustrations by dreaming about how better our jobs would be if the boss wasn’t around to make all the decisions? For the staff at the workplaces featured in Channel 4’s Running The Shop, this wish comes true, for a few weeks while the cameras are on them, anyway.

The show’s format sounds like it was ‘thought showered’ by a focus group mashing up The Fixer and Don’t Tell The Bride with The Apprentice. But apparently it came from ‘inspirational entrepreneur’ Hilary Devey, whose ‘brave solution’ for floundering companies is for the senior managers to take a temporary break and allow the employees to manage themselves and implement their own ideas. The programme treats this as a ground-breaking notion, as if no-one else has ever thought that workers are capable of running organisations.

The first episode visits Taskers The Home Store, which flogs furniture, appliances and DIY goods to the folk of Aintree. Its mission statement: ‘give people a BMW, charge them for a Ford’. Managing Director John Tasker is very hands-on, and keeps everyone else’s hands off all the important decisions. So while he’s away, the staff enjoy the opportunity to put into practice their new approaches to advertising, and different product ranges. Without being held back by hierarchies, they find more confidence and creativity in working together. Unfortunately, their motivation has to come from wanting to keep Taskers financially viable, and getting their boss’ approval when he returns, rather than doing a good job in and of itself. But squint a bit, and you can see something of what work could be like – people freely discussing ideas and democratically deciding what to do. Hopefully, later episodes will see the staff getting ambitious enough to think about how changing the workplace’s structure would be even more rewarding.

Mike Foster

Labour Government Wasn’t the Way to Socialism (2015)

From the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

July, seventy years ago, saw the election of the first majority Labour government in Britain. Here’s what we said at the time in the Preface to our pamphlet Is Labour Government the Way to Socialism published in January 1946. We also republish a leaflet produced in Belfast, summarising what that government did to the workers.

The end of the Second World War saw the election of a Labour Government in Great Britain. There have been other Labour Governments, in 1924 and 1929-31, but this time the Labour Government was returned with an overwhelming majority of M.P.’s in the House of Commons. On the earlier occasions the Labour M.P.’s were in a minority and the Labour Government was consequently dependent for its continued tenure of office on the support of the Liberal Party. For this reason supporters of the Labour Government pleaded that Labour Party policy had not had a fair trial; it had always to be modified to please the Liberals. Consequently when things went wrong, the failure of the Labour Governments was excused on the ground that they were ‘in office but not in power.’

This time no such excuse can be pleaded. As a Labour M. P., Mr. Garry Allighan pointed out in an article in the Daily Mail (31^stJuly, 1945), ‘This time there can be no alibis.’ ‘Labour has no alibi left,’ he wrote, ‘If it fails to produce the goods – full employment, all-round national prosperity, international concord, health, homes and happiness for the whole people – it can fall back on no excuse.’

The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not support the Labour Party or Labour Governments. The S.P.G.B was founded in 1904 by working men and women who were convinced that Socialism is the only hope of the working class. Labour Governments cannot solve the workers’ problems. In 1924 and again in 1929 we placed on record in our official organ, the Socialist Standard, our certainty that the Labour Government just entering office was bound to fail, not because it was a minority government but because the whole idea of Labour Government is based on a wrong principle. We saw those two governments come to an inglorious end, as we knew they must, but the lesson was not taken to heart by the workers. This time there can be no good reason for failing to draw the correct conclusion. The Labour Government which entered office in 1945 cannot solve the problems facing the workers of this country. No matter how able and sincere the M.P.’s and members of the Labour Party may be they cannot succeed in making the existing social system work in the interest of the great majority of the population, the wage and salary earners.

To say this is not, however, a gospel of despair. The workers’ problems can be solved, but only by abolishing the capitalist system of society at one sweep and establishing Socialism in its place.

This great task can be brought to fulfilment, but first it is necessary to understand why “Labourism” is not and cannot be the means of doing it.

It is the purpose of this pamphlet to explain why ‘Labourism’ must fail and why Socialism will succeed.

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, S.P.G.B. January, 1946

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LABOUR GOVERNMENT AND THE WORKERS (1960)

Your Labour candidate will advise you that you can improve your conditions of life by voting Labour. His Party, the Northern Ireland Labour Party, are at one with the British Labour Party. Below we give some details of Labour Government in Britain:

(1)     Used CONSCRIPT TROOPS to BREAK strikes.

(2)     Imposed a "PAY PAUSE" and "INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION".

(3)     Used (in peace time) a wartime Order, 1305, in an effort to have striking trade unionists JAILED.

(4)     Had workers RESISTING BLACK-LEG LABOUR sentenced to IMPRISONMENT and FINES under old PROPERTY-PROTECTION ACTS of 1875.

(5)     Agreed to, and tried to justify, the dropping of the FIRST A-Bomb on Hiroshima.

(6)     Safeguarded the interests of British capitalism by nationalisation of bankrupt industries.

(7)     Sent British troops to AID DUTCH IMPERIALISM, and IMPRISONED and BANISHED African leaders.

(8)     Imposed the FIRST CHARGES on the "free" Health Services.

This is but a small part of Labour's black record when it waged war against the workers in the interests of British capitalism between the years 1945 and 1951. We challenge our Labour opponents to deny or "explain" these terrible happenings.

In this Election the UNIONIST AND LABOUR candidates stand for the MAINTENANCE of CAPITALISM. Only the WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY challenges the capitalist system and proposes an alternative―SOCIALISM.

BEFORE VOTING YOU HAVE A DUTY TO CONSIDER THE SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE.

Printed by the Cranmour Press, 49a Mountjoy Street, Belfast 13, and Published by the World Socialist Party, 185 Donegall Street, Belfast 1.

Editorial: Labour's Strange 'Revolution' (2015)

Editorial from the July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour's electoral victory, 70 years ago this month, was a strange sort of revolution.

Since 1940, the Labour Party had been in power as part of the wartime coalition. 1945 saw them merely increase their share of the political cake. Clement Attlee, for instance, previously Deputy Prime Minister under Churchill, moved up a step. Similarly, Herbert Morrison, who had run the home front during the war, continued to run the home front during the peace. Morrison, Home Security during the war, stepped into Attlee's shoes as Deputy Prime Minister.

Amongst rank and file Labour MPs elected in 1945, there were dozens of majors and lieutenants - the officer class – and not a single private. The very ordinary elite remained quite firmly in control of the political establishment.

Labour's crowning glory of '45 is seen as the creation of the so-called welfare state, in particular the National Health Service.

Although associated with the Labour Party, in fact all capitalist parties supported the drive for reorganisation of 'social security' – the provision of housing, health and education, and of unemployment and old age payments. Beveridge, whose report formed the basis for the social security reforms after 1945, was a Liberal. The Education Act of 1944, which established free compulsory secondary education for all, was the work of the Tory 'Rab' Butler.

To the capitalist class, it was evident that the existing system needed reform. A patchwork quilt of measures enacted over a century was unsystematic and hence inefficient – particularly in cost terms. Loopholes existed through which workers could gain more than they 'needed'.

And the welfare state also brought them benefits. The war had revealed serious flaws in the health of the 'nation'. The British Tommy, with his rotten teeth and pigeon chest, became an object of derision. This was a bad for fighting - and for working when peace returned. Something had to be done. In 1943, arch-capitalist Sir Samuel Courtauld freely admitted that social security 'will ultimately lead to higher efficiency among them and a lowering of production costs'. Healthy workers make healthy profits.

The welfare state, the promise of a 'better world' tomorrow was also a carrot, an incentive to increase production – and killing – during the war. The Beveridge Report honestly declared 'each individual citizen is more likely to concentrate upon his war effort if he feels that his Government will be ready in time with plans for that better world'. It was a promise that had to be fulfilled to avoid social unrest and conflict.

However, like all reforms, the measures that constituted the welfare state were always viewed by the capitalist class as subject to requirements. As early as 1951, the Labour government introduced the first charges on its own supposedly free National Health Service.

The welfare state and the NHS may have benefited the workers, but that was not the intention. The intention was to maximise profits, to increase the welfare of the capitalist class. So far as revolution was involved, the reforms were an attempt to avoid it.

Local Dignitaries (1998)

A Short Story from the December 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many years ago when my daughter was young I was invited by her school, along with other parents, to attend an open evening. It was a small middle school in a tiny Norfolk market town and as we had lived in the area for only about six months I was looking forward to meeting the other parents as well as to soaking up some of the atmosphere of the place where my offspring spent every day of the week being trained to serve capitalism.

Readers who are parents will be familiar with school open evenings, events where we may scan exercise books for any signs of genius in our kids, examine pieces of artwork, and even hear about misdemeanours, lack of personal concentration, or accusations of "not trying". The impression I got that night was that my own little darling had her nose pretty much to the grindstone and would one day prove an excellent commodity in the job market. Much as I was concerned for her personal development I, nonetheless, knew that this is how it would be, how it is for us all, though the individual rewards we receive for it do vary.

After interviews with teachers I wandered off to see if I could get a cup of tea anywhere and make an unofficial exploration into areas of the school which were not, seemingly, open to parents. In a corridor I came upon a room filled with men and women, where a table was laid with biscuits, sandwiches, tea, coffee and wine. I was staring at the table when someone asked "Red or white?" and a glass of wine was shoved into my hand and I was told to help myself to food. Whilst sipping my wine I took a good look at the other people present. It struck me that they all looked incredibly smart, the men in suits, the women in dresses, one or two in evening dress, making me feel strangely out of place in my blue jeans and tee shirt. (I had been doing a spot of gardening only that afternoon and had not thought to change.) One or two curious glances were cast in my direction and an elderly man asked me who I was. When I told him he looked perplexed. "Heather who?" I shuffled off guiltily to seek out the peanuts.

The headmaster, Mr Wallace, appeared, his face wreathed in smiles as he greeted his guests. I reflected that on the couple of occasions I had met with him he hadn't smiled at me like that! He addressed a tall man as "Director" and shook his hand warmly—far too warmly I thought. A woman was wearing a good deal of hardware round her neck. Chains of office? A mayoress no less. It was at last beginning to dawn on me that I, a mere parent, was not meant to be a part of this little gathering. Not for the parents the effusive headmaster, the special room, the wine and the dainty sandwiches.

Suddenly Mr Wallace was by my side. "Ah. Rachel's mother, isn't it? How's it going?" he said with a sickly smile. Neither of us was comfortable with each other. I munched steadily on my peanuts while he told me that the room was reserved for "local dignitaries". There was something about the way he said it. Then he whizzed off to the other side of the room and was soon engaged in conversation with a man who wore a bow tie.

I took the hint. After two cucumber sandwiches and a second glass of wine I decided it was time I left. As I edged my way to the door, a hand on my arm detained me, though temporarily, "You must be Mrs Rogers," said a glamorously attired woman weighted own with jewellery. "No," I told her, "I'm only one of the parents", and quickly made my exit.

At this point in my story I may be expected to say that I hope the day will come when local dignitaries will no longer be separated off into special rooms away from the hoi polloi, but I would rather say that I hope the day will come when local dignitaries will no longer be. Period.

Heather Ball

Second Civil War (1969)

Book Review from the December 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Post-Prison Writings and Speeches, by Eldridge Cleaver. (Cape 35s.)

There may be those who, since the appearance of Soul On Ice, have been eagerly awaiting the next blast on the trumpet from Eldridge Cleaver. There may. Well here it is, with an introduction in the customarily ecstatic terms by Robert Scheer.—a collection of essays, speeches, articles and an interview with Playboy magazine.

The long suppression of so large a minority as the American Negro just had to call for a terrible response, one day, and the philosophies of what is called Black Power are part of that response. In the Playboy interview Cleaver muses on a " . . . guerrilla resistance movement that will amount to a second Civil War . . ." and the book is crammed with violence, some of it defiant, some of it couched in fashionable four letter words.

Cleaver thinks that we are witnessing only the beginning of the big fight and that when the American government is finished with Vietnam it will apply itself to a war against the black people at home.

This simple, Goody-and-Baddy, concept is carried into his rages against the white politicians who want a policy of overkill in the fight against Black Power—the Reagans, the Daleys, the Alioitos. And Cleaver blasts also at those whose concern for the modern fortunes of American capitalism has led them to embrace Civil Rights—like poor old LBJ, who ended up usurping the battle cry We Shall Overcome. Cleaver thinks Johnson would never have said We Want Black Power, which shows how even a Black Panther does not plumb the depths of a politician's cynicism.

Cleaver does not display the more obvious symptoms of racism which are evident among some black nationalists but even so this is not a constructive, nor even an analytical, book. Raking among its rubble—the fury, the romantic poetry of Che Guevera, the threatening excerpt from Mao's little red book—it is possible to come up with some useful chunks.

There is, for example, a passage from a speech by Abraham Lincoln which highlights the racial bigotry of the man who is popularly supposed to have been the Negroes' great friend and which shows why Lincoln is such a hero to the Ku Klux Klan. And who can argue against this:

Compare the thieves in our prisons with the big-businessmen of this country, who are in control of a system that is depriving millions of people of a decent life. These people — the men who run the government and the corporations — are much more dangerous than the guy who walks into a store with a pistol and robs somebody of a few dollars.

But if course it is possible, and easier, and cheaper, to get all of this—and more—elsewhere.

Ivan

Obituary: Jack Moore (1993)

Obituary from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to announce the death of our comrade Jack Moore in Evenley, the Northamptonshire village where he moved after his retirement. Jack Moore joined the Socialist Party in 1941 after a brief period in the Labour Party. After the war he was an active member of the old Bloomsbury and Camden branch. An architect by training, he lectured for many years on architectural acoustics at the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster). He was a recognised expert in this field and from time to time contributed articles on noise and on housing, but also on economic questions, to the Socialist Standard. He also designed the front covers of a number of pamphlets the Party produced in the 50s, 60s and 70s. After he moved away from London he continued to contribute to Party activity by becoming the secretary of the committee dealing with postal applications to join our Central Branch, and many of those joining this branch in recent years will no doubt recall corresponding with him.

Will there be too many pensioners? (2004)

From the November 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the former head of the CBI, Adair Turner, presented his report to the government on future pension provision. It made for scary headlines. “Pension crisis looming for 12 million workers”, worried the Times (13 October).  “Harsh truth is that we must save more or risk retiring in penury,” and went on:

“The root of the problem is increasing life expectancy and lower birth rates. By 2050, the proportion of British people over the age of 65 will increase from 28 percent today to 48 percent. This will leave Britain with dwindling numbers of taxpayers to support a massive retired population.”

Is this true? Will society be unable to cater for future pensioners at the same standard of living as they have today? Is there going to be a sort of class war between the generations, between those at work and those who have retired over how the national income should be divided between wages and pensions?

    

The short answer is: No. These are scare stories put around by employers, who want to reduce the contributions they pay into company pension schemes and the taxes they pay for state pensions, and by insurance companies, who want to sell more private pensions.

    

They've got one thing right though: in any society those who don’t work have to be maintained out of what is produced by those who do work. Everybody would agree that this is fair enough as far as people over a certain age are concerned, as well as for younger people who for one reason or another are unable to work.

    

But, in present-day, capitalist society there is another group of people who don’t work, and have to be maintained by those who do, namely, those who live off what used to be called “unearned income”, income in the forms of rents, interest and dividends derived from property ownership. That in fact is a good starting definition of a member of the capitalist class: someone owning sufficient profit-yielding assets to be able to live without having to work.

   

The source of all such unearned income (and indeed of the fat cat incomes of top directors, which is only unearned income disguised as earned income) is what Marx called the surplus value produced by wage and salary workers over and above what they are paid, which generally speaking corresponds to what they need to keep themselves fit to work at their particular trade or profession. It is out of this unpaid labour that not only the idle rich but the whole non-productive superstructure of capitalist society (the armed forces, civil service, legal system, banks, insurance and other money-handling activities) has to be maintained. What allows capitalism to maintain an enormous – and still growing – non-productive sector is the high level of productivity in the productive sector, a productivity which increases slowly but steadily all the time, historically at a rate of one to two percent a year.

    

Pensioners too are maintained out of this surplus but pensions are not a transfer payment from workers to pensioners, as the scare stories suggest; they are not paid for by ‘workers paying taxes’ since the burden of taxes paid by workers is in the end passed on via labour market forces to employers. Pensions are a transfer payment from the profits of the capitalists, even if ultimately these profits come from what workers produce. So, even if the ‘over-burdened pension system’ was to be reduced, this would not benefit the working population since the capitalist class would not dream of passing this on as higher wages and salaries.

Growth of pension schemes

One of the non-productive activities that the capitalist State has to undertake is the maintenance of the poor, those members of the working class who are unable to work and therefore have no income from a wage or salary paid by an employer: the sick, the handicapped, the unemployed and of course the old. This used to be done under what was called, appropriately enough, the Poor Law, which required local parishes to maintain the poor from within their boundaries. The fate of poor old people was the workhouse.

    

The history of the “Poor Law” is the gradual nationalisation of the system, accompanied by changes of name such as social insurance, national insurance, social security, national assistance, income support, pension credits, and the substitution of money payments for so-called “indoor relief” in a workhouse. By the turn of the last century, the authorities began to discover that so-called “outdoor relief” – a monetary payment – was actually cheaper than “indoor relief” and in 1909 stingy old age pensions were introduced for some workers aged 70 and over. This was financed by contributions from employers and workers and from general taxation and was baptised “social insurance”. It is still the basis of the State Old Age or Retirement pension in Britain today.

    

The level of the basic State pension has always been fixed as below the official poverty line, with the result that an increasing proportion of pensioners are on means-tested benefits to bring them up to the poverty line. As these top-up “pension credits” are tied to average earnings, the number of pensioners on means-tested benefits is expected to go up year by year. Turner – and the so-called “pensions industry” – are against this scheme as it discourages people from buying private top-up pensions (what they mean by “saving”) since most of any such pensions are deducted from the State's means-tested benefit.

    

To start with and until 1948, the State scheme only applied to a section of the working class, essentially manual workers in private industry. A different situation had evolved for people working for national and local government – so-called “superannuation” schemes (superannuation is just another word for pension), under which in return for contributions related to their salary, workers received a pension also related to their salary. These schemes were not funded, i.e. the money from contributions did not go into a fund that was invested, but went directly towards paying existing pensioners, a system known as “pay-as-you-go”. The logic was that funding was unnecessary since it would always be possible to find the money to pay pensions as governments don’t go bankrupt.

    

Superannuation schemes were also introduced, for office and supervisory staff, in the private sector. Eventually, these all came to be funded, to separate the money for pensions from the firm’s capital and so stop it being raided if the firm ran into cash flow problems or went bankrupt (a protection which has exactly not proved 100 percent efficient in recent years.)

    

A funded scheme means that contributions from members and their employers are paid into a fund which is then invested in government bonds or in shares or in property, and pensioners are paid out of the interest and capital gains on these. In recent years, with the slump in stock market prices, there have been capital losses rather than capital gains and these schemes have run into financial difficulties. Employers have been using this as a reason for cutting benefits, at least for new entrants. Increasingly, these are being forced into schemes which offer smaller and less secure pensions that are no longer related to wages or salary but purely to the amount invested and to the vagaries of the stock market.

    

A third type of pension arrangement is an entirely personal one where the pension payable depends on the contributions (and the income from investing them) of  the individual person concerned. These are basically savings for retirement arrangements which also involve placing the money on the stock exchange and so have run into difficulties for the same reasons as funded pension schemes. They are the ones that are notoriously subject to so-called “mis-selling”.

    

Funded schemes are based on strict actuarial principles and have to be to remain financially viable in the sense of having enough money to be able to meet all their obligations to future as well as present pensioners. What actuaries do is to take statistics on life expectancy and a likely real interest rate over a long term to work out, given the pension benefits under the scheme, how much money needs to be paid into a pension fund to allow it to pay all the pension rights acquired at a particular time. Clearly, if people are living longer – as they are – that means pensions are going to be paid for longer, which means that the scheme is going to need more money to pay them. In actuarial terms, this means more money has to be paid into the scheme, i.e. contributions have to be increased.

    

In this sense, for funded schemes, the fact of people living longer does indeed mean that the pension contributions for working members have to increase. But actuaries have known for years about likely future population trends and pension schemes will have already taken this into account. What has caused the current financial problems for such schemes has been the unanticipated slump in stock exchange prices. This is mentioned by Turner but almost in passing, since he is all in favour of people’s pensions being dependent on the vagaries of the stock market.

    

One idea mooted by Turner to save money on pensions is for the normal pension age to be raised from 65 to 70. This of course would mean that pensions wouldn’t have to be paid for so long and, as the TUC has pointed out, no pension at all would have to be paid to those who die between 65 and 70, as one in five existing pensioners do (Times, 19 July).

The ghost of Malthus

But this problem only applies to invested, funded pension schemes and cannot be validly extended into a general social problem of “too many old people” or “people living too long” (even though it would be typical of capitalism to regard what is after all an improvement in the human condition as a problem). The fallacy is that the narrow financial criteria that apply to funded pension schemes don’t apply when it comes to considering the economy as a whole. Here the broad economic, rather than the narrow financial, position is what counts:

“Over the twentieth century the British population grew from about 36 million in 1900 to 56 million in 2000. People aged over 64 grew from about 1.8 million (five percent of the total population) to about 8.6 million (fifteen percent of the population). So the total number of mouths to feed and support rose by one-half, the proportion of elderly rose three times and the numbers of elderly rose nearly five fold. All these increases were dwarfed by the seven-fold rise in annual wealth production.”

And for the future:

“The long-term record of productivity growth alone undermines the claim of a demographic time bomb in the future. Even without any increase in the size of the active workforce, productivity growth at this long-run trend of about two percent a year means a near doubling of annual output over the next 40 years” (The Challenge of Longer Life: Economic burden or social opportunity?, Catalyst pamphlet, 2002, p. 28).

The “too many old people” doom merchants are making the same mistake as Malthus made two hundred years ago with his (completely wrong) predictions about “overpopulation”: they are ignoring that productivity also increases over time, so that whereas there are indeed proportionately less workers engaged in production they are able to produce proportionately more wealth. It is the increasing productivity that will go on between now and when existing workers retire that will mean that society, even capitalist society, will be able to support the expected increased proportion of retired people in the population. There is in principle no problem here.

    

So why the scare? Basically, because there’s a vested interest involved – the self-styled “pensions industry”. They want to reduce the State’s involvement in pension provision to paying a basic minimum pension so that they can themselves make money out of providing any pension over and above this. They’ve got their greedy eyes on the £57 billion a year “shortfall” mentioned by Turner and on the commissions they can make on this if the government forces both employers and employees to “save” this amount, or even a proportion of it, each year.

    

What in fact is ironic – or rather, it’s a bare-faced cheek – is that they are not an “industry”, i.e. not part of the productive sector, at all. They are part of the non-productive sector maintained, just as much as pensioners are, out of the surplus-value produced in the productive sector. Not one person working in insurance companies and other private companies engaged in pensions provision produces a single item of wealth. From an economic point of view they, too, are a burden on surplus value. But don’t expect any government report to point that out.

    

The real question facing workers is whether they should continue to support the whole non-productive superstructure of capitalist society when, if it were to go, along with capitalism itself, how we they going to survive in old age wouldn’t be a perpetual worry, since in socialism every member of society, including the old, would have free access, as a matter of right, to what they needed to live and enjoy life.

Adam Buick

Reforms, Revolution and the Left (2005)

From the February 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most people can think of aspects of  capitalism that they'd like to change.Individual changes can theoretically be made, but does reformism work as an overall strategy for real change?

Socialists are revolutionaries: we believe that the establishment of a Socialist society will involve a fundamental change in the way people live, and will necessitate the capture of political power by the Socialist working class. As revolutionaries, we do not advocate reforms, that is, changes in the way capitalism runs, such as alterations to immigration policy or the health service or the tax system. Reforms, however ‘radical’, can never make capitalism run in the interests of the workers. Nor should supporting reforms be some kind of tactic pursued by Socialists to gain support from workers, for workers who joined a Socialist Party because they admired its reformist tactics would turn it into a reformist organisation pure and simple. Socialists must reject reformism as a distraction from the revolutionary goal.

The reform–revolution issue is a long-standing one that has occasioned much debate over the years. In 1890 William Morris wrote an essay ‘Where are we now?’, as he left the Socialist League and looked back over his time in that organisation and the Social Democratic Federation. He saw two ‘methods of impatience’, as he termed them. One was futile riot or revolt, which could be easily put down. The other was, to use the then-popular label, ‘palliation’, what we would now call reformism. Morris resolutely opposed both, since they would be carried out by people who did not know what Socialism was and so would not know what to do next, even if their efforts were successful on their own terms. Instead he advocated propagating Socialist ideas:

"Our business, I repeat, 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. Until we have that mass of opinion, action for a general change that will benefit the whole people is impossible."

Morris thus rejected the reformist ideas that permeated the SDF and prefigured the Socialist Party’s view on this issue.

Another important discussion took place a few years later in the German Social-Democratic Party (the SPD). Eduard Bernstein, who enjoyed the prestige of being Engels’ literary executor, argued that reforms were all that should be aspired to: ‘The final goal, no matter what it is, is nothing; the movement is everything’. This was partly because Bernstein considered that some of the unpredictability of production under capitalism could be mitigated by the provision of credit and the founding of employers’ organisations (cartels and trusts). He also envisaged reformist politics and trade unions as gradually eliminating capitalist exploitation and ushering in Socialism.

 Bernstein’s main critic at the time was Rosa Luxembourg, in two articles reprinted as the pamphlet Reform or Revolution. Damning his work as ‘opportunist’, she pointed out that trade unions could only," limit exploitation, not abolish it", and claimed that his views were tantamount to abandoning Socialism. Certainly we can agree that reforming capitalism will not turn it into Socialism. But even Luxembourg did not oppose reforms.

"Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal — the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social-Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means: the social revolution, its aim."

And she made no real attempt to relate reformist policies to the final goal, other than in statements such as: " as a result of its trade union and parliamentary struggles, the proletariat becomes convinced of the impossibility of accomplishing a fundamental social change through such activity and arrives at the understanding that the conquest of power is unavoidable. "

This, however, offers no reason why a revolutionary organisation should advocate reforms. And how has the reformist argument fared over the last hundred years? Have reformist movements and reforming governments made any contribution to Socialism? The answer to this question is a resounding No! Reformist governments, like all governments, do what they have to do: they administer capitalism in the interests of the ruling class, though they do make some effort to claim that their actions benefit the whole population. The Labour Party, for instance, has abandoned any pretensions about fundamentally changing society, and is now unashamedly the Tory Party Mark II.

Reformist movements try to get elected to government or attempt to influence the government of the day, all with the aim of carrying reforms into practice or of defending the status quo against some ‘anti-reform’. For the reformer’s work is never done under capitalism, which continually throws up new problems which need the reformer’s attention and constantly undermines any existing ‘gains’, however feeble. The list of potential reforms is as long as your arm; in the course of just one recent week in Manchester, there were meetings/campaigns dealing with ‘rights’ for homeworkers, the new Immigration and Asylum Act, the police ban on a picket outside Marks and Spencer, flood relief in Bangladesh, and the pollution caused by urban 4x4s. Which of these and many other worthy causes should the committed reformer give priority to?

The ‘Left’ may claim that it enjoys the best of both worlds, both supporting reforms and advocating revolution. But in fact its revolutionary posturing is just a matter of words, for its practical policies are purely reformist. Take the biggest Left organisation in Britain, the Socialist Workers Party, for instance. The 18 December issue of its weekly paper Socialist Worker carried an article on the pension myths being peddled by the government (for the Socialist take on this, see the November Socialist Standard). Here is part of the SWP’s ‘solution’ (from their website at http://www.socialistworker.co.uk):

"We don’t want the present miserly level of pensions and care, we want better.
So say we did want to increase the share of GDP spent on the old by 5 percent of GDP or more. This only means increasing the tax rate by 0.1 percent of GDP a year for 50 years, a tiny amount.
It might mean returning top tax rates to closer to the ones which Margaret Thatcher’s governments used for most of their time in office.
Or it might mean taxing private pensions of the rich, or returning corporation tax rates on big business to a decent level".

It is obvious that, in speaking of the rich and tax rates, the SWP envisage the continuation of capitalism, rather than its abolition. It might be argued that they are only trying to attract support on the basis of reformist policies but that they really aim at revolution. But firstly, it would be quite dishonest to do this, to get workers’ support on the basis of saying one thing while really wanting something quite different. Secondly, there is no reason why anyone who goes along with increasing corporation tax should, as a consequence of supporting this, somehow be won over to Socialism. And thirdly, the SWP are utterly silent about revolution and Socialism, suppressing all mention of ‘the suppression of wage labour’. Rosa Luxembourg, as we saw, viewed reforms as the means and revolution as the aim. Like the rest of the Left, the SWP have effectively embraced Bernstein’s view, abandoning revolution for reformist measures.

The Socialist response to all this is straightforward. If you want to get somewhere, aim for that destination directly, rather than going on detours and trusting that you will eventually, by however roundabout a route, arrive at where you want to be. There is, and can be, no reformist road to Socialism, nor can there be a mixture of reformist and revolutionary policies. The Socialist Party has just one aim, the establishment of Socialism.

Paul Bennett

Hype and Hypocrisy – the Magna Carta (2015)

From the June 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The good burghers of the borough of Runnymede are getting excited, and Surrey county council is thrilled to bits, because on 15 June 2015 they will be celebrating the 800th anniversary of the sealing of the Magna Carta.  A committee and an advisory board has been set up.  Members of these bodies range from Trevor Philips, the chairman of the Equal Opportunity Commission, to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. who, according to the website magnacarta800th.com, is a ‘Magna Carta private owner’.  Nearby Royal Holloway College is preparing quite an array of events, courses and a Smartphone app to mark the anniversary.

The strapline for the celebrations?  ‘Commemorating 800 years of democracy’.  Imagine, democracy for 800 years, encompassing the evisceration of John Ball after the Peasants’ Revolt in the second century of ‘democratic’ England, the shooting of leveller Robert Lockyer by Cromwell in 1649, and the hanging of 12 year-old Abraham Charlston for Luddite activity in 1812.  Democracy?

Clearly not democracy.  So what are Surrey Council, Runnymede Borough, Royal Holloway and any number of other organisations celebrating exactly?

King John, known as Lackland (king of England from 1199-1216) had had many disagreements with his richer subjects.  Things came to a head in London on Sunday, 17 May 1215 when, whilst many people were in church, the City gates were opened to the rebel landowners by sympathetic rich Londoners.  With the capital full of his opponents and too difficult to take by siege, the king had to negotiate.  For a few weeks, a peace was brokered between representatives of Lackland and the barons; a document was put together, agreed to, and given to the spigurnels (chancery clerks responsible for sealing documents) to do their work.  Copies of this document would have been distributed throughout the country, signifying this accord between the king and the barons.  Peace, then, had broken out.

A few weeks later the document was made ‘null, and void of all validity forever’ by the Pope, in response to a request from the King.  Nine barons and all the citizens of London were excommunicated.  The civil war was back on.  In response to resistance throughout the country, John’s soldiers destroyed villages, raped and thieved first in the North, and then down to East Anglia and across to Oxford.  But not long afterwards, the French prince Louis, having been invited to invade by the barons, entered London in June 1216.  Then on 18 October the King died from dysentery and within ten days his son Henry III was crowned.  The document was given a few tweaks and reissued in November as a peace offering by the new King, but with little immediate effect.

It was only after a few more battles in the following year, including those of Lincoln and Sandwich, that peace was agreed with the Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217, and the French prince left the country with a bribe of 10 thousand marks.

The document was issued for a third time, with further tweaks, and named ‘Magna Carta’ to distinguish it from another, smaller, issue, the Charter of the Forest.  This latter document took the bits in the previous document that pertained to the forests – that is, land set aside for royals to use for hunting.  It has been said that this document relates more to ordinary people than does the Magna Carta.  It is true that, amongst its demands that foresters mutilate their dogs’ paws so they can’t chase deer, there is a clause that bans the removal of limbs, or life, for stealing venison.  However, the document does not explicitly ban blinding, a punishment at that time.  The prescribed punishment in the Charter of the Forest was a fine as heavy as can be levied according to the thief’s means, and if it could not be paid then it’s a year and a day in prison followed, if the money was still not available, by being kicked out of the country (i.e., they must ‘abjure the realm’).

These documents were regularly reissued throughout the thirteenth century, generally when the king was in need of more revenue.  From starting its life as an attempt to negotiate a peace with a king, the Magna Carta seemed to turn into a way of generating taxes.

By the sixteenth century, with the Reformation and the rise of Protestantism, it is hardly surprising that a document that spoke of the rights of the (Catholic) church, and drawn up in a time in his reign when Lackland felt it expedient to submit to papal authority, would not be something to flash around.  Shakespeare’s King John, for instance, does not mention the Magna Carta.  When the Chief Justice, Edward Coke, suggested that the king was not above the law, James I had him dismissed, leaving him with free time to write The Institutes of the Lawes of England, which expressed his view that the Magna Carta was the basis of the common law.

In the seventeenth century, with the conflicts between parliament and king, it became fashionable, although not with the Lord Protector Cromwell, who is said to have referred to it as the ‘Magna Farta’.  Levellers such as John Lilburne and Thomas Overton saw it differently, Lilburne invoking it at his trials for treason against Cromwell, quoting Coke’s Institutes, and Overton quoting the charter in An Arrow Against All Tyrants.

The leveller William Walwyn, however, had a more astute understanding.  In A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens he says: ‘Magna Carta itself being but a beggarly thing, containing many marks of intolerable bondage, and the laws that have been made since by parliaments have in very many particulars made our government much more oppressive and intolerable…’

Onwards into the 18th century, we see the United States considering it as a basis of their constitution and Bill of Rights.  The symbol of the state of Massachusetts is a man holding a copy of the Magna Carta.

So there we have it.  This is the focus of the celebration.  A document that lasted in law for a few weeks in a failed attempt to prevent handbags at dawn between a king and his rich subjects, which was then split into two documents over the course of the century, and reissued whenever a thirteenth century monarch wanted more money.  These bits of vellum have become a fetish that signifies democracy.

It offers protection under the law for free men.  By free men, of course, it doesn’t mean the likes of us (putting gender aside for the moment).  It means protection for the rich.

And it is argued that this is the first time a king has been held to account, and a limit set to his power.  Yet the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of the power of the Witan – the councils of ‘wise’ men – in pre-Norman England, and their influence on the monarchs.

Meanwhile, back in Surrey…

In woodland, close to where the Magna Carta is purported to have been sealed, lies the Runnymede Eco-Village community.  It is on land occupied by the group Diggers 2012, land that has been vacant and otherwise unused since 2007 when Brunel University left the area, having sold it to a property developer, who soon afterwards was given planning permission.  For around three years these hippies have been building shelters, setting up solar electricity and growing vegetables.  Or, as the Daily Mail website puts it, ‘Dope-smoking anarchists sully site where King John sealed the Magna Carta with litter-strewn shanty town’ (odd that the Mail believes that the king sealed the Magna Carta with a litter-strewn shanty town and not some kind of wax on a stick).

The landowners are in the process of going to court to evict Diggers 2012.

And on 15 June there will be a celebration of democracy in Runnymede, in the presence of the Queen –  a non-elected hereditary head of state, it seems, is the perfect example of these ‘800 years of democracy’.  That and a thirteenth century document resulting from a hissy fit between royalty and rich men.

And perhaps freedom will be celebrated by the force of the law booting a few hippies off nearby land.

And two final commentaries written not so far apart:

‘...it is implied that here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.’

Winston Churchill

‘… it's through that there Magna Charter,
As were made by the Barons of old,
That in England today we can do what we like,
So long as we do what we're told.’

(Marriott Edgar)

Vincent Jones

Water Grab - the Theft and Waste of Water (2012)

From the December 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The world has arrived at a critical stage in the way it uses its water. As water, a fundamental necessity of all life, is absolutely essential to the whole of humanity, who should be the primary stakeholders?

Water is fast becoming the focus of attention for social justice rights groups, environmentalists and diverse populations, both rural and urban who recognise the dire effects that increased privatisation, monopoly control, misappropriation and misuse, globalised corporate policies and government and international institutions' complicity and influence have all had on the ordinary citizen's access to it. We are at the stage where the misuse and overuse of water have resulted in severely falling water tables as a result of the over-pumping of aquifers and the negative results from big dams and river diversions are being realised. More water is being used every year than is being replenished.

In effect, water is being stolen from our descendants. According to the Global Footprint Network, capitalism currently uses the equivalent of 1.5 planet earths. Following on from this a recent report published in the journal, ‘Nature’ assessed capitalism's groundwater footprint. They estimate that the size of the global groundwater footprint, the area required to sustain groundwater use and groundwater-dependent ecosystem services, is about 3.5 times the actual area of aquifers currently tapped for water supplies (Link).

Land on all continents is becoming increasingly dependent on the unsustainable use of groundwater. Some of the biggest food producers, e. g. US, China and India, are the biggest culprits of over-pumping aquifers and there are others such as Saudi Arabia, which has severely depleted its own aquifers and is now buying up large areas of Ethiopia and elsewhere in order to grow food for itself.

'Land grab' is a term which has become familiar in recent years. 'Water grab' is a relatively new term. It refers to the different ways in which outside actors divert water from its traditional uses and users and appropriate it for their own benefit by a number of means. Use can be denied in many ways. The most obvious is to physically divert the water via pipes or canals, reducing or stopping the original flow. It may be privatised and monetised, cutting off those who can't pay. Sources may be overused by industrial development schemes causing contamination of local wells and water courses. Rivers, streams and lakes may be seriously contaminated by mining runoff or industrial and agricultural effluent affecting local and downstream populations. Huge quantities of water are locked up in the production of crops intended as food for humans, animal feed or, increasingly, biofuels. With the rapid increase of international investment in overseas lands for agricultural production for the export market has also come the realisation of just how much water is being denied to traditional local users and how much 'virtual' water is being diverted by moving it around the world locked up in crops and animals.

Water grab transfers the control of water from resident farmers, usually smallholders, and hands it to foreign companies. Local communities who have traditionally had unimpeded access to it for irrigation and general household needs along territory close to rivers and springs are disenfranchised. The deals done are generally leasehold for land use, whether for agriculture, mining, industry or pure investment, but land without water is worth little. Usually the deals which are struck take little or no consideration of those living on and working the land but are between governments (local or national) and foreign companies. The transfer of water control from both closely affected and downstream communities to the new user is often not specified in the land deals. However the amount of water required for irrigation is implicit in the crop type and the location, especially in rain-scarce areas.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean has reported that land acquisition (land grab) in Latin America and the Caribbean is in its infancy and only has examples in Argentina and Brazil. However, this has been challenged in the ‘Declaration of Buenos Aries’, signed in March this year at the third special Conference on Food Sovereignty, representing over 100 organisations from 20 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, which stated that ‘these conclusions result from using very limited criteria: the buying up of large extensions of land for the production of food, where at least one foreign government make up the actors or agents involved’ (Against the grain).  In effect, this means that the FAO does not consider it land grabbing when private investors are the parties involved. According to their report, land grabbing only results from sovereign (state) investment, which clearly reveals their stance as world capitalism's bodyguards to private takeovers anywhere in the world.

Following the publication of an article in the ‘Wall Street Journal’ in September by the FAO and the European Bank for Research and Development calling for governments and social organisations to 'embrace the private sector as the main engine for global food production,' a large group of these social movements, including La Via Campesina, Grain, Friends of the Earth International and a number of Latin American groups representing independent and non-commercial farmers, peasants and women, strongly countered the call. They issued a statement reiterating the evidence found in numerous international studies that those engaged in small farming feed the majority of the world's population (Link.) and that they feed them using far fewer fossil fuels for transport, production and fertilisers, with more economical use of water, and with a long-term view of care of the soil, the water and the environment in general. As a consequence, their contribution to global warming is negligible compared with that of large agribusiness; in fact, they often claim that they cool the earth.

Projects for which water is the primary requirement – dams and hydro-electric schemes – also seriously affect large numbers of resident populations and the wider environment. Mine Islar describes recent neoliberal reforms which have given the private sector the right to lease rivers for 49 years for electricity production thus: 'in some cases this particular privatisation in Turkey can be understood as an instance of 'water grabbing', where powerful actors gain control over use and increase their own benefits by diverting water and profit away from local communities living along these rivers' (Islar, M. 2012. Privatised hydropower development in Turkey: A case of water grabbing? www.water-alternatives.org). These schemes negatively affect local farming, community needs and the ecology of the area. All rivers in Turkey are now prey to this threat.

As for large dams, supposedly the solution to control and regulate the flow of water according to geographic and demographic requirements, these are now being seen as problems in themselves. As the climate becomes more extreme (a knock-on effect of global warming) on nearly every continent, 'large dams are at risk of becoming white elephants due to drought and weapons of mass destruction during extreme floods' (Lori Pottinger, Huffington Post, 21September).

It is being recognised that wastage by evaporation from big dams can be substantially more than from the rivers and, in the worst examples, accounts for up to half of the annual river flow – an incredibly extravagant waste of much needed water. A hydroelectric dam in the Amazon has been calculated to produce methane (from rotting vegetation in the flooded forest) with eight times the greenhouse effects of a coal-fired power station with a similar generating capacity. Reservoir gases in Ghana emit up to five times as much greenhouse gas as all the country's burning of fossil fuel. These examples reveal some of the vicious negative effects of big dams on the global water cycle, a serious consideration for the state of the planet. (These and many more examples from Fred Pearce's book When the Rivers Run Dry.)

One of the conclusions of a detailed study of almost 200 major international water-related projects over the past 20 years is, ‘This mismanagement of water and aquatic systems has “led to situations where both social and ecological systems are in jeopardy and have even collapsed”’ (http://tinyurl.com/8upcanp).

There is evidence a-plenty to reveal the true culprit – the engine of capitalism driving the all-important imperative for profit. However, it needn't be like this. Following the elimination of the possibility of manipulation by profit-seeking actors, water, as with all other resources, can be dealt with responsibly in the light of the links between science, technology and policymaking as forged by the democratic decisions in the best interest of the planet and its primary stakeholders, people.

Janet Surman

Our May-Day Meetings (1938)

From the June 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

All our members who organised and took part in the meetings and sale of literature on May-Day in Hyde Park are to be congratulated upon their magnificent efforts.

The two propaganda meetings were well arranged for such an occasion. Two vans were so placed that, with large banners bearing the name of the Party, our presence in the Park could hardly go unnoticed by anybody. Comrades Rubin, Turner, Ambridge, Otto, Clifford, Cash, Kilner and Willmott addressed well-ordered and attentive audiences, each from a different angle, driving home the soundness of the Socialist Party position, with the result that nearly 1,400 copies of THE SOCIALIST STANDARD and a large number of pamphlets were sold.

Another gratifying thing was to see a number of "old faces," sympathisers of the Party, who expressed their delight as seeing the S.P.G.B. once more laying low the lie of our being nothing but "armchair philosophers." Bravo!

Considering that the sale of literature is prohibited inside the Park (a striking example of bourgeois democratic rule), the amount of literature sold during the march from the Embankment, and then outside the Park gates, was simply amazing. Altogether over 60 members of the Party put their "shoulders to the wheel" in this part of the day's work. Let us keep on keeping on.

Robert Reynolds