May the force be with you (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Were you one of the thousands who watched "Star Wars" when it was shown, yet again, on TV on New Year's Day? Juvenile it may be, but it is very popular. The plot, about "Good" versus "Evil", is not much different from that in countless films about cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, or secret agents and foreign spies. The extra audience attraction in this case comes from the science fiction hardware.

Technology, especially powerful technology, grips the popular imagination in a way that worries many people who are concerned about the direction in which modern society is developing. Space flight, computer-controlled fighter rockets, laser weapons, nuclear missiles, and most of the other inventions in "Star Wars", are anti-human. And the sequence of events, as in countless computer games, is little more than a series of episodes of destruction and counter-destruction. But it is all done with great brilliance and rhythmical timing, like a ballet, to make it attractive. President Reagan was very shrewd when he gave the new American armaments programme, the Strategic Defence Initiative, the label "Star Wars". He ensured its widespread support amongst American voters. The technology of death and destruction is booming.

On a mundane level, too. technology appears to be threatening us. Thousands of workers in manufacturing and the information industries are losing their jobs to the new electronic systems. Chemical and nuclear wastes are polluting the land, sea and atmosphere. And the surveillance and control powers of the state are increasing rapidly with the use of databank computers, television eyes and bugging devices. The temporary feelings of vicarious power we get from watching science fantasy films are hardly enough to offset our growing sense of powerlessness in real life.

What, if anything, has gone wrong? Throughout the 1960s and 70s there was a stream of magazine articles and television programmes persuading us that the advances in new materials, biological engineering, electronics, nuclear physics, and so on, were going to usher in an era of plenty, comfort and leisure. Many of these optimistic journalists are now silent, because it has not happened like that. Why not? The short answer is that the journalists did not understand (or chose to ignore) the relationship between technology and real life.

Technology in its widest sense embraces all the methods and devices with which human beings make their living from their environment. And it has always been changing, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, throughout human existence. Technology is the basis upon which human societies arise, and at an early stage it became the main factor in conditioning relationships between people in society, because it began to make wealth and power possible. All the early inventions, like sowing seeds, or smelting metals, or writing, were also hedged round with a great deal of religious magic, and this became an integral part of the power structure in the development of human societies. Priests either became wealthy rulers themselves or developed close partnerships with those who had power. The result was that, instead of increasing production and raising the standards of living of everyone, the application of new technology was mostly directed at providing luxury and opulence for the ruling elite. The pyramids of Egypt were faced with marble and capped with gold, while the slaves who built them died of exhaustion in the surrounding sand.

The direction and impact of technological advances cannot be properly considered, therefore, without taking into account the power and wealth relationships in a society. The type of society that dominates the world today does not put up pyramids or enormous stone cathedrals. Instead it puts up enormously expensive sputniks and space shuttles—while millions starve to death, and hundreds of millions live out their lives in grinding poverty. When we examine the power and wealth relationships in present society it becomes clear why the prospects foreseen by the optimists did not materialise, and why we actually feel ourselves threatened by "advances" and "improvements".

The most obvious—and yet the most consistently ignored—reason why technology is not doing what we want it to is that it is not ours. It does not belong to us—the great majority of the population of the world. We design it, and make it, and run it all, but we have no say in what we make or how it is used. Just as we do not own or control the farms and factories and offices and transport in which we work. They are all owned and controlled, either privately or through the state, by a small ruling class in every nation. Our access to the wealth we produce is limited by the wages we can negotiate from them. And our power in deciding what course society shall take is limited to putting a cross on a voting slip, every four years or so, against the name of a politician who will keep things going on much the same as usual.

And yet change is obviously taking place. The lives we lead are very different in many respects from those of our grandparents a hundred years ago. And it is technology that has forced that change, but technology interacting with the social structure. We produce and use more and more sophisticated and destructive weapons, not because technology favours weapons, but because this is a fiercely competitive, nationalistic, warring type of society. "Star Wars" is one of the many pieces of entertainment that romanticise and give approval to violence. What "Star Wars" ignores is the society which manufactures its fighter rockets, its huge space ships, and its planet-sized Death Star, and keeps them all fuelled and fed and manned with highly trained personnel. High technology depends, not only upon high technologists, but upon a whole society at an appropriate level of co-operation, knowledge and skills. Human beings have certainly developed technology, but technology has also developed us.

These changes, in people and in the lives they lead, have been gradual, but the force of technological change also exerts pressure upon the social structure itself. And this cannot change gradually. Ruling classes never willingly give up their wealth and power and privilege, and the basic power structure which evolved out of the capitalist revolution three hundred years ago remains essentially the same. The ruling class has modified its tactics and repeatedly adjusted its public image in order to maintain and increase its grip, not only upon the bulk of society's wealth, but upon society's means of producing wealth in all its forms. It is this, and the rapid growth of capitalist nations all over the world, that are responsible for the escalation of civil violence and international armed readiness. The force of technological development now promises plenty and ease and peace to everyone on earth, but that very promise is a threat to the present social structure. Capitalism, whether state controlled as in Russia, or privatised as in the West, depends upon restricted consumption by the masses to keep them dependent upon wages and salaries. Agriculture and industry can produce an abundance of food and consumer goods of all sorts, but when they start to do so the markets collapse and production is cut back.

Technology appears as a threat, therefore. only within the limits of this restricted, oppressive social structure. "Star Wars" is an extrapolation, far into the future, of capitalism's oppressive and destructive use of technology. George Lucas and his scriptwriters explain it as a conflict between "goodies" and "baddies". But it is fiction. Real human beings are not "goodies" and "baddies", and they have changed the structure of their social relationships many times in the past. The slave empires of the Mediterranean have all gone, and the feudal empires of Europe and the Far East have followed them. Capitalism must follow in its turn. The force for change is the developing power of production. It is this that makes possible a world in which weapons and wars are not only unnecessary but impossible, but it is we, the great majority, who must make that change and realise those possibilities. Those of you who are already working to bring about that change know that the force is with you.

Ron Cook

Socialism—will it work? (1987)

From the January 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Socialism's all very well but . . . we've got to start somewhere . . . it's idealistic . . . you can't run before you can walk . . . "

Ever said that? Ever felt like that? Most people do when faced with the arguments for a moneyless, wageless society. They agree completely but still feel that there is something more immediate to do.

It's fairly understandable really. It's an attitude we learn every week on the TV, when Sir Robin Day manages to get his guests through 17 different world events, conflicts and social problems in the space of 60 minutes. Or breakfast telly devotes up to three minutes to Jimmy Greaves' views on thermonuclear war. And every week brings some government spokesperson presenting a new sure-fire solution to what is usually a very old problem. Unemployment? That's easy set up a programme called JobClub! or JobStart! or JobTrain! or TrainStart!, or something like that. Then spend more on full-page ads than you do on the scheme itself, and quietly issue the results of the scheme on a bank holiday or whenever the next royal baby is due.

Or what about a new problem, like AIDS? What's the blinkered response of the politicians to that? Wake up Lord Whitelaw in the House of Lords, tell him how to spell AIDS, and what it is, and get him to head a committee to look into it.

But take a step back from the day-to-day catalogue of initiatives and schemes, of campaigns and committees, to ask the simple question, does it work? The answer can only be no; the same problems remain every year and return every election. And with them come some new ones—AIDS, drug abuse, and so on. Capitalism produces problems as quick as the legislators or campaigners can solve them. The simple point that must be grasped is that the vast majority of social problems have a common cause in capitalism. So if you say "Socialism is fine but it must wait, then be aware of exactly what you are saying. Can you really say that unemployment is just an unfortunate blight on society, or is there a reason why capitalism cannot avoid the dole queues? Is it enough, for example, to condemn heroin as "evil", or is there a reason why people should seek to escape from reality?

To all these problems, socialism (which means the replacement of capitalism by a system of common ownership and democratic control) is a far more relevant and immediate solution than any attempt to keep capitalism but without the nasty bits.

But then, isn't there one issue that overrides everything: "I want socialism but we've got to get rid of the Bomb first . . . " Well, what is being done at the moment to solve this particular and particularly pressing problem: in the last few months thousands of people got together to Link Arms Across Scotland; people around the world donated a Million Minutes of Peace to thinking about peace (as if if we all clap our hands loud enough then Tinkerbell might live); the Pope invited a variety of religious leaders round for a really big pray-in and an appeal for one day of ceasefire (which lasted until lunch-time in Ulster and breakfast-time in Beirut); and Billy Bragg got himself arrested for cutting some fence around an American base (the things people will do to plug a new album).

Meanwhile of course, those supporters of multilateral "disarmament" met in another plush hotel, this time in Reykjavik, where they almost reached agreement on whether to hold another summit. So a lot has been done, there can be no doubt about that. But what has been achieved? Another month of demonstrations that may make the demonstrators feel they are doing something. Another month of Terry Waite flying in. And another month of more warheads being stockpiled while even more destruction is being designed on the drawing-board.

Just because nuclear weapons are the most obvious and most horrific problem that most of us face, does not remove their rationale inside capitalism, it doesn't mean that capitalism suddenly doesn't need them and we need only wish them away. Only a sane society can guarantee freedom from the threat of war.

In socialism, there would be no need for weapons of destruction, because a society based on production for use must remove the conflicts over resources and markets that is inherent within capitalism, whether it's the fishing areas around the Falklands. or the Kharg Island oil terminal. Removing the weapons of war is more than just a question of taking the toys from the boys or banning the bomb, but of denying to the small minority—whose interests weapons are there to defend—the position of having separate interests.

With socialism, the world will no longer be split up into countries, states, super powers, blocs or pacts. Instead we will have to democratically organise around the world to use the earth's resources to produce for the population s needs, and not for markets or economic quotas.

It can be tempting to get caught up in the demos and the marches as an alternative to actually getting anywhere. But just think of all the battles workers have fought this century already — and for what? For the very same things that reformism is still demanding. The only difference now is that the weapons are even more horrific.

So the argument that "socialism is a fine ideal but we must do something now" presents a false choice between socialism and doing something now. The real option is to do something now—buying this paper, selling this paper, joining us—for socialism.

Brian Gardner

Branch News (1964)

Party News from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

More news from Belfast and Glasgow.

Danny McCarthy reports that the Belfast members had good literature sales at both the Easter CND parade and the Conference of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.

A recent demonstration over redundancy was used as an opportunity to put over our case. Danny went along with Comrade Montague, who stated our attitude to the television and radio reporters who were present. Alas, this was not included in the television programme that same evening.

The Irish comrades put their usual hard work into the recent local elections, in which we had a candidate in the Duncairn ward. Danny reports that the response of the Duncairn workers to our appeal for election funds was “truly staggering”.

Glasgow report that they had an audience of about eighty at their debate with the Young Liberals, when R. Donnelly put our case. The theme of our May Day meeting in Glasgow was “Abolish the Wages System”. The audience numbered over a hundred, seven pound collection was taken and over £2 worth of literature sold.

The Branch contested two wards—North Kelvin and Knightswood—in the municipal elections. Publicity at North Kelvin was limited to intensive canvassing of the Socialist Standard—over 450 copies were sold during the previous three months—and the distribution of eight thousand manifestoes. The party polled 134 votes which, Glasgow Branch think, must have contained comparatively few “mistaken” votes.

In Knightswood again our publicity was restricted, although we did get a mention on TV. The Glasgow members slogged away here under tremendous difficulties—they sold the Socialist Standard around the doors and they distributed twelve thousand manifestoes. The party polled 297 votes but, as the Branch puts it, “How many of these were Socialist votes is difficult to say in view of this being the first time we have contested the ward.”

Glasgow Branch are a living witness to the fact that hard work for Socialism is the most invigorating thing. Far from being tired after their exertions, they arc already planning “a greater effort next year.”

We hear from Sunderland that our comrade Clifford Allen addressed the Hylton Estate Workingmen’s Club (or rather their Debating Society) last month on the subject “Karl Marx—was he a dreamer or a realist?” His lecture was very well received by an audience of 50, of which 5 were members of the Sunderland Group. The address was followed by extensive discussion and many questions. 11/6d. worth of Socialist Standard were sold.

Comrade Allen and the members of the Sunderland group were much encouraged by the results of the lecture and intend to concentrate their efforts on similar activities in the future. There is a move to establish a number of debating societies and discussion groups on the numerous new housing estates in the Sunderland area, and the group hope to give further addresses to these. It is heartening to see such a good start being made to the activities of the Party in the North-east.

The debate at Bromley with INDEC attracted an audience of about 45, of whom half were non-members. Literature sales were only nominal, but there was a collection of £3 4s. 6d.

The Aldermaston March (1959)

From the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The arrival of the second Aldermaston March in London on Easter Monday was a grand opportunity for the Party to make itself felt—and it did! The awakening political interest in this country, which was briefly indicated at the time of Suez, is bringing many young bewildered people into the political arena for the first time. Their rallying point, at the moment, is the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Encouraged by our successful and inspiring Annual Conference, during the preceeding three days, an impressive body of Party members reported at midday to the Party Literature Depot that had been set up in a comrade’s car by the Albert Memorial. This was the last halt for the many thousands of marchers prior to their final “assault” on Trafalgar Square. Over Conference week-end, both Paddington and Wood Green Branches had prepared leaflets specially for the occasion. One dealt with the futility of the Campaign in general. The other concerned the controversy within the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament as to whether or not they should withhold their votes from parliamentary candidates who do not promise beforehand to oppose the British manufacture of nuclear weapons, once elected.

Interest in our leaflets was so great that the Party Organiser and a few other comrades went back to Head Office to roll off another 2,000. In all 5,000 leaflets were distributed during the day. Once the March was on the move again the literature depot was set up, this time near to the Square.

Thirty-three comrades drew supplies of literature from the depot but a number of others helped too, so that everywhere you looked the SOCIALIST STANDARD and the pamphlet on War were to be seen. Sales were remarkably good—234 STANDARDS and over 160 War pamphlets—getting on for £15 worth, and these figures do not include a certain amount of literature that had been brought along by individual members.

A most heartening aspect of the day's effort was the number of provincial comrades who were doing their bit. Obviously enjoying the feel of an all-out Party effort were members from Bradford, Manchester, Newport and Nottingham and, as was to be expected, nearly all the London area Branches were represented. Specially noteworthy were the high sales recorded by a Manchester comrade and the number of accepted challenges to debate issued by the Newport Group secretary.

As for assessing our impact, it was noticeable how many more people than last year were prepared to accept the Socialist contention that the real problem is the continued existence of war-prone Capitalist Society and not the nature of current weapons.

PADDINGTON BRANCH.

*      *      *

The following was distributed as a leaflet during the March:

A point of view

“. . . We march in hope. We are building the foundations of a better, saner future, free not only from the horror and cruelty of our time but also its blindness, double-talk and unreason.” (Tribune, 27 March 59.)

If only this were true, how worthwhile this large and impressive march from Aldermaston would be! After your four days on the road, our view of the Campaign may not be popular but it must be put. We hold that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is on an unsound basis and inevitably leads in the wrong direction.

The Campaign fails because it is not concerned with removing the cause of war. In opposing “The Bomb ” to the exclusion of everything else, the effect is to oppose neither bombs nor war. . . . One year of ceaseless activity: Aldermaston, last Easter—Mass Lobby in June—Direct Action at Swaffham in December. Hundreds of thousands have heard your appeal to ban the Hydrogen Bomb, but have you made any impression on the present Government? And do you really believe another Labour Government would be any better?

The truth must be faced. Over these practical questions the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is rent with dissension. 

A large body of the Campaign is working for the return of a Labour Government. How futile! The Labour Party is committed to war and the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

An active minority is advocating “direct action” and is trying to persuade people not to vote for any candidate who does not oppose the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

Put to the test. Labour as well as the Conservatives will manufacture and possibly use the Hydrogen Bomb. The supporters of “direct action” sense this without understanding why and their methods, the outcome of despair, are a repudiation of democracy.

The Hydrogen Bomb is a monstrous thing. We say war in any form is monstrous!

The risk of nuclear weapons is inseparable from war, and war is inseparable from the way human society is organised today. The world we live in is dominated by the private ownership of the means of life, production for sale and profit, and by economic competition. The struggle between governments represents the rivalry of capitalist ruling groups—a struggle that continually threatens mankind with war.

Russia, with its state-controlled capitalism, is no less involved in this sordid business than are the U.S.A. and Great Britain.

Socialists want to abolish capitalism and to replace private ownership by common ownership. Socialists want a world in which the privilege of a few to monopolise wealth can be replaced by production of goods and services solely to satisfy human needs.

Socialists want a world in which “ Community,” “ Co-operation ” and ”Peace” can become realities not hollow slogans.

Effective opposition to the Hydrogen Bomb demands opposition to the whole monstrosity of war.

Opposition to war demands opposition to capitalism.

Opposition to capitalism demands working for the re-organisation of human society—for socialism.

One swallow doesn't make a profit (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The current issue of Birds, the magazine of the RSPB, carries the following editorial about Seal Sands on the Tees, an internationally important wintering place for shelduck and migrating shore birds. It is worth reproducing in full.

“For years we have fought to save this last vital remnant of Seal Sands from reclamation for port development. The last round in this battle was about the draft County structure plan, which had zoned the whole area for development. The special panel appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment to hear objections to the plan found in our favour, concluding that the case for industrial development was weak and that there were positive reasons on nature conservation grounds against reclamation of any but a small sector of the site. However, the Secretary of State has said that he is proposing to reject his panel’s recommendation and to give priority to expansion of the port and port-related industry. If he does not change his mind (and we have submitted a further strong objection), this will permit the Tees and Hartlepool Port Authority to complete their destruction of the estuary.
“It will also be the third recent occasion on which a Secretary of State has rejected the findings of an enquiry and approved the despoliation of a site of international or national importance on the grounds of regional or local economic advantage—grounds which furthermore were not proved at the enquiries in question. Both the other consents were for oil refineries —one at Cliffe on the North Kent Marshes and the other in Nigg Bay in the Cromarty Firth—and they come at a time when Britain and Europe already have excess refinery capacity.
“A public enquiry is intended to provide an arena where all information and facts for and against development of a site can be properly tested. It becomes a pointless expenditure of time and money if a Secretary of State is going to throw overboard conclusions every time they do not suit his views or, as one must inevitably suspect, when they run contrary to the political expediency of the moment.”

Would it be churlish to say to the RSPB: “We told you so”? What they are experiencing confirms yet again two major points in the case of the Socialist Party. First, that the so-called democracy under capitalism, here expressing itself as the grand-sounding “public enquiry”, is allowed to go just as far as capitalism wants it to—to attempt to mollify the working class—until it starts to conflict with industry, profits etc. Then bang! up goes the brick wall and out comes the dictator (on this occasion a Labour Party one).

Second, it illustrates that power is political, in the Government’s hands. Even a wealthy pressure-group with a full-time staff and nearly a quarter of a million members to sign petitions cannot alter the Secretary of State’s decision. If they cannot save even a mud-flat in this situation, how can the working class hope to change society without first capturing political power through Parliament?

A final comment on the RSPB. They currently run an appeal called “Save a place for birds”. Perhaps this experience will demonstrate to them that nothing can be safeguarded within the capitalist system — only by abolishing it and building a sane society. Capitalism is not even concerned with saving a place for people. What hope have birds got?

D. W. Roberts

Obituary: Jim Spittle (1973)

Obituary from the November 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many members will be saddened to hear that Jim Spittle, who had been enduring a painful illness for some time, died during the first days of October.

He joined the party in 1921, at first the old West Ham Branch and later, when he moved to west London, what was then Wembley Branch. Jim worked for Watney’s and it was there that he met, and persuaded into the Party, Jack Thurston, who was to become his close friend and neighbour for so many years.

My first memories of Jim are of my new, nervous days as a Party member. This was just after the war; the Party was growing and we came in rude and demanding. Jim took it all quietly; we soon became impressed with this man who was always to be relied on to turn up, wherever we were having a meeting, whatever the weather. I never saw him in an overcoat; he cycled everywhere.

After his retirement Jim moved to Suffolk, at first in his own bungalow but then, when his wife died, in with one of his children. He still travelled up to stay with Jack Thurston whenever he could and on these visits it was always a great pleasure to see him at the Branch. Until the last days he kept his physical toughness, cycling each day five miles there and back to get the milk.

Jim was no speaker or writer and he was modest enough about his considerable knowledge to keep it mostly out of sight, to be shown only when he was convinced it needed to be. If there is such a thing as a backbone in the Party, he was part of it. When Socialism is here, it will be peopled by men like Jim Spittle; would that there were more like him today.

Ivan

Keep an eye on Spain (1958)

From the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

"On October 12th in Washington the Spanish Ambassador gave a Columbus Day reception to which Soviet diplomats were invited for the first time. The Ambassadors of Poland and Czecho Slovakia were also present"

— (Manchester Guardian. 12/11/57.)

One evening in 1951 our Branch-room was filled to overflowing. The London correspondent of the official Yugoslav News Agency. Tanjug. was vainly attempting to defend the proposition that Yugoslavia is a Socialist country. A Hackney comrade, known for his bluntness, asked what our visitor’s reactions would be if it ever should suit his Government to sip champagne with Franco as Molotov had done with Ribbentrop, betokening the switch from enemy to friend and the desire to inaugurate trading and to co-operate militarily. His retort was an impassioned denial of such a possibility at any time in the future and resentment at the very suggestion. Of course our comrade's question was born of a whole history of switched alliances between the nations of the modem world. Each Nation-state represents a privileged and powerful minority who owe their position to their direct (private) or indirect (state) ownership of industry and wealth. In a world competing for export markets, supplies of the raw materials necessary for industrial production and strategically placed war bases, every participant in the world economy is a potential enemy of every other, though each will try to sink as many differences as possible with as many countries as. possible so as to present a stronger “front" in the course of the struggle against the rest. It is the interests of the capitalist class in the particular situation which basically decide who is friend and who is foe.

Sputnik Scientists in Barcelona

Six years have passed. The course of events has once again shown the correctness of the Socialist contention that it is not sentiment nor is it high principle but the desire for trade and power that motivates the ruling class of each country. Actually, latest reports from Spain go one better. There are all the signs of at least a partial "rapprochement” between Franco Spain and the Kremlin itself. Fortunately for him, our adversary of that evening six years ago does not have the responsibility of answering for the new situation. He wisely departed from the field of journalism and as far as we know has refrained from returning to his native country. How would be view this latest development? First the game of football against a Spanish team in Belgrade. Then a return match though there are still no diplomatic relations between Spain and any of the East European countries. Russian technologists freely participated in the recent Barcelona Geophysical-year Conference and already Franco can say in connection with the Sputnik, "We have to fact up to the fact that we are living under the sign of the Soviet earth satellite. The old Russia could not have launched the satellite; it could only happen in the new Russia. Great enterprises call for unity, discipline, authority . . . " (News Chronicle, Wed. 30/10/57).

For the first time under the Franco regime Spanish newspapers reproduced the front page of the Russian "Pravda,” dealing with the satellite. “Never before” said the Guardian correspondent “had the press been allowed such freedom to play up things Russian." Manchester Guardian, 12/11/57).

Trade goes on

We have known for some considerable time that trading between these supposedly irreconcilable enemies, the “Christian Gentlemen of Spain" and the “Atheistic Reds" had been going on. At least three years ago bananas, which are quite a luxury in Russia, were finding their way from the Spanish Canary Islands to the Soviet bloc via Switzerland. The traditional Spanish export of saffron to rice-eating China, communist or otherwise, has steadily continued. The News Chronicle article quoted above reports the recent arrival of several Russian delegations to Madrid. This has not been reported in the censored Spanish press as it will no doubt require some little time to recondition the public's attitude to Russia. There is talk of some sort of Russo-Spanish agreement over the gold reserves which, it is claimed, were handed over to the Russian Bank by Negrin, the Prime Minister, at the fall of the Republic, for safe keeping. Russia has insisted up till now that the gold was but a partial payment for debts incurred by the Republic when buying Russian arms. Other East European countries are also involved in the development of trade with Spain. The following is reprinted by the Manchester Guardian (12/11/57): —

“Spain is negotiating S25 millions trading with East Germany. Spanish negotiators are in contact with Czechoslovak Government Government officials. There arc direct trade relations with Poland."

Calculated Risk

Moscow also took a bold step by recently repatriating several thousand Spanish and Basque refugees, many of whom, having gone there as children as long ago as 1938, and spent almost all their lives and had their education there. Quite a lot of them returned with Russian wives (in itself quite a concession!) and almost all brought back household goods now being mass produced in the U.S.S.R. Khrushchev must have thought long before permitting so many disgruntled people to return to the West though be probably counted on Spanish working class conditions being such that the comparison between life in both countries would favour industrialised Russia, notwithstanding the flamenco singing so eagerly lapped up by the tourists on the Costa Brava.

Pumping Uncle Sam

It would seem that Franco, the most long lived dictator bar neighbouring Salazar of Portugal, “Britain's oldest ally" is taking a leaf out of dictator Tito’s book. The U.S. Government may have been taking his alliance too much for granted. How better to prompt further economic “shots in the arm" than to play “hard to get," with the hint that there may be others in the offing? And in case anyone says that Yugoslavia would not necessarily be a party to a Russo-Spanish “rapprochement " who would have thought that the one-time “fascist hyena" Tito would be spending time last month hunting, fishing and shooting with Marshal Zhukov ? But then it does not seem to have done Zhukov any good, does it?

Eddie Grant

In the shadow of Mickey Mouse & Clinton (1994)

From the October 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are living in a Brave New World and the invisible dictator is Walt Disney. After the death camps came the theme parks: in the first human bodies were cast into furnaces, like so many offensive animals to be slaughtered; now they cast human sensibilities into the mind-numbing, culture-eroding cartoon community of Mickey Mouse and make the victims pay to get in. No longer is total power sought, at least by the sophisticated, by means of the cudgel and the bullet. Now the slaves are condemned to prisons of fabricated fun. (Has it ever occurred to those who declaim against prisons being turned into holiday camps that this says more than a little about holiday camps?) From the phoney friendliness of Radio One (where we all have Fun) to the cheap and sloppy outpourings of Hollywood's hypnosis industry', fun is for sale; illusion has become one of the fastest-growing commodities of world capitalism. You want happiness? How much can you afford?

Brave New World

In this Brave New World, which is indeed the same old world with its same old system and single old agenda of profits before life, there is a celebration of the ephemeral and the unhistorical. The beauty of Disney, the first theoretician of cultural excretion, is that nothing he produces (produced by others, of course) exists within real history. From Bambi to Aladdin to Peter Pan and assorted talking animals, every thing is ripped from the context of materiality, like a drunk's view of the night before An epidemic in the use of banned drugs, pathways to escape, plagues the inner cities where a passage from reality can be fixed for a price. But the legal illusion-sellers, the merchants of here-today-gone-before-you-know-it Fun, are the market leaders with their drip- drip-drip of manufactured escapism designed to make you forget what you are and why you are. Disney does this well. Not for nothing did they call his corporation an Empire. Not for being jolly good fellows did the Disney Corporation (now in the midst of internecine executive warfare over its future leadership) make $3.6 billion in 1993, as against a mere $244 million in 1984.

Speaking of which . . .  Orwell’s novel was basically wrong. In parts chillingly predictive of the sinister world of security cameras, "intelligence services" and news manipulation which modem capitalism has become. Nineteen Eighty Four was essentially a scare story for people who could only recognise an oppressor if he looked like Hitler or Stalin. This has been the great self-defence of liberal capitalism: well, at least we’re not Hitlers or Stalins. Examine and scrutinise as much as you will the smarmy, offensive, unctuous grin of a Clinton and there can be no doubt that the funny little moustache just isn’t there and neither is the Stalinist stare or the goose-stepping crazies with medals and ministerial powers.

"Big Clinton Is Watching You"? No, it just does not ring true. Clinton is a product of the Brave New World, more at home in a Disney theme park with the Three Blairs, Captain Kohl and Major the Mouse (that couldn’t roar) than in any Ministry of Truth worthy of Orwell’s ink. In the Clinton World Empire nobody is sent to Room 101; we send ourselves into a dazed captivity of MTV where music has become a hostage to star-selling, or CNN where news happens so fast that it is invented before history has had time to take place. In Orwell’s nightmare at least you would know where you were. Or if not, at least the simplicity of brainwashing (never a convincing explanation of the ideological process, incidentally) could be blamed for not knowing where you are. But Maoism is as obsolete now as the Ford Popular and dental care on the NHS; Orwell was the prophet of a disaster which had already largely happened when he forewarned us of it.

Happy slaves

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which predated Orwell’s by a decade-and-a-half, is the story of what has happened to capitalist culture. It is a critical guide-book to DisneyWorld. It is a tale of death by a billion laughs. It and Crome Yellow may well be the only successful  novels which Huxley wrote, and to be sure The Doors of Perception (which gave its name to a rock band and an air of intellectual legitimacy to a drug culture) was the product of a mind rotten with empty Californian culture [sic] and devoid of the slightest reference to the capitalist system. Had Huxley directed his eminently scientific brain towards the nature of the profit system which can only ever employ science unscientifically he might have left us more. As it was he died on the day that JFK was shot (by several hundred people if the books and films are to be believed) and did not even make the News. "What were you doing when you heard that JFK was shot?" (Perhaps one of the more inane cliches of our century.) "Reading Brave New World and wondering if things can get any worse." They did get worse and here we are. The novel is still worth reading.

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death (a book replete with insight, but feeble on vision) supports what has been stated here:

“What Huxley teaches is that in the age of advanced technology, spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face than from one whose countenance exudes suspicion and hate. In the Huxley an prophecy. Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility".

Leaving aside questions of spirits and nations (both themselves artificial products), the analysis is not to be dismissed lightly. Persuading the victim to find the strength to break free is one thing, but persuading happy slaves that they are not really happy is quite another.

Metaphysical fantasy

In Brave New World Revisited, Huxley, writing in 1958, displayed prescient sagacity in spotting the cultural signs which contemporary jumbled-up minds have thrown into the lucky-dip theory called Postmodernism (of which more some other time): In Brave New World non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature (the feelies, orgy-porgy, centrifugal bumble-puppy) are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation . . .  A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time on the spot, not here and now in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate and control it.

"Instruments of policy" In an age where sound bites and cultivated images subdue larger populations than armies could dream of regimenting, we should think more and more about just what these "instruments of policy" are all about. Look again at that robotic, idiot's grin on the face of the American President and ask yourself how safe you feel with Mickey Mouse’s foam-filled fabricated finger on the fun-packed, all-action, bang-bang-bang nuclear button.

Steve Coleman

The Bottom Dog. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

He loved his master dearly in the days of long ago ;
   His dirty kennel and his scanty food
To him were blessings, and he sought no other things to know,
   And all the world looked on and called it good.
But now, because this canine dares to bark for something more,
   The masters curse him for a greedy hog,
And wish that they could kick him as they did in days of yore,
   To teach him he is but the Bottom Dog. 

In days of old when foreign thieves his master’s house would spoil,
   He thought it but his duty and his "bis,"
To guard his master's property—the fruits of others' toil,
   With life and limb as though these things were his.
To-day he views his master with distrust and e'en with scorn,
   Much as the Bull looked on the bloated frog.
His faithfulness has vanished through the terrors he has borne,
   And now they call him "Bolshie Bottom Dog." 

Ungrateful whelp! hast thou forgot thy master's loving care ?
   Regardless of your puny puppy’s whine,
To shield you from the wintry blast, and summer heat and glare,
   Consigned you to the comforts of the mine.
Hast thou not learned in all these years the dignity of work?
   The pride of being just a human cog
In those vast wheels of industry that grind for those who shirk ?
   Oh! bad, unpatriotic Bottom Dog! 

Now just because some dogs have lost an eye, a paw, or leg,
   They snarl and growl at Barnes and Clynes and Hodge—
The master's friends—who tell them if they’ll just sit up and beg
   There’ll be more offal for the Bottom Dog.
But these are signs the mongrel, who is not devoid of pluck,
   With instinct clearing of its mental fog,
Will seize the thieves who rob him and I wish the bounder luck
   To end the days of Top and Bottom Dog.

F. G. Thompson

Spanish Anarchism & Libertarianism (1997)

Book Review from the January 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Remember Spain: The Anarchist and Syndicalist Revolution of 1936. Essays by Murray Bookchin (AK Press £4.50.)

This pamphlet consists of two essays: "An Overview of the Spanish Libertarian Movement" and "After Fifty Years: the Spanish Civil War".

Bookchin’s view of the Spanish Civil War is made clear from the outset. In the preface he describes it as "the greatest proletarian and peasant revolution to occur over the past two centuries". Compared with similar struggles in Italy, Germany and Austria, he writes that the Spanish working class and peasantry put up a massive, brave and organised resistance to the forces of fascism in the guise of Franco's military uprising. Bookchin views the Spanish Civil War not as a struggle to defend a discredited and treacherous republican regime but to create a social revolution in Spanish society. Much literature on Spain has tended to play down the more radical forms the conflict took, with the so-called Communist movement at the forefront of this camouflage.

As its title would suggest, much of the first essay deals with the development of the Spanish Anarchist movement, its structure, attempts at democratic control and how these varied from the countryside to the more urban areas.

The remainder discusses the problems of building a mass libertarian movement in the circumstances which have changed since the time of the Spanish Civil War. Bookchin highlights those changes and the limitation of unions, syndicalist as well as reformist. He outlines the capacity of the capitalist system to condition the working class through institutions like the family, school, religious organisations, the factory and trade unions. The system teaches workers obedience, hierarchy, the work ethic and authoritarian discipline and these also have their effects on organisations formed to try to emancipate workers from capitalism. Employment, (although Bookchin uses the term "factory"), and the class organisations that spring from it, are seen as most important in instilling docility in workers, manifesting itself in a commitment to hierarchical organisations and authoritarian leaders with the result that most militant groups and situations can be bought off to serve the interests of a reformist labour bureaucracy.

Bookchin does not provide clear-cut answers to these problems, nor would we expect him to do so, but while socialists may not always agree with the attempts to formulate a solution he does make, this sort of discussion should be of concern to all of us attempting to build libertarian forms of organisation that can begin to challenge capitalism.

In the second essay Bookchin argues against the view of the so-called Communists that Spain was too economically backward for a socialist/anarchist revolution. He sees this as just an excuse for the reactionary role they played in destroying the more radical elements in the civil war in the interest of the dictatorship of the state capitalist Soviet Union, adding that if Spain in 1936-9 was too economically backward then so was Russia in 1917. The more radical initiatives which the "Communists" helped to destroy is well documented as is the reactionary role of popular frontism. What is not considered is the implications of their isolation in one country. The causes of the Civil War are considered by Bookchin to be cultural as well as economic.

The second essay also gives an interesting account of the depth of what has been called the Spanish revolution. In the Catalonia region it is estimated that three-quarters of the economy was under "workers’ control" and in what are described as "the more thoroughly anarchist areas” especially among the agrarian collectives, money was eliminated and the material means of life were allocated according to need rather than work, but it is clear that the circumstances varied from region to region.

Whilst sometimes Bookchin uses the terms socialist and Marxist in, to say the least, irritating ways this pamphlet is still well worth reading. It is certainly an encouragement to find out more about the “Spanish revolution" if your knowledge of it is limited. Some may feel Bookchin overstates the significance of the Spanish Civil War or the depth of support for the more radical movements within it What cannot be denied, even sixty years on, is that it was an event of enough significance to analyse and learn from.

Ray Carr

Fighting the tiger (1997)

From the February 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early in the morning of 26 December 1996, as South Korea slept, the ruling New Korean Party met secretly and in seven minutes passed the most draconian labour legislation the workers had encountered since the end of military rule in 1987.

When workers awoke a new labour law had been introduced which gives big business greater freedoms in sacking workers and setting working hours. A ban on the formation of two trade unions in any one workplace was introduced until the year 2002 along with the outlawing of new umbrella labour groups until the year 2000.

A new National Security Act was also introduced which gives the Korean CIA greater powers. Although ostensibly justified by the incursion of a North Korean submarine into South Korean waters last year, many workers believe the new act is meant to compliment the labour laws and will be used to crush internal dissent and re-discipline the workers with an iron fist.

President Kim Young-sam rationalised the new legislation by stating that the country needs to endure a period of radical change if it wanted to compete on the global market, fending off, for instance, the threat from low-cost economies like China. Last year, rising labour costs and a slowed economic growth resulted in a £12.5 billion trade deficit and a drop in the profits of quoted companies by 40 percent.

Ironically the new legislation came within two weeks of South Korea making it into the "big man’s club"—the OECD, which includes all the leading industrialised countries, and in which a condition of membership is the recognition of certain labour rights.

Needless to say hundreds of thousands of workers immediately took to the streets in a national, stoppage which was the largest in the country’s post-1945 history, taking part in huge demonstrations and sit-ins and engaging in running battles with the security forces.

As can be imagined, the chaebol (the country's giant industrial conglomerates) were the hardest hit, losing £640 million in the first week of industriaJ action, bringing to a total of £2.7 billion lost to similar action throughout 1996—a loss which prompted the South Korean capitalist class to embark on a massive transfer of funds into the cheaper labour markets of developing countries and first world economics.

At a time when government ministers in this country have been telling workers that trade-union curbs and labour market de-regulation are important if Britain wants to compete with the likes of South Korea, it seems paradoxical that South Korea wants to mirror Britain.

The truth is that the South Korean capitalist class have come to realise that the average eight percent annual growth they have enjoyed since 1960 has peaked and that profits can only be maintained by following the example set elsewhere—by hammering the workers still further and in investing in countries with low productivity costs where workers have fewer rights.

What becomes of the ongoing unrest in South Korea is anyone's guess. One thing is certain though. It is high time the workers there, as well as their counterparts world-wide, realised they are exactly "something to be bought and sold— a commodity" which one Korean labour leader recently claimed they were not.

John Bissett

Handing back the booty (1997)

From the March 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 1 July Hong Kong will revert to being part of China, bringing to an end a century-and-a-half of colonial rule. Hong Kong island was originally ceded to Britain in 1842, part of the prize for victory in what even capitalist historians call the Opium War. Though supposedly British in perpetuity, Hong Kong island is not viable without the surrounding territories, which, after yet another war, were granted to Britain on a 99-year lease in 1898. On an agreement reached by Margaret Thatcher, the whole of the Hong Kong territory will be returned to China.

Hong Kong has operated as a very profitable colony, with rich pickings for British companies and their local subsidiaries. Politically, it has been run by an appointed governor, aided by advisory councils, and with no pretence even at what passes for democracy under capitalism. Most forms of protest were illegal, including the use of loud-hailers in public. Things began to change as the implications of Thatcher's negotiations with the government of China sank in. Then in 1992, John Major appointed old chum and recently-defeated Tory MP Chris Patten as the new Hong Kong governor. Patten belatedly introduced limited elections and repealed much of the earlier repressive legislation, but this was clearly window-dressing, done with a view to flaunting Hong Kong's "democracy" in contrast to the dictatorial regime in China.

China has for years done very well out of Hong Kong as an export market and a source of foreign exchange, and certainly has no interest in seeing the place degenerate into chaos. After 1 July, Hong Kong will be a Special Administrative Region of China, under the slogan of "one country, two systems". The political boss will be the Chief Executive, elected by a hand-picked selection committee in a show of openness that fooled nobody. In December the new man was named as Tung Chee-hwa, millionaire owner of a shipping company and just the kind of person China's rulers like to do business with. In fact in 1985 they actually bailed out his company to the tune of £75 million! Tung is clearly going to toe Beijing’s line: already he has given warning that the press will have to be more "responsible", meaning they should not inquire at all closely into the doings of the government. And many of the former colonial laws are being revived, much to the wrath of Patten and the British political establishment.

But what hypocrisy it all is! China criticises Britain for repressive policies, and then re-introduces some of the most repressive, which is particularly chilling from the government responsible for the 1989 Tiananmen massacres. Britain objects to China re-introducing the laws that British governors were originally responsible for and still implemented up until recently. But it's really all a sideshow, with the aim of British-owned companies continuing with their investments in Hong Kong (and, of course, in the rest of China), and of the Chinese government profiting from its new possession.

The ordinary people of Hong Kong were treated with contempt (at best) by successive colonial governors, and will receive similar treatment from Tung and his capitalist colleagues. The pollution in Hong Kong, the enormous squatter population, the sweatshops and firetrap factories, will all continue. As one ruling class hands over to another, capitalism with its exploitation and its disfigurement of human lives and the environment remains in place.

Paul Bennett

The Uselessness of "Practical Politics" (1934)

From the February 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most Socialists are familiar with the type of criticism which consists of arguing that Socialism is a vague proposal for general change, whereas what is needed is a series of definite, practical reforms. Bertrand Russell, in the Sunday Referee for November 5th, reproduces this argument with a variation which is new, at any rate, to the present writer. This is the opening paragraph, which provides the key to the entire article, entitled “The age of stagnation”:—

"The nineteenth century, judged by any definite test, was a period of solid progress, in comparison with which the present is an age of stagnation. This not because there were, in those days, more people who desired change, but because reformers worked patiently for definite objects without any thought of altering the entire social order.” 

He then goes on to specify the particular types of reform he has in mind, such as Parliamentary reform legal reform, sex reform and prison reform.

This attitude embodies two fairly obvious errors. In the first place the present, century has witnessed social reforms, such as National Health and Unemployment Insurance, Old Age Pensions, etc., and political reforms, such as the enfranchisement of women. One would have expected the latter, at any rate, to have held a special appeal for Mr. Russell. In the second place it is obvious that the present National Government have no “thought of altering the entire social order.” On the contrary, they obtained power for “ definite objects.”

At the last election they obtained support by promises of certain immediate reforms. Even the Bolsheviks, who do profess to have Socialism as their ultimate aim, secured power by promising peace, land for the peasants and bread for the workers.

It is no part of the Socialist case that reforms are unnecessary. Capitalist society produces such a crop of evils that the need for reforms is constant and urgent; but it is a necessity which imposes itself upon the master class, who alone possess the power to introduce them. Hence we find arising from this class (in the words of Marx and Engels), “Economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, and hole and comer reformers of every imaginable kind.” (Communist Manifesto.)

Mr. Russell belongs to this type of person. He is superficial enough to think that by concentrating attention upon the details of capitalist administration he will avoid facing the fundamental problem which the very existence of capitalism involves. In this he resembles most defenders of capitalism to-day. Indeed, this is the only safe line for such people to take, since the moment the workers begin to think about fundamentals the game of bluff will be nearly up.

No one need worry that they will not have enough to do if they become revolutionary. Even a small organisation like the S.P.G.B. is not maintained by meeting to pass revolutionary resolutions. Practical details have to be attended to, and will become more numerous as the Party grows. The revolution will change the class of details that need dealing with. The working class in power will find its administrative capacity amply taxed. Mr. Russell, however, wishes us to ignore the need for revolution. He offers us the barren prospect of becoming mere busybodies on behalf of our masters.

Various sections of the ruling class at present are preoccupied with what they describe as ”preventing war.” Not having finished paying for the last they do not relish incurring a still greater burden of debt by having another. Mr. Russell proposes, in a further article in the same paper (November 19th), international agreement to take the armament industry out of private hands. It is, of course, only to be expected that armament firms will support policies suited to their interests, but it by no means follows that Mr. Russell’s proposal is any solution to the war problem.

In the first place, Governments do not increase their debts merely to oblige the armament firms. Control of trade routes, markets and sources of raw materials is essential to any powerful group of capitalists, and conflicts over this control are the prime cause of modern wars. Secondly, Mr. Russell’s idea implies a degree of harmony of interests among the national groups which is simply non-existent. If they cannot agree about the division of the plunder derived from the exploitation of the workers of the world they are hardly likely to trust one another not to obtain arms except from Government arsenals. In fact, the armament industry is not a separate, watertight, economic department, it is inextricably bound up with other industries.

In order to carry out Mr. Russell’s proposal each Government would either have to confiscate or purchase industrial concerns normally used for other purposes or leave them outside its control, thus losing valuable sources of supply in time of need. Mr. Russell might just as usefully suggest an international agreement between Governments not to employ civilians in war time. Experience shows that armies can, in a few months, be increased from a few hundreds of thousands to several millions, and similarly all kinds of factories become sources of war supplies, including arms and munitions, when the emergency arises. Mr. Russell, with his passion for attention to detail, should pay a certain amount of respect to details such as these. Deeper than this he can hardly be expected to go, but of all utopian schemes that of establishing peace under capitalism is the most fantastic. Capitalism is founded upon robbery—the robbery in the workshops, mines, farms, etc., of the producers, by the possessors of these means of living. The proceeds of robbery require to be protected, both from the robbed and from, rival gangs of robbers. Hence the existence of armed forces. For the international capitalist class to get rid of these forces would be equivalent to abandoning the most important guarantee of its own conditions of existence; in other words, it would be equivalent to, economic and political suicide.

Disarmament in any real sense of the term is the task of the international working class. They can accomplish it only by getting control of the armed forces through consciously organised political action. That is the essential preliminary act in the drama of social revolution, whereby the means of living will be converted into the common property of all. Nothing less than the determination to emancipate themselves will provide the workers with a motive equal to the task. So long as they are prepared for slavery in the factories they will be ready for sacrifice on the battlefield at the behest of their masters.

Mr. Russell fears that much of the stagnation of which he complains is due to the fear of war. This only demonstrates the urgent need for the workers to concentrate their attention upon the revolutionary task. For them no essential change for the better can come within the limits of a system which inevitably generates wars and the fear of war. Our masters may alternately slacken or tighten our chains as circumstances dictate, but the chains will still be there until the workers as a class deliberately break them.

To any worker who is fully alive to his slave position emancipation is his supreme specific need. Compared with this the petty details of day-to-day adjustments within capitalism sink into relative unimportance. Certainly they can form no basis for a workers' party. Such a party can have for its object nothing less than Socialism.

Eric Boden

'We'll Always Have Paris…' (2016)

From the January 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

There was a good deal of optimism doing the media rounds after the Paris climate talks last month ended in a new global agreement, and no wonder. It's almost the first time all or nearly all the countries of the world have managed to agree on anything, even if only in principle and even if they are not bound by it.

Make no mistake, this is a breakthrough. Despite the best efforts of climate change deniers and corporations to offer up spurious arguments to baffle the public, obscure the issues and obfuscate the debate, the politicians of nearly 200 countries have gone with the scientific consensus. This was by no means a done deal. Far-right parties across Europe, worryingly successful at the polls recently in the UK and in France, may differ on other points of policy but are universally located in the climate sceptics camp. In Britain, UKIP has made this scepticism abundantly plain (or you might call it canting ignorance), while Marine Le Pen has done the same in France and Donald Trump, the man causing a Republican meltdown in the US, is unsurprisingly of a similar view. Clearly there is something in the right-wing political agenda that is anti-science, and presumably the supporters of these parties are anti-science climate sceptics too, or at least not uncomfortable with the outlook.

The politicians in Paris were therefore, knowingly, going against a large tranche of public opinion. We don't often have cause to praise any capitalist politician in these pages, but to see them make common cause for once, and at the risk of votes, is something to be acknowledged.

Not to be underestimated too were the obstacles to a settlement, even given a universal will to agree. The COP21 talks did not, as one might suppose, involve just the foreign ministers of each country, but something over 38,000 delegates representing NGOs, charities, universities and corporations too. The weighted delegation selection procedure meant that some tiny countries were disproportionately represented, so that Tuvalu had one delegate for every 253 islanders while India had one delegate for every seven million people. Morocco sent 439 participants while France, the host, made do with just 395, China scraped along with a paltry 326 and the UK sent a laughable 96 (carbonbrief.org). In addition, countries arranged themselves in blocs according to their perceived common interest. The opportunities for disagreement between, say, AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States) and BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), or LLDC (Landlocked Developing Countries) and CfRN (Coalition for Rainforest Nations) must have been as hard to resist as they were legion. To get something they all wanted, everyone had to come away without something they wanted.

Easily pleased

But still, the media hoopla says more about the global background mood of gloom and pessimism than it does about any genuine progress at Paris. People who are accustomed to expecting nothing are easily pleased by anything. This is how it was after Kyoto too. Back then, in 1997, it was only a few rich countries, not all of them. They did not offer to do much, and what they did offer to do they subsequently mostly failed to do, or pulled out of the agreement like Canada and the US, or refused like China to sign up in the first place. But you'd never have got that impression from the way the news media was bigging up the story. As they told it, Kyoto was a historic event, a watershed moment, a landmark agreement. A few politicians had got together and nodded in the right places over pious statements none of them needed, or intended, to stick to, and the media went crazy with delight.

So anyone tempted to criticise Paris as a box of empty promises needs to put it in context. It's better than Rio or Kyoto. It's definitely better than the Copenhagen disaster. At least it shows willing. But, let's face it, that's still not much. The agreed aim to keep global warming below 2°C is already too late and the additional aspiration to try to keep it below 1.5°C looks positively fanciful, requiring in the words of one climate scientist 'a true world revolution' to stand any chance of success (New Scientist, 12 December). There has been zero progress on adopting a universal carbon tax, widely seen as the only way of bringing environmental 'externalities' into the balance sheet or, in plain words, forcing polluters to cough up the cost of polluting. No targets are specified, because concrete imposed targets are thought to be what sank the Copenhagen talks. Instead countries declare their own targets, called individual nationally determined contributions (INDCs). However none of this legally binding (how could it be?) and there are no penalties for failing to keep to the INDCs.

Worldwide, fossil fuels still produce around 80 percent of the energy, while renewables account for around 1 percent. The problem is not just weaning the world off the one and onto the other, which partly depends on better energy storage technology and economy of scale, it's also about the practical obligation of managing to maintain trading equilibrium in a volatile market within the existing fossil fuel economy.

Thus, when oil and gas prices crashed last year, countries including the UK found themselves subsidising the fossil fuel industries to the tune of around £500 billion, around six times their investments in renewables, while simultaneously cutting back even further on those renewable investments. Even as the world's delegates were heading for Paris, many of their governments were in full flight in the opposite direction. Turkey, for example, is building more coal power stations than any other OECD country and could double its carbon emissions in the next 15 years (Guardian, 12 November).

Logic of capitalism

Insane? No, it's logical, at least within the circular logic of capitalism. And that's just the trouble. People don't really understand how capitalism works. A New Scientist article recently cited as an example of unrealistic optimism a statement by biologist David Attenborough, to the effect that 'One thing would halt climate change – if clean energy became cheaper than coal, gas or oil' (1 December). Quite correctly, New Scientist pointed out that there is such a thing as being too cheap, and that if renewables follow their present path of becoming rapidly cheaper (since 2009 wind energy costs have dropped by 60 percent and solar by 80 percent), they may no longer yield a profit and therefore start to haemorrhage investment. Meanwhile if fossil fuel demand falls, prices will fall too, leading paradoxically to a surge in both. We're seeing something like this at the moment, where we are supposedly running out of easily-extractable oil yet the price of oil has collapsed.

Anti-fracking advocates are similarly deluded into thinking their campaign is succeeding in the UK while the truth is that cheap oil is keeping investment away from alternative technologies.

It's enough to give anyone a headache, but this is the weirdly unpredictable rollercoaster of capitalist supply and demand, against which no government or policy statement has any defence. And this headache should surely give David Attenborough and others pause to consider that the market really doesn't work, at least not for the purposes of our collective human benefit, and that any proposed solution which involves the market is ultimately going to be fatally undermined by the operations of that same market.

What is being played out at the moment is a global Tragedy of the Commons, and Paris was the moment where all countries officially recognised it. But this Tragedy is not being caused by people commonly owning the planet and commonly ruining it, but by private wealth owners acting in their own interest and against all other competing interests, the very principle upon which capitalism is built and which it can never overcome.

As the COP21 talks were taking place in Paris, huge crowds assembled in the streets to focus the attention of the delegates on the task at hand. Some of their placards read 'System change, not climate change'.

They are more right than they know.

Paddy Shannon

Things fall apart (1997)

From the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Sucked in and spat out like raw eggs", was how one member of the British public described the unfortunates who invested and lost everything in Albania’s "pyramid funds". It seems that pure logic alone should have told those who thought they were on to a winner that all would come to nought, and if not that then surely the experience of Russians and Rumanians who had also been conned in the past by such "get- rich-quick" schemes.

The Albanian pyramid fund schemes were quite simple. Investors were offered large rates of interest from the money they had persuaded others to invest. Obviously, sooner or later, and especially in a rather insular population of three million, a saturation point would be reached when the funds ran out of investors’ money. Collapse was as inevitable as night follows day.

But after decades of poverty and authoritarian rule under a Stalinist regime, and then media stories about western living standards being just on the horizon, we can hardly blame the Albanian working class for falling for the scams. After all. even "enlightened” workers in the western world have been conned into depositing their money in dubious schemes for as long as living memory. Remember Maxwell and his pension scheme?

For the average Albanian the pyramid funds were deemed a safe bet because the government was believed to be closely involved and would act as protector of hard-earned money the people had invested. A further incentive was the fact that at the inception of the funds there was no banking system, and little prospect of work or other methods of making money. Little wonder then that so many—an estimated one million households—were prepared to invest all and everything into schemes which were advertised as charity and welfare funds guaranteeing regular pensions.

During the peak period of the pyramid funds, it was widely believed that the economic transition from authoritarian state capitalism to something resembling the western model was running smoothly. Even the World Bank believed that Albania was quicker at learning the western economic and democratisation process faster than Russia and other former eastern bloc countries. In truth, Albania was no different. What money there was in circulation had been earned by some Albanians working in other countries, for instance in neighbouring Greece and Italy. Furthermore, much money going into the funds was via drug-trafficking operations, arms sales to those involved in the nearby Balkan conflict and money-laundering operations.

Meanwhile, the European Union was only too happy to sanction aid schemes— $1,200 million a year—ignoring a scam that was being watched over by a corrupt Albanian government. Anything was better than "communism" and if Albania was en-route to democracy, then what the hell. Though the US did level token condemnation at the pyramid schemes, the business community in Britain, as well as certain leading politicians, supported Berisha's ruling Democratic Party. Berisha could even be found standing beside Margaret Thatcher on the Tory Party Conference platform in 1991.

The world capitalist elite was full of praise for Berisha. For one thing he was determined to see through painful economic reforms that would have given leading Tory Party officials an orgasm and he had achieved commendation for a rapid land redistribution programme. Regional support was reinforced when it was believed he could appease ethnic tensions in the neighbouring regions of Kosovo and Macedonia which had sizeable Albanian populations.

In November of last year many investors were enjoying a 40 percent return on their deposits, even reinvesting that. Thousands had sold their homes to fund their investments. By January, the popular Gjallica pyramid fund had collapsed and investors had lost everything. An estimated $2 billion was gone overnight.

In the Mafia town of Vlore, tens of thousands took to the streets, rioting and fighting with police, demanding their money back, incensed by the idea that they had been duped by the government. Berisha tried unsuccessfully to deflect the blame on to others, even promising to repay lost money. His words fell on deaf ears. Mass civil unrest followed in the towns of Fier and Barat and spread quickly to other parts of Albania. Army bases were attacked and looted, public buildings were firebombed and prisoners released from jails over-run by rioters.

Albania’s opposition parties co-operated to form a joint venture they named the Forum for Democracy, demanding not only the government’s resignation, but that it be replaced by a government of technocrats—"economic experts"— whom they argued could best handle die growing unrest.

As the tidal wave of protest spread, becoming bloodier by the day, Berisha declared a state of emergency and in an attempt to assuage the anger on the streets sacked his prime minister and government. With martial law in place, Berisha cut links to the outside world, blacked out the independent media, imposed a night-time curfew, banned political activity and ordered police to “shoot to kill" rioters. Anarchy waited in the sidewings.

WB Yeats once wrote a memorable verse that seems to have become a much-quoted epitaph for modern times:

"... Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." 

This verse is from the prophetic Second Coming and Yeats makes a verbal play on the phrase, making it refer to cyclical repetitions of unrest that have occurred before.

The words are well suited to the chaos that has returned to Albania after the overthrow of Enver Hoxha’s tyrannical regime in 1991 and which has plunged the country into a long and protracted period of unrest. They are finding a twisted echo in graffiti sprayed across walls the length and breadth of Albania: "Albania needs God again". The slogan hints immediately at the seriousness of events in Albania and of a desperation born of a belief that there can be no foreseeable mortal solution to the ongoing problems of Albanians.

In truth, the solution is wholly mortal. It comes of workers in Albania realising their common class position with their counterparts the world over and in rccognising that their god Mammon needs to be dismissed like every other god the master class would have us worship, before we can—any of us—live in comfort and security.

Indeed, if ever a model should be held up to workers of the insanity of the money system it should be the pyramid investment schemes of Albania. 

John Bissett