Imperialism and the ‘Labour Aristocracy’ (2020)

From the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Given that many believe that those living in the ‘Global North’ are living off the backs of the people in the ‘Global South’, we begin a multi-part series of articles correcting this, starting with the origin of this mistaken view.

Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto was not just a scathing indictment of capitalism; it was also a paean to its material achievements which were seen as preparing the ground for communism.

Remarkably anticipating today’s globally interconnected world, it spoke of capitalism’s expansionist dynamic, propelling it to spread out across the world from its heartland in Western Europe:

  ‘The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production’.

These days the shoe is on the other foot: the footprint of Chinese capitalism is everywhere visible in the guise of its mass-produced commodities and those ‘Chinese walls’ have long since become just a tourist attraction. As Marx said:

  ‘The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future’ (Capital, Vol 1).

However, this ‘diffusionist’ perspective has not gone unchallenged among those claiming allegiance to Marxism. In the early 1900s Trotsky developed his concept of ‘combined and uneven development’ which he coupled with another – ‘permanent revolution’ – in opposition to the ‘stageist’ model of the Mensheviks. That model maintained that a relatively backward country like Russia needed to pass sequentially through two distinct stages – a ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution (which socialists were urged to support) followed by a socialist revolution once capitalism had become sufficiently developed.

Trotsky argued that Russia exhibited a dualistic character -– a modern urban-based capitalist sector and a vast pre-capitalist peasantry – which necessitated a quite different model. The Russian bourgeoisie were too weak to implement a ‘bourgeois democratic’ revolution themselves. Consequently, it fell to the workers’ party to do this. Concurrently, the new ‘workers’ state’ should move towards implementing a socialist revolution. Hence the idea of a continuous ‘permanent revolution’ – two revolutions rolled into one.

However, Trotsky acknowledged that Russia alone lacked the productive capacity socialism required and so opposed the concept of ‘socialism in one country’ promoted by Stalin and Bukharin. For a socialist revolution to succeed this depended on developments elsewhere – notably, the advanced countries:

  ‘We rest all our hope on the possibility that our revolution will unleash the European revolution. If the revolting peoples of Europe do not crush imperialism, then we will be crushed – that is indubitable. Either the Russian revolution will raise the whirlwind of struggle in the west, or the capitalists of all countries will crush our revolution’ (1930, History of the Russian Revolution).

The ‘European revolution’ did not occur. Nor was there any good reason to expect it might. After all, most workers there had been patriotically supporting one capitalist bloc against another in World War One. But in Russia, too, the vast majority were not socialists either (as Lenin repeatedly acknowledged) and without a conscious socialist majority you can’t have a ‘socialist revolution’. Thus, having seized power in 1917, the Bolsheviks had little option but to develop capitalism.

The unpalatable implications of this for a self-proclaimed ‘Marxist’ like Lenin helps to explain his subsequent subterfuge in trying rationalise away developments there. Though he generally did not anticipate the coming upheaval in 1917 would be socialist, it later became commonplace among Bolshevik cadres to refer to it as a ‘socialist revolution’. That was only credible if you completely redefine what socialism meant which is precisely what Lenin did – identifying it with a form of ‘state-capitalist monopoly’ made to ‘serve the interests of the whole people’ (1917, The Impending Catastrophe and How to Combat It).

This new definition grew out of Lenin’s belief that state capitalism was a ‘step forward’ for Russia. Though he distinguished between ‘socialism’ and other forms of state capitalism – such as in wartime Germany – he nevertheless endorsed the latter too, arguing that ‘our task is to study the state capitalism of the Germans, to spare no effort in copying it and not shrink from adopting dictatorial methods to hasten the copying of it’ (1918, ‘Left Wing’ Childishness).

Lenin’s semantic gymnastics help us to better understand other aspects of his worldview – most notably how he envisaged a ‘proletarian revolution’ unfolding. According to him, this was likely to first occur, not where capitalism was most advanced (as Marxists contended), but rather ‘at the weakest link in the imperialist chain’. Russia, though itself an imperialist power, was a paradigmatic example, being heavily dependent on foreign capital. By breaking that chain here this would induce a domino effect, starting in Europe and culminating in capitalism’s overthrow worldwide. When this did not happen Lenin increasingly shifted his focus from Europe to national liberation struggles against imperialism in the ‘backward’ countries as the way forward.

For Lenin, imperialism was the ‘highest stage of capitalism’, commencing in the late nineteenth century. He was not referring to imperialism in general but rather a new and virulent kind of imperialism originating in certain structural changes within capitalism itself – notably, the emergence of ‘monopoly capital’.

In his book, Imperialism: A Study (1902) which influenced Lenin, the liberal, J.A. Hobson, wrote of a shift from ‘competitive capitalism’ to ‘monopoly capitalism’, after the late nineteenth century Great Depression. Monopoly capitalism was the ‘tap-root’ of the new imperialist era exemplified by the ‘Scramble for Africa’. Hobson opposed the then establishment view that ‘trade followed the flag’, arguing instead that trade could flourish without the need for colonial conquest.

According to him, what fueled imperialism was the accumulation of surpluses of capital beyond what the advanced countries could profitably invest domestically. These surpluses arose out of extreme inequality. Given the capitalists’ ‘higher propensity to save’, redistributing wealth in their favour, not only increased their savings (‘capital’) to the point of excess; it also reduced the workers’ income and thus exerted a restraining influence on their capacity to consume.

Consequently, there was diminished scope for the capitalisation of profits, because of insufficient market demand. This depressed prices and solidified a movement toward monopoly by making it increasingly difficult for small businesses to survive.

Lenin concurred with Hobson’s ‘capital surplus’ theory but disagreed with his ‘underconsumptionism’. As Charles Barone notes, Lenin seemingly argued that capital would be exported, ‘not because it was absolutely impossible to invest in the home market but because it could obtain a higher rate of profit abroad. The variance of profits existed ostensibly because of the uneven development of capitalism where capitalism had become “overripe” in some countries’ (Marxist Thought on Imperialism: Survey and Critique, 2016).

According to the labour theory of value, a higher rate of profit initially occurs where production is more labour-intensive (typically the case in the economically backward colonies) since ‘living labour’ is the sole source of profit. This rate tends to decline with mechanisation and industrialisation (as was happening in the developed countries) though that would be compensated for by an increase in the absolute mass of profits.

Normally, under competitive capitalism, this situation would be mitigated by the tendency for profit rates to equalise through the flow of capital towards industries temporarily experiencing above average profits, thereby increasing supply and thus eventually reducing prices (and profit rates).

However, in the context of the new imperialism, Lenin held that Marx’s 19th century model of competitive capitalism no longer applied. It was being progressively replaced by monopoly capitalism which interrupted this tendency for profit rates to equalise. As Paul Sweezy contended in The Theory of Capitalist Development (1968), under monopoly capitalism, the ‘equal profit rates of competitive capitalism are turned into a hierarchy of profit rates, highest in the most completely monopolized industries and lowest in the most competitive’.

If so, we would expect investment to incrementally flow into the monopoly sector at the expense of the competitive sector. Rudolf Hilferding in Finance Capital (1910) suggested this is precisely what was happening. Bank capital and industrial capital were merging into finance capital, the ultimate form of capital most closely associated with imperialism. Centralisation of capital would eventuate in the formation of a general cartel which would fuse with the state, replacing market competition with planned production. This probably influenced Lenin’s own thinking on the allegedly progressive role of state capitalism.

For Marx, super-profits could indeed arise from monopolies (and developments like technological innovations). However, he did not go as far as Hilferding in thinking this would kill off competition: Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists compete among themselves; competitors become monopolists (1847, The Poverty of Philosophy).

For Lenin, the primary source of super-profits originated not within the domestic economies of advanced capitalism, however, but rather from the export of capital to the colonised countries. These super-profits were enormous, being obtained over and above the profits which capitalists squeeze out of the workers in their own country (Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism).

One would expect this to be reflected in the pattern of investment given that capital tends to flow to wherever the rate of return is highest. However, the evidence suggests, firstly, that the great bulk of capital then, as now, raised in the advanced countries was invested domestically rather than abroad (as foreign direct investment – FDI). Secondly, most FDI was itself invested (as Lenin acknowledged), not in the colonies but in other advanced countries – particularly America. Thirdly, at this time there were few controls on the movement of capital internationally so it is unlikely that the equalisation of profits rates would have been significantly impeded. Finally, fluctuations in FDI flows tended to follow the same pattern as domestic investment, implying a roughly similar rate of return – a conclusion empirically supported by historians like D K Fieldhouse and others.

Bukharin, in Imperialism and World Economy (1915), wrote of two contradictory trends shaping modern imperialism. While monopoly capital made for the decline of competition domestically, internationally competition was intensifying in the guise of economic nationalism (mainly in the form of tariffs rather than capital controls).

Lenin called this state of affairs monopolistic competition – the imperialist conquest of foreign territories opened up additional markets to soak up the expanded output of domestic manufactured goods whilst affording opportunities to invest surplus capital in the primary sector of these colonies, employing a super-exploited workforce to produce cheap raw materials for export to imperialist countries themselves.

Thus, in contrast to Marxian diffusionist thinking, Lenin (following Trotsky) argued that imperialism shored up and perpetuated the ‘uneven development of capitalism’ and, with that, spatial variations in the rate of profit. Repressive colonial policies that pushed down wages, the establishment of native reserves to subsidise labour costs out of the proceeds of peasant farming and the persistence of labour-intensive production techniques constituted the material basis of these ‘imperialist super-profits’.

Before modern imperialism some countries (notably Germany) had been able to rapidly develop their economies, exploiting what Trotsky called the ‘privilege of historical backwardness’ and join the select club of imperialist powers. However, by the early twentieth century this was no longer possible. Those powers having carved up the rest of the world amongst themselves, one could only expand its sphere of influence at the expense of another. This is what led up to the First World War.

It was then, wrote Lenin, that the ‘world proletarian revolution’ was in the process of ‘clearly maturing’. The events in Russia, he suggested, could ‘only be understood as a link in a chain of socialist proletarian revolutions being caused by the imperialist war’ (The State and Revolution, 1917).

But Lenin’s reading of the situation was hopelessly misguided. A ‘socialist proletarian revolution’ would surely have entailed an emphatic widespread rejection of nationalism and, as noted, there was little evidence of that happening then. Indeed, ironically, Lenin himself was a fervent advocate of the ‘national liberation’ of ‘oppressed states’ from the ‘oppressor states’, convinced that political independence would strike a blow against imperialism and, by extension, monopoly capitalism.

Nothing could be further from the truth as the subsequent history of post-independence states in the Global South bears out.

Robin Cox

(To be continued)

Link to Part 2

Rear View: Sick society (2020)

The Rear View Column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sick society

‘Many Turkish womens’ right groups say the crackdown reflects a wider societal problem. They say many women who are being abused seek — but never receive — proper help. Melek Önder of the We Will Stop Femicide initiative told DW that Turkish police, the government and state officials must do much more to protect women at risk: “There were cases where women who were being violently abused asked for help, but nothing happened,” she says’ (dw.com, 24 July). The crackdown on protests is hardly surprising under the would-be Sultan, Erdoğan. Calling for wife beating to become a priority concern for the police, who prefer not to get involved, and thus give their tacit endorsement, is reformist folly, particularly when there are so many reactionaries such as Ebru Asiltürk, ‘the spokeswoman for womens’ affairs for Turkey’s Islamic conservative Saadet Party.’ She opined recently that ‘…the treaty [Istanbul Convention to tackle violence again women and domestic abuse, as well as promoting gender equality – which Turkey was, ironically, the first country to ratify!] would be like a “bomb” destroying Turkey’s traditional family structure.’ Femicide is indeed an indication of serious, wider social and sexual problems that are not confined to a small minority of deviants or reactionary regimes – Poland is another example – but are typical of a sick society. Neither changes in the law and policing policy, nor more prosecutions against wife beaters offer a cure.

Cultural pain and pleasure

‘The UK’s only centre dedicated to stamping out female genital mutilation is facing closure after the government pulled its funding, putting women at fresh risk of harm. Cash has been quietly withdrawn from the unit – set up by Theresa May, when she vowed to end FGM “within a generation” [likely as effective as Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to end child poverty] – leaving it struggling to survive…The crisis comes despite hundreds of new victims of FGM being identified every month and just one successful prosecution for the practice, despite laws being on the books for 35 years’ (independent.co.uk, 26 July). Women supporting the status-quo or reactionary cultural/religious practices abound, alas.

Back to the primitive?

There may be some socialists who would like to see the return of the woolly mammoth, but none favour primitive communism over the establishment of a post-capitalist world. ‘ Lotte Alberg, who owns two sex clubs in Amsterdam’s famous red-light district, is relieved to see her staff back at work. Club BonTon and Club LV both reopened this week after four months of lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic’ (pri.org, 6 July). To Alberg and Fuambai Ahmadu, an anthropologist who chose clitoridectomy as an adult, we say the only place for prostitution and FGM in a world freed from the dictates of capital and culture will be at the museum of antiquities. Engels showed that the suppression of women had its origin in the rise of private property. Marx saw sex work as ’only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer’ (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844). Rosa Luxemburg and Sylvia Pankhurst shared the socialist vision of Engels and Marx:

 ‘The mass of the proletariat must do more than stake out clearly the aims and direction of the revolution. It must also personally, by its own activity, bring socialism step by step into life’ (Rosa Luxemburg, What Does the Spartacus League Want?, 1918). 

‘Our aim is Communism. Communism is not an affair of party. It is a theory of life and social organisation. It is a life in which property is held in common; in which the community produces, by conscious aim, sufficient to supply the needs of all its members; in which there is no trading, money, wages, or any direct reward for services rendered’ (Sylvia Pankhurst, What is behind the label? A plea for clearness, 1923).

Mother and daughter

The decade leading up to 1914 and the ‘War to End All Wars’ was they heyday of the Suffragette movement under the leadership of Sylvia Pankhurst’s mother, Emmeline. Some readers may be intrigued surprised to learn that we opposed her and the Women’s Social and Political Union she founded in 1903.

Sylvia Pankhurst is better known for her part in the campaign for votes for all women as well as all men (one third of whom were denied the vote before 1918). Her mother, Emmeline, the authoritarian leader of the WSPU, was against this and campaigned instead only for votes for women on the same terms as then applied to men; which would have resulted in enfranchising more property-owners than workers. Opposing that was a no-brainer.

When Sylvia Pankurst wrote the passage above she had come to hold the (mistaken) position that the vote didn’t matter either for men or for women, arguing that communism (or socialism, she used both words to describe the same form of society) could only be achieved by anti-parliamentary action. A few years later, in 1927, Emmeline, who had been a jingoist in the First World War, was adopted as a Conservative Party parliamentary candidate; not surprising for someone who had stood for votes only for rich women.

Socialism can only be achieved with the majority support of women and of men. This point is so important that it forms part of our Declaration of Principles: ‘That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex‘ (emphasis added). This clause along with the other seven dates from the formation of our Party in 1904. Yes, the founding members, all 142 of them from Miss H. Aitken to H. J. Young, were remarkably forward-thinking in their assertion that women’s emancipation could only be achieved as part of the emancipation of all humanity through the establishment of socialism as described above by Sylvia Pankhurst.

Pathfinders: Two fingers to the virus (2020)

The Pathfinders Column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Two fingers to the virus

The continuing spikes in Covid cases around the world, in places where it was deemed vanquished or at least in retreat, starts to resemble the physical appearance of the virus itself, with little trumpets erupting everywhere from its spherical surface. But what’s also erupting is the trumpet fanfares of success as countries like India and Russia announce the mass production of vaccines they have supposedly developed for their home markets. How have Modi and Putin succeeded in leaving the rest of the world straggling behind them? Do they have better scientists than anyone else? Did they just get lucky?

In the case of India, it’s just political spin from the nation’s prime administer. “Not one, not two, as many as three coronavirus vaccines are being tested in India,” Modi announced with a flourish in Delhi in August, as if announcing the breakthrough of the century. But you can describe anything as a vaccine and announce tests on it. “Along with mass-production, the roadmap for distribution of vaccine to every single Indian in the least possible time is also ready,” he added with grandiose pomp but again without really saying anything.

Russia’s president Putin went further, however, by announcing that a Covid vaccine had been medically approved and would go into mass production by October. They’ve called it Sputnik V, as a two-finger reminder to the western world that Russia was first into space in 1957 with the Sputnik satellite. Ignoring calls for a global combined effort, the Russian Health Ministry has released no details of the Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials it ran last month. As for Phase 3 trials, apparently they didn’t run one.

Vaccine trials go in three distinct phases to check three distinct things: 1) will it kill or damage anyone (small test only), 2) does it do anything useful in any way at all (medium sample), and 3) does it do what we actually need it to do (big sample)? Paracetamol would pass the first two phases of clinical trials for the coronavirus. So would a gin and tonic. Almost anything would, apart from Trump’s bleach. Phase 3 is the one that matters. Without that, you’ve basically got nothing. Or you’ve got worse than nothing, because you could make Covid stronger (New Scientist, 12 August). Diseases and drugs vie in a constant arms race. If you attack a disease with a drug that’s meant to kill it, and the disease wins, it’s like Popeye getting a dose of spinach.

Vaccines are already under attack in social media, with anti-vaxxer messages outnumbering pro-vaccine posts on average by five to one, and a recent survey suggesting that, even if a vaccine is produced in the UK, up to 50 percent of the population might refuse to take it (New Scientist, 12 August). Let the idiots die, you might think, the world has enough fools, but their anti-vaxxer idiocy could kill others if it prevents society vaccinating its way to the long-hoped-for herd immunity. And any vaccine toted as effective which turns out to be the opposite will only strengthen the antivaxxer lobby and risk extending the pandemic.

Of course the Russians might be right about their vaccine, though the lack of transparency is not encouraging. Even by capitalist standards, Putin is not a team player. He will certainly be hoping the vaccine works, so he can use it as an armlock on the West, just as he did with gas supplies to Ukraine. Things in Belarus have been kicking off lately, with the repulsive and patriarchal troll Lukashenko stage-managing yet another 80 percent election ‘victory’ despite only scoring 3 percent support in polls, and calling on Moscow for support in the face of the gigantic social protests that followed. A working vaccine would be just the leverage (Ras)Putin needs if he’s considering an empire-building intervention into Belarus, as seemed a possibility when this went to press.

Big Bang in Beirut

The August warehouse fire in Beirut had already attracted a lot of media attention. As the smoke plumed up over the dock area, volunteer firefighters and a paramedic went in on the ground. On a balcony blocks away, a French architect live-streamed the fire to his Facebook friends, a bit of excitement on an otherwise dull day. Little flashes in the smoke suggested fireworks going off, which added spice to the event. Then a stupendous explosion, and a shockwave flashed outwards, ringed by a fat white condensation cloud that was eerily redolent of a small nuclear detonation. Cladding and glass flew like autumn leaves off apartment blocks across the city. The fire team was killed instantly. The architect, who thought he was at a safe distance, was also killed, and two hundred or so other people besides. The docks were obliterated, three hospitals destroyed, ships flipped, sunk or flung in pieces onto the land. The blast measured 3.3 on the Richter scale despite the force going mostly upwards. It was heard 160 miles away. It has been listed as the fifth most powerful, artificial, non-nuclear explosion in history.

Sympathetic city halls across the world draped themselves in the Lebanese flag, including Tel Aviv, though Israel and Lebanon are technically at war. As the fire burned out over the blast area, the recriminations started. How could nearly 3,000 tonnes of explosive ammonium nitrate have been kept for six years in a port warehouse without proper safety precautions, despite numerous warnings and six letters to judges, and without residents knowing about it? The conspiracy vultures descended to feast, but the simple answer was that people fucked up. The Lebanese cabinet resigned. The country’s food supply, in a pandemic, had been virtually destroyed.

Ammonium nitrate is quite like potassium nitrate, or saltpetre, and is popular because it’s cheap to make, good for fertilisers and, if you mix it with fuel oil, excellent for making bombs. Terrorists love it for this reason, which is why capitalist states are keen to phase it out. It’s not supposed to explode by itself but if you don’t store it right it will do, and has done repeatedly, killing thousands. Of the ten biggest explosions mentioned above, it was responsible for four.

We can’t say people in socialism wouldn’t use ammonium nitrate. We don’t know. But we can pretty much guarantee that they wouldn’t stuff thousands of tonnes of it next to flammable material in a forgotten warehouse for six years just because of a legal dispute over who should pay the port fees after the original shipowner went bankrupt. There are bound to be accidents in socialism too, but they wouldn’t be because of arguments between jobsworths about who owed money to whom.

Paddy Shannon

Popular Marx (2020)

Book Review from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Compendium of Karl Marx’s Capital. By Carlo Cafiero. Anarchist Communist Group. 2020. 100 pages

Marx’s Capital, first published in German in 1867, is a tome of over 1,000 pages and so not an easy read. As a result, ever since the working-class movement took off in the 1870s its content has been popularised in shorter works. This is an Italian one from 1879. It is accurate enough with long passages from Capital, though Cafiero’s conclusion expresses a rather romantic view of ‘revolution’.

Cafiero was a member of the International Working Men’s Association and met and corresponded with Marx and Engels but who in the end sided with Bakunin when the split came and became a populariser for ‘anarchism communism’, i.e of those anarchists who stood for a society where the means of life were owned in common and the principle of ‘from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs’ applied (as opposed to ‘to each according to their work’ as favoured by other anarchists). His pamphlet Anarchism and Communism puts the case for this (which we call socialism) rather well.

Despite opposing Marx politically, Cafiero accepted Marxian economics, and later anarchists translated his pamphlet into French and Spanish, a tacit recognition that anarchist attempts to develop an alternative analysis of the capitalist economy (as fellow anarchist-communist Kropotkin attempted) had failed. In their introduction the ACG go so far as to describe Capital as ‘a superb contribution to our revolutionary understanding’ and to recommend it to anyone who wants ‘to understand how the system works in order to fight and ultimately destroy it.’ We don’t disagree of course but it must cause raised eyebrows amongst some anarchists.

Unfortunately, it is not a good translation. Why, for instance, are the words ‘currency’ and ‘salary’ used instead of ‘money’ and ‘wages’ as in Marxian economics in English? And there is a glaring error on page 58 where Cafiero is made to say ‘therefore, salary cannot represent the price of labour power’; which is wrong both in terms of what Marx held (wages are precisely the price of labour power) and of what Cafiero himself had written in the preceding paragraph. Socialist Party members familiar with Italian say that a correct translation of what Cafiero wrote in Italian is ‘therefore, wages can represent nothing other than the price of labour power’ (they advise that there are other, though less serious, mistranslations too.) It is a bit odd that the ACG did not pick this up and add a correction as that wages are the price of labour power is a basic part of Marxian economics.

Adam Buick

Right Here (2020)

Book Review from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Far Right Today by Cas Mudde (Polity £14.99.)

The term ‘far right’ as used here refers to organisations which accept that inequalities between people are natural and positive. It covers both the extreme right (which includes fascism and rejects democracy) and the more numerous radical right (which is mostly populist and opposes liberal democracy, which in turn involves rule of law and respect for minority rights). In the EU, the far right has gained support in recent decades, from around one percent of the vote in the 1980s to seven percent in the 2010s. As Mudde says, they are ‘here to stay’. The radical right, in particular, is more or less part of mainstream politics. An example of an extreme right political party would be Golden Dawn in Greece, while the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) would be radical right.

The book deals with a lot of parties and other organisations, in many European countries but also the US, Brazil and India. Thus it is on the whole more of a helicopter tour, though a useful and informative one, than a detailed look at specific movements or individuals. While there are plenty of differences among them, many views common to the far right can be identified.

They are nativist, combining nationalism and xenophobia, and often advocate ethnocracy (where citizenship is based on ethnicity). They are authoritarian, wanting law and order, a strictly-ordered society where infringements are severely punished, though they are themselves quite often violent. Immigration and the ‘refugee crisis’ (Mudde’s quotation marks) are central issues, with so-called security of nation or race seen as vital and as having a cultural component. They advocate familialism, with the traditional family seen as the foundation of the nation and – yet more jargon! – femonationalism (‘the use of women and women’s rights in support of nativism, in particular Islamophobia’). Their support for the family implies opposition to abortion, but they are increasingly tolerant of homosexuality.

One issue about populism is that its supporters claim to oppose an elite, the definition of which is not usually clear. Mudde states that mainstream politicians are viewed by the far right as a corrupt elite who steal from ‘the people’. He says also that much academic research shows that voters for the far right are motivated less by economic anxiety than by ‘cultural backlash’, which refers to mass immigration and the supposed rise of a multicultural society. So it seems in fact that little support for the far right is based on the existence of inequality or resentment at the power of the one percent.

Mudde describes the radical right as reformist but the extreme right as revolutionary, though without explaining or justifying this latter label. His final conclusion is that the response to the far right should be the strengthening of liberal democracy. Instead, it would be better to argue for a truly democratic classless society.

Paul Bennett

Capitalism’s World (2020)

Book Review from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: a Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet by Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore  (Verso £9.99.)

The seven cheap things are nature, money, work, care, food, energy and lives. ‘Cheap’ does not just mean low-cost, it is a strategy that provides as little compensation as possible in return for transforming production. This is part of the Capitalocene, a term the authors prefer to Anthropocene and which emphasises the way capitalism has changed the relations between humans and the rest of nature.

Each chapter provides a rapid run-through of various aspects of history. For instance, the chapter on cheap nature observes that indigenous people, in the Americas and elsewhere, were often regarded as part of nature and so should be enslaved, ruled and exploited by Europeans. In the seventeenth century, the productivity of labour in English agriculture grew massively, and far more people came to work outside farming; as part of cheap food, they were fed by grain imports from the US. Even a century ago, food made up a far greater proportion of average household expenditure than today. Rural people, as in Ireland and Peru in the sixteenth century, were often forced to move to towns and villages.

Cheap work involved far more than low wages. The spoils of war often involved slaves, including women for sexual purposes, and capitalism imposed longer working hours than people in earlier forms of society had been used to. There was cheap care too: the important work of caring for others was seen as appropriate for women. In the US much caring work is performed by low-paid immigrant workers, and it was recently reported that 4.5 million people in the UK have been forced under coronavirus to become unpaid carers.

Cheap energy resulted in a big reduction in the cost of producing iron, leading to cheap tools and machines. The sixteenth century saw a transition to large-scale coal mining in England and peat-digging in the Netherlands. Despite environmental objections, burning coal to power sugar refineries was legalised in Amsterdam over a century later, as coal was cheaper than peat. Controlling energy costs was one way of sustaining cheap work. Currently a switch to solar power would require a massive investment, and capitalists prefer to rely on cheap oil.

Cheap lives included racist characterisations of some humans (see above on cheap nature). More broadly, force and ideology combined to maintain cheap labour, cheap care, and so on. For instance, in 1575 Francis Drake participated in the murder of every inhabitant of an Irish island before acquiring greater wealth in the Americas and a knighthood. The nation-state became a technology of social control.

Patel and Moore’s book contains a great deal more, which we can’t cover here. The conclusion, though claiming to be revolutionary, discusses the idea of ‘meaningful, pleasurable work’ without saying much about what would be needed to realise such a ‘reparation ecology’.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: What is poverty? (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Huge rise in destitution for the poorest’ ran the headline in the Times (27 July) reporting on research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research. According to this think-tank:

  ‘Destitution is defined as income that is so low that a household is likely to lack essential provision of shelter, food, heating, lighting, clothing/footwear and basic toiletries in the immediate future’.

Destitution is a word socialists have tended to prefer to describe the situation of ‘the poor’ as the word poverty has a wider meaning.

In fact capitalism can be said to be based on poverty in that the vast majority of the population does not have enough of their own resources to live; as a result they are obliged by economic necessity to sell their mental and physical energies to an employer in exchange for money to buy what they need. In this sense all those in the working class are poor; it is part of the definition of the working class.

Other definitions of poverty don’t take the analysis as far back as this, but assume that most workers do have a more or less steady job and so do have resources to satisfy their basic needs. This is not entirely unreasonable as most workers do have a job and the regular income it provides and so are not deprived of some or all of the basic necessities of life. They are not destitute.

Academic, legal and popular definitions of poverty start from this point and define the poor as those who, for one reason or another, do not have enough money to satisfy all their basic necessities. In this sense most workers aren’t poor. Only those on very low wages or who are unable to find an employer or who are unable to work are poor. In other words, essentially what the NIESR mean by destitution.

Ever since the sixteenth century the state has had to make some provision for people in this position. For centuries it was called the Poor Law; today it’s Income Support as the minimum level to which the state will bring up a person’s income. When Marx was writing and right up until the 1920s such people were officially called ‘paupers’. Marx regarded one section of paupers as part of what he called capitalism’s ‘industrial reserve army’, i.e., that section of the working class that could be called on to serve as wage-workers in periods of capitalist expansion but which had to be maintained by the state in times of contraction. The NIESR report confirms that the number of the destitute does rise in a period of contraction (even though the present one is government-induced rather than a part of the boom/slump cycle).

It is not just socialists who feel the need to distinguish between poverty and destitution. Reformists have come up with the concept of ‘relative poverty’: ‘those who can scrape by on the basics but who cannot afford the normal activities and opportunities that average earners have access to’ (Big Issue, 21 February 2019). In Britain you are considered to be in this position if you are in a household whose income is less than 60 percent of the median average (i.e., of the mid-point of the range of incomes).

This concept has a number of drawbacks. First, it assumes that those with incomes above this level don’t have restricted opportunities. Second, it’s a moving poverty line as a household can find itself reclassified as not being (or being) in poverty without their income changing simply because the average income has. It is probably better called ‘relative low income’. Still, according to the government’s own statistics some 14 million people, or over 20 percent of the population, are in this position. Which is quite an admission and a condemnation of capitalism by its own standards.

Material World: Vaccine development: another market failure (2020)

The Material World Column from the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘There is just not enough profit margin in it for pharma companies. They live by profits and the rules of capitalism. And capitalism has no interest in human beings other than as consumers’
(Nobel laureate and immunologist, Professor Peter Doherty, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 April).

The pharmaceutical corporations would have us believe that without their investments in scientific research, millions of people would not benefit from the medicine they sell. These businesses are built upon a business model of maximising shareholder value — and hinges on short-term returns to seek maximum profits so their investors can achieve higher prices for their stocks and pursue higher returns for their dividends. We are told that without the pressure from competition and the promise of riches, drug companies would not invest in research.

Capitalists imagine a world in which free enterprise and free markets promotes a race to the top but this isn’t quite how things are in practice. It may sound counter-intuitive but the laws of capitalism deliberately restrict innovation, information and knowledge. Many in the pharmaceutical industry are bound by non-compete agreements in their employment contracts which prevent employees when switching jobs using prior experience to make meaningful contributions to a new employer. Patent protection allows the patent holder to charge high fees for the direct use or licensing of their discovery and to sue anyone who doesn’t buy this permission. Competitors are discouraged from trying to improve on products, knowing they would need legal permission and considerable time and money is spent on acquiring such permission. So the patent system shrinks the overall pool of innovators, slowing down progress.

Public health experts have warned for years that the world is at risk of a major pandemic, and the drug corporations showed little interest in preparation until this latest outbreak of COVID-19 offered an opportunity to rake in government subsidies and enjoy profits with minimal risk. Governments have eliminated many risks that had dissuaded drug companies from vaccine investments by bankrolling research, sponsoring clinical trials, and reducing liability for drug corporations.

Back in 2016, doctors at the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development created a potential vaccine for one deadly strain of coronavirus which they believed could be effective against the strain we face now but the project stalled when it struggled to secure funding for human trials. The lead researcher, Dr Hotez, told NBC, ‘We’ve had some conversations with big pharma companies in recent weeks about our vaccine, and literally one said, ‘Well, we’re holding back to see if this thing comes back year after year.’”

It is business logic which reflects the belief that vaccines for recurring seasonal illnesses, like the flu, are the more attractive investment. They promise a client base that can be mined over and over again. Capitalism steers R&D toward the largest profit in the shortest amount of time.

In 2017 a plan to speed up the development and approval of vaccines for priority diseases such as MERS and SARS, both of them coronaviruses, was put forward by EU officials on the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), a public-private partnership, but it was rejected by industry representatives of the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries. Informed sources commented that rather than compensating for market failures by speeding up the development of medicine, as per its remit, the IMI has been ‘more about business-as-usual market priorities’ and that the influence of pharmaceutical companies has led IMI’s agenda to becoming dominated by industry priorities, and side-lining poverty-related and neglected diseases, including coronaviruses. Drug companies have historically pleased investors by promoting vaccine development projects during disease outbreaks, then quietly dropping them later. Had there been more sustained interest, researchers would have more tools for combating the current outbreak.

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the workings of capitalist economics, laying bare the pharmaceutical industry. When faced with a global threat, one would expect worldwide cooperation and collaboration to contain it. The United Nations, International Red Cross and others said it was a ‘moral imperative’ that everyone have access to a ‘people’s vaccine.’ Sadly, such aspirations are unenforceable, despite the launching of some international initiatives.

While the World Health Organization has called for a COVID-19 ‘patents pool’ where intellectual property rights would be surrendered so pharmaceuticals could freely share data and technical knowledge and numerous participating countries have begun revising their licensing laws to allow them to suspend intellectual property rights, the response from the industry has been cool. Pfizer and some other major drug makers say they oppose suspending patent rights for potential COVID-19 vaccines.

The UK and the US refuse to support the WHO initiative and are more interested in siding with big pharmaceutical corporations than turning vaccine research into a genuinely collective endeavour. For the British and American governments the patent system is sacrosanct and they appear determined not to upset their own pharmaceutical corporations or the financial sector that makes substantial returns from these companies, which spend more money on share buybacks than on researching drugs. Now, a new term has entered our lexicon – ‘vaccine nationalism.’

National governments are neglecting the most effective and safe route to discovering speedy cures for coronavirus: by forgoing corporate profitability and intellectual property rights in favour of global cooperation through open and shared research.

The minority interests of economic and financial groups has placed profits for themselves above the common good. The chaos of the market must be superseded by a more rational system of planning – a socialist system, where drugs are produced to meet the needs of humanity. When it comes to the crunch, pharmaceutical companies treat healthcare as a commodity. For the pharmaceutical companies Covid-19 is a business opportunity.

Our competitive capitalist market is not a suitable approach for solving the problem. Socialism would apply an open, collaborative strategy to coronavirus vaccine development to assure a safe and effective vaccine will be made accessible to all and it would speed up the process of discovery as well.

ALJO

Capitalism and Democracy : Part 1 (2020)

From the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism: incompatible with democracy

Capitalism’s relationship to democracy is similar to a conversation in a film set in apartheid South Africa, where a lawyer addressing a client described the relationship between the law and justice in general as being similar to distant cousins who were not on speaking terms. Capitalism, as we know, is a world-wide system. However, the type of political system that underpins it differs in various parts of the world. In many places it operates on the basis of what are clearly totalitarian regimes, although even here terms such as ‘Peoples’ Assembly’, as in China, try to create the illusion that it contains democratic features. The dominant political system for organising capitalism is the mostly Western mode of liberal democracy (LD). It is this system that we will focus on here as it claims to be the only democratic system on offer, and organisations such as the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and National Endowment for Democracy attempt to export and promote this model to other parts of the world.

It seems that there is a widely held belief that capitalism and democracy go together almost as well as bread and butter and that therefore totalitarian regimes are seen as something other than capitalist. China and similar systems are labelled, quite incorrectly of course, as ‘Communist’. This linking of capitalism with democracy seems to be contradictory when one considers that it is based on the minority ownership and control of the means of producing and distributing wealth; meaning of course that the majority are separated from those means and therefore from any real control over their lives. So immediately the system of LD defines democracy in very limited terms. It is clearly undemocratic in terms of wealth production and distribution but claims to be democratic on the basis that on the political level it allows for a multi-party political system where a majority of the population, restricted generally only by age qualification, can vote political parties in and out of government, which normally occurs every four or five years. So the general opinion is that this is more democratic than the parts of the world that are governed by one-party states.

However, it can also be argued that this multi-party system does have advantages for a smoother running of capitalism. To begin with, the state can be described as little more than an executive committee to ensure the overall interests of the minority who monopolise the means of living. If a particular government is seen to be failing in this respect, normally due to some problem with the economy, those who hold economic power have at their disposal an alternative to take its place, and generally they have enough control over the prevailing ideas in existence to persuade the majority to vote in line with their thinking. So a multi-party system is a good arrangement for the minority capitalist class. Secondly, it is probably less costly in economic terms not to have to resort to maintaining the kind of state apparatus needed to support a totalitarian state. As the majority are convinced that they live in a free and democratic society, control over the population is easier.

Illusion of Political Democracy

However, it can be argued that even the limited democracy allowed for in the LD system is a sham. Whilst LD does allow for multiple political parties for the electorate to choose between, perhaps there is less difference than many might think between a one-party state and a situation where multiple political parties exist but stand for more or less the same thing. For example, there is little difference in real terms between the Democrats or Republicans in the United States or between the parties who might reasonably be expected to compete for government in places such as Germany, France or Italy. Here we are merely considering differences limited to the running of capitalism and not anything more radical. In the years running up to the election in December 2019 the situation in Britain was arguably somewhat different and so is worthy of examination.

Margaret Thatcher once suggested that one of her major accomplishments had been Tony Blair. It seemed that the Labour Party had been moving rightwards prior to Blair but it was under his leadership that the concept of New Labour really began to take shape. The policies advocated by this seemingly new version of the Labour Party meant that it was now in a position to challenge and perhaps end the Conservative Party’s long reign of political power in Britain. It was now seen by those who mattered most to be a party fit to take power and run capitalism in the right way. Things radically changed in 2015 when, after Labour’s defeat in the general election of that year, a subsequent leadership election led, much to the surprise of most people, to the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a long standing left-winger.

Whilst the background to these events is of interest, the relevant point to be teased out here is that the Labour Party under a left reformist programme was a rather different animal and definitely not one the capitalist class would be willing to accept as suitable for forming a government. From almost the moment he was elected there were moves to discredit his leadership abilities and most definitely his suitability to be a prospective Prime Minister; that was apart from personal attacks and for good measure his dress sense. The anti-Corbyn campaign was mainly administered by the mass media but was also supported by many of those close to the top of Corbyn’s own party including a substantial number of Labour MPs, so much so that after only about a year as leader Corbyn had to seek re-election. Despite all of this the Labour Party gave the Conservative Party a good run for their money in the snap general election called by Theresa May in 2017.

If a fairly recently leaked report into the internal strife in the Labour Party is anywhere near accurate, the surprisingly good showing of the 2017 Labour election campaign was the last thing that many near the top of the Labour Party wanted. Those who were totally opposed to the elected leader of their own party had to wait until the end of 2019 to achieve their goal when a disastrous election result for Labour signalled the end for Corbyn and led to another leadership election early in 2020. The election of Sir Keir Starmer who has been described as ‘soft left’ is probably seen as the beginning of the process to return the Labour Party to a situation where it can be viewed by those who matter in the capitalist system as a party fit to form an alternative government if the need arises.

This points out something about the level of democracy within capitalism. LD may be a multi-party system but to have much or even any chance of gaining political power the policies put forward have to be inside a very limited framework. A party needs to operate in very narrow confines even when it is only concerned with running capitalism. Take for example the Labour Party’s slogan for the 2019 General election ’For the many not the few’. That slogan, along with the way in which the Labour Party under Corbyn thought they could administer capitalism, not only sounded the alarm bells for much of the capitalist class but also caused dissent for many in the hierarchy of the Labour Party who saw even this kind of mild reformist programme for running capitalism as meaning they would very likely be unelectable despite the fact that they performed quite well in 2017.

By 2019 the Brexit issue was more at the forefront of the campaigns. Some have argued that the programme put forward in 2019 was much less radical then those of the 1960s and 70s. Following on from the Blair governments the dominant attitude of many in the Labour Party was that to win an election they had to advocate policies that either mirrored or were at least not that far removed from those on offer by the Conservative Party. The important issue now was not even trying to represent the many but who could run capitalism to the benefit of the minority who really mattered. After all, the only time that Labour had been in power in over forty years was the Blair administrations. Elected in 1997, the prime ministerial role was passed over to Gordon Brown in 2007 who was then defeated by Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010, following another periodic capitalist economic crisis in 2008. To be blunt, the Blair governments were more or less conservative in everything but name. So the last Labour government that was elected with something close to a traditional Labour programme was way back in 1974. Many of course will blame this on neo-liberalism but that is just capitalism operating in the only way it can.

As pointed out previously, LD has advantages over more authoritarian systems for running a society based on the rule by and for a privileged minority. As it is based on a multi-party political system it manages to create the impression that people live in a free and democratic society, thus making it easier to manage any opposition to it. For people have little to object to as they seemingly have the right to vote governments in and out of power and the right to protest and there exists a media which is seen as being independent of the state.

However, the right to vote on its own is no guarantee of democracy. As for the freedom to protest, whilst as with voting it is an important right, history has tended to show that whilst there have been many protests on many issues they have changed very little and fundamental change needs more than just protest movements, especially as they normally focus on single issues campaigns. As for the media such as television and the press, whilst it is, in theory, free from the state it is a powerful weapon in the hands of capitalism.

Managing Democracy

As capitalism operating under LD permits a limited form of democracy it needs to find a way of making sure that it can control the majority who are divorced from ownership, It needs a mechanism to replace the outward repressive state apparatus generally found in totalitarian societies, in order to maintain a compliant society; otherwise the democratic practices it does allow could be used by a politically conscious population to overturn the rule of capital. This is where the work of Chomsky (Manufacturing Consent) or more recently a book entitled Managing Democracy, Managing Consent edited by Rebecca Fisher come in very useful. This process could also be termed as the Construction of Reality. This is not a form of conspiracy theory where a group of powerful individuals meet and make certain plans to hold the population in check but is the natural outcome of a system of minority control operating with limited democratic rights which need to be controlled within.

To begin with, it is stating the obvious to say that in a capitalist society the means of communication are owned and controlled by members of the capitalist class who have no interest whatsoever in undermining their system. Not surprisingly as in capitalism the tendency to monopoly is an unstoppable force the media is owned and controlled by very few companies. This is highlighted by a report published in 2019 by the Media Reform Coalition on the ownership of the media in the UK. This states that just three companies, Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, Daily Mail Group and Reach, the publisher of the Mirror titles, dominate 83 percent of the national newspaper market. This is up from the figure of 71 percent only four years earlier. When online readership is included it means that five companies – News UK, Daily Mail Group, Reach, the Guardian and Telegraph control nearly 80 percent of the market. To quote from the Media Reform Coalition:

  ‘We believe that concentration in news and information markets in particular has reached endemic levels in the UK and that we urgently need effective remedies. Concentrated ownership creates conditions in which wealthy individuals and organisations can amass vast political and economic power and distort the media landscape to suit their interests.’

From time to time media outlets may question the way that capitalism is operating or favour one particular political party over the rest but any criticism it makes is within the boundaries which suggest that capitalism is the only game in town. In line with all capitalist companies, the corporations who own the mass media exist on a profit priority basis and much of their revenue comes from selling advertising space to their fellow wealthy corporations. The income from this source is estimated to be around 75 percent of a newspaper’s total income, even for the so-called quality press such as the Guardian or Independent. So there is no wish to bite the hands that feed them. (The source for much of the information on the media is Media Lens).

RDC

(continued next month.)

What do protests signify and why so many? (2020)

From the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just what is wrong with the world today, so wrong that there are huge numbers of protests in numerous countries with millions of people crying out for change? Some of these protests get much publicity, others in different parts of the world are rarely heard of except locally. A brief search on the internet for protests will supply reams of information from countries many people from the West will not be able to point to on a map, let alone be aware of the protest and its purpose – but they are there in great numbers and appear to be growing annually.

Nuclear Weapons

Different generations may have different perspectives as to the significance of any particular protest but as each generation grows older they can look back and possibly/probably have a different view from those of younger generations who are viewing the same events but as historical events. If we recall the early days of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) and the ‘Ban The Bomb’ banners, initially started by Bertrand Russell all those decades ago with the aim of stopping development of nuclear weapons and protecting the planet and humanity, and then we give serious thought to the years in between then and now, what do we find? In those six to seven decades research and development of such weapons has continued and a significant number of countries, including the UK, continue to produce and sell them at great profit. The humble atomic bomb of 1945 has now become a bomb of the past, superseded by incendiaries of much greater capacity. Since then waste nuclear materials have become a favoured product for use in depleted uranium weapons as used in Iraq for example.

Following on from the initial CND campaign, which clearly hasn’t seen success yet, came more generalised protests such as the Greenham Common women’s attempts to bring ongoing attention to the US Airforce base from where nuclear weapons were being deployed.

Year on year since the first atom bombs were dropped by the United States on those two towns in Japan, more countries of the world either developed or simply bought those weapons from countries willing to sell them for great profits.

And where are we now? How has protest affected the decisions of those in power to pay attention to calls for abolishing nuclear weapons? Some talks to limit the kind and size and numbers – talks but no action to speak of.

Global Warming/Climate Change

Around six decades ago there were strong warnings regarding the coming problems for the globe connected to human-made global warming. At that time the emphasis of growing movements and writers was on the rape and pillage of the worldwide environment and the urgent need to protect the planet for future generations. The result? A year on year increase of emissions, increased degradation of forests, over use of water leading to the increased disappearance of aquifers and huge increases in the number of migrants having no choice but to move away from such diversitiesadversities as drought, gradual inundation and loss of land for basic food stuffs.

Recently we have witnessed the Extinction Rebellion and global protests with the expected kick-back from media entrenched with the status quo. This topic now seems to be taken more seriously by many more individuals as time slips by but the action required against it is not being taken. Warning after warning is signalled telling of the enormity of the problem and still production for profit continues regardless whilst continuing to ignore the degradation of the planetary environment and the plight of climate refugees.

Racism

Surely no one now can be totally unaware of the history of slavery and the following knock-on effects continuously displayed and currently witnessed in the Black Lives Matter protest movement. Whilst the previous two paragraphs related to all life on Earth this topic reveals the division specifically between black and white individuals as a result of the despicable history of European colonialism. The evidence is clear that the legacy of colonialism of one form or another has left indigenous and black and brown people in positions of severe inequality. Both the US and UK’s statistics reveal inequalities in employment – from the securing of a job interview to rate of pay, education, housing, stop and search by police and especially imprisonment where numbers by percentage of population are highly disproportionate.

This protest has been alive for generations. Now we continue to witness an ongoing series of horrific deaths – murders(?) – of black individuals who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course there will be protests. Such an urgent matter does need to be addressed but this isn’t what is happening.

Why are there protests?

It becomes more apparent as time goes by that huge sections of the global population are standing up and shouting because they want to be seen and heard calling for action different from what their leaders are offering. Democracy, so-called, as it is displayed around the world is obviously not democratic enough for many. Voting for a candidate once every four or five years, for example, and then hoping that something will be achieved eventually is surely not how most would want it. They know their voice is not heard and is not likely to be heard or acted upon.

In one way or another all these various voices of protest seek to improve human society. Let’s assume that at some point one or more of the objectives are resolved to the general satisfaction of the protest’s supporters. Will those supporters be satisfied or will they then discover another problem to be solved? Recognising that any move in the direction of satisfying the protesters is likely to be insignificant, how long are supporters, or even generations of supporters, prepared to continue with their fight against what they consider to be wrong? Many protest movements have evolved over the years and are still unresolved. Some will be prepared to compromise and accept crumbs from the table leaving future protesters to attempt to take the protest further.

Reformism seems to have become acceptable to many as a way to achieve a particular end step by step but consider the track record of another attempt to improve things within the system, trade unions, a collective of workers pressing for improved conditions, better pay and other concessions from employers. Some will look back at the headier days some decades ago but the reality is that there are fewer union members year by year as new rules and regulations from governments are applied plus the downgrading of the general work force following massive offshoring of manufacturing. The bottom line is profit for employers and companies, not improved conditions for workers.

It should be noted that one of the issues referred to above, that of global warming, has suffered for years now from the added effects of reformism. Recall the long list of COP meetings (Conference of the Parties) established in 1985 supposedly in order to address the pending global climate problem. So many agreements to no avail, so much negative influence from corporations, so many more emissions, including those from the thousands of people attending from all parts of the planet, as delegates, media, protesters – and every meeting registering more annual negative effects.

Democracy

Current systems of ‘democracy’ around the world are seen by many citizens as worthless and lacking in what’s required of a true democracy, thus leading to increasing numbers of protests annually. All of what we can refer to as ‘single issues’ have relevance to any debate, however in isolation they face the power of the opposition, that is the power of the wealthy, the corporations, the capitalists and our elected representatives in hock to the capitalists. Many things are not allowed to change because that would affect ongoing profits. The capitalist system is far from democratic and must be overcome. Rather than be divided by all such single issues what is required is that as members of a global population we recognise that all of these issues are just parts of the whole, all should be gathered together under the umbrella of a true and inclusive democracy.

Janet Surman

60 Years for Socialism (1964)

From the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Original front cover of the September 1904 Socialist Standard reproduced on page 2 of the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard. 

News in Review: Maurice Thorez (1964)

The News in Review column from the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Maurice Thorez

Maurice Thorez, who led the French Communists when they were the largest political party in France, died last July. His career is a classical example of the Communist technique of forming alliances of conveniences, of employing any means to achieve their ends, of compromising and of plain double-dealing.

Thorez’s early years followed a familiar pattern of agitation and imprisonment. In the middle of this he was elected to the French Parliament and in 1930 became the party's Secretary-General. Then came these highlights in Communist history:—

• 1934. French Communist Party join the Popular Front Movement, in alliance with Leon Blum’s “Socialists” and Daladier’s “ Radicals.”
• 1936. Communists refuse seats in Blum's government, back strikers against the government.
• 1939. Communists support Russo/German Pact of non-aggression and friendship. Deladier declares Communist Party illegal. Thorez called up but deserts to Russia.
• 1940. Thorez and Duclos sign appeal which attacks the “warmongering French Bourgeoisie ” urges overthrow of Leon Blum. but omits to condemn the Nazi occupiers of France. Communist Party tries to obtain permission of German Occupation forces to resume publication of the banned paper Humanite.
• 1941 German invasion of Russia. French Communists join forces with de Gaulle, who excuses Thorez’s desertion and makes him Minister of State. 
• 1946/7. Thorez serves as Minister of State in governments under Gouin, Bidault and Ramadier until alliance between Communists, “Socialists” and MRP breaks down under the strain of Indo-China war.

Since then, the fortunes of the French Communist Party have declined. No longer are they the country’s largest party, no longer have they any prospects of filling important ministries in a government.

One of the men—Bidault—they once supported as an act of Left Wing expediency is now the darling of the Right-Wing extremists. Another—de Gaulle—is virtually dictator of France.

One thing, however, remains. The French Communists still trim their sails to catch the lighter breeze from Moscow, still recast their policies overnight to suit the interests of the Russian government.

This is established Communist policy all over the world. The Communists defend it by arguing that it is intended to gain working class support, and to elect a Communist government which will then introduce Socialism.

This policy has always been theoretically wrong and has been shown up as hopeless in practice. In many countries it has been exposed and France, where Thorez left a party in the depths of impotence and futility but still churning out the the old confusion, is one of them.


Meaning of affluence

One of the myths which have helped to buoy up British capitalism over recent years has been the great illusion of Affluence.

This “Affluence” has had some gaps in it glaring enough to be spotted by even the most deluded worker. Equally obvious should have been the mean standards by which working class conditions have been judged.

A cramped, nondescript little house which is being bought on a lifetime’s mortgage; a mass produced car at the kerbside; a television set. These are what add up to “affluence.”

How the ruling class—or the more perceptive of them—must chuckle at this massive deception! Because they are the people who know what affluence really means. They live in style, in what may fairly be described as houses. They do not fear the prospect of sickness, or unemployment, or old age, as do the “affluent” working class.

Consider, for example, the case of Mr. Michael Fitzgerald Heathcoat-Amory, ager 22, address Oswaldkirk Hall, Yorkshire. This young man’s income at the moment is £11,000 a year—interest from a trust fund left by an uncle who was killed in the war—and what the Daily Telegraph described as ". . . a large sum from other sources.”

But there has recently been some rearrangement in the affairs of Mr. Heathcoat- Amory. As the result of a High Court ruling, he will now receive a lump sum of about £175,000, which is around 65 per cent. of the original trust fund. The balance— about £85,000—will remain in trust, accumulating interest to be inherited by any children Mr. Heathcoat-Amory may have.

Now this is Affluence. And nothing done for it, by the young man or his children yet unborn, except to be conceived in the right womb, and born in the right room at the right time.

We have, of course, come across Mr. Heathcoat-Amory's name before. He is the nephew of the Mr. Derek Heathcoat-Amory who made his name as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who fed the pigeon on his window sill on Budget Day. The Chancellor’s job partly consists of trying to keep British capitalism prosperous by urging the workers not to press wage claims.

It is obvious that the Heathcoat-Amorys know it all—about poverty and affluence and about where they come from.


The Stock Exchange

What's that you're reading son?

It’s an ad. about die Stock Exchange- jolly interesting.

What’s it say?

Well Dad, it's written like a chat between a boy and his father. The boy’s doing some lessons at school on the Stock Exchange and he’s asking his Dad about them.

School, eh?

Yes Dad, and a posh one it sounds, too —boys called This Minor and That Major and their fathers are jobbers and things like that and I know that’s posh because the ad. says they're the people stockbrokers buy shares from and sell them to.

That’s real interesting, son. Anything else?

Well, it says the Stock Exchange benefits us all, Dad. And we all invest in it I know you pay the insurance man every week but you never told me that that makes you an investor. We must be posh! Think I’ll add Major to my surname.

Hang on, son. That isn’t why I take out an insurance. I couldn’t care less what they do with my premiums; I’ve got to pay them because on my money I’ve got to put something by for when I’m sick or when 1 retire. If there weren't insurance firms I’d probably keep it in an old sock or something.

You’re not like the fathers in this ad., then?

That's it, son.

Anyway, I suppose if you were an investor getting all those profits you wouldn’t really need an insurance policy or anything?

As they say in this ad., son, you’re catching on quick.

What’s it all about then, Dad?

Well, it’s true that I can invest in stocks and shares if I want to. It’s like the old song; if I didn’t eat I’d have money to burn.

But you might get dividends, Dad.

I might. Three or four per cent of what I’d invested, perhaps. I might even make a bit of money buying shares when the price was low and selling them when it was high . . .

But that cuts the other way. If 1 may say so, Dad, you might buy when the price was high and sell when it was low—so you’d lose money.

Correct But whatever happened I could never expect to make very much. How much can I afford to invest? And what sort of dividend or capital gain, as they call it, would I make on it? How long would that last if I got the sa . . . sorry, if I became redundant?

Not long. Who does make money on the Stock Exchange, then?

Just like in any other form of gambling —the big gamblers. But the dividends come from the profits which are made by people like me going out to work for an employer. And you, when you’re old enough to work.

What else comes out of the profits?

Well, an employer has lots of things to pay out of them—rent, interest on loans, perhaps, government taxes, and so on.

So where does the Stock Exchange come in, Dad?

Well, it only deals in the stocks and shares, which are the legal documents which give the right to the dividends. And if a company or something needs more money the Stock Exchange can organise it, by selling lots more of those documents. But this doesn’t alter the fact that profit comes from the exploitation of the working people.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t really necessary?

Well, Son, I suppose that as far as capitalism goes it isn’t a bad idea. Something's got to do the work of the Stock Exchange, just like something’s got to do the work of judges and policemen and insurance salesmen and the rest If they didn’t exist, capitalism would have had to create them, in a manner of speaking. But this makes no difference to you or me, or to anyone like us. We’d be better off in a world which didn’t need all those things.

So the Stock Exchange isn’t all it’s cracked up to be in this ad., eh, Dad?

Well, Son, like I've always said, don’t believe all you read in the papers.

Rachmanism revised

Fears that Rachmanism still stalks the borough of Willesden have edged the Council there into setting up a permanent rackets watchdog to probe housing scandals. (Kilburn Times, July 10th, 1964).

Social researcher Mr. Peter Whittaker has drawn up a Black Dossier to be studied by the Milner-Holland Committee. Labour Alderman Reg Freeson says that the rackets are still increasing in the borough; “Every housing racket we investigate we get the terrifying feeling that just around the comer there is another racket we cannot put our finger on.”

Councillor Winnick was even horrified to see fresh rackets on the council list this year. This was capped by Conservative Councillor Miss Wallis, who said, “Wherever there is a shortage you will find the spivs.”

Capitalist parties have always told us that they could manage the problems of society by just a little oil there, a tightening of a screw here; no need to get rid of private property, the profit motive or the wages system. Far too sweeping they said; it may be alright for later on, but we must deal with this or that problem right now. In Willesden they are not only still dealing with the immediate problem—it appears to be getting on top of them.

Shortly these same parties will be padding from door to door cadging for votes. They will point to their glowing records of social service and endeavour, and promise to cure what they promised to cure at the last election and the one before that, and before that, and before that . . .

M.Ps. who have been conspicuous by their absence from their constituency will soon be seen smiling concernedly on street comers, knocking on doors enquiring about the needs of their electorate. They do these things because they need the workers’ votes to give them power to run capitalism as they think best

While the workers support capitalism, the problems of poverty, rackets, bad and short supply, housing, crime and unemployment will continue. In its struggles on the international field, capitalism will often produce a war of some sort or the other.

Capitalism is one big Rachmanism. Since when have even the most pious of property owners been free of the taint of exploiting others? When the Rachmanites apply strong arm methods on a small scale on their tenants, isn't this what the Big Boys do on a large scale when they wish to annexe or “ protect ” someone else’s possessions overseas?

Rackets do not begin and end in Willesden.

The VC10

The VC10 affair was one of the government’s more publicised mistakes.

Aircraft are always newsworthy objects— nothing pleases a patriotic British worker more than reports that a British ’plane is selling well abroad. He enthuses over the aircraft’s sleek lines, over its tasteful livery. To him it is a lovely object, a thoroughbred—unlike American aircraft which, he thinks, are slipshod jobs whose engines are always going wrong and whose wings cannot be relied upon not to fall off.

So it came about that the VC10 carried a lot of hopes, including those of the government and the British aircraft industry.

But the clouds gathered quickly about the new airliner and rumours grew thick until BOAC’s new chief, Sir Charles Guthrie, in the unkindest cut of all, clearly indicated that the VC10 was not the aircraft he would choose if his airline was to run at maximum profit.

The government, falling between the two stools of its own support for the new ’plane and its unequivocal instruction to Guthrie to run BOAC as a purely commercial undertaking, compromised by cutting BOACs order and holding up some of the other aircraft already on the way.

This has made the Ministry of Aviation look rather foolish.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was expected to be a winner because it needed shorter runways than its American rivals— and could therefore land at places which were closed to the Boeing and the Douglas —but this advantage has been wiped out by the smaller airports lengthening their runways especially to take the big American jets.

Everyone now knows that the British Aircraft Corporation originally recommended building an aircraft almost identical to the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC8, but were overruled by the Ministry: who thought that an aircraft which looked different would sell better.

Everyone now knows that the VC10 was spectacular gamble and that it is Mr. Amery’s bad luck that it did not come off. But if the opposite decisions had been taken on the aircraft’s design they would also have been gambles, with no better chance of success than those which have collapsed about die government’s head.

All of capitalism's investment and production is a gamble, depending for its success upon the caprices of an uncontrollable, unpredictable market. This holds true for a barrow boy buying up a job lot of apples and for a great aircraft firm building a glamorous liner.

The VC10 will not be the last project, heavy with national pride and vested optimism, to crash before it leaves the ground

Race riots

In Harlem and in Rochester in the United States, in Singapore and in British Guiana, there are race riots—ugly, bloody affrays in which human beings suddenly descend to frantic animals.

In Germany the trials of the guards of the concentration camps, which were the obscene fruition of racial theories, drag on, revealing their sickening evidence of men at their most degraded.

In South Africa the Nationalist government continues its dour, inflexible policy of apartheid, while riot simmers beneath the thin crust of surface peace. The Australian government refuses permission for a Burgher family from Ceylon to land because they are not “. . . substantially of European origin,” but it does not say exactly what this means.

All over the world, racial strife continues. In many cases it needs only the most trivial of incidents to spark off a storm of violence and counter violence which seems almost to have no end.

Racial theories are a chronic sickness, holding back the progress of the human race to a sane and harmonious social system. Even more, they are based on the absurdest of fallacies, are shot through with inconsistencies and are usually inspired by the most primitive of suspicions.

The interests of working people in all countries are the same. Society's crying need is for the international unity of the working class to abolish capitalism and substitute for it a cooperative world of abundance and freedom.

It is the need for dignity, for progress, for survival. The people of the world can have Socialism if they want it or they can choose, in one way or another, extinction.

“Young Socialists”

Our recent feature “Labour's Young Lions” has provoked the usual sort of reaction from the Young Socialists.

The June issue of Young Guard, their paper, offers the customary sneer about ". . . the revolutionary virgins in the Socialist Party of Great Britain . . .”, but carefully avoids any attempt at dealing with our criticisms.

The Socialist Standard has replied to this, inviting Young Guard to send us a reasoned argument, which we will publish with our reply.

But the young lions are silent, and still. So far (mid-August) they have not replied.