News from the World Socialist Party of Ireland (1966)

Party News from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We distributed 30,000 copies of our Election Statement in eight areas of Belfast, in Derry, Armagh, Newry, Portadown, Lurgan, Larne, Carrickfergus and Lisburn. This was the widest and biggest distribution of a single Socialist statement in Ireland, 

We also distributed 300 copies of 'Comment'. This activity look its toll of Party funds. Had it not been for the generous help of the SPGB it would not have been possible to campaign on such a large scale. But at least on this occasion all the money was spent on actual propaganda and did not find its way into government funds in a lost deposit! We are now recovering and have plans for producing a new leaflet for 'follow-up' distribution in the areas where we put the Election Statement."

The Passing Show: Radio Rot (1966)

The Passing Show Column from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Radio Rot

I have to make an admission that I do like listening to the radio—and watching the TV, too, when I get the chance, which, as I don't have a TV set, is not very often. Of course, you have to use discrimination in choice of programmes and learn to resist the mesmeric effect of the box. There is, after all, a little switch on one side and this must be firmly turned off if you are not to sit through programmes such as "Take Your Pick" with Michael Miles or “Juke Box Jury" with David Jacobs. This was a cruel lesson I learned when I did have a set, but maybe there was some value in watching them once or twice—a sort of immunisation process.

Of course, not all the radio and telly programmes are “light,” at least not intentionally so. There are some pretty good documentary features which are useful as far as they go, and the B.B.C. does encourage some controversial discussions in programmes like “Any Questions.” And they can be quite enjoyable providing you don’t get too het up at the puerile questions which they deal with in all solemnity. If you are a Socialist, you will naturally feel it just that much more acutely.

For a Socialist is so very aware of the really big problems of the world and how to solve them, that it must be like twisting the knife in a wound to hear the questions panel heatedly discussing whether Bernard Levin should be more polite or whether gambling winnings should be taxed. The piffling, inconsequential drivel that some of the “personalities" talk at a time when millions are starving and the world is dangerously close to a third big war, has to be heard to be believed. Even the “serious" commentators rarely get anywhere near a fundamental consideration of the way we live today.

But after all is said and done, it should be no more than we expect. The BBC, ITV, Pirate Pops as well, can only in the main reflect public interest and as we are all too painfully aware, this does not include a serious consideration of the Socialist case. Which is the real reason behind the consistent refusal of the powers-that-be to grant time on the air to our Party. When Socialist ideas are much more widely accepted and discussed we will not have to pester the authorities for a measly five minutes. They will be asking us instead.

Goodbye to the Afternoon Nap 

It is just another of the many nasty tendencies of capitalism that it is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to abolish or whittle down those of our leisurely customs which interfere with production and profits. In our December issue, we recalled how the 12 days of Christmas was very quickly reduced to one when the industrial revolution got under way, and although we get more than one day nowadays, it is nowhere near the original number. But even then, we were wrong to take it. according to some newspapers who seem to place the national productivity drive before all else.

Then again, some of our older readers may recall the circumstances under which pub licensing hours in this country were restricted. When my father was a boy, the public houses were usually open all day. some from 6am till midnight, but the First World War stopped all that. It was found that there was a tendency for munitions workers to spend their overtime earnings over the bar and to miss some of their shifts, so the licensing hours were severely curtailed and remained essentially so until fairly recently when there were minor revisions. Nothing really to do with any concern for our health—this time it was munitions production which caused the axe to be wielded.

No doubt you can think of other examples such as the shifting of May Day to the first Sunday in the month, and thus you might be inclined to think that it's a good job workers have struggled over the years to increase the paid holidays allowed by their individual employers.

Britain is not, of course, the only country where the cry is for more work and less leisure. You would never have thought that the afternoon siesta, such a part of life for those in hotter countries, would go: yet this is what looks like happening in Chile. The government there has decreed that the four hour lunch period be reduced to 30 minutes, and that all bars close between mid-day and 7pm each day.

Perhaps, as the Evening Standard editorial of January 8th pointed out, somewhat slyly, the indigestion pill manufacturers will do a roaring trade and the ruling class will get some increased production and profits. But for the Chilean workers it is the same sad story of the reduction of their leisure time and per- haps an increase in stomach ulcers. For as the Evening Standard also points out: "A half-hour hastily snatched lunch breeds ulcers faster than almost anything else in the world.”

More New Year Hypocrisy

It was perhaps in the nature of capitalist polities that the late premier of India, Mr. Shastri, should receive praises and tributes following his death on January 11th. With China breathing hotly down their necks, there had been strenuous efforts by USSR to patch up the India-Pakistani quarrel and Mr. Shastri's death occurred only a few hours after he had signed a peace agreement with the Pakistan president Ayub Khan.

Doubtless it came as a shock to various statesmen, not least the Soviet Prime Minister, Mr. Kosygin, but Shastri's demise is not likely to have any great or lasting effect on the world situation, despite the sloppy tributes of Harold Wilson and Lyndon Johnson. The U.S. President was true to his usual hypocritical form when he spoke of the news as “a tragic blow to the hopes of mankind for peace and progress.”

Indeed, the history of Shastri's short term as Premier (a mere 18 months or so) has been anything but peaceful. In that time he had been involved in clashes with China and Pakistan and had openly stated that his government were considering the production of a nuclear bomb. Previously he served under Nehru, whose government went to war originally with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue, and not so long ago annexed Portuguese Goa. In dealing with striking workers, Shastri’s government was just as brutal and repressive as its predecessors.

But all this you are not supposed to remember as canting politicians heap praise on the dead man’s shoulders. And the tragedy of it is that many workers will indeed not remember, even though the events were all so very recent. It is the Socialist who will bear it all in mind and point out that despite his apparent gentleness as a person, Shastri was one of Capitalism's politicians, and in that role, he was as much an enemy of the working class as Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler.

Gaspers

  “In 1960 nearly seven and a half million people in the United Kingdom were living in poverty, defined as below the National Assistance standard." (Report by Professors Smith and Townsend 23-12.65.)

  "Mr. Jack Stone, who has resigned as managing director of Lloyds Packaging Warehouses, is reported to be in line for a Golden handshake 'well in excess of £50,000'." (Guardian 10.1.66.)

  "Protecting this (copper) trade is not merely a matter of charily towards Zambia since about 45 per cent. of Britain's copper comes from the Zambian mines." (Guardian report 7.1.66.)

   ". . . Only by accepting a less ambitious full employment target will employment be brought under control." (Daily Telegraph editorial 10.1.66.)

  "Aspro-Nicholas Ltd. said last night that it was prepared to send Oxfam and War on Want £250,000 worth of tablets which were being withdrawn from the market . . .” (Guardian 11.1.66.)

   “The Duchess of Norfolk is planning a banquet for 300 dogs in the grounds of Arundel Castle, to raise funds for a stray dog Sanctuary." (Guardian 10.1.66.)

  

   ". . . Labour won the last election, and is proving a visibly non-Socialist party." (The Economist 8.1.66.)

  "Christmas, for me, is out of this world” (The Bishop of Guildford in his Christmas Day broadcast.)

Eddie Critchfield

Russia (1966)

Book Review from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Atlas of Soviet Affairs by Robert N. Taafe and Robert C. Kingsbury (Methuen, 7s. 6d)

This is the latest in a paperback series; others have been Atlases of African and of World affairs

Maps are useful, indeed fascinating, things also be exciting, and can tell a story of more than a country's physical features.

An Atlas of Soviet Affairs illustrates the growth of the Russian state, from the Great Duchy of Moscow in the late 15th Century. It shows the steady Russian expansion into Europe and the Far East, the spheres of influence which the present great Soviet Union dominates and where it now conflicts with the United States.

There is one map which tells, with its arrows and dotted lines, of the deportations under Stalin of the Volga Germans, the Crimean Tatars and the North Caucasians. The text, in a stunning understatement, says that the deportations took place ". . . often with great loss of life . . ."

There is a lot to be learned from this little book, of the Soviet Union's physical geography, its history, economy and communications. The idea behind it, if not new, is excellent; but the question is whether a paperback can do proper justice to it.

The authors are University professors in the United States. They are not misled by the all too common delusion that the conflict between Russia and America is one of ideology; they show that it is anything but.

The commentary alongside the maps is balanced and occasionally there is a flash of humour, grim or wry or sardonic: ". . . the abstention of Albania from COMECON is a relatively minor economic problem and is probably compensated for by the recent addition of the Mongolian People's Republic (Outer Mongolia)"

Ivan

Government (1966)

Book Review from the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Insight into Government by Lord Craigton, Pitman 21s.

This little book is intended as a primer for those who want to play the game of bourgeois politics. It is written by a Conservative peer for the benefit of “individuals and organizations who desire to exert influence on the British Government” in order to “get things done”. The multitude of tedious activities with which Lord Craigton concerns himself are those aimed at the endless reform of capitalism. Naturally, the socialist movement — whose object is the establishment of a system of society on an entirely different basis — is considered too trivial to warrant any consideration.

We can, however, endorse two of the points which Lord Craigton makes. Firstly, that the House of Commons is the seat of power in Great Britain. Secondly, that the state machinery of capitalist society is manned by paid officials and civil servants members of the working class. But his lordship is blissfully unaware of the irony of such a situation—where the working class loyally runs capitalism in the interest of its capitalist masters and uses its voting power to perpetuate its own degraded status.

This book, then, contains little of any importance to the workers. Socialism will not be achieved by attempts at exerting pressure and influence on a government which has been elected for the declared purpose of administering British capitalism.

Those who fooled themselves into thinking otherwise are having this lesson painfully taught to them at present. But one useful fact does emerge from Lord Craigton's sketch of the machinery of government If a majority of working men and women, equipped with a knowledge of what socialism is and how it may be realised, chose to elect socialist delegates to the national parliaments nothing could stand between them and the classless reorganisation of society. But the workers have no need to glean such information from Lord Craigton’s over-priced book. Throughout this century the SPGB has been putting forward the case that, once a consciously organised working class has captured the coercive apparatus of the State, this may be converted into the agent of emancipation.

As long as working men look to their leaders and the apologists of capitalism for political inspiration they will stay where they are—propertyless wage earners at the whim of capital. When they choose to shake off their lethargy and work it out for themselves there'll be a different tale to tell. Until such time there will continue to he a market for such books as this.

Ivan

Letter from Austria (1966)

From the February 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Like many other parts of Europe, Austria has been celebrating a jubilee— the twentieth anniversary of “the liberation from the autocratic rule of Hitler Germany’’. We have for months past been reminded of the marvel of reconstruction, the rebuilding of the City of Vienna, in a thousand variations we have been told of the “Austrian Miracle”, praised for our industry, the return of prosperity, and the country's great reputation in the world both East and West.

Remember the tragedy of Vienna, devastated by War and thrown into a chaotic state, without transport, gas, electric or water supplies. Women with pails and bottles trekked to the Vienna Woods to get water from the springs there, while old people and children ransacked the forest for fuel. In the city, the fire brigades just could not cope with the fires which raged everywhere. The police force ceased to function for a time and looting was rife. As the Arbeiter-Zeitung of April 27th last says: —

  Deserted flats looted; the ordeal of tens of thousands of women outraged by demoralised and degraded soldateska; what the old and sick suffered in those days beggars description. With no hospital transport, the death rate rose enormously; the dead were packed in paper and transported on improvised vehicles to the cemetery, or unceremoniously interred in the nearest park.

  And now we are bidden to admire the wonderful reconstruction, including that of the army, which celebrated the day of peace and freedom by holding the greatest military parade ever in Austria.

Had the collapse been caused by an earthquake or some other blind force of nature, bitter memories of the ordeal would understandably be eclipsed by the general satisfaction and pride in the speedy work of reconstruction. But it is the capitalist class who have good reason to rejoice. Indeed, eleven thousand of them can now show taxable incomes of a million schillings a year, while in Germany, the “patriotic zeal” has produced sixty-six thousand millionaires.

For the workers it was not so much the impulses of patriotic fervour as the urgent need to find employment and earn wages again, that compelled the destitute to take up any dirty and miserably paid jobs in the way of clearing up the mess and setting the factories and services going again. What indeed has the working class to show after those twenty years of toil? The same sort of poverty and insecurity as before the war; a worse housing problem, not to mention the fear of yet another war.

The question we should in any case ask is: Why had this tremendous work and painful healing of the awful wounds become necessary in the first place? The responsibility' for the catastrophe must be sought within the structure of modern capitalism throughout the world—it was not due to some force in nature beyond the control of man. And so it should also be asked, if such horrors are foreseeable and preventable, why were they not prevented? Because quite clearly capitalism’s top luminaries, the supposed experts on social affairs, are quite powerless to do so. The system they are running is bigger than they, which explains why they have not fulfilled their election pledges or solved any of the major social problems.

And when the war came along, they were caught up in its maelstrom and look an active part in. or helped to organise the orgies of massacre and devastation. Some also committed “atrocities” and were eventually tried, convicted and hanged. How then can the mass of humanity—the “non-expert” and “non-educated"—continue to trust leaders and “Personalities”? The answer is that they will do so, with continuing misery, until they realise that what they need are not “great men" but Socialist knowledge and the self reliance arising from it.

No blind forces of nature can be blamed for the destruction of Warsaw. Rotterdam, Stalingrad, Dresden, Hiroshima and Coventry, the devastation of London, Berlin and Vienna. Responsibility for this must rest squarely with world capitalism. This system exists for the profit of a privileged minority, not for the benefit of humanity as a whole.

Obviously, then, there is nothing surprising, mysterious or inexplicable if periodically such a system of inherent glaring contradictions and evils runs amuck and plays tricks on normally intelligent people, “intellectuals” and “non-intellectuals” alike, who operate, serve, and vote for it. It breeds war and strife in which the masters use every device to stimulate antagonism and hatred between the world's workers who are to do the fighting.

As our pamphlet The Racial Problem so aptly put it:

  From the cradle to the grave, they are subjected to a mass of propaganda which deadens their minds, works on their prejudices, and endeavours by every means possible to turn their thoughts away from the real cause of their troubles—capitalism, with its wages and money system.

Rudolf Frank

Voice From The Back: Poverty and Wealth (2011)

The Voice From The Back Column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Poverty and Wealth

American patriots like misguided patriots elsewhere in the world are fond of holding up “their” country as a paragon of fairness and equality, but where is the equality in the following figures quoted by the ultra patriotic CNN? “The richest 1% of U.S. households had a net worth 225 times greater than that of the average American household in 2009, according to analysis conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. That’s up from the previous record of 190 times greater, which was set in 2004” (CNN Money.com, 23 December). The truth is that the USA like every other country in capitalism has a wide gap between the haves and the have-nots.

Poverty and Ill-Health

It is often claimed by supporters of the NHS that while poor people may live in sub-standard housing and experience economic insecurity they have at least access to excellent medical care, but this is a complete fallacy. “Maternity services are close to breaking point and care for mothers is worsening, the UK’s leading midwife warns in a dramatic plea over the declining state of childbirth on the NHS. Labour wards are struggling to give women the proper quality of care under the ‘relentless’ pressure of a record birth rate, staff shortages and increasingly complex births, says Cathy Warwick, general secretary of the Royal College of Midwives” (Observer, 2 January) So you are exploited inside capitalism but at least you were born unlike some members of the working class that were even denied that by capitalism’s drive to cheapen production – and even reproduction.

Poverty and Sex

Every Hollywood romantic screenplay and lots of popular songs depict the magic of love but for many members of the working class the reality is much more sordid. “A fifth of homeless people have committed ‘imprisonable offences’ to spend a night in the cells and more than a quarter of women rough sleepers took an ‘unwanted sexual partner’ to escape their plight, new research out today shows. A survey of more than 400 rough sleepers by Sheffield Hallam University reveals the desperate steps taken by the homeless to find shelter…Unwanted sex has become a way out of homelessness for many. One in seven men and 28% of women had spent a night or longer with an unwanted sexual partner to ‘accommodate themselves’” (Guardian, 23 December). The reality behind the Hollywood fantasy and the pop song magic is that poverty destroys even the best of human aspirations. It is not the sort of thing Frank Sinatra would sing about – is it?

Poverty and Credit Cards

One of the jibes often thrown at socialists is that the concept of world socialism is an idea that has been outgrown by the 21st century. We are constantly being told that we live in a new modern society where far from suffering the poverty of the 19th century members of the working class now have bank accounts, credit cards and mortgages. This rosy portrayal is hardly backed up by recent figures released by the charity Shelter. “Nearly one in ten of those in private rented accommodation used their credit card to cover the housing bill in the year August 2010, while about 8 per cent of mortgage borrowers did the same, the housing charity said. In many cases, residents struggling to make ends meet have withdrawn cash from their card to pay housing costs, pushing them deeper into debt” (Times, 6 January). Charity claim that two million now use their cards to pay their housing costs. This is hardly the new poverty-free society that its supporters claim.

It's Not Cricket

As children if we happened to be born in England we were taught about “sizzling sixes over the tuck shop roof” and nonsense about “play up play up for England chaps” and other such foolishnesses about cricket. If you happened to watch the England v. Australia cricket matches on TV you may have seem grown-up children still indulging in that nonsense. They call themselves “the Barmy Army” and who are we to argue with that adjective? Behind the worthwhile sporting endeavours of all the cricketers concerned lurks the usual sordid commercialism of capitalism. “This week, the England and Wales Cricket Board will try to capitalise on the first Ashes victory in Australia for 24 years by auctioning the rights to sponsor home Test matches from 2012. It is talking to a number of potential replacements for the current sponsor, npower, in the hope of netting up to £5m, 25% more than the previous deal” (Observer, 9 January). You may have seen it as a great 3-1 victory – they saw it as a great commercial opportunity. That is capitalism for you.

The craziest border in the world? (2011)

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

All borders are mad – it goes with the territory – but perhaps the world’s craziest border is that between India and Bangladesh.

The very existence of the border is itself an act of madness, even in nationalist terms. This can best be seen on the western section of the border. On the Bangladeshi side of the border, Bengali speaking farmers tend their crops. Whilst on the Indian side of the border Bengali speaking farmers tend their crops! Linguistically, ethnically and culturally the people of Indian West Bengal and Bangladeshi East Bengal are identical, differing only in religion. The Islamic religion forms the sole basis of Bangladeshi nationalism, the state’s only reason for existence, the only reason for the existence of the border. Nationalism based on religion is a lie compounded by falsehood: the lie of the mythical nation overriding all real class interests; the childish falsehood of the big man in the sky. In any case, neither Bangladesh nor India are religiously homogenous – around one fifth of the population of Bangladesh are Hindu, despite years of oppression, and a similar proportion of Indians are Muslim – making India the world’s third largest Islamic country.

The line of division between India and Bangladesh has its origins in the 1947 carve up of Imperial India. East Pakistan, as Bangladesh was known until 1971, was constructed in great haste from the districts of the Province of Bengal with a Muslim majority. Whilst West Pakistan (current Pakistan) had a reasonably coherent frontier – deserts, rivers and mountains – East Pakistan was an amorphous blob with no clear geographical divide. The border line is, to say the least, wiggly.

An enclave is a fragment of one country entirely enclosed by another. Approximately 80 percent of the world’s enclaves can be found along the northern stretch of the India-Bangladesh border. There are 92 Bangladeshi enclaves in India, 21 of which are counter-enclaves (i.e. Bangladeshi enclaves located in an India enclave within Bangladesh). India has 106 enclaves in Bangladesh including three counter-enclaves, and the world’s only counter-counter-enclave. The latter, an enclave within an enclave within an enclave, is a jute field near the village of Dahala-Khagrabari. The enclaves range in size from 26 km2 to a mere 53 square metres (Upan Chowki Bhaini, the smallest international enclave in the world).

Within the enclaves, known locally as Chitmahals, life is not pleasant. With the exception of one or two of the larger territories which have always been reasonably well organised, the fragments are outside the state system, their 70,000 inhabitants, known as the Nowhere People, effectively abandoned. Censuses are not taken, electoral rolls not made up and taxes not collected. There are no proper roads, no hospitals, schools and police force. The enclaves are hives of ignorance, poverty and lawlessness, their inhabitants robbed, raped and murdered with impunity, a poor life experience even in terms of the rural subcontinent. Without a visa inhabitants cannot legally cross the border to go to school, hospital or market. However since they cannot obtain a visa without visiting the ‘mainland’, residents are effectively prisoners within their tiny fragments of land. The Latin root of the word enclave, inclavatus, meaning shut in or locked up, is indeed appropriate.

An additional 50,000 former inhabitants of the Indian Chitmahals are resident in India proper. Some left during or immediately after the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war, but most have fled during the last decade as community relations have deteriorated. These individuals are in a particularly poor plight, being recognised neither as Indian citizens nor as refugees and thus not being entitled to national benefits, such as they are, or international relief efforts.

The enclaves date back to a treaty of 1713 between the Maharaja of Cooch Behar and the Mughal Empire (the latter was taken over by the British in 1765 but Cooch Behar endured until 1949, one of the last princely states to cede to India). In Raj days, the existence of the enclaves was a mere matter of land ownership since there were no trade barriers and the enclaves were economically self-sufficient in any case. Only with the post-colonial carve up, did the Cooch Behar enclaves become at all significant. A territorial exchange was first proposed in 1958, and agreed by a 1974 treaty between India and Bangladesh however this was not ratified by India, which had most to lose and was hobbled by an unstable political situation. Recently the position of the largest enclave, Dahagram-Angarpota, has been improved by the creation of the Teen Bigha corridor, a neck of land transferred from India to Bangladesh in 1992. Access however is only permitted during daylight hours.

Economically the effect of the division has been devastating. The border cut the great metropolis of Calcutta from its eastern hinterland, no mean factor in that city’s decline, and elevated the minor provincial town of Dacca to capital status. India’s highly productive north east was left isolated from the rest of the state – the rail link between Calcutta and Assam was severed in four places and not restored until a quarter of a century later. Particularly affected by the dislocation has been the area on the eastern section currently known as Tripura. Tripura has a 856 km border with Bangladesh but is linked to the Indian mainland only by a neck of land which narrows down to a mere 60 km wide. Illegal trade in this area alone amounts to some $1.5 billion per annum – a tidy sum of duty lost to the governments concerned. Across the whole border around 100 people per year lose their lives mostly due to anti-smuggling actions – the Indian Border Security Force in particular has a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.

In the last ten years, the Indian government has been erecting a fence along the border. The chain link construction topped with barbed wire stands 3.6 metres high and, with 3406 km authorised, will be by far the longest enclosed border in the world. This is a mighty construction task running from the mangrove swamps of the south, through rich farming land to the forests and mountains of the north. Approximately 50,000 people have been made homeless by the erection of the fence. Although the suppression of terrorism is a stated aim (United Liberation Front of Assam rebels and various Islamist groups use Bangladesh and India respectively as safe havens), smuggling is a more important motive.

Immigration too is a factor in the erection of the fence. Poverty stricken Bangladeshis are migrating in droves to the newly developing lands of northeast India – it is estimated that there are around 20 million Bangladeshis illegally resident in India. Goaded by aspiring political leaders, the Assamese are particularly wary of being ‘swamped’ by migrant Banglas and have exerted considerable pressure to ‘stem the tide’.

The erection of the barrier has not been unchallenged. In places, the construction runs close to or on the border, contrary to a 1974 treaty between Bangladesh and India which banned building in the proximity of the border. This has led to clashes between the Bangladesh Rifles and India’s Border Security Force with casualties inflicted on both sides.

A subcontinental Common Market between India and Bangladesh has been proposed and this would indeed make a certain degree of sense. However the degree of political ill-will makes an end to the division unlikely in the near future. Socialists are often reviled for their unrealistic utopianism in opposing ‘natural’ national divisions. Only by individual case studies can we find out how unnatural and insane such national divisions really are.

Kaz.

Letter: Papal Bull (2011)

Letter to the Editors from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Papal Bull

Dear Editors

I was disappointed that the article in response to the Pope’s visit (‘Against Religion’, Socialist Standard, November ) failed to address the reasons why his attack on secularism and atheism was objectionable. The article was introduced as a reply to the Pope’s assault, but it really consisted of a generic dismissal of Christianity.

The arguments put forward are not solid or up-to-date. The Vatican has never presented the bible as its main evidence for the existence of God, and does not hold that it contains infallible history or geology – there are no “Biblical accounts of the Earth’s age”.

You write that the bible is full of contradictions, which isn’t criticism. The bible is a compendium of books written over 1600 years by dozens of different authors in a similar number of styles and genres – no-one claims it is (or could be) consistent.

The article makes fair points, but like a lot of attacks on Christianity it beats the Church over the head with a stick it didn’t make – typically refuting claims that no-one is making and calling non-existent dogmas nonsense.

I would have rather seen the Pope’s mantra of blaming relativism turned on his own subculture. The Catholic Church twists and adapts its form and content to suit the age and defend its power – the Vatican was only mildly embarrassed when one of its priests became dictator of Slovakia, but at least in the 1930s the Church was openly Fascist.

We can easily dismiss the Pope and his visit in 2010 as irrelevant. We can do the same for the Royal Wedding this year. But the fact remains that thousands of people will be engaged by these events and by the messages they give out. A critical socialist response needs to be incisive and to the point – generic and dismissive doesn’t cut it.

Eddie Jarvis (by email)

Reply:

You are correct. The article was a criticism of christianity generally and not of the dogmas of the Roman Catholic church in particular or of the arrogant, superstitious (he believes in miracles) and deluded (he thinks he’s gods representative on Earth) man who heads it. His particular sect might not place much store in the stories of the bible but lots of other christian sects do. They think the bible is literally true and also that it is consistent – as you would have thought would those who think its authors were inspired by god when they wrote it.  –  Editors

Pathfinders: The final frontier (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A row has blown up between the US Congress and Nasa over people-carriers. Congress is insisting that Nasa stick to its plan of developing a rocket capable of taking manned missions beyond low earth orbit by 2016, which Nasa sniffily says it can’t do (New Scientist, 22 Jan). Presumably Congress doesn’t want Richard Branson or SpaceX to corner the space tourism market but the warring parties seem to have overlooked what the US Air Force is up to. The military has just lobbed a highly classified 13 tonne satellite into space aboard a Delta IV rocket (BBC News, 21 Jan) and could presumably be modified to do the same thing for a crewed spacecraft. This is the second huge satellite sent up by a Delta rocket in the past three months on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office, which reports to the CIA and the Department of Defense. The NRO are of course keeping zipped about the payloads but surveillance is the most likely purpose.

Congress is also doubtless embarrassed that Uncle Sam is having to rely on Russian rockets to get its own and the European Space Agency’s astronauts up to the International Space Station (ISS), now that the space shuttle fleet has been all but mothballed. Once considered a lunatic folly and, at around $160bn, estimated to be the most expensive object ever constructed, the ISS has survived cuts, shuttle disasters, air leaks, meteorite punctures and bad press to acquire an almost iconic status. In space technology, anything that actually works for longer than 6 months tends to do that, like Hubble and the Mars Rover. The Italian astronauts currently cooped up in this flying garage are texting, twittering, Facebooking and doing live TV interviews, while some genuinely useful science is also being done in the microgravity conditions.

In defiance of the recession, the space business is booming, due largely to satellite broadcast services like BSkyB. UK space companies are reported to have a turnover of £7.5bn with a 15 percent annual rise in employment (BBC News Online, 8 November 2010). With this kind of growth potential the UK government has now decided to get in on the act and start to sever its highly expensive commitments to the European Space Agency, the French and German dominated group which co-manages the ISS. This April, the UK Space Agency will be inaugurated with its own £200m annual budget, around one fifth of the space budgets of France and Germany. Meanwhile the European Commission has announced that the Galileo project, a 30-satellite GPS system for the EU, will cost around ?5bn, just one day after a senior Galileo contractor was sacked for calling the whole project ‘a stupid idea’ (BBC Online, 18 January).

Why stupid? Well, the sky is getting pretty crowded these days, with approximately 3,000 satellites in orbit. That they don’t crash into each other too often is due to the vast ranges of these orbits, although two satellites the size of small cars did pile into each other at 27,000 miles per hour in February 2009. The US Space Surveillance Network is still trying to find all the pieces, on top of the 8,000 other pieces of junk they are tracking, all of them barrelling around the globe at 13 times the speed of a bullet.

The question a socialist would ask would be: do we need all these satellites, given that most of them do pretty much the same thing? Well, we don’t, but the various competing sections of the ruling class do. The Navstar satellites that make up America’s GPS system are controlled by the military, giving the US a huge advantage in any future power-plays as well as wars. First to break the GPS dependence was Russia, with its Glonass system, then the US tried to stop the EU developing Galileo. Now every country that can buy or borrow the technology is lofting its own satellites and GPS systems into space, for fear of being shut out by enemies or simply by trade competition. In January China announced development of its own Beidou Navigation System. India meanwhile has sent up 7 satellites and would have sent up another one last month but the rocket blew up. 52 countries currently have payloads in orbit and the rockets just can’t go up fast enough.

Of course the various countries are talking about making their GPS systems compatible so they can share, but that’s not what they’re up there for. Any future war without satellite navigation and surveillance is unwinnable, as Iraq found out twice. Even Belarus, Colombia and Iran have their own satellites. Ominously, both the USA and China have in recent years used surface missiles to shoot down their own satellites, but rockets will only reach so far. Those in medium to high earth orbit would require space-based technology, possibly lasers, which would have to be pretty hefty, possibly requiring a heavy lift rocket like the Delta IV.

On the positive side, a former SpaceX engineer has started a fund to buy a comms satellite from a bankrupt firm and plant it in geostationary orbit where developing countries can use it (New Scientist, 22 January). Buythissatellite.org argues that internet access is a human right, but more pragmatically points out that since India is now bringing out a $12 laptop there is no great reason why everybody can’t get online. So far the fund has raised $30,000, which wouldn’t pay for a rocket’s spark plug. Funny that Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, now valued at $50bn, hasn’t thought of buying himself some popularity by putting up the cash. In socialism, it hardly needs saying, there would be no issue here. Press a button, move satellite, end of.

Paddy Shannon

Production Values: bottled water (2011)

The Production Values Column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

   A sideways glance at capitalism through some of its products.  This month: bottled water 

It may come as a surprise to younger readers to learn that water hasn’t always come from the supermarket in plastic bottles. There was apparently a time when you could drink it pretty much for free, straight out of the tap. Just as if it fell out of the sky!

But that was in the bad old days. Before consumers wised up and demanded that all those empty spaces waiting on supermarket shelves were filled with rows of different brands of bottled water. Petitions, campaigns and protests demanding new beverage “experiences” finally forced manufacturers and retailers in the 1980s to relent and meet consumer demands for water filtered through Corsican volcanic rock, carved from ancient arctic glaciers or condensed from mountain clouds in Fiji. (These high-end products are of course in the minority. Most products, despite the iceberg or mountain stream on the label come via a tap in an industrial estate, across from an abattoir, just off the M6).

To think that there was a time when we used to think there was just water! H2O our science teachers used to call it, which does scant justice to the range of minerals, fizz and flavourings that can now be pumped into this “pure” product. None of which appears to make much real difference, it has to be said. According to the Observer, one blind tasting panel praised a particular water’s ‘fresh, sweet, lemony aroma’ only to inform them it came from a tap in a Birmingham public toilet. Taking the piss surely.

Under capitalism there is nothing new under the sun. Not even rain. The market wasn’t of course responding to a real demand so much as completely creating that demand. Perrier and Evian are hardly even an example of capitalism’s supposed dynamic inventiveness, more a case of “old wine in new bottles”.

Humans need water. But capitalism doesn’t need humans – unless they can be employed or sold to. So because they are too poor, 3,000 children die each day from diseases caught through drinking tainted supplies. Their mistake? – to be born not as capitalists, nor even as consumers under the market system. In some regions wars are fought over which capitalist controls the water. Every time a borehole is dug a common resource is sucked up, enclosed and sold back to us. Does capitalism think we will swallow anything? Clear as.

Next month: We look at “the best a man can get”. A cure for cancer?! Of course not, we’re just looking at the razor blade.

Greasy Pole: Nothing New In Old And Sad (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Oldham and Saddleworth – or, for those living in the wrong part of it, Old and Sad – is a parliamentary constituency in Manchester with an electoral history such that it has accrued a reputation – again, depending on where someone might live in it – of renown or notoriety. Even before the recent by-election the votes revealed acute political entanglement compounded of poverty, crime, racism, riots… All three major parties have won the seat during the last 20 years and it provided the first case in almost a century in which the campaigning was brutal enough to cause an elected MP – Phil Woolas – to be turfed out, leading to the recent by-election. In 1995 an authentic Socialist – a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain – stood. The 46 votes cast for him were a sensible measure of the electors’ readiness to misuse their political power by preferring the usual rag-bag of reformist sterility.

Poverty and Sickness

The constituency make-up is varied, from Saddleworth’s relative affluence to the social and racial mix of Oldham with its crowded terraces. Oldham is rated as 33rd among the country’s most deprived areas, with five of its wards among the worst 10 percent. The 1998 unemployment rate among ethnic minorities bore no relation to their proportionate presence. The grim link between poverty and sickness yields a death rate almost one third above the national average. From this noxious soil erupted the riots in May 2001 – the worst of their kind in the United Kingdom for fifteen years. In a history of consistently bitter electioneering 2010 was only the most recent example. Labour’s 1995 campaign was managed by Peter Mandelson, whose style was later excused by Woolas: “Peter may be a bastard but at least he’s our bastard.” The campaign of the then successful LibDem Chris Davies was guiltily excused by their future leader Charles Kennedy: “By-election hand-to hand electoral combat can throw up trenchant exchanges and tricky campaign behaviour. In days gone by I have experienced the occasional sharp intake of breath where some of my own side’s literature has been involved.”

Tory and LibDem

It might have been expected, as an opening to the Age of the New Politics, that the January by-election would have encouraged something fresh and novel from the candidates. Well, no. The Tory candidate, Oldham-born Kashif Ali, a “self-made” (however that is interpreted) local barrister signed a “clean politics” pledge but this excursion into stunning naiveté did not impress the other two principal candidates – or the electorate. His vote fell from 11773 in May, when he was a close third, to 4481, leaving him a long was behind the LibDem. There was a popular rumour that the Tory leadership had Ali running a quiet campaign, in case too high a vote for him would embarrass Nick Clegg: this was fiercely denied by the Tories, as if such back-stabbing would be foreign to all they stood for. LibDem Elwyn Watkins (whose polling day mail shot referred to him as just “Elwyn” without mentioning his party) presented himself to the people of Old and Sad as: “…unlike some career politicians (did he mean Cameron and Clegg?) I have worked in the real world…I was taught the value of hard work, discipline and sticking with it…I’ve been made redundant twice – I know what it’s like.” He had made enough money to bankroll his candidature – and the legal challenge to Woolas – in something called “turning factories round”, including four years as “business analyst and financial adviser” to a Saudi Arabian sheik. And what about the embarrassment of that pledge he signed to oppose the rise in tuition fees? “If I had been elected in May I too would have had to compromise. I would go with the coalition and vote for it.” Unable to benefit enough by Woolas’s fall, or perhaps to escape being tainted by his party’s reputation for broken promises, his vote in second place was down by some 3000.

Labour Choice 

The Labour Party chose Debbie Abrahams, who in the Colne Valley constituency in May came third with a vote falling from 17536 to 14589. She has had a career as a health professional, including five years as chair of the Oldham Primary Care Trust – a job she resigned from in 2006, in protest at what the Labour government were doing to the NHS: “I have seen a steady stream of national policies introduced…which threaten these values and the future of a NHS that is equitable and free at the point for need… ”  was how she announced this at a large Keep A NHS Public rally. But this does not mean she cannot “compromise” as dourly as any LibDems; now she blankets whatever doubts she has about her party and its policies by meaningless drivel about it being “…important that the real issues and concerns of people in the borough are not lost during this election campaign…” Asked about Woolas, she merely said she felt sorry for him, that he had “paid the price for what he had done”.

The voters seem to have agreed with this, as the Labour vote held firm and Abrahams won and to have been angered by hearing from the Tories and LibDems – as they once heard from the Labour government – that the current problems of British capitalism are rooted in their slacking in superfluous jobs for high wages or living in luxurious homes on welfare benefits. Even if some of them may be among the 2000 local authority workers who will be sacked as the local authority make their expenditure cuts. There is nothing new in this – nothing new in the stress with the deprivation nor in the victims’ misguided response to it all as they divide their support among an unremarkably hopeless coalition of wanglers.

Ivan

Witch side are you on? (2011)

The Halo Halo! column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

It’s always strange when, after conversion from one religion to another, someone says “I was born a Christian” (or Muslim, or whatever), “but I’ve converted to Hinduism/Judaism/The Celestial Flying Teapot” or whatever it is. Of course, none of us is born Christian or Muslim or anything else. We’re born with no knowledge or beliefs in any god. In fact we’re all born into a state of atheism.

If someone ‘born’ into a religion – any religion – suddenly became aware of the fact that by some freak occurrence it was the wrong god they had been born with, and they had to convert to another one, surely God only has himself to blame. These gods certainly move in mysterious ways.

There’s been a bit of juggling from one deity to another in the news lately. The strangest case by far must be that of Christine O’Donnell the ‘Tea Party’ candidate for a seat in the US Senate. After apparently being brought up as a God-fearing Christian her faith in Jesus was shaken. “I dabbled into witchcraft,” she admitted. “One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar.” Maybe she once wrote to Santa but mistakenly sent the letter to Satan. We’ll never know.

However, by the time the midterm elections were under way she had found Jesus again. After reassuring the American public that “I’m not a witch” she went on to explain to them the truth about (amongst numerous other things) Evolution, Socialism and Masturbation.

“Evolution is a myth. Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?”

“America is now a Socialist economy. The definition of a Socialist economy is when 50% or more of your economy is dependent on the federal government”.

And her views on masturbation were numerous and detailed. Hardly the sort of thing sensitive readers of the ‘Standard’ want to hear. Well OK then, just one  – “Masturbation is a form of adultery.” Do you think she’s been doing it wrong?

As someone once pointed out. “The trouble with political jokes is that they sometimes get elected.” This one didn’t.

Back in the UK Lauren Booth, an English language Iranian TV channel journalist, and Tony Blair’s step-sister in law, spent most of October hogging the headlines with her conversion to Islam. “Almost unnoticed to me, when praying for the last year, I had been saying ‘Dear Allah’ instead of  ‘Dear God’, she informed readers of the Guardian while complaining about the ‘screams of faux horror’ from her fellow columnists. In fact they were mostly screams of laughter at the latest antics from Blair’s extended family.

Tony himself, of course, famously recently undertook a religious conversion when he decided to become a Roman Catholic and nipped off to Rome with Cherie for an audience with the Pope. Imagine being a fly on the wall at his first confession when he was asked about his role in the Iraq war.

It must be confusing now in the Blair household. “Hide the pork pies and the communion wine, Lauren’s coming round”. Fortunately Roman Catholicism and Islam do have one thing in common. Both are dominated by old men wearing long black dresses. Maybe that’s the attraction.

NW

Tiny Tips (2011)

The Tiny Tips column from the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Sofia Whitcombe began her day with the startling realization that she might not be exactly who she thought she was. “My whole life, I thought I was a Capricorn,” the 25-year-old New York publicist said. “Now I’m a Sagittarius? I don’t feel like a Sagittarius!” Countless people were astonished by the “news” in Monday’s Star Tribune in which Minneapolis astronomy instructor Parke Kunkle affirmed that the Earth’s “wobble” has shifted the zodiac signs.

The buzz has raced across the Web like a shooting star. Some people seemed angry. “I believe it’s a zodiac scam,” said Jose Arce, 38, from Fort Lee, N.J., who runs a body shop. “I’ve known myself to be a Sagittarius, I believe, since I was born. So to come up now with some new sign? It’s unacceptable!”

[Link.]

A bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49m yen (£254,000) today at the first auction of the year at Tsukiji market in Tokyo, but the fish’s growing popularity across Asia has raised fears it will soon be fished into commercial extinction. The 342kg tuna easily beat the previous record, set exactly 10 years ago when a 202kg fish fetched 20.2m yen. Market officials are accustomed to seeing prices rise during the new year auction at Tsukiji, the world’s biggest fish market, but today’s winning bid was unexpected:

[Link.]

Catholics who receive communion at Sunday mass believe the sacred wafer they swallow contains the body of Christ. New York health officials have warned the parishioners of a Long Island church that the wafers they received on Christmas Day may have also contained hepatitis:

[Link.]

Everyone curses the taxman, but Romanian witches angry about having to pay up for the first time are planning to use cat excrement and dead dogs to cast spells on the president and government today. Also among Romania’s newest taxpayers are fortune tellers – but they probably should have seen it coming:

[Link.]

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public. The BBC’s Mohamed Moalimuu in Mogadishu says the penalty would probably be a public flogging:

[Link.]

Using an expanded definition of poverty, the U.S. Census Bureau said it determined that 15.7 percent of Americans — 47.8 million — live in poverty:

[Link.]

An unrepentant banker (2011)

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Bankers’ bonuses: who’s to blame for the greed?

Bob Diamond, Barclays bank’s chief executive, and one of Europe’s highest-paid bosses, last month faced a grilling from the Treasury Select Committee, a cross-party body appointed by the House of Commons. Those expecting a replay of previous confrontations between MPs and bankers – in February 2009, for example, when the bankers said they were ‘profoundly sorry’ for their role in the financial crisis – were to be disappointed.

Diamond was unrepentant. In answer to questions from MPs, he said it was about time that unfair public criticism ‘moved on’ so bankers could stop apologising and get back to business as usual. MPs wanted to know if Diamond was going to show ‘restraint’ on bonuses this year (no), refuse his own bonus (probably not), act more responsibly and increase lending to business (impossible to do both), accept personal liability for the failing of institutions (no) and if he was ‘grateful’ to ‘the taxpayer’, ie, the state, for bailing out the financial system and keeping him and his whole industry in business (grudgingly, and after much evasion, yes. In other words, reading between the lines, no). 

Diamond’s performance added fuel to the fire of the ongoing bankers’ bonus controversy. Ministers in the present government, while campaigning for power, said they were determined to do something about the arrogance and excessive wealth of the bankers. And to be fair, they are doing something. In fact, as Will Hutton puts it in The Observer (16 January), compared with Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, business secretary Vince Cable and chancellor George Osborne are ‘fire-breathing radicals’, clamping down on tax avoidance, taxing bank profits, setting targets for bank lending, regulating hedge funds and contemplating more banking reform and regulation. But so far, they are being relatively timid about bankers’ bonuses. Why? Now that they have taken power, they, in common with all governments, accept the reality of capital accumulation and their role in it. And that means not doing anything that will frighten the financiers too much.

Capitalists united – and divided

That remains true even in the face of an increasingly numerous opposition. After all, as Hutton says, the issue of bankers’ bonuses is uniting everyone in outrage – ‘from captains of industry bewildered how top bankers can earn so much more than they do to the newly unemployed who wonder what they have done to deserve poverty and hardship while the moneymen pocket millions’. That the state bailouts have poured into the pockets of private individuals, and the poorest and most vulnerable will be left to pay the price in terms of job losses, benefit cuts, and reduced levels of social services and so on, we have already stated (see Socialist Standard, passim). But how come we are also seeing criticism from captains of industry and government ministers and the business press and so on? Not so long ago, bankers could rely on them being ‘intensely relaxed’ about such matters. Why now so increasingly angry and vocal?

Partly it is a fear of social unrest and breakdown. It also reflects divisions within the capitalist class. As a class, the capitalists are united by the need to promote the conditions necessary for investment and business activity. For that, they need, for example, a supply of compliant and affordable labour, a state willing and able to provide socially necessary infrastructure, a financial system to facilitate the processes of capital accumulation, a vibrant consumer market, and so on. On issues such as these, capitalists stand united. But the capitalist also finds himself in competition with his comrades. Capitalists have differing needs and interests depending on exactly how they get their hands on the spoils of exploitation – whether as landlord, financier, industrialist, retailer or state official, for example. In the usual course of things, this is just the stuff of competition, of ‘business as usual’, the undertow of everyday life. But when crisis hits, everything breaks to the surface. As Marx puts it (in Capital, Volume 3, Chapter 15):

  ‘So long as things go well, competition effects an operating fraternity of the capitalist class […] so that each shares in the common loot in proportion to the size of his respective investment. But as soon as it is no longer a question of sharing profits, but of sharing losses, everyone tries to reduce his own share to a minimum and to shove it off upon another. The class, as such, must inevitably lose. How much the individual capitalist must bear of the loss, ie, to what extent he must share in it at all, is decided by strength and cunning, and competition then becomes a fight among hostile brothers. The antagonism between each individual capitalist’s interests and those of the capitalist class as a whole, then comes to the surface…’

Who wins out in this struggle is not simply a reflection of factional power, as the Marxist academic David Harvey points out (The Limits To Capital, Chapter 7). The existence of surplus value (profit) in money form is ‘the most adequate form of capital’, which means that ‘the moneyed interest enriches itself at the cost of the industrial interest in the course of [a] crisis’ (Marx). This, then, helps us understand the row about bankers’ bonuses. It’s a row about which class, or which fraction of a class, is going to be landed with the costs of the crisis. We see, therefore, that Marxian theory is not esoteric mumbo-jumbo or outdated rubbish, as often claimed, but a powerful explanation for what is actually going on in the real world. If you understand Marxian theory, bankers’ multi-billion-pound bonuses and the row surrounding them no longer look so much like an insane aberration, but a logical consequence of social and economic structure. Bankers are enriching themselves at the expense of industry and workers? Well, OK, that’s what we would expect to happen…

What is to be done?

The question is what is to be done about it. As Harvey says, however the class struggle eventually plays out, however the losses of the crisis are finally distributed between factions of the capitalist class, and between the working and capitalist classes, and whatever the power struggle that ensues, the necessary result will be the destruction of value (closure of workplaces, the laying off of workers, destruction of surpluses, defaulting on debt, cutting of state services, and so on) so that a new round of capitalist accumulation can begin. This is totally irrational and insane from the point of view of human needs, but inevitable and logical from the point of view of capital accumulation.

The film-maker Charles Ferguson, whose investigative documentary Inside Job exposes the delusions and deeds of the bankers during the course of the crisis, says that, ‘Those responsible [for the crisis] blame the system. Or they blame the bubble caused by irresponsible borrowers.  Some of them blame low interest rates. In a grim way, it’s actually amusing to watch them blame anyone except themselves’ (Evening Standard, 17 January). The film-maker’s contempt for those who line their pockets and profit from social disaster is justified. But actually, in a sense, it’s the bankers who have got it right. It is the system that is to blame. And we should indeed ‘move on’ – from blaming capitalists who are as much at the mercy of the system as the rest of us, to an understanding of the world we live in and how it works. Politically, that means moving from a demand for ‘regime change’ to one for ‘system change’.

Stuart Watkins

Capitalism’s crisis of legitimacy (2011)

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Capitalism’s current crisis is not just economic and financial.

The recent worldwide recession has led not only to an economic crisis, but also a crisis of political legitimacy for the global system of capitalism. In Britain the ruling elite and in particular the coalition government are attempting to side-step this fact by claiming that “we’re all in it together.” Of course in some ways we are, the impending state spending cuts and inevitable redundancies and reduction in public services to vulnerable people being imposed by these hard-boiled public schoolboys will obviously affect those of us in the working class far more than the small minority of capitalists. The narrative from central government is that swingeing cuts in borrowing and public spending need to be enacted, in order to restore profitability to UK Capitalism plc.

And so in this allegedly different political landscape, we hear new terminology and concepts such as ‘The Big Society’, ‘The New Localism’, an increased role for ‘Civil Society’, ‘Ethical Consumerism’ and of capitalism’s concern for the ‘The Environment’.

Are these recent, reformist style trends evidence of the state’s attempt to mask the realities of a class-divided society? Over the next few years, what other coping strategies will the capitalist class use to try to find some stability for their system? How can individuals and the working class as a whole respond to this in a way which will best reflect our interests? What sort of future do we want to see?

Possibly the most profound trend that is now emerging and rapidly advancing is not necessarily the recent decline in profitability of the wages system of production, but a decline rather in the confidence of the ruling class to convince us of the validity of their system. It seems the legitimisation crisis transcends the sphere of domestic capitalist politics and extends to the spheres of religion, nationhood and the state, liberal democracy and the most basic tenets of human liberty.

Thatcher’s mantras

When Thatcher was Prime Minister in the 1980s she endlessly repeated the slogan “There is no alternative” (shortened as TINA). In economics, politics and political economy, it came to mean that there was no alternative to the status quo of their economic system and economic liberalism. It is still the main slogan of economic liberalism, arguing that free markets, free trade, and capitalist globalisation are the only way in which modern societies can go, as any deviation from their doctrine is certain to lead to disaster. Thatcher’s affinity for the phrase led to the author Claire Berlinski choosing it as the title for her biography of the former Prime Minister.

In the early nineties, Francis Fukuyama wrote a book named The End of History and the Last Man, which in a similar strain argued that liberal democracy had triumphed over so-called communism, actually authoritarian state capitalism, and the historical struggle between competing political systems within capitalism was over, though apparently there could still be future events. This trend dovetailed into a political fashion for “Rugged Individualism”. Indeed, Thatcher in her third term of office regularly claimed “There is no such thing as society.”

Change of rhetoric

Today, far from Thatcher’s ‘There is No Alternative’ rhetoric, we now get an apologetic, “We’re All in this Together” from our so-called leaders.

We now have an offer from the state for us to be part of the “Big Society”. At first sight this apparently bold initiative at rolling back the state may seem appealing. But strip it to its core and one suspects other motives.

In a speech in Liverpool on 19 July to re-launch what critics say is a vague idea, the still newish Con-Dem Coalition Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that what he terms “the Big Society” is at the heart of his policy agenda:

  “We need to create communities with oomph! Neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.”

And with one eye on the detailed government spending cuts that were to be announced in October, Cameron insisted his attempt to revive community action was driven by “great passion” rather than the need to save money:

  “It is not a cover for anything. This would be a great agenda whether we were having to cut public spending or whether we were increasing public spending.

“This is not about trying to save money, it is about trying to have a bigger, better society.”

I wonder how many people really believe him.

And while all that and far more is going on, we as apparently individual, and certainly individuated, citizens are micro-managed keenly by armies of state officials in terms of our health, personal habits, children and domestic waste disposal. We are implored to consume ethically and to be mindful of our Environmental Impact and Carbon Footprints.

It seems capitalism in the coming decade is likely to be a miserabilist, reactionary affair in which personal responsibility and self-reliance is propounded as the dominant ethos within society. Is this the future we want?

This scenario could be so very different. How can we reach for the sort of world many people long to see, a world in which poverty, hunger, war and ruination of the quality of life for the majority of people can be abolished? That means going beyond capitalism to a society in which things like money, nation states, official government and production for profit are abolished.

“Capitalism is only unbeatable as long as everybody thinks it is. As soon as everybody thinks it is finished, then it will be finished. We therefore need to keep in touch with what other people are really thinking. And we need to explain, tirelessly, where the only viable future for the Human race lies – in that post-capitalist society of common ownership of the world. It is impossible to be neutral in this struggle.” (Ron Cook, Yes, Utopia!)

Andy P Davies