Pathfinders: Space Race 2.0 (2021)

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

You know who the first man on the moon was, right? And the second? Bet you can’t name the third, or the next nine. After the initial feat, and an edge-of-your-seat crisis with Apollo 13, the space race quickly got old, and global interest waned. 50 years ago this month, the crew of Apollo 15 made the fourth landing on the moon and drove the first moon rover, and barely anyone noticed. Not long after this, the huge money sink of the Apollo programme was scrapped. For all the sciency hype, the moon’s only real purpose was as the finishing line in a space race aimed at putting one over on soviet ‘communism’.

Now we’re watching Space Race Reloaded, this time as a multi-player game involving the US, Europe, China, Russia, India and others, and including for the first time large amounts of private capital. What on earth – or off earth – is going on?

Space exploration has attracted its share of eccentrics, like ‘Mad Mike’ Hughes who, in February 2020, launched himself skyward in a steam-powered rocket to prove that the Earth was flat, but died proving instead that it was very hard. If you’re going to be eccentric, it helps to be rich, and the bullish billionaire trio of Bezos, Branson and Musk have not hesitated to vie in what, from a worker’s earthbound perspective, are pointless and ecologically egregious vanity projects involving low-orbital flights for rich tourists. The bulbous head of Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket inspired an inevitably phallic comparison by the Daily Star which talked about the billionaires ‘willy-waving’ with their ‘giant thrusters’.

But it’s more than just boys showing off their toys. In May China parked a rover on Mars, and last month launched a crew up to its new Tiandong space station, as well as announcing plans for a joint Sino-Russian moon base. Meanwhile Nasa’s new director Bill ‘Big Willy’ Nelson has ‘sought to leverage China’s space ambitions as a way to get Congress to fund Nasa’s plans to return to the moon’.

In the 1970s, space programmes relied solely on the resources of national governments. Now things are different. Since 1970 the wealth of the top one percent has grown at 100 times the pace of the bottom 50 percent, creating mind-boggling resources of private capital that can now be invested in the biggest projects. Nasa has contracted part of its operations to Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, including servicing the International Space Station, and that’s only the beginning.

SpaceX also won the contract to supply the moon lander for Nasa’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, as part of its Artemis moonshot programme. Disappointingly for space nerds, the SLS is an unimaginative repeat of the old Saturn V burn-and-discard 3-stage system. After some notable successes with reusable rockets, SpaceX did hope to win the contract for a Nasa reusable rocket design but its Falcon Heavy rocket isn’t anywhere near big enough to get to the moon, and its gigantic Starship rocket – billed as a potential Mars crew shuttle – is still in development.

If the moon wasn’t really the point last time, this time it might be. First, there is the matter of helium-3 (see Pathfinders, March 2014), a rare isotope on Earth but abundant on the moon and potentially useful in nuclear fusion that might provide up to 10,000 years of cleanish energy. But it’s still uncertain whether helium-3 extraction would be economic. Second, there is the fact that the moon, as a satellite, will be out of range of the satellite wars which are widely predicted (Pathfinders, November 2020), and which prompted a Nato space war summit just last month (Times, 15 June). Third, Nasa confirmed in 2020 that there was water on the moon, which was a game-changer. In space shuttle days, the cost of lofting a kilo of water to space was $54,000. With SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 shuttle to the ISS, this dropped to $2,720 (Link). Yet a permanent moon base is only really feasible if there’s a local supply. The water concentration Nasa detected in sunlit areas was 100 times less than in the Sahara desert, however the presence of any at all suggests that there may be vast deposits of ice in the dark polar craters. These would not only enable moon colonies but also potentially supply liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuels in order to make the moon a launch point for further space exploration, and as a staging post for Mars.

But it’s not all about ends, it’s also about means. China has been making giant technological strides lately, and this is alarming the Americans, because space technology is also weapons technology – ‘there are no technologies used in space that aren’t dual-use’. The fear is, whoever gets a lead in space has a lead in perpetuity. Moon bases today, missile bases tomorrow, perhaps.

It need hardly be said that socialists deplore the militarisation of space. But billionaires like Musk are motivated by an altogether higher purpose, and that doesn’t include the silly story about him planning to mine a gold asteroid worth $700 quintillion. He is well known for tweeting about potential extinction-level asteroid strikes, and how humans need to colonise other planets so all our eggs are not in one basket. Nasa has pooh-poohed the notion of deadly asteroids, however a darker truth could lie behind the prediction. What if the super-rich suspect that climate change is out of control, and that the Earth is ultimately doomed through its own (i.e. their) folly?

What better use for your billions, and what better legacy, than to initiate searches for a viable replacement planet? In this context, the search for extraterrestrial life takes on a new significance. Nasa has just announced probes to explore the supposedly bio-generated phosphine layer in the upper atmosphere of Venus. And just last month the Juno probe did a flyby of Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon and thought to have a liquid iron core, hence magnetic shielding, and more subterranean water than all of Earth’s oceans combined. Next year it will do a flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa, with a thin oxygen atmosphere and, it’s believed, a water ocean 60 miles deep under a 20-mile-thick ice crust. Europa is one of the most promising sources of life, if any, in the solar system. The European Space Agency is planning a trip there in 2022, and Nasa again in 2025.

The idea of the capitalists funding an ‘exit strategy’ to escape the dead Earth they have created is of course the plot of Ben Elton’s 1989 novel Stark. We say, they’re welcome to live on some frozen airless dump, and we hope they rot. But let’s hope we get socialism before that happens, and before any idea of exporting capitalism to other planets really gets off the ground.

Paddy Shannon

Letter: My journey to becoming a socialist (2021)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

One cold Friday night some 40 years ago, I had what I have now come to realise was something of a serendipitous encounter with a complete stranger while enjoying a beer or two in The Horseshoe Bar, Glasgow, just before making my way to London on the overnight train to take part in what was called ‘The People’s March For Jobs’ demonstration at Hyde Park.

As a young member of the Society of Graphical and Allied Trades (SOGAT) printer’s union, I felt quite proud to be a banner-wielding protestor against Prime Minister Thatcher’s government and their total disregard and contempt for the working class, and somehow felt the need to express my anger the only way I knew how.

There was a good few dozen of us print-workers gathered from all around the multitude of factories based in and around Glasgow, with one particular thing in common – a distinct hatred of Thatcher and her Tory cronies.

Anyway, whilst in the throes of alcohol-induced rage and fury, I was approached at the bar by a chap with a distinct goatee beard who was also enjoying a refreshment or two.

‘What you up to young man?’ he asked.

‘Oh, on my way to London to join the People’s March For Jobs,’ I proclaimed proudly.

‘Whit the fuck ye daen that fur?’ he bluntly enquired. Somewhat taken aback, I was a bit stuck for words. ‘Waste o’ fuckin time, if ye ask me pal,’ he went on. ‘Whit difference dae ye think it’s gonnae make son?’

‘Well,’ I said ‘that bitch is closing down all the factories, and causing misery for everyone. I’m a socialist and I want to do something about it,’ I chelped back.

He erupted in laughter and told me that I had a lot to learn. He bought me a beer and invited me to get myself down to the Stirling Library at Royal Exchange Square in the heart of Glasgow some Saturday afternoon where I will find out ‘what a real socialist is’. Somewhat disgruntled by this I vowed to accept his challenge and see for myself just what this guy was talking about the next time I happened to be in the city centre.

The People’s March For Jobs came and went, and several months passed during which time I’d actually forgotten about my encounter with this strange man who dared to doubt that I was anything but a bona fide socialist. True to my word, I eventually headed on down to Royal Exchange Square whereupon I did indeed come across a group of mainly men taking it in turns to address a fair-sized crowd who had gathered to listen to them shouting about the forces of ‘capitalism’ and how ‘real socialism’ was the only solution to addressing the problems inherent in that disruptive and destructive worldwide system.

I was blown away and more than just a wee bit curious about the concept of this new world order that would revolutionise the way in which we functioned and interacted together as humans. A complete change from the current system of competition, to one of cooperation. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. I just had to find out more.

There was about an hour or so of questions and answers from the assembled crowd — some of them quite forceful and aggressive, some very supportive and showing genuine interest — all of them answered articulately with superb confidence and knowledge by the same man who I met in the pub a few months earlier. The meeting began to come to a natural end and I hung around until there was only a handful of guys and a couple of women left. I was approached by one fairly well-spoken chap in a grey trench style raincoat, who asked me if I enjoyed the session and would I like to join them for a beer? Not one to turn down such an invitation, I found myself being made most welcome by this group of strangers in a local hostelry who were only too happy to answer this inquisitive young man’s enquiring mind about this thing called ‘world socialism’.

What an incredible experience! I left a couple of hours later completely awestruck by what these ‘genuine socialists’ had described to me as a ‘world of abundance’ where everyone will be free to live a life of their choosing and for the benefit of all. Instead of the way things are now, whereby we’re all enslaved by the wages system, and if you don’t have a job, you cannot afford even the basics of human needs. If you do, it’s only because you’ve been forced to sell whatever skills you have to the highest payer, and even then, only just about manage to survive. It all gave me food for thought, and I thought it was corrupt.

A lot has happened in my life since that fateful day. But one thing remains, my absolute conviction and determination to continue along with other like-minded fellow workers and true socialists – not the kind of wishy-washy reformists who think that by accepting piecemeal reforms handed down by the capitalist class and the politicians that they employ, we will somehow reach social equality for all – that’s not going to happen.

What I have discovered is that although we may well be slightly better off in terms of material goods and commodities than those of our forebears, this is still a far cry away from what is possible when the majority of us come to understand and realise what can be achieved with the will and determination to make it happen. Then and only then will we realise the true fruits of our collective labours, instead of handing them over to that privileged minority of parasites who feed off of our labour in order to feather their own nests with luxuries. The kind of luxuries that they proudly show off and boast of, while the rest of us look on in despair of their greed and the gross inequality that we have to endure under capitalism. Come join us, fellow workers. You’ve got nothing to lose but your chains. Who knows, maybe one of these days you too will be writing all about your journey to becoming a socialist in the pages of this journal.

Paul Edwards

No Borders (2021)

Book Review from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Build Bridges Not Walls. A Journey To A World Without Borders. By Todd Miller, City Lights Books, 2021. 161pp.

A book about a world without borders is always going to be one that interests socialists who themselves envision a borderless, stateless society of free access to all goods and services organised democratically on the basis of each according to ability to each according to need. And in this book, the author establishes his own imaginative credentials from the very first pages by envisioning the world as ‘a land without political boundaries’ which ‘connects us to one another’ and stating his intention to ‘examine the natural inclination of human beings to be empathetic with one another, to forge solidarities with one another, and how such inclinations contrast with the borders that invoke and perpetuate chronic forms of racial and economic injustice’. His book focuses mainly on the way in which the policing of the border between Mexico and the USA creates immense suffering – violence, dehumanisation, early death – for refugees from Central America seeking but being prevented from finding better lives north of that border. But in so doing, it throws off a large number of reflections on how similar borders throughout the world provoke similar suffering and suggests that the abolition of borders ‘could make the world a more sustainable, habitable place for all’.

Both its reflections on the author’s personal experiences in reporting on border zones over many years and its analysis of the political system that dictates and enforces border control constitute a powerful indictment of nationalism and the nation state and the way in which they make life hell for people on the move from one country to another for reasons of war, persecution, crop failure, drought, flood, or just plain old-fashioned poverty. He tellingly makes the point that no such preventions exist for ‘people who are very wealthy’ or for those associated with the capital which flows from one country to another. And he illustrates how governments are prepared to spend massive resources on ‘drones (engineered with locust-like wings and… armed with facial recognition software), high-tech cameras, motion sensors, war technology, night vision goggles and an arsenal of weapons’ to keep out those who nationalist fervour considers politically or economically undesirable. Meanwhile, worldwide, he points out that, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, ‘2.1 billion people suffer from malnutrition’.

So what is to be done? The author makes the point that ‘demanding to abolish the border is as unthinkable to many people today as it once was to ask to abolish slavery’, but that chattel slavery has been (largely) abolished and so we should use our imaginations to try and step over the new frontier he points to. However, it must be said that the abolition of chattel slavery can be seen to have been in the interest of a system – capitalism – that was always going to be more efficient in the more advanced stages of its development by using another kind of slavery, the kind that exists today – wage slavery. Much less likely is it that the abolition of borders will be seen as being in the interest of capitalism and of the national capitalist classes that own the world, since, as the author himself tells us, ‘2,153 billionaires have more money than 4.6 billion people – 60 percent of the world population’. Since the small minority is unlikely to give that up of their own accord, it can only be left to the majority of the other class in society – those who sell their energies for a wage or salary – to make that happen and to bring about the end of the wages system, which will also mean the end of the border system and the nationalism that underlies and sustains it.

So the author is right to say that ‘building such a world [i.e. a borderless world] means imagining a radically different global order than we have now’ and it is heartening that he refers approvingly to the book by Ian Shaw and Marv Waterstone, Wageless Life: a Manifesto for a Future Beyond Capitalism. But after such a powerful set of arguments against the nation state and the system it supports, it is a little disappointing that he does not take those arguments further and make them even more imaginative by openly advocating the abolition not just of borders and states but of money, wages and the whole of the profit system. Instead he seems to remain entrenched in the idea of money as the currency of human interaction (‘The resources are there. The money is simply misdirected’) and to limit himself to advocating arrangements like ‘the bottom-up democracy of the [Mexican] Zapatista movement’. The fact is that, so long as the money and wages system and the profit motive underpinning them continue to exist, it is inconceivable that the competing states supporting their national capitalist classes will be dissolved and their borders taken down. If you stick with that system, you are stuck with the state, and with the plurality of states, in conflict as their political and economic interests rub against one another.

Howard Moss

We can feed the world (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack Kloppenburg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that hi-tech agriculture is frequently justified by the rationalisation that it will feed the world. Kloppenburg says that is the wrong approach.

‘People need to feed themselves — they need to be allowed to feed themselves’ (Link).

We should concentrate attention upon the economics which drives agriculture and the food industry rather than disproportionately focus upon specific technologies and techniques.

The farming industry rarely asks ‘What do we grow that is best for the land?’ or ‘What can we grow that will benefit our community the most?’ or ‘What crop will be most nutritious and damage the land the least?’ Those are not questions that the food corporations ask. Instead they usually have just one question, ‘How much money can be made out of the land?’

The Malthusian overpopulationists gained popularity with the publication of Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (propped up by Garret Hardin’s later ‘Tragedy of the Commons’) which claimed that the world population was exploding and food production would fail to keep up with the numbers of people.

It led to what is known as the Green Revolution, and it is a policy still being emulated in modern times by the Bill Gates Foundation. What it did was basically to take fertilisers and pesticides, an integral part of intensified industrial farming methods, and transfer the practices elsewhere to increase production. Today Gates and the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa have joined various corporations such as Monsanto, manufacturers of the Round-Up herbicide, to introduce genetically modified crops with the same end of increasing harvest yields.

However, such pessimistic predictions did not materialise because the rate of population growth dropped. The world population no longer is expected to reach the earlier projection of 12 billion. Now the estimate is 9 billion or even 8 billion and the world already is well able to supply sufficient food if wastage is reduced.

Sweet-sounding statements from government ministries are frequently rendered meaningless by businesses bent on maintaining their expansion and growth. Capitalist accumulation is limitless. The purpose of capitalism is endless expansion of production for profits and an ecological nightmare has arisen from irrational, unplanned, undemocratic production, rather than a rational, democratically planned economy. Capitalism will poison and pollute the planet beyond recovery if it is not replaced.

Spurred by UN population projections and its calculation of the degree that food production has to increase, ie that the world must produce 70 percent more food by the year 2050 through yield growth to feed the expected rise in population, many commentators determined that the world needed to upgrade its farming methods with innovations such as genetically modified seeds and foods. We are told that the agribusiness corporations manufacturing fertilisers and pesticides, and the food processing companies, are the only sector capable of feeding the planet’s population and that family-owned, small farms are not equipped to do so. The food industry has no motivation other than to derive more profits from the food chain. Corporations expend a huge budget on public relations in defence of their business plans.

Yet there is no global or regional shortage of food other than some localised supply deficiencies caused by armed conflicts or temporary pest problems like, for example, a locust plague. Many countries are net food exporters. Wherever we look, farmers are already producing a surplus. There is no food scarcity. Food security could be provided for all people, all the time. Currently substantial crop harvests go to bio-fuels to drive vehicles. Crops that could fill the empty bellies of the hungry are diverted to fill fuel tanks or to fatten up cows and pigs. A 2013 estimate is that 4 billion additional people could be fed if animals were absent from the global feed chain, and that figure excludes nomadic pastoral livestock rearing, which often takes place on marginal land less suitable to arable farming and could easily continue to be practised.

Then there are plantations growing cash crops such as palm oil, coffee and tea. Cut flowers are a major export of Kenya’s horticulture. These may bring in valuable foreign currency for local elites but has very limited ability to feed the local people. World agriculture possesses the possibility to substitute non-edible crops for nutritious sustenance but Big Ag chases the stock market as well as the food market and states assist by providing generous financial and tax subsidies to it.

We cannot lay out any detailed alternative but we can broadly predict that in socialism the people would likely adopt a more flexitarian diet, supplied by the use of mixed cropping, agro-ecological production systems, and conservation agriculture, using more appropriate soil and watering procedures and requiring much less chemical input. A method called the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) has the potential to feed a further seven billion if universally applied.

The World Socialist Movement long ago determined that increasing production does not solve hunger as it is not a technological issue but a political and economic problem.

An editorial in Journal of Sustainable Agriculture agrees:

‘Hunger is caused by poverty and inequality, not scarcity…the world produces more than 1 1/2 times enough food to feed everyone on the planet. That’s already enough to feed 10 billion people, the world’s 2050 projected population peak. But the people… cannot afford to buy this food…The call to double food production by 2050 only applies if we continue to prioritize the growing population of livestock and automobiles over hungry people’ (Link).

In anticipation of more people living on the planet, we already have the knowledge and skills to feed those extra mouths. Socialism will exercise these to provide sufficient nourishment and end scarcity whereas it is in capitalism’s interest to maintain malnutrition and food shortages to keep prices up.

ALJO

How do you like your News? (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new channel, GB News, brought in 336,000 people for its launch (Guardian, 14 June) – more than three times the number watching BBC News and more than seven times the number watching Sky News at the same time. It has a distinctive brand – as the name suggests, and as its chairman, Andrew Neil, made explicit, ‘We are proud to be British. The clue is in the name. And while we will never hold back from covering our country’s many flaws and problems, we will not come at every story with the conviction that Britain is always at fault, usually to blame when things go wrong, generally useless. We won’t forget what the B stands for in our title.’

There seems to have been a space in the media market for this, given the popularity it enjoyed at launch. What is more interesting is the quite overtly populist tone of the broadcast. Neil insists the channel is ‘dedicated to covering the news that matters to you and giving voice to those who felt sidelined or even silenced in our great national debates – because if it matters to you, it matters to us. GB News will not slavishly follow the existing news agenda.’ To be sure, there are good reasons for people to take that idea seriously. A significant portion of people in the UK do not trust, for instance, the BBC, to tell the truth ‘at all’ – 20 percent in December 2019 (YouGov, 16 December 2019). Contrast that with the 8 percent who took it to tell the truth ‘a great deal’. This will only gain more force since Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC political editor, was singled out by name by the Prime Minister’s ex-adviser, Dominic Cummings, in his criticism of the government’s handling of the pandemic (Daily Telegraph, 26 May). This is all good news for GB News, who want to primarily compete with the BBC.

Popular populism

The liberal press reacted as would be reasonable for them to, when faced with any sort of populist rhetoric: strident derision. The Guardian (12 June) gave the channel a one star out of five review, calling it ‘Utterly deadly stuff’. Stuart Jeffries continues in his review to ask a ‘philosophical question’ – ‘Can GB News change Britain’s news agenda if no one watches it? The answer, incredibly, is yes. […] [It] will be a success if it has reach rather than ratings.’ And it seems that it does have reach. His optimistic conclusion, nevertheless, is ‘A year tops.’ While Jeffries is quite right to point out the technical failures and the poor production quality, there does seem to be something important missed in just straightforwardly slating it. Why, if it is so bad, are people interested? There may be a genuine desire for explicitly political populist reporting in the UK. It would be hardly surprising if that were the case.

The political slant, besides the nationalism noted above, is one of focus on ‘woke’ moves made in mainstream politics and standing in opposition to them: ‘We will puncture the pomposity of our elites and politics, business, media and academia, and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is.’ There is certainly a consistent narrative being spun here, and now there are serious questions arising about who exactly the ‘elites’ in question are. Of course, the narrative is helped by corporate advertisers, including Ikea and Octopus Energy, boycotting the channel (Independent, 16 June). In what might otherwise be described as the free market deciding to allocate funding elsewhere, Tory MP Craig Mackinlay explains that ‘This is all part of the closing down of free speech campaign which I am afraid we are seeing across our society. […] Corporates should do what they do – sell things rather than get involved with political debates’ (Daily Mail, 16 June). Of course, this does raise questions of where the funding does come from. It is a well-documented fact that the media relies on advertising much more heavily than it does on readership/viewership counts, money-wise.

Where’s their money coming from?

As one would expect, it is funded primarily by hedge funds, large conglomerates like Discovery, based in the UK, and investment firms based in the Middle East like Legatum. There seems to be very little that is proudly British vis-à-vis the financing of the programming. As Kevin Rawlinson and Jim Waterson write sharply, ‘Neil lists his main residence as France on official documents’ (Guardian, 14 June). And more or less for those reasons alone, it does not matter that there are voices from a range of political positions, including Gloria De Piero, who was a Shadow Minister under Jeremy Corbyn at one point, and Andrew Doyle, who voiced his support for Corbyn.

The ostensibly anti-establishment tone of the broadcast comes down to little if that is going to be sharply restricted by advertiser and shareholder pressures. As James Curran and Jean Seaton note on their history and analysis of the British press, the work that inspired Manufacturing Consent (Herman & Chomsky, 1988), ‘[The introduction of market forces] did not inaugurate a new era of press freedom and liberty; it established instead a new system of press censorship more effective than anything that had gone before [succeeding] where legal repression had failed in conscripting the press to the social order’ (Curran & Seaton, 2018, p. 5). Left-wing commentators mean nothing when advertiser pressures hold your programming to ransom any time inconvenient views are expressed. In Orwell’s still-insightful summary of the issues in his article on ‘The Freedom of the Press’, ‘Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban […] because of a general tacit agreement that “it wouldn’t do” to mention that particular fact’. And that is quite relevant when considering how much the anti-establishment rhetoric is substance and how much it is just rhetoric. If they are genuinely against business or the establishment generally, where are they getting their money from? Why would business agree to fund them in the first place?

The tone of the broadcast is highly misleading in two respects. One, just elaborated, that it is highly doubtful anything substantively in favour of the working class is going to be expressible on the platform – even if the viewers it draws are overwhelmingly ABC1 (82 percent). The second is the actual quality of the reporting. The channel insists on ‘character, flair, attitudes, opinion, and, yes, a sense of humour. […] Along the way we hope to have fun. […] GB News will aim to inform, inspire, and entertain.’ The blending of entertainment and reporting has complex effects – it cannot be taken as a straightforward good. Any further erosion of rational reflection on political issues, including the explicit introduction of the aim of entertainment into journalism, is likely to do little but distract from the matters at hand. It would be one thing to watch the channel because one agreed with the editorials, it would be another to watch it because it is funny – and be dragged into their narrative on merely that basis.

All of this does still leave the possibility open that the channel is knowingly run without regard to profit, just to introduce the narrative into public discourse. This would sound far-fetched, if it were not for the historical precedent. The incentives to do so are clear: further shift the opinion to the right, with the additional benefit of leading the viewership into a false sense of complacency about what is being said and done against the elite strata of society. Sky News, for instance, operates at a loss (Wired, 13 June). If there is anything to be said, then, against the view of news corporations as pure profit-making machines like any other, it is that the view is not cynical enough. Their existence may be justified by elites for ideological functions alone.

Bluster against the elite

At any rate, this much is clear: for all its bluster against the elites, Andrew Neil, ex-editor of The Times, chairman of The Spectator, BBC regular, and chairman of Press Holdings, is unlikely to say much of substance against them. That isn’t to be put down to his opinions – left-wingers are around in the ‘GB News Family’ too (gbnews.uk). But that doesn’t matter much when advertiser pressures are the same as any other news corporation, radically restricting the views expressible on air. And if it will have to fight for funding, as it looks like it might, there will be little choice but to pander to the elites. However noble your intentions (granting an enormous benefit of the doubt here), it means nothing if the market forces in question operate to reflect the interests of those who have the money. And they do operate in exactly that way, especially in matters of the media. If it is to last, it can only do so with utterly subservient editorials, carrying on restricting the spectrum of opinion, though it might well maintain all the rhetoric of ‘not slavishly [following] the existing news agenda.’ This doesn’t leave room for Stuart Jeffries’s conclusion of ‘A year, tops’. We should be so lucky.

M. P. Shah

Oaths and Umbrellas (2021)

Book Review from the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unfree Speech: the Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now. By Joshua Wong with Jason Y. Ng: Penguin £9.99.

Joshua Wong was one of the organisers of the democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, having begun his activism at the age of fifteen in 2011. This book has three parts: his own account of these events, letters he wrote while in prison (half the book, and the least interesting section), and general reflections on the situation in Hong Kong and the state of democracy globally.

Wong was first arrested in 2014, after protesting against changes in the way that candidates for Hong Kong’s Chief Executive could be nominated. A little while later, the Umbrella Movement began, with large numbers protesting and many others handing them free food and water. Wong became ‘a global poster boy for resistance against Communist China’, and in 2017 he co-founded the Demosistō Party, with a programme of self-determination, i.e. that Hong Kong people should decide their own destiny once the transition period after the handover from the UK to China ends in 2047. In 2016 one of their members (not Wong, who was too young to stand) was elected to the Legislative Council. He and a few other council members slightly altered the oath of allegiance they were supposed to swear, and as a result the Chinese government prevented them from taking their seats. The affair is known, of course, as Oathgate.

In 2017 Wong was one of a number of protesters sentenced to prison for unlawful assembly. His sentence was originally one of community service but it was increased to six months’ jail time after an appeal by the government. He has been jailed more than once since, and in May this year, while already in prison for earlier ‘offences’, he was given a further ten months for attending a vigil to mark the Tiananmen crackdown. Others have been charged with rioting and sentenced to six years in prison.

Hong Kong, Wong says, is gradually changing from the rule of law to rule by law, and even a police state, as freedom of assembly and other rights are eroded. The police have become extremely violent against some protesters who wear hard hats and throw bricks at them. The change from British to Chinese rule has just meant being ‘handed from one imperialist master to another’, with young people in particular increasingly describing themselves as Hong Kongers, rather than Chinese.

Wong suggests that Hong Kong is not as important to China as it once was, as cities such as Shanghai have been expanding their role as financial centres. So perhaps it is more trouble than it’s worth. But companies still worry about the economic impact of upsetting the Chinese rulers, and the airline Cathay Pacific sacked a couple of dozen staff for expressing support for protesters. He is aware of the extent of inequality in Hong Kong, but says at one point that all the problems are due to an unaccountable government and a biased electoral system. He sees China as ‘the single biggest threat to global democracy’, and states that the erosion of freedoms there is spreading to the rest of the world. Imprisonment, though, will simply strengthen the resolve of demonstrators, who certainly show a great deal of courage.

Paul Bennett

A Gender Item (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is there a distinction between sex and gender? In the vast majority of cases the sex of a person can be established through physical attributes and these are determined by two sex chromosomes, the X and the Y. Two X chromosomes results in the female, X and Y chromosomes produces the male.

There are exceptions. Human cells usually contain 46 chromosomes, but occasionally, approximately 1 in a 1,000 males have a 47th, an extra Y. This can result in being taller than average, have learning difficulties, speech problems or weaker muscle tone. They don’t have distinguishing physical features and their sexual development is normal, although infertility can result.

It is possible for females to be karyotype 46 (usual number of chromosomes) and XY. This is gonadal dysgenesis and results in females with normal female external genitalia, but malfunctioning gonads that are prone to becoming cancerous and are usually surgically removed.

What all this demonstrates is there are naturally occurring variations that may cause physical and psychological issues, but do not alter the basic biological determination of females and males. That would seem to be a matter of material reality and not one of personal choice.

Can the same be stated in relation to gender, or are gender and sex merely interchangeable words in this context? There is an argument that avers sex to be as stated above, while gender takes into account social roles that may be determined by a person’s sex, or by personal definition according to subjective awareness.

There are at least eight gender identity terms – transgender, two-spirit, cisgender, non-binary, genderqueer, gender expression, gender fluid, gender neutral – and there may be others. The majority of the population are, in this list, cisgender, that is, their gender matches that which they were assigned at birth.

The question then arises as to what the material basis is for the plethora of alternatives with which a minority identify. People are, of course, free to choose the identity they present to the world, but such a choice suggests gender to be merely a social construct; or is there a genetic basis?

Scientific study of transsexuality appears to be minimal. Transsexuals are individuals born as one sex, but identify as being of the other sex. Studies of twins indicate a genetic basis for transsexuality, although there is presently no clear understanding of what that genetic basis is.

Nor is there an established common terminology used across studies. This means there can be no clear accounting of numbers as to how many individuals are transsexual. Approximations range from 7 to 9 out of every 100,000 people as being transgender.

Amnesty International estimate there are 1.5 million transgender people in the EU, about 0.3 percent of the population. An Equality and Human Rights Commission 2011 survey in the UK of 10,026 respondents found 1.4 percent were in a gender minority group, of which 1 percent had gone through some part of a gender reassignment process. That process did include actual actions taken, but also thoughts about it.

Everyday speech often uses sex and gender interchangeably, but some academic disciplines reference different definitions while others do not, which is also the case with dictionaries. Languages such as German and Finnish don’t have different words for sex and gender, the context of use being the defining factor.

All this indicates a great deal of uncertainty, which makes the possibility of giving offence all too real. A minority, however small, needs to be accepted on its own terms and not become subjected to a despotism of the majority.

Capitalism has done a great deal to break down social barriers and overcome discrimination. Driven by the constant need to realise profit, differences between people, actual or perceived, cannot be allowed to hinder that process. This is not a moral, but an economic imperative, and is a long way from being fully realised.

That prejudice and discrimination continue to exist cannot be denied, but neither can the progress made. A ‘No Blacks, No Irish’ notice is now utterly beyond the pale even though ‘Black Lives Matter’ remains pertinent.

In matters sexual, homosexuality has gone from illegality and the subject of barbed humour to celebrated wedlock in half a century. This is not to suggest all is well, far from it. Human attitudes are not fixed and need to be challenged. What one generation regarded as deviant, the next (or perhaps the next but one) accepts without question.

If this is not the case then we socialists are wasting our time promoting far-reaching changes that can only come about if the generality of popular ideas radically change. If the basis of present society, capitalism, cannot be replaced by a superior system, socialism, then human progress will have stalled.

While accepting that capitalism has allowed a great deal of progress to be made, it cannot go beyond its own economic imperative. For socialists, the free development of one is contingent on the free development of all. For a society in which this is possible, the constraints and divisions engendered by capitalism must be overcome.

Capitalism reduces most if not all aspects of society to commodities to be traded for profit. Sex is certainly a category with many such commodities. From pornography to gender re-alignment, from commercial stereotyping to lifestyle products, no possibility for profit is ignored.

The prevailing ideology of capitalism is individualism: Margaret Thatcher’s (in)famous pronouncement that there’s no such thing as society was a clear expression of this. No society equals no classes in any meaningful sense. People are free to self-define their identity, and woe betide anyone who might contradict or question.

However, denying society does not mean it doesn’t exist. An obvious lesson of the Covid pandemic is that not only does society exist, it must act in concert for the well-being of all. It also cannot be denied that society plays a major role in defining gender roles.

Recent history shows gender roles are not fixed because society is not fixed. There’s a continuous dynamic between individuals and sub-groups with society at large that initiates social change. Science plays a huge part in this by bringing new understanding to play.

There are hormonal and surgical ways of physical gender realignment, to match external sexual characteristics with psychological disposition. This patently does not bring about a chromosomal change.

Self-definition has merit: who has the right to decide how another should dress, deport and generally live? There are, though, women who, to say the least, are uneasy about those born men redefining themselves as women.

Caution should surely be the watchword during adolescence, a period of sexual uncertainty as the brain transitions from childhood to adulthood, which is perhaps the only transitioning that should occur at that time.

After detransitioning, former transgender man Charlie Adams established the ‘Detransition Advocacy Network’. This was in response, Adams claims, to being contacted by a significant number who’d transitioned in their teens and then changed their minds in their 20s.

The claim is that, triggered by gender dysphoria, transitioning seems not to have alleviated the condition, leading to a realisation that the change had not addressed deep-seated issues. These include body image problems, eating disorders and even, in some cases, autism.

However, following a survey in the USA of 28,000 transitioners, the ‘National Center for Transgender Equality’ reported only 8 percent detransitioned, of whom 62 percent only did so temporarily after succumbing to pressure. Just 0.4 percent detransitioned having changed their minds.

There does not seem to be peer-reviewed in-depth research into transitioning, its causes and consequences. The two examples featured here illustrate in the titles of the organisations the lack of objectivity.

The Adams charity declares its advocacy of detransitioning, while the ‘National Centre’ is clearly supportive of transitioning. Similarly, much of the comment available on the internet is of a partial nature from right-wing and actively anti-LGBT news outlets to radically pro-transitioning groups, with a plethora somewhere in between.

This is an area of uncertainty that science will undoubtedly continue to help clarify. Meanwhile, minds need to remain open. There cannot be progress if people are silenced by either legislation or social, largely media, pressure.

There is a responsibility to express contrary ideas without malice, with those shown to be wrong exposed through reason. Such is the very basis of democracy, open discussion without fear of censure.

One of the basic misapprehensions of a socialist society is that equality will be achieved through uniformity, when actually the opposite is the case. Diversity is integral to socialism, for it’s through the dynamic of difference that progress will continue to be made. Socialism cannot be static, a once and for all arrangement of relationships and roles.

Dave Alton

Carrying Capacity Carry-ons (2021)

From the July 2021 issue of the Socialist Standard

When members of the World Socialist Movement explain that we aspire to a society of abundance where there is plenty for all, it is not a recommendation for some sort of orgy of consumerism, but simply referring to the fact that it is technically possible to produce more than enough to satisfy everyone’s material needs and that meeting everybody’s needs will indeed likely involve an increase in what people consume. This will certainly be the case for the billions of people who endure horrendous hunger, disease, and squalor. So, yes, socialism will involve raising the personal and individual consumption for much of the world’s population.

Surprisingly, some of our most vociferous critics are not conservatives but liberal progressives who decry such a goal as ecologically unfriendly and unachievable. More often than not, they will cite statistics of our planet’s carrying capacity and tell us we would require two or three Earths to provide for humanity’s needs.

Carrying capacity is a well-known and widely accepted concept. It basically says that sustainability requires balance and goes something like this: Humans need certain resources to survive, food, water and shelter. A sustainable habitat is one in which supply of and demand for these resources are balanced.

Some environmentalists today assert that current consumption limits have already breached or are about to breach the carrying capacity of our planet. This view assumes carrying capacity to be static. Seldom do they question why many carrying capacity calculations often differ. It is because determining a sustainable carrying capacity involves many variables which depend upon various criteria. Estimates vary widely depending on availability of resources and differing lifestyles of people in different parts of the world consuming different amounts of those resources.

The carrying capacity concept is fraught with problems from an ecological point of view. Carrying capacity is an idealised concept not to be taken literally. When applied to ecosystems, and even more, to human society, it falls apart. The fundamental flaw is failure to consider the role of social structure and relationships.

The talk of carrying capacity isn’t particularly helpful and supports the status quo. We are accustomed to the claim of too many people with images of the teeming slums of mega-cities, the bloated bellies of starving babies in the crammed refugee camps, as evidence that the planet cannot support our numbers. To bring the argument closer to home, we hear scare stories that Europe or the United States needs to shut its borders to (non-white) immigration, for having finally got our own birth-rate down to manageable levels, the last thing we now need to do is to open our doors to an invasion of poor (non-whites), who will use up our scarce social services and crowd us out of our neighbourhoods – the racist ‘white replacement’ theory.

The very concept of carrying capacity is a fabrication designed for social control. The possibility of marginalised populations being subject to eugenics and sterilisation to ‘curb’ their procreation isn’t too far-fetched. It is irrational that the culpability for poverty and hunger is attributed to them having big families and not to today’s wealth and resource inequality.

Too many sincere eco-activists buy into the idea that overpopulation is a problem leading to the destruction of the environment. The enemy is people. The poor are being blamed for being poor. The WSM response is that it is capital accumulation which is responsible for most resource use and subsequent waste. It demands increasing levels of consumption and strives toward unending growth and expanding markets. We should ask why advertisers need to spend billions of dollars on marketing if people seek never-satisfied levels of consumption. Under capitalism, there is a very large industry devoted to creating these wants. Capitalism requires consumption, whether it improves our lives or not, and drives us to consume up to, and past, our ability to pay for that consumption. In a system of capitalist competition, there is a built-in tendency to stimulate demand to a maximum extent. Corporations need to persuade customers to buy their products or they go out of business. De-growth as a few radical green proponents propose would destroy the capitalist economy.

‘Would the grow-or-die economy called capitalism really cease to plunder the planet even if the world’s population were reduced to a tenth of its present numbers? Would lumber companies, mining concerns, oil cartels, and agribusiness render redwood and Douglas fir forests safer for grizzly bears if — given capitalism’s need to accumulate and produce for their own sake — California’s population were reduced to one million people? The answer to these questions is a categorical no…’ argued Murray Bookchin, who introduced the school of thought called social ecology.

The ideal use of technology is to find ways to make fewer resources stretch far further. Renewable energy is clearly capable of providing large quantities of power for large numbers of people without emitting so much carbon. Adaptive agricultural methods are similarly capable of meeting the dietary needs of many more people than at present. Technology can cope with the growing demands placed on carrying capacity or planetary boundaries, by which we are not referring to greenwashing capitalist techno-fixes such as carbon capture and storage.

Technological innovation under capitalism is overwhelmingly introduced with the fundamental goal of enhancing profits and capital accumulation. So it is not suprising that some technological innovations under capitalism come at the cost of the environment. Capitalism lacks any intrinsic mechanism for regulating negative social and ecological side effects, which are deemed ‘externalities.’ The most that can be achieved, and then only under the pressure of social movements, is limited regulation.

Socialists are seeking to create a ‘steady-state economy’ which corresponds to what Marx called ‘simple reproduction’ – a situation where human needs are in balance with the resources needed to satisfy them. Such a society would already have decided, according to its own criteria and through its own decision-making processes, on the most appropriate way to allocate resources to meet the needs of its members. This having been done, it would only need to go on repeating this continuously from production period to production period. Production would not be ever-increasing but would be stabilised at the level required to satisfy needs. All that would be produced would be products for consumption and the products needed to replace and repair the raw materials and instruments of production used up in producing these consumer goods.

The existence of the carrying capacity concept is to maintain the ruling class’s current stranglehold over the lives of the poor – and to extend this stranglehold into the most intimate aspects of their lives such as decisions over family size and childbearing. Figures for carrying capacity are tied to current technology and practices. Any talk of carrying capacity should start by saying ‘If we never, ever do a single thing different than we do today…’

The future of society, and of the environment, relies on whether the global working class can wrest control of society from the parasitic few and commence production for need and use instead of for profit and capital accumulation.

When those in the environmentalist movement offer their ideal future it usually tends towards a pastoral idyll. Marxists have always advocated the greening of the cities ever since the Communist Manifesto declared for the ‘gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.’

ALJO

The Yesterday League (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

With Wimbledon well in the past and the first class cricket season nearing its end, we must be approaching winter and the beginning of the football season. So get out your scarf and woolly hat and get yourself ready for another nine months of cliches and clobbering.

How you view the new season may depend on whether you live in Scarborough or Lincoln. The innovation of automatic promotion and relegation between Division Four and the GM Vauxhall Conference was intended to catch perennial strugglers like Rochdale and Halifax: instead it ensnared Lincoln City, who the previous season had only just been relegated from Division Three and who now find themselves cast into something approaching outer darkness. Their replacement is not a team from the desirable commuter suburbs like Altrincham or Barnet but down-market Scarborough, who are pledged to try and survive by continuing to play part-time. As league clubs cut their playing staff to the bare minimum, the difference between Division Four and top non-league clubs diminishes all the time anyway.

At the other end of soccer's ladder of success. the pre-season headlines were made by the moves of Howard Kendall. Peter Shilton and Peter Beardsley. Kendall, having managed Everton to the League Championship, has been lured by the pesetas of Athletic Bilbao. Even if he returns to Britain after a couple of years, he is likely to be a millionaire by then — easily so if Bilbao win a trophy or two. So he may not stay long enough to need to learn Spanish (or Basque for that matter).

The rest of the transfer market has concerned players rather than managers. Glenn Hoddle left Spurs to join Monaco, who. according to the Guardian, play on the fourth floor of a shopping precinct before crowds of just over four thousand. Shilton has gone from Southampton to newly-promoted Derby County, in a deal widely described as worth a million pounds (most of which will apparently find its way into the bank account of Shilton himself rather than that of Southampton). This is the first big purchase at Derby since publicity-hungry capitalist Robert Maxwell took over as chairman from his son and it surely will not be the last.

Maxwell, in case you didn't know, is also owner of the Daily Mirror. It's an interesting combination, as football clubs and newspapers have a lot in common besides relying on each other for publicity and sales. Both are often poor investments from the ordinary capitalist standpoint, delivering more losses than profits (the continuing ban of English clubs from the European competitions sharply limits the profit-making possibilities). But both can be attractive toys to play with, providing publicity, excitement and a chance to impress people and do down the opposition.

The most shattering pre-season event was the abrupt withdrawal of the League sponsorship by Rupert Murdoch's Today. This proved that Murdoch's rivalry with Maxwell is unlikely to extend to the field of sport-, the big boss of the Sunday Times, News of the World and the rest is interested in the glamour only of a healthy balance sheet. Todays withdrawal may lead to legal action by the League to get some of the money it presumed was coming its way through the sponsorship. This one will run and run.

An extra bit of excitement was added at the end of last season by the promotion/relegation play-offs (a return to something very like the system originally abolished in 1898). While the introduction of these coincided with changes to the sizes of the top two divisions, this could easily have been achieved simply by adjusting appropriately the numbers of teams promoted and relegated. The play-offs were in fact set up purely for financial reasons — which is bad news for. say, Oldham, who got sizeable crowds at playoffs but thereby lost out on a lucrative promotion to Division One. Automatic relegation from Division Four may have helped boost some end-of-season gates too — at least. Burnley don't draw crowds of fifteen thousand for any other reason any longer.

As they say, may the best team win. Sometimes, of course, the best team may win. but more often it's the one with the richest chairman.

Paul Bennett

Letters: Eco-Socialism (1987)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eco-Socialism

Dear Letters Editors,

Congratulations on your August issue "One Green World”, which addressed some of the multifarious issues of the environment.

I have been a fairly regular reader of the Socialist Standard in the past and have been consistently disappointed at your failure to look at "green" issues. All too often I have come to the view, after reading your journal, that the SPGB languishes in the past, placing an overriding faith in the ideas and doctrines of Marxism and attempting to apply them unquestioningly to the modern world. That is not to say that Marx's fundamental theories do not hold good — indeed they do — but it is necessary, in my view, to appreciate how capitalism has surpassed Marx's expectation of how ingeniously it would strive to keep itself going.

For example. Marx could not have forseen the invention and proliferation of the atomic bomb, the ultimate symbol of capitalism's self-destructive tenacity, nor could he have envisaged the sheer scale of waste and ruthless exploitation of the world's finite resources which we are now witnessing.

I believe that the future — if there is to be one — must be a "green" one. It is my hope that it will be a socialist "green” future if we are to avoid a return to a form of feudal societal structure.

It is all very well to sit in an ivory tower of pure, untainted Marxist socialism, pronouncing an "I told you so" view of modern society and waiting for a "mass understanding" which will bring about true socialism. I too believe that genuine socialism can only come about through the collective will, but in the meantime there is a world out there and if we don't act to protect it through means pragmatic as well as pure, then we may well lose it. Yes, capitalism with its absurd self-contradictions is a dying order — the very real danger is that it now has the power to take us all with it (and thus all hope of genuine socialism).

Having made these points, I wish to come back to your August issue: 1 was dismayed to see that in all your considerations of green issues you didn't mention SERA — the Socialist Environment and Resources Association. SERA is a growing body (currently over 1.000 members) of "green" socialists actively campaigning for a green and socialist future.

May I, through your letters page, urge you to return to the theme in future issues and look at the work of SERA? Perhaps the SPGB might consider trying to organise a public debate with SERA? Further, if I may be so bold — members of the SPGB might consider also becoming members of SERA — membership of the one organisation is not. in my view, incompatible with membership of the other.

Yours sincerely.

Steve Dent

Reply

We welcome the invitation to debate with SERA. However we cannot agree that membership of The Socialist Party is compatible with SERA. Although we recognise the urgency of the ecological problems facing the world, reformist activity perpetuates capitalism and so postpones their solution.

Editors.

Theory, theory and even more theory

Dear Editors.

I have only been reading the Socialist Standard for a short while but to me it seems that the principal fault in your presentation is that you are too academic.

You theorise so much that you ignore what happens in society in practice. If a certain society is not theoretically correct in terms of your rigid Marxist analysis then you dismiss it totally. You are completely hostile to anyone that does not completely support your case.

In terms of strict socialist analysis, based upon Marxist principles, perhaps Russia is not socialist. But the vast majority of people are not concerned with such theoretical analysis that the SPGB keeps coming up with. They are concerned with practical matters such as jobs and homes. The fact of the matter is that in practice Russia does provide jobs and homes for its people. In theoretical terms the SPGB may deny that this could take place but in the real world the SPGB's theory has little relevance. While the SPGB remains trapped within the language of theory and abstract analysis then it will remain an irrelevance to ordinary people.

Paul Jenkins 

Swansea

Reply

The aim of the Socialist Standard is to put across socialist ideas. We try to do this by publishing articles which offer a socialist interpretation of current affairs and political ideas and by including articles written in a variety of styles and taking different approaches in the hope that they will appeal to as many readers as possible. However the common element in all the articles we print is the case that capitalism cannot meet the needs of the working class and that socialist revolution is necessary if that objective is to be met.

Although we agree that in putting across our ideas we should not ignore reality, it is true that how people see reality may very well be affected by the ideas that they hold — the two are not totally independent of each other. Indeed one of the most important functions of the Socialist Standard is to challenge the conventional view that capitalism, despite its problems, is the best of all possible worlds by highlighting the extent to which the political rhetoric of capitalism does not conform to people's everyday experiences.

That kind of thinking also informs our approach to countries like Russia. In this case the rhetoric used is that of "socialism" and because our sole objective is the establishment of a socialist world we are bound to be interested in any country that claims to have already established socialism. But an examination of the social and economical system in Russia demonstrates that, once again, the reality does not live up to the rhetoric. What The Socialist Party understands by socialism is a system based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, a society where everyone has access to the things they need, a society where there is no buying and selling, no wage slavery, no production for profit and a society where everyone can participate in the making of decisions affecting their lives. That kind of society is not to be found in Russia. It may be that workers have jobs and houses in Russia but this does not affect the things they do not have — free access to all the things they need, freedom from the tyranny of wage slavery and state coercion.

The Socialist Party is concerned with practical issues like people's standard of living — housing, health care and so on — and it is because we are so concerned that we ask questions about why it is that millions of workers throughout the world are deprived of such basic necessities. The only answer that makes sense is that it is because of the way society is ordered. And the only permanent solution that makes any sense is to abolish the present social system and instead establish a socialist society.

There are three stages in the development of political ideas. Firstly, an analysis of what's wrong with society as it is and most people from their own experience of life in capitalism could come up with a list of persistent problems that they would like to see solved. Secondly, if we are serious about trying to find permanent solutions to those problems then we need to try to explain why such problems arise. Theory may very well be useful here, enabling people to put their own personal experiences into a broader context. Having come up with an explanation that fits what we know about the world we can then think about ways to solve the problems identified in the most effective way. At this stage we need not only political theory but just as importantly, political action and organisation.

The Socialist Standard provides a forum for a discussion of ideas about life in capitalist society and why it is the way it is and of socialist ideas. These issues are not abstractions but are of vital relevance to all workers. But The Socialist Party is not just concerned with ideas. Why not visit your local branch of The Socialist Party and find out about socialist action in your area?

Editors.

Between the Lines: Our people (1987)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Our people

It's good to see television which shows what life is like for us working people. Not Coronation Street dummy workers, but real workers talking for themselves about real life. Such TV is all too rare, but Yorkshire TV's On The Manor (Monday. 3 August. 8.30 pm. ITV) showed how to do it. The documentary was about The Manor estate, a mile and a half from Sheffield city centre. Sixty per cent of the estate's inhabitants are below the official poverty line; 75 per cent have no car; only one per cent "own" their homes. The programme showed (with the use of excerpts from a government propaganda film made in the 1940s, claiming that towns belonged to the people and would be developed to make life happier for them) that all that has really happened with the building of new council estates has been the replacement of new slums for old. As Barry Pennington, who lives on the estate, said. The Manor is a prison of poverty: people can’t escape because they lack the money to do so.

Inhabitants of the estate make weekly visits to an open-air market where second-hand clothes and shoes can be bought: three blouses for a pound. Ann Matthews from the estate defined poverty as "people not looking their best, not living in the best conditions". She is right. The poverty of life for the workers shown in this documentary, just like thousands of workers in other towns and cities, is a deprivation not only of what people need in order to survive without extreme suffering, but a denial of access to the extreme comfort which all of us could enjoy. On The Manor workers have boosted their confidence by forming a tenants' association and learning to resist those who supervise their poverty. Such resistance is necessary and educative but it is not going to break down the walls of the prison of poverty. Only the struggle for a socialist society will succeed in doing that.

Naughty people

Capitalism, the most ethically bankrupt and socially obscene system of living in the history of humanity, loves to depict itself as a moral society. The Cook Report (Wednesdays. 8.30pm BBC1) is all about showing that crime does not pay — or that, when it does, the criminals will not escape the public gaze. The idea of the programme — which is very compelling viewing — is that the fearless reporter, Roger Cook, accompanied by a camera team, confronts wrong-doers and urges them to bare their wicked souls to the honest viewers. One week he was on the Costa del Sol in Spain being hit by umbrellas owned by dodgy East End characters wanted by the police in Britain; the next he was exposing the sick traders in child pornography. It is all righteous stuff and perhaps it even puts some fear into people who have put fear into others. But — and this is the but which makes The Cook Report an essentially superficial and phoney exercise — Cook's exposes are only of those who have illegally exploited, molested or lied to others. The legalised criminals are not up for exposure.

When is Roger Cook going to do a programme in the offices of M15. asking them a few of the questions which our masters seem to be rather touchy about us wanting to think about? But then, MI5 vets all employees for the BBC, doesn't it? What about going into the churches to look at some of the corruption there? Cook may well derive some satisfaction from exposing the child-pom producers (who are usually seriously disturbed people and certainly small-fry when it comes to child molestation) but there would be plenty of mileage in an expose on the routine repression of children by the education system. Following East End gangsters to Spain made exciting viewing, especially when one of them punched Cook straight in the gob but when are we to see the next programme on the robbers who have become Stock Exchange millionaires by paying workers less than the value of what we produce? When is Cook going to stop picking at the scabs and start shining the light on the cancer itself? Now maybe some good investigative journalist could infiltrate The Cook Report Office and show us just how stories are chosen to be followed up — and how they’re dropped.

Trendy people

This column has in the past complained about the patronising nature of the presentation of rock music on TV. Well, it's only of interest to proles, and young ones at that — probably uneducated and unemployed — so we'll make it pretty basic, say the producers. Of later matters have become worse; Network 7, the new Channel 4 programme for the 18-25 market, seems to be directed at viewers with serious brain damage. Features on why Tony Blackburn fell in love with his wife and why Tony Blackburn divorced his wife and other issues of profound importance to people inhabiting a world which could go up in smoke at any time is insulting drivel. Trendy, illiterate, artistically uncouth, socially shallow rubbish like Network 7 and No Limits are a reflection of the cultural degeneration of a system which was fit for the dustbin of history long before the kids watching these programmes were born.

Steve Coleman

Cry from the Bronx (1987)

TV Review from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Watching The Bronx: A Cry For Help (C4. 27 July) you could be forgiven for thinking you were seeing bombed cities during world war two. We were shown a landscape of rubble and rubbish; we were told of rats the size of cats, the lack of basic amenities like water and heating, the high rents and landlords who would do nothing for their tenants; and we were told of the spread of poverty from a few streets to many.

Meanwhile what were the politicians doing about the conditions in the South Bronx? Making promises of course! Jimmy Carter promised 56 million dollars in aid. It did not materialise. Ronald Reagan told the people of South Bronx that he could not do anything unless elected as president. He was elected but did nothing. In fact doing nothing seemed like a deliberate policy: a New York City official hoped that the people would move away so that the whole area could be bulldozed. The capitalist system runs for the minority and if you're poor you're meant to be thankful for what you've got — even if it's akin to a bomb site.

The Bronx: A Cry For Help showed a side of the "Land of the Free" that is seldom seen — the degrading poverty that exists alongside the extreme wealth of the few.

Brendan Cummings

The Great Tin Crash (1987)

Book Review from the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Great Tin Crash. Bolivia and the World Tin Market by John Crabtree, Gavan Duffy,  Jenny Pearce.  (Latin American Bureau, London, 1987)

1985 saw the collapse of the world tin market with the price of tin falling from over £8.000 a tonne to less than £4,000 in October alone. A market surplus of tin had been occurring for some years but changes in dollar and sterling exchange rates exacerbated the market collapse. The repercussions were felt in areas as wide apart as Cornwall and Bolivia, where tin miners lost their jobs.

But capitalism takes no account of the human misery it causes as this book makes clear. It quotes Eduardo Galeano as saying that:

Bolivians die with rotten lungs so that the world may consume cheap tin. Tinplate is made from tin and the tin is worth nothing: a half dozen people fix its global price.

Seventy per cent of workers in Bolivia’s state mining company, Comibol, lost their jobs and this in a country where poverty is second only to that in Haiti in the Western hemisphere. Bolivia is a country in debt. It has been estimated that as many as 50 per cent of the population may be unemployed. It is also a country unable to compete effectively — a victim of new technology, of changes in consumption patterns and of economic recession. But the authors of this book also point out that Bolivia is a victim of capitalism, a "system [which] is fundamentally wasteful of the resource which lies at its very foundation: human beings".

But the human tragedies created by poverty are not the concern of the London Metal Exchange which dominates the world metal market. It ensures that consumers are not dependent on a single producer and guarantees a single price for metal of a given type and quality, regardless of source. But the metals market has been subject to the economic recession that has affected all aspects of the world economy. Demand for tin has fallen and so only low-cost tin producers could survive. The International Tin Association attempted to maintain the price of tin by the operation of a stockpile: during periods of shortage tin was released onto the market and during periods when demand was low tin was purchased for the stockpile.

Bolivia is a high cost tin producer and its position has been worsened by competition from Brazil — a major low cost producer — and a fall in the amount of tin sold on the world market due to substitution, technological change and the use of alternative materials for packaging. In addition. Bolivia was more vulnerable because of its dependence on tin production — in 1980 tin made up about 40 per cent of Bolivia's exports — and its generally weak economy. In 1985 the inflation rate was 8,163.5 per cent. The exchange rate fell from 25 peso to the dollar in 1980 to over one million peso in September 1985. In an attempt to stabilise the economy the government froze wages (but not those for members of parliament or the military). It is little wonder that many Bolivians turned to coca cultivation where money could be made preparing cocaine paste for export to USA. The tin miners' response to the wage freeze and the removal of subsidies on food was to organise mass underground hunger strikes. The response of the management at Comibol was to be grateful to be freed from their contractual responsibility to pay wages.

Bolivia's future looks bleak. It will perhaps be able to weather the present crisis because of the informal economy — one estimate suggests that the production of coca has risen to 160.000 tonnes in 1985, enough to produce 437 tonnes of cocaine. But, as with other exports, it is the American sellers who make the profits. Nevertheless it does provide employment, with as many as one in six families engaged in coca production. Meanwhile the Bolivian miners' union. FSTMB. still argues that losses at Comibol have been exaggerated by the government and they reject "the closure of any mine without a prior technical and economic survey", a rearguard campaign not unlike that waged by the NUM in Britain over pit closures. But increasingly the role of the FSTMB has been one of negotiating compensation for redundant miners.

The precarious situation of tin miners in Bolivia is typical of workers in any industrial nation. The FSTMB has long been a thorn in the flesh of the Bolivian government and the present administration of Paz Estenssoro has been happy to see a weakening of the miners' influence. At the same time the competition for employment has turned miner against miner within Bolivia and. internationally, the insecure future of tin mining divides workers between countries.

This book claims that the failure of the rich nations to maintain stable exchange rates and to support the International Tin Council means that they must "bear the considerable responsibility for this hardship". The use of tin is undergoing a profound change and the management of that change is harsh because capitalism permits change to occur regardless of human cost.

 Under capitalism, however, not only are the benefits not shared but the very process of change itself generates losses and hardships to its victims. National agreements in the third world do not have the resources to compensate their citizens for changes in the international division of labour. The tin crash has shown the importance of sharing the costs of a crisis of this dimension equitably, with wealthy consumer nations assuming more of the burden.

Benevolent capitalism, as suggested here, is a pious hope. The authors call for "a more humane and democratic world order" and "a genuine transfer of economic power and wealth". Neither are possible without the abolition of the capitalist system which, they recognise, takes no account of the needs of human beings.

Philip Bentley

Society without exchange (1987)

From the September 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

It may be hard to imagine a society totally without exchange, but nevertheless for the vast majority of human history, around 15.000 years, this was exactly the way things were organised in a stage of human history called primitive communism.

At this time humanity lived a tribal existence with each member of the tribe as important as another: the men as hunters, the women as gatherers of fruit and roots. The young, as the future of the tribe, the old as the wisdom of the tribe, who knew the migratory patterns of animals, where the best roots could be found and much more besides. When the men and women returned with food it was not (as portrayed in some of the more pathetic films such as One Million Years BC) a mad rush for food and the strongest getting the most but a fair and equitable share-out, as the tribe realised the importance of each member of their society.

Examples can still be found today of such tribal societies: the Kalahari Bushmen and Pinaro Indians to name but two who, when first confronted by colonialists and asked about greed and property and who owned what, could not even find words in their language for such concepts and would end up laughing and looking bemused.

Socialist society

The Socialist Party however is not advocating a return to primitive communism. Far from it. but we can learn from history. Socialism must be on a world-wide scale, to replace worldwide capitalism — no individual countries, just one world. Also, it can only be established when the majority understand and want it. There will be no leaders and it can only be brought about democratically, by the ballot box, through conscious political action.

Socialism is only viable when the means of producing and distributing wealth are sufficient to provide for everyone's needs. Even the most conservative estimates of food production conclude that with farming methods now available we could feed six times the present population of the world — a total of five billion people.

Money is only necessary today because, living in capitalism, the means of producing and distributing wealth are in the hands of a tiny minority of the population. A person's position in society is determined by their relationship to these means of production. If someone is lucky enough to be one of the owning minority then they are members of a capitalist class whose ownership of the means of producing wealth means that they do not have to work but are able to live off rent, interest and profit. If however you are one of the vast majority of people who do not own factories, banks, shipping lines or whatever, then you are a member of the working class. You must make a living by selling the only thing of any value you own; this is your labour power — your ability to work — for which you receive a wage or salary.

Some people say that even workers do not have to work. They could live on social security, but anyone who has tried to manage on this pittance realises how hollow this argument is and that, if a worker is able to get a "decent" wage, he or she is forced by necessity to take it.

Workers, even though they and their class produce everything in society and run it from top to bottom, are only able to gain access to the fruits of their labour through money. A worker who helps to produce, for example, £50.000 worth of cars a week will only receive a small fraction of this in wages; the rest is the surplus value (unpaid labour) extracted from all workers, which yields the rent, interest and profit from which capitalists derive their wealth.

In socialism however things will be very different. Once a majority of people want and understand socialism and how to get it, then they will take control of the various state machines and implement it. When socialism is established the land, factories, transport — all the things we need to live — will be taken into common ownership and democratic control. No one will own anything (apart, of course, from personal items). This is not to be confused with nationalisation, which is merely state controlled capitalism as exists in countries such as Russia. China and Cuba.

Production for Use

How will things be produced? Who will produce them? They will be produced as they are now. by the people who produce them now. The important difference will be that instead of the rationing of a wage or salary, there will be free access to all wealth for everyone. Everything produced will go into a common store from which everyone will take what they need. Everyone will have free access to the common store because you cannot buy what already belongs to you and everyone else. People will not be left out because they are too old, young or sick to contribute to production as happens now. These people will be looked after to the best of society's ability. Things will be produced directly for human use, not for sale with a view to profit as now. when, if there is no profit there is no production and if you are unable to pay then you are not able to consume.

Human Nature

One of the arguments socialists often encounter is that all the greedy and selfish people will take more than they need. How correct is this argument?

First of all, in a socialist society people would have to be very greedy and foolish to consume so much as to cause any kind of problem. However, apart from that the notion of greedy people is quite wrong.

"Human nature" does not exist. Human behaviour, which is its proper title, is not fixed but is the result of the society people are conditioned to live in. At present we all live in a "dog eat dog" society of competition; a vicious society where the weak are fair game. Yet even now anyone can point to examples where people forget about the greedy nature of this society to help others. They co-operate even though there is no economic reward; think of voluntary workers, or blood donors for example. There is no reason why our rational desire for comfort and human welfare should not allow us to co-operate even further in a sane society based on cooperation.

So-called human nature is no barrier to a concept of “from each according to ability, to each according to need". Human beings are not naturally greedy, selfish, aggressive, or naturally anything else; human behaviour is determined by the kind of society people are conditioned to live in. There is only one barrier to socialism: a lack of understanding by people and therefore a lack of desire for it — in other words, a lack of socialists.

The Socialist Party does not have or need leaders; the party is only used by politically conscious socialists as a vehicle to get socialism; when socialism is established the need for the Socialist Party will disappear. Its job done, it will go out of existence.

Steve Colborn