The Menace of Aerial Warfare - Part 2 (1936)

From the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

Towards the end of the War we sat in our cellars and whispered after each bomb that dropped nearby, “Can you smell gas?” We didn’t know what it smelt like, but we sniffed apprehensively and hoped there would be no strange smell. What if we had smelt gas? We should have died like rats in a sewer. We should have been merely part of the dead incidental to war. And not even the useless consolation of a place on a Roll of Honour. The war-dead, whether they are civilians or civilian soldiers, are victims of a predatory anarchy, which exists between nations by virtue of the profit system. They are not even romantic victims. They die terror-stricken, in mud and filth. They crouch in holes, waiting for high-explosive and asphyxiating and excoriating gases to put a period to their lives. Their monument is an interim dividend.

What is the answer of capitalism to this? Aeroplanes, more aeroplanes, and yet more aeroplanes, with bombers in the ratio of two to one.

Let me give you another little picture, this time drawn by Major Endries, in his book, “Gift Gaskreig.” This is an English raid on the German manufacturing town of Dusseldorf: —

Light bombing squadrons arrive quickly in the darkness. They drop on the largest and most important factories, now working on night shift, bombs filled with white phosphorus. A torrent of inextinguishable flames overwhelm the buildings. Workmen attempt panic-stricken escapes to the cellars—the population, more panic-stricken, flies underground. The raiding party wireless to H.Q. “successful raid,” and calls for a second raiding party. These arrive with light gas bombs, spreading first an irritant gas that can pierce masks, followed by a second, stronger and more lethal gas, which kills the populace as they flee from underground cellars made uninhabitable by the first gas. Every two or three hours similar attacks are repeated on different parts of the town until everything is enveloped in flames, and clouds of poison gas mark the place where before hundreds of thousands of human beings lived and moved.

It has been suggested that an electric ray or system of electrical power projection might be used against hostile aircraft. Apart from widely scattered articles in the sensational press, there has been no evidence that such a ray or power projection is contemplated or possible, but presumably it would operate by interfering with the ignition, either magneto or coil, and—a remoter possibility—by exploding the fuel tank. It is a matter of fact, however, that intensive experiments have been in progress during the last few years with the application of the compression ignition engine (the Diesel) to aircraft, and the engine will be available for use in heavy aircraft within a matter of months. A ray of the type suggested would, therefore, be quite useless, since the Diesel has no electrical machinery to be affected, and the crude oil fuel is practically non-inflammable.

It is not difficult under a regime of unrestricted development to contemplate bomb and container designs which would release poison gas to dissipate uniformly in a low-lying cloud or death blanket not higher than our tallest buildings. But assume a blanket one hundred yards high, which gives a big margin of error, and we find that less than half a ton of chemical is sufficient to produce effective saturation over a square mile. Even if you multiply this by a thousand to allow largely for wind losses, barriers and higher concentrations, you are still far within the limits of practicable gas attack from the air.—“Scientific Disarmament,” Victor Lefebure.

Mustard gas, which, with Lewisite, is the gas best adapted for the destruction of civilian populations, is known technically as diclorethyl-sulphide. With Lewisite and chlorpicrin it is classified as a vesicant gas because it attacks not only the respiratory organs, but also the eyes, skin and surface tissue of the body. The mask, therefore, is not an efficient or a complete protection. Ordinary clothing will protect against mustard or Lewisite for two or three minutes, after which the gas, which is an easily vapourising liquid, penetrates to the skin. A complete suit of oilskin, so constructed as to be airtight, is a protection, but as such suits could not be worn for more than an hour or two without collapse, it is a matter of Hobson’s choice. As an emergency protection against low concentrations, motor grease smeared thickly on the exposed parts of the body, and especially between the fingers, in the elbow joints, and the parts of the head uncovered by the mask, is said to be effective. The manufacture of oilskin suits in useful quantities is impossible, and the cost would necessarily prohibit wide distribution among the class of people most in need of them—the workers.

Low concentrations of mustard do not kill if the respiratory organs are properly protected, although Lewisite, so far as effective concentration is concerned, is largely an unknown quantity. It causes painful lesions of the skin and tissue, and ulcers and sores, which may lead to prolonged invalidism. The ulcers may be gangrenous and, in the case of Lewisite, will, unless dealt with rapidly, be arsenically poisoned.

The injuries are very difficult of healing. A resultant tendency to despondency and lowering of morale in the patient is often seen. The combating of this must be made a special point in nursing these cases.—“First Aid in Defence Against Chemical Warfare” (Collins & Blackmore).

Both mustard and Lewisite are known as persistent gases, i.e., they persist in the place where dropped for periods varying between seven and fourteen days. The contaminated areas must be treated immediately with “ bleach ” (chloride of lime in powder form) if they are to be moderately safe for use. These gases also persist on the clothing of persons who have been in contact with them, and, if they entered a warm room or gas-shelter, unless their clothing was removed, they would injure the persons in the shelter. Mustard does not affect the skin immediately, the period of delay being from three to twenty-four hours. It is therefore quite possible for such persons to transmit the gas unknowingly for a considerable time. Used against disciplined troops, with proper respiratory protection, the proportion of deaths to casualties from mustard gas is very low, but it cannot be too greatly emphasised that the population of our large cities have not the necessary discipline and knowledge to protect itself.

On cold nights mustard is liable to lay in liquid form on the ground, becoming a dangerous vapour when the temperature rises in the morning.

Food contaminated by mustard gas is uneatable. Mustard burns are as painful inside as out— and fatal. It is certain that docks and wharves would be heavily bombed with mustard to contaminate essential food supplies.

Water is easily contaminated, and boiling is not a protection. To drink affected water might easily be fatal. Reservoirs are easily bombed, and cannot be covered, because water depends upon contact with air to keep it fresh.

Chloride of lime is an efficient neutralising agent, but it is doubtful (to say the least) if enough could be manufactured to supply the civilian population and the forces actively engaged, and since very large supplies of this chemical would be a tactical necessity for the armed forces, the amount available for civilian defence would be inadequate. It is not an exaggeration to say that adequate supplies of chloride of lime will be the deciding factor in any future European war. Lewisite has the definite disadvantage of being efficiently neutralised by water, large supplies of which are usually available. Mustard, on the other hand, can be used to infect large areas for several days, and during this time no troops could use the areas in question. To gain contact with the opposing forces it would be necessary to make “neutral” lanes through the gas by spreading large quantities of chloride of lime.

The most usual type of mustard gas bomb weighs 50 lbs. and contaminates about 600 square yards; the average load of a bombing aeroplane would, therefore, be 90 bombs capable of infecting an area of 54,000 square yards. In practice, of course, there would be a great deal of overlapping, and the figure given cannot be regarded as accurate. Even if we reduce the area by 50 per cent., however, we are left with 27,000 square yards, or 15 square miles, and, although the population of such an area would not necessarily be killed in its entirety, the total of fatal and non-fatal casualties would be extremely high, and it would be dangerous in the extreme for the survivors to move until the gas had been neutralised. There is, too, the additional problem of dealing with injured persons, which, at the present time, seems impossible of solution.

When, during the late War, it was proposed to use mustard gas in shells, it was discovered that the use of liquid presented serious problems in ballistics, which had to be overcome before it could be used. Although these technical difficulties were overcome, gas shells will always remain complicated and expensive things to make. The gas bomb, on the other hand, is not fired by percussion, but dropped. The difficulty, therefore, does not arise. A certain amount of streamlining is used for greater accuracy, but, quite apart from the fact that a gas bomb does not require to be very accurate, even petrol-tins filled with liquid gas and dropped, almost without discrimination, would be effective.

The practice of spraying gas from containers has not yet been used against civilians, but, given reasonable weather conditions, there is no reason why it should not be effective.

It is improbable that gases of the phosgene type would be used against large centres of population, chiefly because mustard is much more effective, easier to handle and as cheap to manufacture. A large distribution of masks capable of protecting the respiratory organs, the provision of gas-shelters arid the efficient gas-proofing of rooms (a comparatively easy job) in the better-built private houses, would provide adequate protection against this gas, which is deadly enough in its effects upon the unprotected, but non-persistent and relatively easy to keep out. Stemutator gases, to stampede the people, might be used, but to assume that the enemy in time of war (whoever the enemy might be) would wish to stampede the people when they could kill them as quickly and easily is a little naive.

It seems clear, then, that we shall have to deal almost entirely with the vesicant gases, high-explosive, thermit and possibly bacteria, and I therefore proceed to a consideration of these three last factors, which, in the anxiety to provide against the major threat of gas, are too often overlooked.

High-Explosive, Thermit and Bacteria

High-explosive is chiefly valuable in air attack for cutting essential connections, such as light, power, gas, water and drainage, in the spreading of general panic by reason of the violence of its effects, and in the destruction of shelters.

There has been great development in the destructive power of high explosive since 1918, and also in the technique of its use.

As an example, the time-delayed bomb may be considered. This bomb explodes between four and 36 hours after it has been dropped, the time of explosion being under full control. In regard to this weapon, the report of the German Red Cross in 1928 to the 13th International Red Cross Conference says: —

It is obvious that all rescue and protective measures would be practically useless if such a bomb exploded in a town after several hours or days. Even the best organised rescue services could scarcely be brought into action under such conditions, and such a step would really mean useless sacrifice.

High-explosive bombs used in aeroplane attacks on London during the last War weighed about 30 lbs. Airship bombs were somewhat larger. Bombs at that time were sufficiently “delayed" to explode after passing through two or three storeys, and could destroy a large house.

It is now possible to construct bombs carrying upwards of a ton of explosive.

In the section dealing with protection I quote some figures given by General Von Haeften, and there is no reason to regard them as exaggerated. Explosive is much more dangerous and destructive than it was twenty years ago.

Thermit has not yet been used against civilians. Its use in times of peace is for welding iron and steel, particularly under-water welding, It can produce a fire-centre of 3,000 degrees Centigrade— above the melting temperature of steel. There is-no method of extinguishing it.

Thermit is a mixture of magnetic iron oxide and aluminium powder, and it can be used equally well in shells or bombs. Thermit bombs weigh approximately 2 lbs., and each bomb is capable of starting a fire centre. Aeroplanes can carry large numbers of these bombs, and it would be a simple matter to start several hundred fires, which might or might not be serious, within the space of an hour or so.

The London Fire Brigade quite recently required most of its personnel and equipment, and the assistance of several fire-floats, to put out a wharf fire, and spent five days doing it. They could not even start to mitigate. the effects of several hundred fires springing up in rapid succession.

The question of the use of bacteria is one that has often been written round, but never seriously examined, in the public Press. This is probably because the effect of this type of warfare is largely incalculable.

It has been rumoured that, at the close of the last War, preparations had been made in several countries to use bacteria, and, in particular, that glanders cultures were discovered in a German embassy for the avowed purpose of infecting Rumanian cavalry horses. Rumour, of course, is proverbially the lying jade, but the technical resources of the time permitted it, and war, after all, is the art of inflicting the maximum of destruction upon the enemy with the minimum of damage to oneself. It would be absurd to expect any considerations of humanity or ethics to temper the tortuous workings of the military mind. The recent bombing of Red Cross units in Abyssinia was quite predictable. It is merely the military mind running true to type.

L. G. Savage

(To be continued.)

Blogger's Note:

The October 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard carried the following correction in connection with this particular article.

Mr. L. G. Savage, the writer of this series of articles, asks us to point out that the instalment which appeared in the August issue contained two errors. In column one, page 123, last paragraph, "magnetic or coil" should read "magneto or coil."

The figures in the last paragraph, column one, page 124, are incorrect. 27,000 square yards is not 15 square miles, but only a small part of a square mile. It will be observed, however, that 27,000 square yards is the area likely to be contaminated by liquid mustard gas, and bears no relation to the area likely to be affected by gas in vapour form.

Ed. Comm.

The Menace of Aerial Warfare (1936)

From the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

(The following article contains a very full examination of the effects of aerial bombing on large centres of population. This writer is not yet a member of the party, but in view of the present importance of the subject, and the support the information gives to the Socialist attitude to war, we have decided in this instance to suspend our rule against including articles by non-members.

There may perhaps be some exaggeration of the probable effects of modern warfare, but on this the reader can form his own judgment from the facts set down. One thing is certain— the effects of another war on a large scale, with the weapons now available, hardly bear thinking about.

Ed. Comm.)

Dye Factories as “Merchants of Death."

Prior to 1914 the I.G. (Interessen Gemeinschaft) possessed a virtual monopoly of the world’s dyestuffs industry. In other countries the industry was in a crude and embryo stage of development. To the general reader it may seem a long way from the manufacturer of dyes to the “merchant of death”—so far, indeed, that this industry has not yet figured, as it deserves, in any of the recent enquiries into the arms traffic. It must remain undisputed, however, that all the motives of the manufacturer of guns, shells, aeroplanes and tanks, in keeping war to the forefront as an instrument of policy, must apply with equal force, to the manufacturer of dyestuffs.

The next war will find the Yorkshire dye factories the most important manufacturers of weapons of offence in England.

When considering all the information made available after the last War had ended, it seems certain that the I.G. played the major part in prolonging the German resistance and, furthermore, had the strategic advantages of this enormous plant been fully realised, the War would have terminated in a German victory by the end of 1915. That she did not understand is now history.

When the first shock of surprise was over, and the immense advantage gained by the German’s use of chlorine was not followed up, the manufacture of poison gas was started in England and France, and it was realised that the pre-War monopoly of the dye industry was making possible the large-scale use of poison gas by the German Army.

Dye factories can be changed over to the production of war gases in a very short time. Indeed, most of the gases have a legitimate industrial use in times of peace. It is for the latter reason that it will always be impossible to disarm, so far as gas is concerned.

Before the last War the dye industry was practically non-existent in England and France, and when it became necessary to manufacture mustard gas (dichlorethyl-sulphide) on a scale suitable to the requirements of modern warfare, new plant had to be erected, which, in many respects, was identical with the normal aniline dye plants. It was not until late in the War, after many failures and many casualties, that production was commenced, but, by the Armistice, it was possible for the Allies to boast that they were in a position to “drown the Germans in mustard gas.” If there had been a well-developed dye industry in England or France, the time required to start production could have been reduced by perhaps as much as 95 per cent.

The importance of the dye industry was realised by England during the Great War by reason of these costly and laborious experiments in gas-production, and, in 1919, the import of dyes was prohibited, except under licence from the Board of Trade. That this order was illegal, having regard to the law at that time, led, in 1920, to the Dyestuffs (Import Regulations) Act, which became operative in January, 1921, whereby the import of dyestuffs and intermediates was totally prohibited for ten years except under Government licence. About the same time France, the U.S.A. and Italy created high import duties to foster the development of the industry.

At the close of the year 1918, the world’s capacity to produce dyestuffs was double that of 1914, the figures standing at 300,000 tons.

The following tabulation of the annual production figures for 1929, of the principal manufacturing countries, is of interest:

Germany (tons) 72,000

U.S.A                 38,000

France         16,000

England         15,000

It will be seen that, at this time, the combined production of the three latter countries did not equal that of Germany. The next in order is the U.S.A., with 38,000 tons, and it is significant that the menace of chemical warfare has been realised more fully in the U.S.A. than in any other country, with the exception of Germany. The U.S.A., in addition to encouraging the manufacture of dyestuffs, possess a large factory (the largest of its kind in the world) at Edgewood, devoted to the manufacture of all types of poisonous gases and equipment.

In 1926 the Imperial Chemical Industries (I.C.I.) was formed with a capital of £65,000,000 to take over and co-ordinate the activities of Brunner Mond & Co., Ltd., Nobel Industries, Ltd. ' (manufacturers, among other things, of explosives), United Alkali Co., Ltd., British Dyestuffs Corporation, and a good many others. The ramifications of this huge combine are extensive, but largely unknown. The merger certainly has had the effect of unifying the potential producers of poison gas with the heavy chemical and high-explosives industry.

Nothing is more certain than that we have here a huge plant that could be mobilised at a moment's notice for the production of war material, and would make profit by the prosecution of war. Therefore, even in the absence of proof, the I.C.I. must be suspected, as must every other potential producer of war material on a large scale, of favouring war as a means of settling the international disputes of capitalists.

It cannot be denied that the chemical industry is of enormous benefit to man, but it is also his potential destroyer. Explosives are necessary to human progress, but the I.C.I. is not organised to help human progress.

For my own part I do not think that there is anything particularly dishonourable in the activities of armament makers in general, or this side of the I.C.I.’s business in particular, because they are merely working within the framework of a system or social organisation that determines their business methods. I do not intend this to be an apologia for armourers, but it is indisputable that, during the last year or two, they have been made scapegoats for evils inherent in the profit system, and my purpose is to draw attention to the wider issues involved.

Shortly after the War the I.G. concluded price-controlling agreements with the dye factories of France, Russia and Italy. It is more than possible that there has been some exchange of personnel and formulae. The I.C.I. also hold large blocks of shares in the I.G.

Even a substance so innocent as beet-sugar, the manufacture of which is subsidised by the Government, can be used as the means of producing supplies of glycerine, alcohol, acetone and hydrocyanic acid. Alcohol is a base for the manufacture of cordite, which probably explains what has been a very unprofitable subsidy.

Chlorine, used as a bleach for fabrics, is a war gas that has been largely superseded, but combined with so common a gas as carbon monoxide, it becomes phosgene, the deadliest of the non-persistent lung-irritants, with the power of corroding metals.

In conclusion, it is fair to say that profits can be made in the chemical industry from war, and the profit system being what it is, the industry’s motives must be suspect.

The Aeroplane

It is well for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can prevent him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.—Stanley Baldwin.

Fighting in the air on a large scale only takes place by accident or by mutual consent.—Air-Marshal Sir R. Brooke-Popham.

CREATE A NEW WINGED ARMY OF LONG-RANGE BRITISH BOMBERS TO SMASH THE FOREIGN HORNETS IN THEIR NESTS.—Hands Off~Britain Air Defence League.

The last quotation is the only answer that has so far been evolved by the present system to the threat of the first two.

The development of the aeroplane since the close of the Great War has been rapid.

Within the last few years we have seen nonstop flights of over 4,000 miles; Australia reached in a little over three days; the Dornier DO X and Soviet aeroplanes to carry over one hundred passengers; aeroplanes annihilating conceptions of space and time remaining to us from quieter days. But we have not yet seen the aeroplane as the destroyer of cities and the slaughterer of millions. Yet, at the present time, this power could be demonstrated at almost any moment. Certainly within a few days.

Unless the people, on whom, ultimately, the power of governments depend, stop thinking in terms of war and think in terms of mass extermination, unless they can force the governments of the world to do something which, so far, has been found impossible, by reason of inordinate self-interest, to do—internationalise civil and military air-fleets, then the present civilisation will become a closed chapter in the history of man’s struggle against barbarism. The collapse that would immediately and inevitably follow the commencement of another war between industrialised countries would be bloodier—more destructive of human life and welfare—than ever before in man’s short history.

Knowing this, Lord Londonderry boasted in the House of Lords (in May, 1935) that he “Had the utmost difficulty, amid the public outcry, in preserving the use of the bombing aeroplane, even on the frontiers of the Middle East and India.” It seems as if Lord Londonderry wishes to immolate the population of our large cities for the convenience of the Indian Army and it is not surprising, therefore, that the Prime Minister should have taken the first possible opportunity to sacrifice him to political expediency.

The standard bomber now in use has an out-and-home range of about 1,000/1,500 miles. Greater range can be attained by substituting extra supplies of petrol for part of the bomb load. The average load is two tons of bombs, in addition to personnel and protective weapons. Fifty tons, a load for twenty-five such aeroplanes, is the quantity necessary, according to the Earl of Halsbury, to destroy every man, woman and child in the London area.

“ Mustard gas,” he says, “is the most deadly of known gases. In an area, say, Richmond to Barking and from Finchley to Streatham, an effective lethal dose would be only forty-two tons. In twelve hours every man, woman and child in that area might fail to live.”

“Fail to live” should be read “subjected to an agonising death.” I am sure that the Earl of Halsbury knows sufficient about the physiological effects of mustard-gas not to object to this trifling emendation.

In December, 1928, Brigadier-General Crozier, writing in the Times, said: —

”During the Great War 380 tons of bombs were dropped in and around London. That quantity could now be delivered in less than twelve hours.”

Although this is quite bad enough, I question the General’s figures. Three hundred and eighty tons is a load for about 200 bombers. I suggest that almost any country within striking distance of London could and would detach a good many more bombers from their air fleet for the important purpose of destroying the city, and could do this without appreciably weakening it. In addition, the large night-flying commercial machine would be very suitable for distributing mustard-gas and lewisite in large quantities. These machines have a lift of from three to six tons, and would require very little structural alteration. Normally they have a low ceiling and a slow speed, but this is not a serious handicap to night bombing, especially if the weather is cloudy.

Air manoeuvres have proved time and again that bombing aeroplanes can gain position over London as and when they like; that they can destroy between dusk and dawn nearly seven million people—almost as many as were killed on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918.

Let me draw a little picture. Towards the end of an evening in 1915 I was sitting in an armchair, reading, when, without warning, a terrific explosion shook the house and blew the window glass into the room. I knew at once that this was an air-raid, the first of the airships to reach London. There were several more explosions followed by silence. Obeying my primary impulse I ran for the cellar, which was an extremely flimsy affair, unlikely to offer much protection, and I knew that the bombs had fallen very close. In the morning I set out to see the damage, and found that, two streets away, most of the houses had been destroyed. I was fortunate enough to see the road before it was closed to the public, and to see for myself the aftermath of an air-raid that was, in relation to the destructive possibilities of modern armament, as a bow-and-arrow to a fifteen-inch gun. The fronts of several houses had been blown out. A bedstead stuck out of one at a sickening angle, the iron contorted into bizarre shapes by the violence of the explosion. The road was covered with debris and rubble, and the surface was gashed and torn. A young man had said “good-night!” to his fiancee, and crossed the road. When I saw the place the body had been removed, but his brains remained as a patch on the wall. I heard, subsequently, that the (inquest verdict was “ Murder against the Kaiser,” an interesting example of war mentality, but of very little use to the dead. 

L. G. Savage.

(To be continued.)

Answer to Correspondent (1936)

From the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

T. Sealey (Birmingham). — We will see what can be done about reviewing this. It will, however, have to wait for a month or two owing to pressure on space.

Ed. Comm.

The voice of the provinces (1936)

Party News from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

In response to the letter appearing under the above heading in the July issue of the Socialist Standard, the Manchester Branch, at a recent meeting, expressed a desire and willingness to organise a Conference in Manchester of provincial members and sympathisers, for the purpose of hearing their views and news; to discuss ways and means of furthering Party propaganda; membership; formation of provincial branches, etc. Will all those interested, and willing to co-operate and attend, kindly communicate with the Manchester Branch Secretary: -

H. Adler, 74 Shaftesbury Road, Manchester 8.

Letter: The voice of the provinces (1936)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received the following letter from readers in Liverpool. Other readers may have something useful to say on the question raised.

“We notice that the S.P.G.B. was founded in 1904, which fact presupposes many years of consistent political interest in London.

“Despite the years which have intervened, however, your contact and influence in the principal industrial centres in the provinces, where it would be expected conditions would have produced the strongest support for your party, remains practically negligible. 

“It would be interesting to hear the considered opinions of your London members on this matter, and equally too the views of provincial members and sympathisers. Should sufficient interest be shown by the correspondence which this enquiry may provoke, we hope it may be found possible for your E.C. to arrange a few special meetings for provincials in London, say, on Sunday evenings, timed to fit in with the many half-day excursions from the provinces.

“Anyway, we are of the opinion that for independent thinking and resolute revolutionary aspirations, the average provincial can make circles round the politically interested London worker. In the provinces London is referred to as a political cesspool. Does this explain why most of the big 'stars' in the Labour world' are the chosen leaders in the provinces ?” .

Yours for Socialism,

“PROVINCIALS.” 

SPGB Meetings (1936)

Party News from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Outdoor Meetings (1936)

 Party News from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Life and Times: Football Is Our Life (2025)

The Life and Times column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

I’ve always watched football, but I hadn’t been to a match for quite some time when a friend told me he’d managed to get tickets for Liverpool playing Manchester United. Did I want to go? Though I don’t support either team I couldn’t resist. So on a balmy spring evening I found myself at Anfield, Liverpool’s famous ground, among 70,000 other fans of both teams. People milled around everywhere outside the stadium, and when we got in we found ourselves high up in a stand above the pitch looking a long way down. Impressive to say the least. I had a good look around and, among the banners on display, a particularly huge one stood out. It was, being held up by quite a large group of people and it said FOOTBALL IS OUR LIFE. Another banner some way away had the words WE LIVE FOR LIVERPOOL FC.

People’s priorities

I couldn’t help but feel a little sad about this. I appreciate and to a large extent share the love and enthusiasm so many people feel for ‘the beautiful game’ and I can see that it also helps to create the sense of community that may be missing in many people’s lives. But for football or one of its teams to become so all-consuming a part of some people’s existence seems to me a reflection, an admission, of their underdog role, acceptance of a life that does not give them adequate opportunity to develop their own individual talents and capacities and to make their own unique contribution to a common social end.

I am reminded of this too when I go on the website of my local newspaper. Down the side there’s an invitation to click on a choice of three categories of article – ‘Latest’, ‘Most Commented’, and ‘Most Read’. If I click on ‘Most Read’, I know that top of that list will be news of sports stars, actors, singers or other celebrities who are in the news rather than more ‘serious’ matters or events that should be of wide human interest. So, as I write, the biggest audience on this site is not for events in Gaza or Ukraine or how people may be affected by the latest proposed government policy changes, but rather for news of, say, the football transfer market deadline and the pay the stars involved will be receiving.

Media priorities

I was also reminded of my Anfield trip by the recent sad death of one of Liverpool’s star players in a road accident. Diego Jota had died together with his brother when the car he was driving came off the road during an overtaking manoeuvre. Tragic of course, yet the overwhelming grief depicted in the media as being experienced by Liverpool fans brought into sharp focus the phenomenon of mass idolisation of celebrated individuals by people who don’t know them personally. This contrasts with the almost routine acceptance of the fate, whether accidental or not, that may befall ‘ordinary people’ and was illustrated by the tragedy which happened to coincide with the footballer’s death. Dozens of people, many of them young children, died in flash floods in Texas. It was reported on, yes, and words of sorrow and regret were expressed, but in that week’s media coverage this ‘act of god’ in which many ‘ordinary’ people died always took second place to the death of the millionaire footballer whose handling of his Lamborghini may have contributed to the accident that killed him. And the Texan tragedy was also subordinated in many places to coverage of a pop music event – the ‘second coming’ that was the Oasis reunion concert.

Worship and idolisation

Of course, there’s no reason why people shouldn’t take pleasure in and appreciate the skills of talented sports people or the artistry involved in producing music. But is it not a sad commentary on the lives so many lead that this should take the form of displays of near fanatical passion or worshipful admiration – an exhilaration not normally available in the existence they are tied to? Is this not a substitute for the lack of interest, meaning and satisfaction workers experience in the employment activities they’re obliged to engage in to survive and that consume most of their waking hours? Does it not stand as some kind of replacement for the lack of opportunity to express their own talents freely in their daily lives? Is it not a patch of colour in drab lives?

And is it not a pity that so many are unable to see beyond this and seem to place so little value on the everyday heroism of those people who spend much of their time not worshipping heroes but helping others, often those at the very bottom of the social pile?

Meaningful lives

The system we live in spurs us to see certain rich or powerful individuals as more important than and superior to others and to almost merge our own identity with them (think the ‘Swiftie’ fans of Taylor Swift). Is this anything other than a denial of their own uniqueness, a rejection of themselves as meaningful individuals in their own right? As an alternative to this, the society of common ownership of all resources and free access to all goods and services which socialists work to see established will surely be one in which each individual is able to develop their own particular talents to the full, achieve personal satisfaction via meaningful activity and in so doing be recognised and valued for the contribution they make to the social effort. In that society every individual will be their own hero.

Howard Moss

This old money game (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In December, 2022 a music video entitled Hi Ren appeared on YouTube. The name of the singer-songwriter-guitarist was Ren. The video was over nine minutes long, virtually an epic by music industry standards. It was a live recording made on a shoestring budget. The song vividly dramatised the singer’s mental health issues and state of inner conflict, conditions which many can relate to. Within two months Hi Ren had gone viral, gathering nearly seven million views and coming to the attention of a host of online music reactors – people who post videos of themselves reacting to other people’s music. Few of those reacting to Hi Ren for the first time had ever heard of its creator, and many were clearly unprepared for what they were to witness.

Intrigued and eager for more, they began reacting to Ren’s extensive back catalogue of online music videos, and to new songs that he continued to drop over the following months. It soon became clear to everyone that here was a musician of exceptional skill and versatility. Ren was an accomplished singer, rapper, guitarist, songwriter and keyboard player. He was also a superb storyteller, performer and producer of his own music videos. His songs were never predictable. They broke convention and they defied genre. Musicians, film makers, videographers, and music lovers enthused online about the way he was breaking open the moulds into which commercial interests had been pouring popular music in recent years.

Dirty-grey average

Capitalism is often praised for innovation and choice, yet the logic of its drive to maximise profit induces companies to turn out products with the widest possible appeal, thereby reducing them to a dirty-grey average. In the popular music industry this tendency to sameness has deepened in recent years thanks to the availability of sophisticated data-analysis tools. Recording companies are now increasingly able to identify and predict the kind of hooks and singing styles that make hit songs. Having once established a winning formula, they mobilise teams of in-house songwriters to churn out pattern-book songs which big-name singers and musicians are then contracted to record and convert into cash. New post-production technology is used to ‘optimise’ the product by electronically removing glitches and correcting imperfections in studio performances. It is now possible electronically to adjust a wobbly vocal line, repair an off-key note, or smooth out an uneven beat. The result is another glossily perfect musical product tumbling off the production line. Commercial radio stations help to magnify this tendency to sameness by demanding songs which fit neatly into their time slots, deal with the right kind of easy-going and uncontroversial themes, and have catchy ‘hooks’ designed to snag listeners.

The music industry as a whole is notoriously ruthless and litigious. Capitalism’s property system makes it prone to scams and money grubbing. Often this involves the murky legal world of copyright. Ren appears recently to have himself fallen foul of just such a scam. Typically, he has responded to it by speaking openly online and making a music video about it. Such openness is unusual and has attracted support from other musicians who have suffered in the same way. Uploaded music videos are themselves often targets for online scammers. In one such fraud, recently exposed, scammers have been using a green screen to remove video images of original artists from videos of Britain’s Got Talent and similar TV shows, and then insert video images of themselves lip synching to the vocals. By uploading the manipulated videos onto their own platforms and attracting an audience they are able to obtain money from the advertising revenue generated.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world. Yet every so often a creative artist comes along who is able to communicate with music of such originality and directness that they can bypass the big companies and attract their own audience. Ten months after Hi Ren went viral, Ren dropped a self-produced album of his own music called Sick Boi. Without corporate backing, with almost no radio exposure, and without the publicity of live shows, the album floated serenely up the British top 40 chart to take the number one position. Ren had arrived – much to his own apparent surprise.

Who is Ren?

So, who is this man? Ren is the professional name of Ren Eryn Gill, an open, generous and appealingly boyish musician, now aged 34, hailing from a remote Welsh village on the Isle of Anglesey. His personal story is studded with drama and tragedy. Signed up to Sony Records at the age of 19, he was forced to abandon the recording of his first album by the onset of severe ill health. He returned home to Anglesey where he became bed-ridden and suffered excruciating pain for eight years. He developed auto-immune disease and experienced a stress-induced psychotic breakdown. During this time, his best friend committed suicide on the Menai Bridge. His illness was repeatedly misdiagnosed until, after years of useless therapy and medication, a private physician in Brussels identified his condition as Lyme disease. Treatment for the disease has now partially restored his health, but having harboured the infection for so long, it is likely that his body will never fully recover.

Convinced that his chance of a major career in music was over, Ren went back to busking on the streets of Brighton, and producing low (or zero) budget videos of his own music. These rapidly gathered a following of loyal fans. And then, in 2022, he dropped Hi Ren and his world exploded. He now has almost 2.2 million YouTube subscribers and Hi Ren has 56 million views worldwide. Those numbers continue to climb.

Ren has taken the experience of his personal tragedy and his struggle to fulfil himself as a creative musician and universalised it into something highly relatable. In his own words, ‘I owe much of my success to the most destructive force in my life, which has been the turbulence of my physical and mental illness’. His music addresses difficult social issues such as mental health, suicide, and the cycle of child abuse. It communicates with raw emotion enhanced by his habit of recording his songs live, in a single take, and with minimal post-production work, a procedure almost unheard of today. Minor glitches in performance are left unedited. This side of his art has touched people of all ages. Comment sections of his online videos are flooded with accounts of how listening to his music has given new hope and even saved lives. Yet, not all of his music deals with difficult subjects. He has a strong sense of humour coupled with an apparent lack of inhibition. His songs vary from the cheeky to the deeply serious. And interwoven into many of them is yet another theme: the nature of capitalist violence and our own complicity in maintaining the system. A trilogy of music videos entitled Money Game, Parts 1, 2 and 3, tackles this theme head on.

Portrait of capitalism

Ren’s music and story-telling skills find particularly powerful expression in Money Game 3, which focuses on the life and career of ‘Jimmy’, who is driven to win his father’s approval by seeking success in business. By his late teens he is already amassing capital. On his way up the financial ladder, he discovers the potency of the lie and the capacity of capitalism’s money game to translate wealth into political power. His business dealings become increasingly risky and illegal. When his father dies of a heart attack his obsessive search for wealth and power become both socially and personally destructive. As the lyrics of Money Game 3 put it, ‘he followed the code in the land of the free: put your hand in the cookie jar and take more than you need’. Jimmy eventually overreaches, is injured in a shootout between drug cartels, and becomes confined to a wheelchair. Too late, he comes face to face with the consequences of his actions and values.

Ren’s exceptional story-telling ability has left a huge impression on his audience. As Money Game 3 tells us, Jimmy is an ‘exaggerated version’ of you and me. He is an Everyman, both complicit with, and a victim of, the system. One reactor responding to Ren’s message nailed it: ‘When you talk to people individually, it seems like everybody gets it, but then we kinda go right back to that lifestyle, because that’s just the way that the world works. It sucks, but it only works that way because of us.’ (Duane Reacts). We are all indoctrinated into the capitalist system and its ideologies from an early age through our parents, through an organised system of schooling which denies children control over their lives, and through the ideologically driven media. The message drummed into Jimmy’s head is that financial success is the only meaningful kind.

Money Game 3 is a punch in the guts, a dramatic piece of musical theatre which won Ren and his friend/videographer, Samuel Perry-Flavey, an award for the best Independent European music video of 2024. Together, the three Money Game videos deal with the violence arising from the profit system, and as well as its impact on attitudes to immigration. They show how we uncritically adopt and reproduce the values promoted by capitalism. It is a fact of life that we can no more stand outside our own society than we can stand outside our own skin, and yet we are not robots: we can step back, reflect on our experience and identify where it clashes with the conventional values and practices of our world. Socialism is, in part, a process of learning to overcome our indoctrination.

The three Money Game videos paint a picture of our world that many recognise. Recognition, however, is insufficient to provide a secure insight into how the system works or how it can be addressed. Ren describes himself as an anti-capitalist, someone who rejects a society that puts profits above people. He has all but denied that he is a socialist. Nevertheless, as socialists we can recognise the portrait of capitalism that he gives us. We can unpack the clues in his work to show that the only way to reject ‘profit over people’ is to reject profit and the money game altogether.

Now that Ren’s star is rising will he continue to resist the blandishments of the music industry or sign up with a record label? If he signs up, he will have greater resources to put into the music he is so passionate about making, but unless he becomes such a highly bankable commodity that he is capable of dictating his own terms it would almost certainly mean a loss of creative freedom. The money game would soon consume him.

At the moment, it looks like he is strongly resisting. True to character, though, he has spoken openly about his own inner conflicts on the matter. We can empathise. These are the inner conflicts and compromises familiar to anyone caught in the contradiction of advocating for a world beyond the destructiveness and repression of the capitalist system, but who, for now, has to live and survive within it. While capitalism persists, however, a socialist perspective helps us to focus on the goal of achieving a world which is more social, more humane and more satisfying than the one we have at present.

Hud.

Pathfinders: Bad apples (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s a popular saying, origin uncertain, that ‘America innovates, China imitates and Europe regulates’. That’s not true anymore in the case of China, which is leading from the front these days in AI and green tech. But Europe continues to live up to its reputation, last month by fining Apple and Meta €500m and €200m respectively for certain dubious business practices deemed to be in breach of the 2022 Digital Markets Act (DMA), the EU’s attempt at levelling the online playing field. The European Commission declared that Apple was guilty of anti-competitive behaviour with its App Store, specifically by ‘restricting app developers in their ability to inform customers of alternative offers or marketplaces that could be found outside its own and steer them towards purchases.’ Meanwhile Meta had erred by introducing a ‘consent or pay’ model which invites users to take out a monthly subscription or else let Meta hoover up all their Facebook and Instagram user data for sale to third parties (BBC news, 7 July).

The Meta model is a typical example of how firms exploit audience capture. They’ve got their customers hooked, so now’s the time to take the piss out of them with extra charges. It’s a bit like what the big streaming services have been doing lately by introducing adverts into paid subscriptions, and then inviting subscribers to pay extra to go ad-free, all in the name of ‘choice’. But is Meta really offering a choice? One might suspect that the real deal is ‘pay up and we’ll plunder your data anyway.’

Apple have always been known for being control freakish and attempting to lock their customer base into their own exclusive ecosystem, including a special patent-protected charging cable that no one else is allowed to make and which doesn’t work with any third-party device.

People say that capitalism drives brilliant technical innovation, but when you look at the way this happens, ‘brilliant’ is not the word that comes to mind. It is chaotic, spontaneous, unplanned and secretive, with profligate waste and duplication. Under the pressure of competition, each developer adopts a walled-garden approach, for the sole purpose of protecting future profits. Most will eventually fail, and the few successes which do emerge are of course incompatible with each other. Producers have every incentive to maintain this incompatibility, make their products impossible to repair, lock in customers, and oppose any move towards component standardisation. In the ensuing market battle, the ultimate victor may not be the best technical product but the one with the biggest marketing muscle. When you decide to ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’, you can end up with a cactus instead of an orchid.

Take electric cars, for instance. What’s deterring buyers, apart from up-front cost, is range anxiety related to lack of charging infrastructure, and long charge times. The real problem is the vast range of models, sizes and batteries being produced. Logically, producers could have cooperated in the first place to produce just one standard battery for all cars, together with standardised quick-replacement mechanisms, so you could swap them out at any garage in mere minutes. But capitalism doesn’t do logic. That’s not to say that EV battery standardisation won’t ever happen, but the battle for profits comes first, and never mind the waste.

Recent EU regulations have been an attempt to override the jarring contradiction between what producers do for profit and what people actually want. So for example, there are regulations to ban designed obsolescence, ban greenwashing, and enforce a ‘right to repair’. These are all worthy enough measures from an environmental perspective, but they are likely to damage the bloc’s overall competitiveness with the less scrupulous USA and China. The Wall Street Journal tartly responded with a 2024 article entitled ‘Europe Regulates Its Way to Last Place‘.

So it was that in 2022, in an effort to reduce much electronic waste due to the multiplicity of different charging cables, the EU put a stop to Apple’s proprietary Lightning port and forced the firm to change its Euro-market products to use the industry-standard USB-C charging port. Now Apple are hopping mad about the new DMA fine over its restrictive App Store, and have lodged an appeal. Perhaps they will argue that if the ruling were applied to offline traders, Tesco would be legally bound to advertise Sainsbury’s products, Asda to advertise Aldi, and so on.

Apple boss Tim Cook reportedly got on the whine-line to US President Donald Trump to complain about all this, presumably in the hope that Agent Orange would put the squeeze on the EU mandarins via more tariff threats. Trump might be less than enthusiastic though. He is thought to be greatly dischuffed at Cook’s polite but steadfast refusal to cave in to his demand that Apple ‘reshore’ all its production facilities to the US. From Cook’s perspective, this would be an utterly bonkers move which would cut a gigantic hole in Apple’s profits, given that US workers cost a lot more than Chinese or Indian ones. Moreover, it would require several years of intense planning, making it scarcely worth consideration given that Trump’s effective time in office could expire as soon as November 2026 with the US mid-term elections. So, appeal or not, Apple may decide to suck it up and pay the fine. €500m is a drop in the bucket to Apple, and a lot cheaper than eviscerating a $3tn empire just to give Trump a few good headlines.

If capitalism really worked in humanity’s benefit, there wouldn’t be any need to keep making laws to curb its natural tendencies. All capitalist producers are bad apples in this sense. Meanwhile attempts at regulation can often mean states or trading blocs are shooting themselves in the foot in terms of global competitiveness. The world has long since socialised production. What it now needs to do is socialise ownership and control of that production too. If it doesn’t, the spiralling chaos will continue, with disastrous prospects for humanity and the planet.

Paddy Shannon

What is 'post-scarcity'?

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A post-capitalist society has to be, by its very nature, a ‘post-scarcity’ society. It has to be a society technologically capable of adequately meeting the needs of its people. This capacity constitutes the material foundations upon which the kind of social outlook and values indispensable to the very existence of such a society can arise and truly flourish. Without it, without an ample supply of the goods and services we all need to enjoy a reasonably decent standard of living, a debilitating and scarcity-driven competitive scramble will inevitably set in, undermining our willingness to cooperate with each other and sapping our desire to work for the common good.

But what exactly does an ‘ample supply of goods and services’ mean in practical terms? Obviously, what is ‘ample’ is dependent on how much we are able to produce in the first place, but it is also crucially contingent on what we ourselves consider to be ‘ample’ – our cultural values. That is to say, it is culturally conditioned.

Consumerism

In a capitalist society, your status correlates positively with how much you conspicuously consume in the form of material wealth. This is what makes consumerism such an integral aspect of our way of life under capitalism.

The point about consumerism is that there is technically no upper limit to the quantities, or money values, of goods and services you could strive to consume. Hence the emphasis on it ‘always’ being a desirable goal that one should consume more – a suggestion that conveniently chimes with the commercial interests of businesses wanting to increase their sales. More is always better. That there is no limit on how much you should consume stems from the fact that status competition itself is essentially a zero-sum game. I can only boost my social status within a status hierarchy at your expense (and vice versa).

According to the argument, it is not just that your sense of well-being and happiness is said to grow in line with your rising level of material consumption; crucially, it is also because this rising level of material consumption works to enhance your status in the eyes of others. The corollary of this is that those lower down this status hierarchy must therefore feel, to that extent, a little less satisfied and less happy with life — at least according to consumerist ideology. The only way in which they might mitigate this relative sense of dissatisfaction or deprivation is by striving to consume more – not just more but relatively more than others around them are consuming.

Our capacity to consume more is, however, dependent on us improving our economic circumstances and increasing our purchasing power, in comparison with others. But, of course, this cannot logically happen for most people in a capitalist society since the very mechanism of capitalist incentivisation itself depends on the systemic entrenchment, and even deepening, of economic inequality. Capitalism needs us to feel dissatisfied with our lot in life, by comparison with others, so we can all the more enthusiastically buy into, and embrace, what it is (literally) attempting to sell us. And, of course, work harder to achieve it.

This is an example of contrived or artificial scarcity. It is contrived because what the system is attempting to implant in us are what Marcuse called ‘false needs’.

Produce more stuff?

What can we do about it? It cannot be emphasised too much that ‘scarcity’ in this sense will not diminish and disappear simply by augmenting or adding to our capacity to produce yet more stuff – that is, by further expanding the already formidable forces of production at our disposal.

The problem is not that we lack the technological wherewithal to make a post-scarcity and post-capitalist society feasible. The problem is, rather, that we allow a system of profit-oriented and market-based production to continue to exist and to fundamentally get in the way of fully realising the productive potential we already possess.

A post-capitalist society, while it is not a recipe for a kind of stoical belt tightening is, on the other hand, not an excuse for some sort of turbocharged consumerism. The grounds for rejecting the latter are as compelling as the grounds for rejecting the former

Instead, there is a middle way, if you like. According to this approach the technological potential to meet humanity´s basic requirements for food, shelter and so on, to a reasonable level, should be looked upon as providing us with the means and the opportunity to better accommodate, or attend to, those other (and often neglected) needs we all have as human beings quite apart from our physical or material needs.

Lifestyle changes?

One thing is for certain: just privately reflecting upon the subject of consumerism and consciously seeking to adjust your own consumer behaviour, however much this might be welcomed, is not going to be enough. Not nearly enough. ‘Consumerism’ as it has been defined here is fundamentally a social phenomenon.

This is the problem with much of the currently burgeoning literature on the theme of a post-growth – and even, post-capitalist – society, awash, as it often is, with informative and penetrating insights into the negative social and environmental consequences of ‘consumerism’. The focus is too much on the particular lifestyles of particular individuals.

With some notable exceptions, there seems to be little in the way of a well-grounded analysis linking this phenomenon we call consumerism with the underlying socioeconomic relations that define our existing capitalist social order. The general tenor of the approach is essentially moralistic in tone and, ultimately, the solutions offered seem to hinge more on reforming or tinkering around with the system than getting rid of it.

Of course, changing values is undeniably important if we are to fundamentally change the nature of the society we live in. The point is simply that we cannot just rail against the ‘consumerist values’ of this society, as we see it, without understanding where they originate from, the material circumstances out of which they have arisen. Criticism has also to be coupled with a clear commitment to changing these circumstances.

Not just subjective

We need also to look at the supply side of the equation as well – not just the demand side. We no longer live in a hunter-gatherer society where we can just go out and kill an antelope or gather roots whenever the hunger pangs prompt us to do so. We depend instead on a highly developed system of food production linking the farmer and the consumer through a complex chain of intermediate stages.

In other words, ‘artificial scarcity’ has an ‘objective’ dimension, aside from being rooted in an ideology. It would be absurd, for instance, to accuse a starving person or a homeless person of ‘consumerism’ because they wanted food or shelter. The scarcity they experience is real enough, but the point is that the reason for it occurring is both contrived – artificial – and inexcusable. Quite simply, people should not have to go without in this day and age. Yet they do.

One very obvious reason why this happens is the enormous diversion of human and material resources away from socially useful production into socially useless forms of economic activities. The purpose of such activities is not to meet human needs but to keep the capitalist system ticking over on its own terms.

Keeping the capitalist money system ticking over involves quite literally reducing the human and material resources available for meeting human needs. These are the very real opportunity costs of propping up a system of capitalist production, which cannot be denied or just brushed under the carpet. There are other, more direct and visible, ways in which human needs are blatantly disregarded and ignored as well. Thus, while we talk of starving and homeless people, we surely cannot be unaware of the grotesque spectacle of millions of empty homes languishing in the face of a growing problem of homelessness or food being destroyed in the face of hunger for no better reason than to push up prices or keep them high.

Such scarcity is ‘artificial’ in the sense that there is no logical reason whatsoever why it should exist other than the fact that it arises from the nature of the society we happen to live in. It will not cease to exist until this society ceases to exist and replaced by one in which meeting human needs is the sole concern.

Robin Cox

Cooking the Books: Axe the rich (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the measures being urged on the government to solve its ‘fiscal problem’ is ‘tax the rich’ by means of a levy on the personal wealth of some capitalists.

‘Advocates of a UK wealth tax, including Lord Kinnock, have proposed an annual 2% tax on wealth above £10m. Wealth tax campaign group Tax Justice UK has calculated this would affect about 20,000 people — fewer than 0.04% of the population — and raise £24bn a year’ (Sky News).

According to the latest figures (for the period 2020 to 2022) from the Office for National Statistics, ‘The wealthiest 1% of households had wealth of at least £3,121,500’.

So, the proposal would only affect some of the super-rich, not even all of the ‘top 1 percent’, let alone the whole of the capitalist class.

The ‘fiscal problem’ facing the British capitalist state, which Labour currently has responsibility for running, is how to pay for its essential spending on such things as the military, education and health for the working class, ‘benefits’ for those not in work, as well as its own administration. This can only be covered by money raised from taxes or through borrowing. The government doesn’t want to borrow more since this risks raising the rate of interest it has to pay lenders; which in turn increases the amount of tax it would need to raise, since taxation is the only source it has of money to pay the interest on its debts (the so-called ‘National Debt’).

The irony is that all taxes already fall in the end on property and property income, irrespective of who pays them in the first instance. Obviously corporation tax, income tax on dividends, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, and employers’ national insurance do so directly. But other taxes do so indirectly.

To be able to work efficiently workers require a given standard of living and an adequate money income to pay for this. By and large, though not automatically, what workers are paid goes up in line with the cost of living. If this rises, so sooner or later will wages. Taxes such as VAT on what workers need to buy to maintain their working skills are in effect passed on to employers. Similarly with a direct tax on wages; this too gets passed on. In fact, with PAYE, workers never even see the tax part of their nominal wages; what counts in terms of maintaining a standard of living appropriate to their working skills is their take-home pay and what it will buy.

Arguments about taxation are essentially arguments about how much in taxes particular sections of the property-owning class should pay. Taxes on wages and on what workers consume fall on employers. A wealth tax would be a tax on what capitalists consume in extravagant living and would enable part of the burden of taxation to be shifted from employers on to the super-rich. It wouldn’t make any difference to workers.

A wealth tax also implies the continued existence of the super-rich. One of their arguments against it is precisely that one effect of such a tax would be to drive some of them out of the jurisdiction of the British capitalist state.

Socialists don’t want to maintain the rich so that the state can milk them. Nor do we want to redistribute their wealth amongst the rest of the population so as to try to achieve a more equal society contrary to capitalism’s nature. We want the means for producing wealth to be commonly owned by society as a whole so that they can be used, under democratic control, to directly provide what people need. We don’t want to tax the rich. We want to abolish the division of society into the rich and the rest.

The state of the state’s finances (2025)

From the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Politicians love talking big numbers: ‘We’re spending £5 million to stop The Thing.’ Or ‘We will spend an additional £20 million to increase The Pittance by a penny.’ When Starmer and his chums came into office they mummered and howled over discovering the astronomical £22 billion ‘fiscal black hole’ left in the public accounts by the Tories. Of course, for the majority of people living on pennies at a time, such figures represent unimaginable amounts. Eking out a few quid from week to week and making every pound work is the lot of most people, so such sums seem like an unforgivable profligacy.

Everyone in politics knew there was a gap in spending plans, and that Labour, despite all its promises not to increase taxation, would have to find a way to close this spending gap. The Tories had arguably laid a trap for Labour, in the form of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a supposedly apolitical authority that marks the UK government’s financial homework. The problem is, if politicians and press just ignore it, it doesn’t do much good.

It does provide useful data, though. Its Brief Guide to the Public Finances provides a lot of the clarity regarding government spending that is missing from much of the daily rhetoric. The key piece of data is the total spend by the government: ‘In 2024-25, we expect it to spend £1,278.6 billion, equivalent to around £45,000 per household or 44.4 per cent of national income.’ Against that background, £22 billion is a rounding error that could easily be sorted by knocking a few invoices into the next financial year.

The issue is that the income for the state is expected to be ‘£1,141.2 billion, equivalent to around £40,000 per household or 39.7 per cent of national income.’ This is the infamous deficit of £137.3 billion. This means adding to a rising national debt: ‘in 2024-25, we expect debt to be equivalent to 95.9 per cent of national income. It is equivalent to around £2.8 trillion or £98,000 per household’. This is significant, because the government has to pay interest on that debt: ‘Net interest payments on the national debt are expected to cost £105.2 billion in 2024-25’.

To put that in perspective: ‘The biggest items [of public spending] are health £193.3 billion, education £89.2 billion and defence £37.6 billion.’ Whilst, in theory, the state is immortal and need never pay back its total debts (when particular debts fall due, it can just roll them over and borrow more money to pay its creditors), servicing the interest bill can become expensive, especially if confidence in any particular government falls and creditors demand higher interest rates to cover their risks. This means the government has to manage the size of its debt: this is why deficits become such an all-consuming obsession.

Politicians, however, point to the difference between capital spending and current spending. The government invests ‘£146.1 billion – 11 per cent of the total – on capital investment such as roads and buildings and on loans to businesses and individuals’. This spending is backed by physical infrastructure and leads to ownership of assets. On top of that it spends ‘£450.7 billion on the day-to-day ‘current’ running costs of public services, grants and administration. This is 35 per cent of public spending’. Additionally, the government spends £313.0 billion on welfare payments (£150.7 billion of which is pensions).

The government thus prefers to look at the current deficit which: ‘counts all receipts and all current spending, but excludes spending on net investment’. The current deficit stands at £60.7 billion.

This accounts for why Labour made politically disastrous decisions, such as freezing winter fuel payments and cutting Personal Independence Payments (for a paltry £5 billion in savings, which is tiny compared to overall spending, but one twelfth of the current deficit).

They can, if they are lucky, rely on economic growth (which raises tax receipts, and lowers welfare costs) to cover much of the gap: but the plan is to have a current surplus, which gives the Chancellor of the Exchequer space to either cut taxes or increase spending in fresh areas. The expectation is to have £9.9 billion of such headroom by the next election: so the strategy is pain today and jam tomorrow.

As the OBR notes in its Economic and Fiscal Outlook – March 2025:: ‘The tax-to-GDP ratio is forecast to increase to a post-war high of 37.7 per cent of GDP in 2027-28. Part of this increase is driven by the policies announced at the previous Budget, including the increase in employer National Insurance Contributions and increases to capital taxes’. From the point of view of the capitalist class, in general, that money going to taxation comes from their available profits and lowers the amount of money available for their profitable capital investment. A record high tax rate, especially one fuelled by an effective employee tax (National Insurance employers’ contributions) will be concerning for them in terms of international competitiveness.

In their eyes, then, government indebtedness is preferable, as it forms a means of funding the state under the control and discretion of the rich, with interest rates being a kind of vote of confidence in the way a government handles the debt. The money from interest payments is also welcome to those of them who lend the government money.

The March report also notes that the government is committed to ‘increase defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP over the next Parliament, which would be equivalent to £17.3 billion in 2029-30’. This would in part be paid for by a £6.8 billion cut in overseas development spending (this simply represents a change from soft to hard power). This unplanned shift in spending priorities shows how the government’s carefully laid plans to generate a current surplus can easily be thrown off course.

All this wealth, though, was originally produced by the efforts of the working class. How much better and more efficient would it be if that effort was directly focused on human needs, instead of producing taxable money?

Pik Smeet

Waking up (2025)

Book Review from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the common jibes directed at the Socialist Party is that, though we have been in existence well over 100 years, we have made little or no progress in garnering support for the system we advocate to replace capitalism. We’re talking here about a stateless, moneyless, marketless society of common ownership, voluntary cooperation and free access to all goods and services – one that will be organised democratically on the basis of from each according to ability to each according to need. Our response to the jibe has always been that what we are at least doing is keeping the idea of that society alive and it will be there for the majority to establish once social consciousness has developed sufficiently for them to see the necessity of it.

Positive signs?

And we do see some positive moves in that direction, evidenced by the idea of a moneyless, borderless world society being advocated from a variety of quarters, often quite independent of any contact with or knowledge of the Socialist Party. In recent times, for example, we have reviewed books such as Beyond Money: A Post-Capitalist Strategy by Anitra Nelson from Australia and Description of the World of Tomorrow: A World Without Money or Barter or Exchange: a Civilisation of Free Access by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal from France. A couple of years ago, in the United States, we had Moneyless Society: the Next Economic Evolution from Matthew Holton, founder of the ‘Moneyless Society’ Facebook site, which boasts 20,000 members. Earlier this year, Justin Fairchild, also from the US, brought out Unchained: Living Without Money, advocating a society in which ‘cooperation replaces competition, access replaces ownership, purpose replaces profit’. And now, from Harald Neslein Sandø, a Norwegian living in Spain and writing in English, we have Waking Up. A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, whose subject of exploration is unmistakeably the kind of society we have always advocated, even though he does not call it, as we do, ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’.

Exploring possibilities

Sandø ‘s book also differs from the others in that it is a work of fiction, science fiction in fact. In his introductory note, the author describes science fiction as ‘a canvas for exploring possibilities’ and his book as ‘an invitation to imagine, question and reflect’. It chooses, in fact, to tell the wholly imaginary story of an individual, Benjamin, who, having been cryogenically frozen when about to die from cancer in 2015, is brought back to life 100 years later after a new society has been established. This is a society based no longer on money but on ‘community effort’, where, as Benjamin is told by one of the first characters he meets, there is ‘shared stewardship’ of the planet and ‘no one owns it – we belong to it’, and there is ‘no money, no ownership, no competition’.

We get little explanation of how this new state of things was brought about, apart from asides such as ‘the planet was about to collapse due to climate change and pollution’, ‘the need for a completely different system became clear’, ‘the monetary system was killing the planet as it demanded a constant overconsumption of resources’, ‘it was a global, democratic decision’, and ‘this transformation has been made possible through a new mindset – a mindset of trust and respect’. We are, however, supplied with intricate details about how the society operates via Benjamin’s discovery of the new way of living people have and the unimaginably advanced forms of technology that challenge everything he once knew. He finds a sustainable world in which human beings collaborate with one another, innovation thrives, mutual support has taken the place of conflict, and there are ‘no supervisors, no bosses, no payroll, no urgency’. And he is told: ‘For the first time in the written history of mankind … we have evolved to a stage where we can look at this planet as a whole, see humanity as one family, and live without borders. This is a world where we all coexist peacefully, without war.’ He also learns that ‘through the efficient management of resources, we have achieved a relative abundance that allows everyone to live comfortably in their own way, regardless of where they are in the world’. It has also become a world of regenerative agriculture where ‘rewilded landscapes flourished’ and which ‘thrived not on domination but on unity’. One of the characters Benjamin meets tells him: ‘We take care of each other, and in doing that, we take care of ourselves. There’s no struggle, no scarcity. Just collaboration.’ The same character goes on: ‘Human nature turned out to be not only selfish and violent. You can choose and, you choose friendliness, which I’m very happy for’.

Human interest

A bit of a fairy tale, a pipe dream, some might say. But it is made less of one – and given a certain plausibility – by the author’s continual explanation of how it works in practice, how the highly advanced technology used to make it operate has been developed and keeps developing. This plausibility is enhanced – and the reader is drawn into the narrative – by the ‘human’ story it tells of how the individual who has been brought back to life adapts to the new world he finds. The book had begun by painting a picture of Benjamin’s former existence when he was a billionaire capitalist driven entirely by the need he felt to accumulate wealth. Now on waking up to find that money plays no part in anyone’s existence, he first feels out of place, ‘obsolete’, ‘not knowing where he belongs’, as he puts it, and he (and we) wonder whether he will cope mentally, how he will accept and adjust to the completely new system and mindset he finds all around him..

As a way of trying to comfort Benjamin and ease his integration into the new world, the guide assigned to him puts an ingenious twist into what he is finding by saying ‘We are all capitalists, as we are living off the shared capital of the planet and universe’. He is then pulled into the drama of a small group of ‘renegades’ who seek (unsuccessfully) to sabotage things and return the world to its old competitive ways, but he comes out the other side in clear opposition to this and in support of a ‘borderless globe’, where, in words that he himself now utters, there is ‘seamless harmony between humans and nature’, where everyone leads ‘their own versions of a good life, respecting each other and the planet’. All this lends some genuine ‘human interest’ to what might otherwise be an accumulation of dry technological detail and, in fact, manages to make the book something of a page turner, its 200-odd pages having been devoured by the current writer in a single sitting.

How do we get there?

There is clearly some comparison to be made here with other attempts at depicting life and organisation in a future non-market society of voluntary cooperation and free access. For many it will bring to mind, for example, William Morris’s late 19th century News from Nowhere, Robert Llewellyn’s News from Gardenia from 2012, and, in particular, the very recent attempt by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass (Half-Earth Socialism: A Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics) to provide a kind of day-to-day outline of what a future society ‘without money or a market’ might be like, something they call ‘a total alternative to capitalism’ and offering, as the authors put it, ‘everything from a plan for resource allocation to an outline of what life will feel like’. The main difference between this book and Sandø’s, however, is that, while Vettese and Pendergrass’s depiction is founded on profound knowledge of and reflection on the scientific and technological problems that a marketless society would need to deal with and overcome, Sandø’s vision, while also technological, is far more ‘imaginative’, fantasy-laden one might say. At the same time, it must be said, this is a factor that contributes to its readability.

From a socialist point of view, the main problem that arises from Sandø’s book – and indeed the others mentioned here, including William Morris’s classic – is that none of them deal effectively with the ‘how’, ie, how we get there. None of them specify the spreading of consciousness by the vast majority of workers as the prime condition – the sole condition – under which a socially conscious working class can, by democratic use of the vote, take the power necessary to abolish capitalism and set about organising a genuine socialist society of the kind looked forward to by all these sources – even if they do not all necessarily use the term ‘socialism’ to describe it.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

A number of the other books mentioned in this review have themselves been reviewed in previous Socialist Standards:

• Oct 2022: Beyond Money. A Post-Capitalist Strategy by Anitra Nelson
• Oct 2022: Description of the World of Tomorrow by Jean-Francois Aupetitgendre and Marc Chinal
• Jan 2023: Moneyless Society: the Next Economic Evolution by Matthew Holton
• Mar 2023: Half-Earth Socialism by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergras

Economics Reworked (2025)

Book Review from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Economy of Want. Economics Reworked. By Donald Power. ISBN 978-1399985888. Also available free from Amazon as an e-book.

This self-published book starts off well enough. That, like all other animals, humans survive by applying their natural energy to obtain from the rest of nature what they need. Thanks to humans’ particular anatomy, their needs — or ‘wants’ as Power calls them — have become immensely greater than those of any other animal, as have the ways of obtaining from nature the means of satisfying them. How they obtain them has been the basis of the economic system of every human society.

Present-day society, he points out, is one where a minority owns most natural resources and instruments of production, fashioned and refashioned from materials that originally came from nature, while the rest have nothing but their natural ability to work. The latter have to work for the former and provide them with the means to satisfy their wants. This means, Power claims, that the economy is driven by what the owners ‘want’ in order to satisfy their needs. They pay workers to produce these and so provide workers with the money to satisfy some of their own ‘wants’ even if not much more than enough to maintain their particular ability to work.

That is alright as far as it goes, but the assumption is that what drives the economy today is the consumption wants of the owners. Power explicitly states this and it is the basis of his argument against the dominant school of economics that teaches that the free market system tends to lead to full employment and also of his explanation of booms and slumps. According to him, the level of employment depends on what the owners want (desire) to consume, so it is entirely possible that they might not want enough to bring about the full employment of the whole workforce. Booms are explained by the owners coming to want more and slumps by their coming to want less after the bubble bursts. He would seem to be saying that the economy is driven by the arbitrary desires of business owners.

He is, however, on the right track in that how today’s economy moves does depend on what the owners do with the surplus that the workers provide them with. But it is not what they want to consume that drives the economy but what they re-invest — or don’t. Power is well aware that they seek profits but gives the impression that this is something they decide to do when they desire to consume more. In reality, it is something that is forced upon them by the workings of the competitive struggle for profits, which is part of what capitalism is; they have to give priority to re-investment in more modern machinery and methods just to survive as a business concern. The capitalist economy is not driven by consumption, not even the consumption of the capitalists. It is driven by business owners’ market-imposed quest for profits, not their own consumption. What we have today is not so much an Economy of Want as an Economy of Profit.

Power’s main concern is to save the planet. Because he thinks that the economy is driven by wants rather than profits, he thinks that it can be reformed — ‘redesigned’ is a word he uses — to work differently by measures to change what people want to buy or use. He proposes to limit the consumption of the owners and, through taxes and subsidies, to re-direct the population towards wanting goods and services whose production and use don’t harm the rest of nature. This is a desirable goal but is incompatible with the present economic system which is driven by profits not wants and so requires its abolition.

Having said this, the book is written in simple, easy-to-read English. It is also refreshing to read a book from a critic of the way capitalism works who doesn’t repeat nonsense about banks having the power to create money from thin air. He accepts that work is the basis of wealth-production. In fact, he uses a labour theory of value, even though he doesn’t realise that Marx was as aware as he is that this doesn’t explain the price of land, paintings or the high income of talented footballers and other artists (demand in relation to unique supply does; the labour theory only applies to what can be reproduced).

Adam Buick