Christmas bombers (2010)

From the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The son of a Nigerian banker wasn’t the only one on a bombing mission at Christmas.

A Nigerian Muslim, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, thought he could contribute to solving the world’s problems by getting on an American airliner from Europe to the US. on Christmas Day 2009, and then trying to blow it up just as it approached Detroit. This appeal to violence can be (and has been) seen in many prominent figures, from Bush and Blair to the Islamist extremists. Though, curiously enough, those who plan and defend their own violence are the most vocal in denouncing violence committed by the other side. In fact both sides, in any of the disputes raging round the world at the moment, claim that their own violence is only made necessary because of the violence coming from their opponents. The truth of the matter is that capitalism produces violence as inevitably as water freezes when it gets cold enough.

Those who start the violence off and direct it, of course, suddenly become shy and retiring when it actually has to be done. When will you hear about a radical imam, who has preached many lengthy sermons about the holy duty of jihad, and about the unimaginable happiness awaiting suicide bombers in paradise, with seventy-odd virgins each (though surely they must be running out of virgins by now?) – when will you hear about that sermonizing radical imam taking his own advice and becoming a suicide bomber himself? Probably about the same time that you hear about President Obama and Prime Minister Brown risking death by serving as private soldiers in hostile territory in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Incidentally, the regular announcement that another British soldier has “given” his life in Afghanistan is simply wrong. A soldier killed after being sent to a belligerent foreign country by the British government has not “given” his life: he has had it taken from him. He has had it stolen by a system of society that unavoidably gives rise to continuous discord and struggle, which from time to time turns into open armed conflict, resulting in combatants on both sides being awarded brief unwanted moments of celebrity as dead heroes, followed often by long-term suffering, financial and other, for their bereaved families.

As for this Nigerian who failed to blow up the plane, and therefore failed to kill himself and 290 other passengers and crew – of assorted nationalities and religions – does this failed suicide bomber believe that when he finally dies perhaps years hence, does he believe he will then go to paradise and get say thirty-six virgins (half the full quota) for a good try? That might be thought ludicrous; but it isn’t more ludicrous than many beliefs passionately held by those who have failed to use their common sense in order to work out why exactly so many human beings (under the pressures of competing capitalist states) spend their entire existence not trying to co-operate with the rest of the human race in order to make things better for all of us, but in trying to murder other human beings.

So Abdulmutallab has now gone on trial in the United States, charged with “trying to use a weapon of mass destruction [a bomb] aboard a U.S. aircraft”, a crime which is punishable by imprisonment for life. This underlines the reality: what you do is not counted good or bad in itself: it is held to be good or bad according to where you do it and who you do it to. All those who dropped “weapons of mass destruction”, or bombs, from US and allied aircraft on to towns and cities across Iraq, which (along with the rest of the military onslaught) resulted in the deaths of perhaps half a million Iraqis, and all those who ordered these bombardments, are regarded in the US (and its allies) as having performed a noble duty.

Abdulmutallab came to Britain to study. He spent three years at University College, London, between 2005 and 2008. Nor was he was scraping along among the down-and-outs: his father was a banker in Nigeria. It would be interesting to hear from those who support the present system why a man who was at London’s university for three years, consorting with Britain’s academic elite, and presumably not living among the poorest of the poor, was so impressed by what he saw and experienced there that not long afterwards he turned out to be so hostile to Western society that he was found trying to murder some hundreds, a random selection, of his fellow humans.

After living in London, Abdulmutallab went to Yemen, a territory much of which was fortunate enough to be ruled by the British for over a century up to the 1960s. Encountering the British Empire at first hand should surely have made the Yemenis allies and supporters of the British for ever, but for some reason al-Qaeda is a powerful force in the country. Since Abdulmutallab had lived both in the UK and in Yemen, the blame game started immediately. Gordon Brown grabbed valuable publicity (he has to fight an election by May, so he loses no chance of headlines) by calling an international conference to consider the “terrorist threat from Yemen”. In fact, this was hot air, even more obvious than usual: there was already going to be an international conference on Afghanistan in London on 28 January, so Gordon Brown’s new emergency summit was merely going to be held “in parallel” with this already-arranged conference. This was followed some days later by an announcement by the Yemeni Deputy Prime Minister, to the effect that Abdulmutallab had “joined al-Qaeda in London”. So each country blamed the other for driving Abdulmutallab into al-Qaeda.

The US response to attacks by Islamic extremists was to establish a prison at Guantánamo Bay. Photos from this establishment proved so harmful to US propaganda about “American freedoms” that President Obama has promised to close it (though he has failed to keep to his declared timetable). The US authorities now believe that 20 percent of the prisoners released from Guantánamo Bay have since “turned to terrorism”. Does this mean that the US accepts that 80 percent of those released from Guantánamo Bay were not terrorists at all? The Guantánamo Bay prisoners were mostly poor Asians, seized at gunpoint, interrogated by methods that amounted to torture, and thrown into a specially unpleasant jail, built in Cuba so that its inmates would not be able to access the boasted impartiality and safeguards of the American judicial system, and held there for years in humiliating conditions without trial, so they could never find out what they were accused of and try to offer a defence. It would seem amazing that these men (never having had the chance of hearing about socialism, and however indifferent they may have been to the conflict before their incarceration) did not on release immediately fly into the welcoming arms of al-Qaeda, on the grounds that if two forces are fighting each other, then if you hate the one you have to support the other. If after all their gruesome ill-treatment by the Americans only 20 percent have actually “turned to terrorism” since their release, it implies that most of them never were terrorists.

Alwyn Edgar

A world without money - Les amis de 4 millions de jeunes travailleurs (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard (Thanks to LibCom collective for originally posting this on their website.)

Introduction

The following article is a translation of extracts from a pamphlet published in France with the title Un monde sans argent : le communisme.

We publish it because not only does it give a clear enough picture of future society, but it also shows what we have always held, that the spread of socialist ideas does not depend exclusively on our own efforts because capitalism itself generates the idea of socialism.

The pamphlet was published by a group with the curious name of 'Les amis de 4 millions de jeunes travailleurs' ( the friends of the 4 million young workers ), which seems no longer to exist, at least not under this name. As far as we know, those who produced this pamphlet developed their ideas quite independently of us even though the phrase 'a world without money' is one we have used for years.

Two further points can be made. First, by 'communism' they mean what we mean by 'socialism', i.e. the classless, moneyless, Stateless society that will immediately follow capitalism. In other words, they don't subscribe to the common Leninist distortion which has 'socialism' ( really state capitalism), with money, wages, the State, as a society existing between capitalism and communism. For us, the words 'socialism' and 'communism' are exact synonyms and thus interchangeable. Although we ourselves exclusively use 'socialism' to describe future society, we don't object to this being also described as 'communism' ( after all, this was the term Marx used ). Second, we have very serious differences with them over how to achieve socialism/communism, since they reject electoral action and expect the change-over to be inevitably violent. In fact we can go so far as to say that their tactics, if applied, would not lead to the sort of society they desire and so ably describe.

Editorial Committee
Socialist Standard July 1979
Communism is the negation of capitalism. A movement produced by the development and very success of the capitalist mode of production which will end by overthrowing it and giving birth to a new kind of society. In place of a world based on the wages system and commodities must come into being a world where human activity will never again take the form of wage labour and where the products of such activity will no longer be objects of commerce.

Communism does not overthrow capital in order to restore commodities to their original state. Commodity exchange is a link and a progress. But it is a link between antagonistic parts. It will disappear without there being a return to barter, that primitive form of exchange. Humanity will no longer be divided into opposed groups or into enterprises. It will organise itself to plan and use its common heritage and to share out duties and enjoyments. The logic of sharing will replace the logic of exchange.

Money will disappear. It is not a neutral instrument of measurement. It is the commodity in which all other commodities are reflected.

Gold, silver and diamonds will no longer have any value apart from that arising from their own utility. Gold can be reserved in accordance with Lenin's wish, for the construction of public lavatories.

MARX AND ENGELS
Marx and Engels set themselves the task of understanding the development of capitalist society. They did not concern themselves much with description of the future world such as had monopolised the efforts of the utopian socialists. But criticism of capitalism cannot be completely separated from a commitment to communism. The historical role of money and the state can only be really understood from the viewpoint of their disappearance.

That Marx and Engels did not talk more about communist society was due, without doubt paradoxically, to the fact that this society, being less near than it is today, was more difficult to envisage, but also to the fact that it was more present in the minds of the revolutionaries of their day. When they spoke of the abolition of the wages system in the Communist Manifesto they were understood by those they were echoing. Today it is more difficult to envisage a world freed from the state and commodities because these have become omnipresent. But having become omnipresent, they have lost their historical necessity.

Marx and Engels perhaps grasped less well than a Fourier the nature of communism as the liberation and harmonisation of the emotions. Fourier, however, does not get away from the wages system, since among other things he still wants doctors to be paid, even if according to the health of the community rather than the illnesses of their patients.

Marx and Engels, however, were sufficiently precise to avoid responsibility for the bureaucracy and financial system of the 'communist' countries being attributed to them. According to Marx, with the coming of communism money straightaway disappears and the producers cease to exchange their products. Engels speaks of the disappearance of commodity production when socialism comes. And don't let anyone speak to us about an error of youth, as a whole rabble of marxologists has acquired the habit of doing. Our references are the Critique of the Gotha Programme and Anti-Duhring.

THE END OF PROPERTY
What is property ? This is not so simple a question to answer. Witness the polemic between Marx and Proudhon. The latter had proposed that 'property is theft'. Proudhon well understood that property does not originate in nature. It is the product of a society where reign relationships of power, violence and the appropriation of the labour of others. It is said that property is theft, while theft is only defined with reference to property; this is to turn round in circles.

The problem becomes more complicated when you go on from property to the abolition of property. Should all property, whether involving means of production or personal possessions, be abolished ? Should it be done selectively ? Should there be a radical break with all property and anything that resembles it ?

Communism chooses this last proposition. It is not a question of transferring property titles but of the simple disappearance of property. In revolutionary society no-one will be able to 'use and abuse' a good because they are its owner. There will be no exceptions to this rule. Buildings, pins, plots of land will no longer belong to anyone, or if you like, they will belong to everybody. The very idea of property will rapidly be considered absurd.

Will everything then equally belong to everybody ? Will the first-comer be able to put me out of my house, take my clothes off me or take bread from out of my mouth just because I will no longer be the owner of my house, my clothes or my food ? Certainly not; on the contrary, each person's material and emotional security will be strengthened. It is simply that it will not be the right of property that will be invoked as a protection, but directly the interest of the person concerned. Everybody will have to be able to satisfy their hunger - and be housed and clothed - at their convenience. Everybody will have to be able to live in peace.

FROM SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE
The right and the sentiment of property will die out in communist society because scarcity will disappear. People will no longer have to cling to an object for fear of not being able to enjoy it any more if they let go of it for a single instant.

By what magic do you intend to bring out this fabulous era of abundance ? the bourgeois will ask ironically. There's no magic about it. We will be able to make abundance appear because it is already here under our feet. It is not a question of creating it but simply of liberating it. It is precisely capital, through submitting people and nature to its yoke for many centuries, that has made abundance a possibility. It is not that communism is suddenly going to produce abundance but that capitalism artificially maintains scarcity.

In communist societies goods will be freely available and free of charge. The organisation of society to its very foundations will be without money.

How can we prevent wealth being grasped by some at the expense of others ? Won't our society, after a moment of euphoria while people help themselves to existing resources, risk sliding into chaos and inequality before sinking into disorder and terror?

In developed communist society the productive forces will be sufficient to meet needs. The frantic and neurotic desire to consume and hoard will disappear. It will be absurd to want to accumulate things : there will no longer be money to be pocketed nor wage-earners to be hired. Why accumulate tins of beans or false teeth which you won't use ?

In this new world people will not have to constantly pay and keep accounts in order to feed themselves, travel about or amuse themselves. They will rapidly lose the habit. From this will spring a feeling of being genuinely free. People will feel at home everywhere. Not being constantly under surveillance, they won't be tempted to cheat. Why seek to lie or build up secret stocks when you are certain of being able to have your fill?

Gradually the sentiment of property will disappear and will appear retrospectively as somewhat odd and mean. Why cling to an object or a person when the whole world is yours?

The new people will resemble their hunting and gathering ancestors who trusted in a nature which supplied them freely and often abundantly with what they needed to live, and who had no worry for the morrow, over which in any case they had no control. For the people of tomorrow, nature will be the world they will have themselves fashioned and the abundance will be created by their own hands. They will be sure of themselves because they will have confidence in their strength and will know their limitations. They will be without worry because they will know that the morrow belongs to them. Death ? It exists. But it is pointless crying over what is inevitable. The point is to be in a position to enjoy the present moment.

3. Democracy
What is more beautiful than democracy : the sovereign power of the people ? As much as the term capitalism can be embarrassing, to the same extent the term democracy arouses support. Everyone is for democracy, whether it is royal or republican, bourgeois or popular. To reproach their adversaries people will call them insufficiently democratic.

Anyone who sets themselves against democracy will at best be seen as nostalgic for absolute monarchy. In general people prefer to label them as fascists. The keenest to do so are often the marxists and marxist-leninists who forget what the founding fathers said about democracy, and who are anxious to conceal their own taste for power and dictatorship. Hypocritically, some of those who are still guiltily nostalgic for stalinism will reproach us for being stalinists.

Democracy appears as the antithesis of capitalist despotism. Here where it is well known that a minority is in charge, one claims to oppose to them the remaining power of universal suffrage.
In reality capitalism and democracy are partly linked. Democracy is the fig leaf of capital. Democratic values, far from being subversive, are the idealised expression of the real and less noble tendencies of capitalist society. Communists no more claim to realise the trilogy "liberty, equality, fraternity" than they do "work, family, fatherland".

If democracy is the consort of capital, how is it that dictatorship and capitalism so often coexist ? How is it that the majority of mankind live under authoritarian regimes ? How does it come about that even in democratic countries the operation of democracy is constantly hindered?

Democratic values and aspirations are the consequence of the solvent character of capital. They correspond to the ending of the insertion of the individual within a community and a network of fixed relations. They also correspond to the need to maintain an idealised community, to regulate conflicts, and to limit quarrels for the good of all. The minority yields to the decisions of the majority.
Democracy is neither a simple lie nor a vulgar illusion. It draws its content from a shattered social reality for which it seems to be a reunification. Within the democratic aspiration there is a search for community, a will to respect others. But the basis on which it takes root and seeks to develop prevents this from succeeding.

Democracy is often still too dangerous for capital or at least for certain interests in power. That is why they constantly seek to impose limits to it. With few exceptions these limits and even simple dictatorship are presented as victories of democracy itself. What tyrant doesn't claim to govern, if not by the people, then at least for the people?

Democracy, which can seem to be a excellent means of absorbing workers struggles during periods of calm, sees itself abandoned without shame as soon as the defence of capital requires this. There are always a few intellectuals and politicians who are most surprised to find themselves so easily sacrificed on the alter of the interests of the powerful.

Democracy and dictatorship are opposed but not unrelated forms. Since it implies the submission of the minority to the majority democracy is a form of dictatorship. While a junta of dictators may well have to resort to democratic mechanisms.

It is sometimes forgotten that fascism, nazism and stalinism were involved in imposing on themselves both terrorist processes and regular elections. They liked to oppose the broad masses and popular justice to the handfuls of "traitors", the "unpatriotic" and those who were "anti-party".

Communism is not the enemy of democracy because it will be the friend of dictatorship and fascism. It is the enemy of democracy because it is the enemy of politics. That said, communists are not indifferent to the regime under which they live. They prefer to fall asleep quietly in the evening without wondering whether tonight someone will come to take them from their beds and convey them to prison.

The critique of the state must not be substituted for the critique of politics. Some take on the machinery of the state but only the better to save politics. Just as certain educationalists criticise schools in order to generalise education into all forms of social relation. For Leninists everything is political. Behind every manifestation of capital, they see an intention, a design. Capital becomes the instrument of a political project to which it is necessary to oppose another political project.
Politics is seen as the domain of liberty, action and manoeuvre as compared to economic fate. Economy, the domain of the production of goods is dominated by necessity. Economic evolution and crises appear as natural phenomena which escape human influence.
The left is accustomed to stressing the possibilities of politics, the right is accustomed to stress the needs of the economy. It's a false debate.

More and more politics appears as the carbon copy of economic life. During a certain period it could play a role of compromise and alliance between social layers.
Today the importance of politics as an intervention in the economy has increased. But at the same time the political sphere has lost its autonomy. There is only a single politics of capital which compels both left and right regardless of the specific interests of their social bases.
While the state appears to be a more or less definable institution, politics is born and reborn from all the pores of society. Although it finds its expression in the action of a particular layer of militants and politicians, it is supported by, and finds an echo in, the behaviour of everybody. This is what gives it its strength and conveys the impression that all social solutions must be political.
Politics follow from, and are supported, by the dissociation between decision and action, and by the separations which set individuals against one another. Politics first appear as the permanent search for power which animates men in capitalist society. Democracy and despotism seem to be the only ways of regulating problems between people. The introduction of democracy into families or couples passes for a new stage in human progress. Above all this expresses, in perhaps the least worst way, the loss of the deep unity which can unite human beings.
Communism does not separate decision and execution. There will no longer be a division between two groups or even between two distinct moments organised into a hierarchy. People will do what they must or what they have decided to do without posing the question of whether they are a minority or a majority. These are notions which presuppose the existence of a formal community.
The principle of unanimity reigns in the sense that those who do something will be in agreement from the start, and that the agreement provides the basis and possibility of common action. The group does not exist independently of, or prior to, the action. It is not split apart in voting to then be reunified by the submission of one part to the other. It is constituted in and by the action, and by the capacity of people to identify with and understand the point of view of others.
It is not a matter of systematically rejecting all voting and any submission of a minority to a majority. But then these are just technical forms to which one cannot give an absolute value. It may be that the minority possesses the truth. It may be that a majority yields to a minority considering the importance of what is at stake for that minority.
Is communism the advent of liberty ? Yes, if one understands by this that mankind will have more choice than now, that they will be able to live in agreement with their tastes.
What we challenge is the philosophy which opposes free-will and determinism. This separation reflects the opposition of man and the world, individual and society. It expresses the rootlessness of the individual and his inability to understand his own needs in order to satisfy them. He can choose between a thousand types of work, a thousand forms of leisure, a thousand loves and be influenced in a thousand ways because nothing truly affects him. No certainty lives within him. He doubts everything and first of all himself. In doing this he is ready to support everything and often believes he has chosen it. Liberty presents itself as the philosophical garb of misery. Doubt as the expression of freedom of thought when really it signifies loss, the inability of man to situate himself in his world.
In the course of the revolution man loses his chains but finally becomes linked simultaneously to his desires and to the necessities of the moment. He becomes passionate once again and begins to understand himself. The extraordinary climate of joy and tension within insurrections is linked to the feeling that everything is possible and at the same time that what one does must be done urgently. That one must no longer hesitate and be blown back and forth between petty tasks. Subjective and objective constraints merge together.

Editorial: Calling on Beelzebub (2010)

Editorial from the February 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Off Haiti the USS Carl Vinson, an aircraft carrier, enables military helicopters to transport food, water and medical supplies to people on the island who desperately need them. USAF air traffic controllers guide planes from all over the world carrying other supplies and equipment to land safely at the airport at Port-au-Prince. A US hospital ship and naval vessels from other countries wait offshore.

Socialists are perhaps not alone in seeing the irony of organisations that normally deal in death and destruction being called in to deal with a situation caused by a Nature that has wreaked death and destruction. For armed forces are just that – bodies of trained men and women whose mission is to kill and maim people and to destroy and demolish buildings. Just as at the very same moment other military helicopters and planes from other aircraft carriers are doing in another part of the world, Afghanistan.

Still perhaps we should at least be grateful for small mercies and not complain when, for once, the armed forces put aside their weapons and do something useful for a change. In any event it is what the people of the world want. It is clear that people all over the globe do genuinely feel for their fellow humans when they are hit by an earthquake as in Haiti or by a tsunami as in and around the Indian Ocean five years ago. They want to help and they do help in whatever small way they can. A sign that, deep down, people do consider themselves as members of a single human community, as people of the planet Earth.

Only a callous buffoon of an American money-seeking bible preacher could say that the earthquake was an act of a god angry at the people of Haiti for some sin they are supposed to have committed. The scorn with which his claim was greeted shows how far removed we now are from the times when this would have been the standard explanation, accepted even by the victims.

Humans are not able to prevent earthquakes but, quite apart from the fact that much that could be done to mitigate their consequences is not done for reasons of cost, a united socialist world provides a better framework than capitalism for dealing with these inevitable Acts of Nature. That today armed forces have to be (partially) diverted from their normal destructive activities to deal with these natural disasters brings out that under capitalism, with its division of the world into competing states, there is no permanent international rescue service of trained men and women, having its own helicopters, landing craft and, yes, even aircraft carriers. As there could and no doubt will be in a socialist world. Without guns of course.

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 133

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 133rd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1565 friends!

Recent blogs:

Cab ride to capitalism

Masters of War

Pitiful Copenhagen

Quote for the week:

"You have the right to free Speech

As long as

You're not dumb enough to actually try it"

The Clash, Know Your Rights, 1982.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

'Klingons to privilege'

From the Inveresk Street Ingrate blog:

SPGBer Max H. joins in the recent fun of photoshopping that daft 'honest dave' poster:

SPGBers who like that sort of thing tell me that Cameron has a passing resemblance to a Star Trek character called 'Data'. What do I know. Buck Rogers was my sci-fi fix as a kid.

More of Max's excellent Cameron posters on his website Capitalist Money Madness. I especially like these two.

Engels defrocked (2010)

Book Review from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Frock-Coated Communist: the Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. By Tristram Hunt

In February last year we reviewed John Green’s biography of Engels, and now along comes another. This one was launched with far more hype, coming as it does from a well-known publisher and being written by an up-and-coming academic and TV historian. Both contain ‘revolutionary life’ in their sub-titles, and even feature on their front covers versions of the same portrait of Engels at the age of twenty.

And of course both books tell essentially the same story. Engels was born to a capitalist family in Germany in 1820, and rebelled against his upbringing but was forced to spend twenty years working for the Manchester branch of the family firm. He supported Marx financially, till in 1869 he was able to retire, and the next year he moved to London. Besides helping Marx’s research into capitalism, he wrote classic works such as The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.

Where Green saw Engels as something of a proto-Bolshevik, Hunt has a more balanced view in this respect. ‘Contrary to Lenin’s later assertions,’ he says, ‘Engels was no vanguardist.’ He appreciated, too, that workers could come to power using the ballot box. Nor was he a Fabian or a supporter of the reformism pursued by the German Social Democrats. Despite some claims to the contrary, he was not responsible for the horrors of Stalinism, and did not corrupt Marx’s ideas in any way.

But Engels was not perfect, by any means. He had some anti-Irish prejudices, but he later put these aside. He does not seem, though, to have modified his anti-Slav views, which led him to call for the disappearance of ‘entire reactionary peoples’. He was against homosexuality, and was not sympathetic to the women’s movement. In the 1840s he apparently slept with the wife of Moses Hess, a former associate with whom he and Marx had fallen out, and then boasted that she was in love with him. Yet ‘the womanising Engels ended up authoring the foundation text of socialist feminism’ (i.e. Origin).

As Francis Wheen did when writing about Marx, Hunt concludes by noting how contemporary Engels now seems, when read in the context of economic recession and globalisation.

Paul Bennett

Poverty in New York

From the Socialist Courier blog

A letter to the press from Joe Berg, Executive Director, New York City Coalition Against Hunger is very revealing:

"In 2008, even before the economic downturn had its worst impact, 1.5 million city residents lived in poverty, 104,000 more than in 2000. More than 1.3 million New Yorkers are now forced to use food pantries and soup kitchens. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, there are 45 percent more people staying in city homeless shelters nightly than when Mayor Bloomberg took office, with levels at an all-time high. On Jan. 7, there were 36,961 people, including 15,727 children, sleeping in city shelters, enough to fill Madison Square Garden two times over. While the number of billionaires in the city dipped slightly in the last year (from 64 to 56), their combined net worth still equaled more than 27 times the yearly income of all 1.5 million New Yorkers in poverty." (New York Times, 11 January)

Richard Donnelly

Getting better (1999)

Book Review from the January 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Things Can Only Get Better by John O'Farrell

It could not have been easy for them but Tory Party activists did an effective job in denying that there was any genuine suffering in this country while their party was in power. It was, they argued, largely a delusion. Millions of people were imagining they were unemployed, there weren't really hundreds of applicants for one job. Tens of thousands were being evicted from their homes because they imagined they couldn’t afford to pay the mortgage. Beggars on the streets were actually rich people, taking time off from fat cat jobs as commodity brokers or financial consultants. This general idea—that anyone experiencing the more extreme kind of poverty had only themselves to blame—was popular enough to help keep the Tories in power for 18 years. And that in itself was the cause of a kind of suffering for at least one man which, although real enough in its effect, had its origins in a delusion as powerful as the one which afflicted and comforted the Tory faithful.

John O'Farrell, a Labour Party activist for some of those 18 years, is better known as one of the writers of the TV political satire Spitting Image and occasional contributor of jokes to Labour leaders like Gordon Brown. He has written a book—Things Can Only Get Better (Doubleday, £9.99)—about how he suffered as one Tory victory followed another, as Labour split and blundered, electing leaders like Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock while Thatcher swiped them all with her handbag and, with her impenetrable arrogance, rubbed her opponents' noses into the misery of defeat.

Leaders
All the way from posh, leafy Thames-side Maidenhead, O'Farrell was almost bred into becoming a Labour supporter. His father was a kind of political anorak and his mother was active in liberal-lefty causes like Oxfam and Amnesty International—although his brother regarded politics as not so much a closed book as one which had not yet been written. None of the family seemed to have any clear idea of why they should work for a Labour victory apart from some undeveloped notion that it would make the world a better place. But that is the kind of motivation which drives football supporters onto terraces each Saturday, to exult or despair, or pop fans to hope their favourite comes out on top:

"I had wanted Labour to win in 1970 because my dad did, just as I had wanted Dana to win the Eurovision Song Contest because my dad did."

Having settled on which team he would support and decked himself out with the appropriate rosette, O'Farrell had to endure a series of humiliating defeats. In 1979 the Labour manager, genial Jim Callaghan, could be blamed because he opted to delay the kick-off. His successor was even worse; eccentric supremo Michael Foot led the team in 1983 to a historic thrashing. Then came the younger livelier Neil Kinnock who first had to prove that his reputation as a fiery left-winger belonged to the days when he was trying to make a name for himself, before he too could preside over a losing team. In 1987 Labour's defeat proved one thing—that a meticulously cynical and stage-managed campaign does not guarantee victory. In 1992 it was if anything a more bitter defeat as the party confounded a great many of the experts in expectation and lost to the team of grey, boring, whining John Major.

Passionate
Throughout these desperate times O'Farrell because deeper and deeper involved in Labour politics, invigorating a near-deceased ward party in Tory Wandsworth. At a quarter to ten on polling day in 1987 an exhausted volunteer came into the committee rooms suggested there was no point in going out again as the polling stations closed at ten o'clock. "Is it worth it?" screamed O'Farrell. "We lost Leicester South by seven votes last time round! Seven poxy votes! You could easily get seven votes out between now and polls closing. Is there anything more important that you can think of doing during the next fifteen minutes?" the volunteer went out again. Labour lost the seat by 57 votes.

No wonder somebody as passionate about the Labour Party suffered so much at their defeats—just like football fans when their team is relegated. In 1983:

"Why I stayed up to watch the results is a mystery to me. I suppose it was for the same reason that I cannot help slowing down and glancing across at horrific motorway accidents."

In 1987:

"As I walked through the Shaftesbury Estate at two in the morning I looked at all the houses with people asleep in their beds, blissfully ignorant of what a terrible thing they had done."

And in 1992:

" . . . when exactly were we likely to beat them? Never, was the simple answer. Never, ever, ever."

Support
This brings us to question what "support" is all about. Why do people "support" a football team? Why support Manchester United and not Brentford? Or Arsenal instead of Torquay? Why "support" the Labour Party and not the Tories? Or the Liberal Democrats or the Natural Law Party? O'Farrell thinks ". . . other people's lives can be improved through the existing political system, whether on a local or national level, and that we all have a moral obligation to try to make this happen". That, except for the bit about a "moral obligation", is all right as far as it goes: but why should it then lead to supporting the Labour Party? O'Farrell goes on about " . . . the simple basic precepts of left-wing politics . . . helping people worse off than themselves . . . granting more freedom . . . improving living standards and fighting inequality". But when he got involved in politics we had just come through a period of 15 years 11 of which had been under Labour government. Those governments, under Wilson and Callaghan, had not exactly covered themselves in glory as far as working-class interests went.

Their records on wars such as Biafra and Vietnam was sordid and shameful. They had fought the working class on many occasions when groups of them had tried to protect their living standards against Labour's assaults. The infamous Winter of Discontent had followed from Chancellor Healey's attempts to impose a five percent limit on wage rises which, after years of restrain and promises of a better future, was the last straw. Callaghan did not lose in 1979 because the working class were swamped in prosperity but because they were fed up with the misery of Labour rule.

Another book
As might be expected, O'Farrell greeted Blair's victory in 1997 by getting drunk. The British people, he thought, had finally come good. What does he now think after nearly two years of Labour rule? What about the attacks on the benefits of single parents? What about the insidious smear that disabled people and compliant doctors are conspiring to defraud Social Security? What about tightening the screws on the unemployed? What about harassing damaged and disturbed youngsters? What about Blair's cosy relationship with mega capitalists like Murdoch, Sainsbury and Bernie Ecclestone? What about his eager support for Clinton's threats to start up another war in the Gulf?

It is time for another book from O'Farrell. This time he might call it something like "Sorry. But After All The Suffering, The Hard Work And The Expectations Labour Won—And Things Did Not Get Better".

Ivan

Weekly Bulletin of The Socialist Party of Great Britain 132

Dear Friends,

Welcome to the 132nd of our weekly bulletins to keep you informed of changes at Socialist Party of Great Britain @ MySpace.

We now have 1559 friends!

Recent blogs:

Labour and the reform of capitalism

Government or democracy?

Who's going to clean the sewers?

Quote for the week:

"Politicians hide themselves away. They only started the war. Why should they go out into a fight?... They leave that all to the poor." Black Sabbath, War Pigs, 1970.

Continuing luck with your MySpace adventures!

Robert and Piers

Socialist Party of Great Britain

Cooking the Books: Financial alchemy (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Bank of England introduced "quantitative easing" last year is was popularly described as the government having recourse to the printing press. This was not meant to be taken literally – the Bank of England did not arrange for more notes to be printed – as it was done electronically. Nor, as Charles Bean, a deputy governor of the Bank of England explained in a speech to the London Society of Chartered Accountants on 13 October (see here), was it the same process that leads to more currency (notes and coins) getting into circulation (through banks being put in a position to have to convert some of their reserves with the Bank of England into cash).

Bean described it as "a programme of large scale asset purchases financed by the issuance of extra reserves". A new fund called the Asset Purchase Facility was set up to which the Bank of England has so far lent £200 billion. This did not come out of the Bank's existing assets but was literally created out of nothing:

"Technically what happens is the following. The Asset Purchase Facility buys assets funded by a loan from the Bank. In turn, the Bank funds that loan through additional reserve creation. If that sounds like financial alchemy, consider how the money flows through the system. When the Asset Purchase Facility buys a gilt from a pension fund, say, it can be thought of as paying with a cheque drawn on the Bank of England. The pension fund will then bank the cheque with its own commercial bank, so the latter now has a claim on the Bank of England – that is what reserves are. In reality, these payments are not made by cheque, but rather are carried out electronically. But the principle is the same, though one key difference is that we pay the Bank Rate to the commercial bank on its claim on us, as well as charging the Bank Rate on the loan we make to the Asset Purchase Facility."

So, what is involved is a circulating IOU from the Bank which can be used to buy financial assets and which, from an accounting point of view, takes the form of a notional increase in the reserves which the commercial banks keep with the Bank of England, except that it is the Bank not the commercial banks that has increased these reserves.

Will this cause inflation? After all, what the Asset Purchase Facility spends does represent an increase in purchasing power. However, the immediate aim is not to cause a rise in the general price level but a rise only in the price of government bonds and stocks and shares:

"If the Asset Purchase Facility buys gilts from pension funds or asset managers, they will then have to look for another home for their money. As it is not very rewarding just to hold it on deposit, they are likely to look to put their money into other assets, including equities and corporate bonds. Thus not only does the price of gilts rise as a consequence of the Asset Purchase Facility's initial purchases, but also the prices of a whole spectrum of other assets".

This limited aim seems to have been achieved as prices of bonds and shares on the stock exchange have risen, helping to repair some black holes on financial company balance sheets. But there is supposed to be a wider aim: to "boost spending and activity" as Bean put it. Which hasn't been achieved. Bean, in fact, honestly admitted that if and when economic activity revives there will be no way of telling whether or not this was due to quantitative easing "for the simple reason that we can never know with precision what would have happened in its absence".

The intention is that, as the real economy recovers, the process will be reversed. The Asset Purchase Facility will sell the bonds it purchased and repay its loan from the Bank of England. The Bank will then liquidate the corresponding commercial banks' reserves with it. If this happens there will be no general inflationary effect as the extra purchasing power pumped into financial markets will be taken out again. But this could be years away. In the meantime the extra purchasing power will continue to go towards financing a stock exchange revival, even perhaps a speculative bubble – while the real economy goes its own way, recovering in due course for real economic reasons not through financial alchemy.

Why are we waiting? (2009)

A Short Story from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reflections of a man in a queue
What are you waiting for? For a certain little lady to come by? For world peace? For that moment when you can slap a parking ticket on that stationary vehicle whose owner has committed the heinous crime of being one minute longer than they should have been? For the chance to appear in ‘Big Brother’? For the dentist to call you in and prove that you have nothing to fear but fear itself? For the weekend when your life feels like it belongs to you and no one else? For the arms of Morpheus to envelop you? For the price of petrol/train season ticket to become more affordable? For your team to win promotion this season? For someone to bid on that eBay item you’re trying to sell? For the replacement of a social system predicated upon the pursuit of profit, profit and more profit?

The local newsagents/post office. Lunchtime. Three counter positions. Two of them closed. Surprise, surprise! Long queue building up behind me. Metaphorically, I pull out my flask, sandwiches and copy of the Beano and settle down for a long wait. I try uttering the mantra, “patience is a virtue,” but this doesn’t work as my concentration is disturbed by the mucky magazines in my eye line. Ian Drury’s song, starts running through my head, “In my yellow jersey, I went out on the nick. South Street Romford, shopping arcade, Got a Razzle magazine, I never paid, Inside my jacket and away double quick.” (Razzle in my pocket)

Last time I was rooted to one spot for so long without moving was in a traffic jam just outside Worcester. On the satnav I watched an hour of my life go to waste as I fumed in the queue. I’m just on the point of turning to someone and saying, “When I was a lad we didn’t have queues this long you know!” Fortunately, I manage to avoid turning into bore number 147.

I move through ninety degrees and peruse those behind me. I’m not that sensitive to other people’s moods but even I could sense their resentment. Their blood pressure is rising exponentially with every minute of inactivity that passes. I gauge this by the angry flush which is appearing on their faces and the muttered imprecations which are beginning to sound more and more and like an audition for a collective of Wiccan worshippers in that Scottish play by Shakespeare.

I too join in the muttering. I am debating with myself whether I should give in to an overwhelming urge to fix them with a glittering eye and expound upon the benefits of a social system based upon production for use, not profit.

After all, my fellow wage slaves are the ones who actually run the system on behalf of a minority.

Waiting for Godot is a play by Samuel Becket. There are two characters called Estragon and Vladimir who, in a two day time frame, engage in various activities whilst waiting for a character called Godot to arrive. In the first scene Estragon after trying hard to remove his shoe, and failing, says, “Nothing to be done.”

“Nothing to be done!” has resonance amongst those who are constantly propounding empirical reasons why this global social system, capitalism, has fulfilled its historical purpose and needs to be replaced. “Nothing to be done!” is an oft-repeated response from other members of the working class when real socialism is explained to them.

Go on the comments section of some internet blogs or media sites. Amongst the jeering, insults, and puerile name calling you will find countless posts complaining how tough times are and how they are going to get tougher. These tirades are often directed at individuals, e.g. politicians, organizations, e.g. political parties, or institutions, e.g., the European Union, who appear, in the eyes of those posting, to hold some malignant influence over their lives. For the sake of veracity, it has to be said, that ‘socialism’ is often cited in less than complimentary terms.

It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the ‘socialism’ referred to as being more scary than the bogeyman is state capitalism as practised by the ex-Soviet Union and by regimes such as North Korea, Cuba and others today. Moaning and whinging seems to be becoming an art form. In the art of not doing anything. A pervasive fatalistic air is apparent. Amongst many who are who are posting on the internet anyway, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” (Karl Marx). Well, here’s the tough love; whining about it ain’t gonna change anything!

The local branch of the bank that likes to be international and local at one and the same time. Mid-morning. Once upon a time there were five counter positions. Now there are only two. One of which is shut. Yet another queue. The frustrations emanating from the increasingly exasperated wage slaves wasting time trying to avail themselves of the banks ‘services’ are palpable. Are those queuing behind me are aware of their role as wage slaves within a capitalist system that daily exploits them in its ever more desperate attempts to fulfil it’s raison d’être? The thing about capitalism is that it’s fulfilled its historical function to lay down the necessary social conditions for a transition to a wageless, moneyless, leaderless, classless, stateless society. It’s just that the vast majority of paid and unpaid members of the working class don’t know that yet.

The couple at the counter finally sorts out their business. She apologies to us all for keeping us waiting. I say out loud, it’s not your fault, it’s the banks. In my mind I’m screaming, “We don’t need banks! Abolition of the wages system! Free access of goods and services! From each according to his/her abilities, to each according to their needs! Had I said all this aloud in one of the temples of the moneychangers what response would I have got? Would I have been dragged kicking and screaming into a police van or into a conveyance to the local mental health hospital. Well! What a looney! (Political correctness in the use of language hasn’t permeated to my part of the world). Elimination of money? Cor, we might be getting seriously peed off wasting our life in this queue but that suggestion is just ridiculous. Isn’t it? Hell, I don’t want to bring back more counter positions in banks and post offices. I want a social system where money and the need for financial transactions of any kind are no longer necessary.

“I'm so tired, Tired of waiting, Tired of waiting for you.” (Ray Davies and The Kinks). I’ve reached an age where “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near” resounds much more loudly nowadays. I think I can legitimately describe myself as a ‘grumpy old man.’ Thing is, I don’t think that you have to be old to be grumpy and dissatisfied to know that there’s something wrong with the way that we live. Like the Kinks I’m getting increasingly frustrated waiting for the transition to a better social system which will supersede the one we have now. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness and is inhibiting the personal, and collective, growth of everyone on this planet. The problem is this better life isn’t going to happen without us all putting in some serious effort to bring it about. “It's your life, And you can do what you want.” So what do you want to do? Are you happy with your life? It’s down to us all. What are we waiting for?

Dave Coggan

Haiti - An Un-natural Disaster

From the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog:

The earthquake in Haiti and similar misfortunes are presented as unavoidable natural disasters. To some extent, this is true. But it ignores the consequences of the deliberate pursuit of profit at the expense of environmental protection. It is not a coincidence that the number of victims of recent disasters such as the Asian tsunami and the Katrina hurricane and now Haiti are clearly related to the degree of their poverty.

The reality with earthquakes is they kill only if we let them. They are inevitable, but the death toll is not.

It is collapsing buildings that take lives, not tremors in the ground. Throughout the animal kingdom, creatures have adapted to survive in their surroundings, but in our environment, where earthquakes are a fact of life, though nature challenges us to do something to protect ourselves, capitalism compels us to surrender safety to monetary profits and savings. No matter how severe earthquakes are, if buildings were properly built in the first place, then the vast majority of people would survive. This does not happen under capitalism, particularly in poorer countries, since the unavoidable pressure to make and save money affects what does, or more importantly, does not happen. There are pressures to build quickly and slapdashly to meet housing needs by landless labourers forced by poverty to find work in urban areas; inferior materials and construction methods are used in accordance with market forces, with poor people getting poorly-built homes; building inspectors are persuaded by politicians or back-handers to ignore breaches of rules so that businesses get the cheap employees they want and workers get hovels they can afford; landowners lobby governments, hand over party "donations" or resort to simple bribery to have new housing built on their land, even if it is unsuitable or downright dangerous. With, moneyless, socialism human needs and safety come second to nothing.

Though seismologists don't know precisely where or when earthquakes may strike, general areas of risk are identifiable. In a socialist society, how we respond to this information would be very different. There would be far greater freedom for those in danger to move to safer areas—action under capitalism that can involve huge financial losses from writing off unsafe homes, shifting businesses to where workers then live, adapting that region's infrastructure to aid in exploiting the new workforce etc. And those who, for whatever reason, chose to reside in seismic zones, they would then have access to the best buildings capable of withstanding the most powerful of quakes. Although Japanese and Californian architects have designed “active buildings”, some on top of massive rubber shock absorbers or with computerised counterbalancing systems that identify and counteract seismic shocks, what's the likelihood of such sophisticated technology being used under capitalism on multi-storey dwellings in poverty-stricken areas for workers on subsistence wages? Using superior designs, building methods and materials, there is no reason why populated areas should suffer any loss of life or major disruption after experiencing very powerful quakes.

The surviving victims of the disaster in Haiti need food, fresh water, clothing, medication and many other items. Some of those needs are being met, but not nearly enough. Governments of the richer countries have offered niggardly help. Ordinary citizens, appalled by the extent of the tragedy as revealed by the media, have responded generously to appeals by the charities.In times of natural disasters volunteers are never lacking, nor slow to offer assistance, whether practical or monetary.Humans are endowed with the ability to sympathise and empathise with their fellow humans. Humans derive great pleasure from doing good, are at their best when faced with the worst and will go to extraordinary lengths to help alleviate the suffering of others.

Most natural dangers are well known and socialism would not need to leave communities exposed to them. This would avoid many disasters. Also, contingency plans would exist throughout the regions and at a world level for the relief of any catastrophe. Emergency supplies of food, clean water, medical supplies would be maintained at strategic points whilst machinery, equipment and helpers would be moved quickly to the area of crisis. The present appeals for money are a pathetic substitute for the availability of real resources and the freedom that communities in socialism would have to immediately use them.

We have access to more comprehensive information and news coverage about world disasters than any previous generation of humans, and yet it appears that people don't feel driven to bring about an end to such catastrophes. It seems our society has been influenced to believe that nothing can be done. That big death tolls from quakes, volcanoes or droughts are inevitable. What efforts do the media make to change this, by explaining both capitalism's culpability and socialism's solutions? If people don't understand, then all there will be are yet more channel-changing "Not-another-disaster. There's-nothing-I-can-do " indifference.

Alan Johnstone

Added Note:

Well worth a read is an article from Rosa Luxemburg about a volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Martinique in 1902.

Utterly perverse (2000)

Theatre Review from the March 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Widowers' Houses. National Theatre Company

My affection for the theatre is such that I rarely feel moved to walk out, and on those occasions when the thought crosses my mind I invariably quickly conclude that things can only get better. Not unusually my optimism is rewarded, and they do. But a couple of weeks ago I achieved a first. Not only did I want to talk out, but I wanted to do so whilst shouting abuse at the director. Indeed had I been on my own I think I might have done so.

The occasion for this singular experience was a National Theatre production of Bernard Shaw's Widowers' Houses, directed by Fiona Shaw, which is currently on a UK tour. Widowers' Houses, Shaw's amazing first play, was first produced in 1892. Written as a black comedy of manners, the play demonstrates how, given the imperatives of capitalism, landlords must necessarily exploit their poor and needy tenants, and that all those who are involved in the system are inevitably tainted as a result.

Fiona Shaw is a marvellous actress, whose performances have given me much pleasure. She is also a sparky, intelligent woman with, so I understand, an Honours degree in philosophy. But her directorial debut sees her perfidiously misinterpreting Shaw's masterpiece. The play as written is a biting, ironic attack of the unpleasant facts of live in Victorian England. But the play as performed is stripped of its historical, economic and political reference points, and infused with an arbitrary erotic sexuality and unlikely melodrama, to the point where it becomes meaningless. "Did you understand that?" said the man next to me to his partner at the end of the show. "No," said his partner without qualification. And it was easy to sympathise.

Director's often reinterpret great pieces of drama, sometimes to telling effect. Shakespeare is a frequent target and the result can occasionally be thrilling. I recall a recent performance of Richard III in which the king was a Hitler-like dictator living in 20th century Europe. And film buffs will likely be familiar with Paul Douglas's account of Macbeth, with the central part being played by a gangster, Joe Macbeth, living in 1920s' Chicago. But Ms Shaw hasn't so much reinterpreted her namesake's play as perversely misread it. On this occasion she might properly be called Fiona Unshaw.

The words spoken by the actors often don't match their actions. Early on Harry Trench, a young doctor with aristocratic connections who is enjoying a Rhineland tour with his older travelling companion Cokane, meets Blanche Sartorious, the wealthy daughter of a rich slum landlord. This is familiar territory, and the resonances with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, which had been performed for the first time only few years earlier, are very clear. Trench hasn't been formally introduced to Blanche and the conventions must be observed. As the redoubtable Blanche tries to have to find a way of prompting the dithering Harry to speak to her father so that she can acknowledge that she has already spoken briefly to him, Shaw describes Harry as "stammering" and "looking at her piteously". But in this production he doesn't stammer or look piteous. Rather he drags Blanche behind an awning where the audience see them immediately begin to copulate.

This deliberate undermining of Shaw's intentions would be bad enough, were it not that matters immediately get worse. The highly-charged sexual encounter has been seen by Blanche's father. His reaction in real life can only be imagined, but Shaw has given him words which meet his intentions, and not the behaviour which Ms Unshaw has conceived. The Shaw line reads, "Sartorious (gravely): 'I intended you to accompany us' (on our walk), Blanche." You can imagine the audience's wide-eyed disbelief. Many people laughed uproariously at the sheer absurdity of it all. Rarely have I felt more sympathy for an actor having to speak such a foolishly inappropriate line.

Further liberties are taken. Speeches are jettisoned, the author's stage directions wilfully ignored or countermanded, Blanche becomes pregnant, and Sartorious's rent collector appears in drag.

How the National Theatre can allow such a travesty to tour is beyond me. It is an unworthy, tawdry show. Better to spend part of the entrance fee on a copy of the play, and re-read Shaw's biting attack on the inhumanities and injustices that are forever part and parcel of capitalism. Whereas I read the play with increasing pleasure, Ms Unshaw's production had my blood boiling with barely suppressed rage.

Michael Gill

Protect and Survive (2006)

Book Review from the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. Penguin Books

This is another erudite yet readable book by Jared Diamond, following on from The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and Guns, Germs and Steel. His theme this time is how and why past societies have or have not collapsed, and how an understanding of such issues may be of help in the present-day world. The Maya civilisation of central America, for instance, collapsed in the early tenth century CE, after a period of 700 years or so. A number of contributing causes can be distinguished: population outgrew available resources, deforestation reduced the amount of available farmland, fighting among the Maya increased, a severe drought occurred, and the rulers had no interest in long-term concerns.

Diamond distinguishes five points that are generally relevant to societal collapse: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbours, friendly trade partners, and a society’s responses to its environmental problems. Often, for instance, forest will be removed and soil eroded, or newly-introduced animals may eat native species or destroy crops: all this may cut the numbers who can survive in a particular area. Destroying unrenewable resources is particularly crucial. Unfriendly nearby societies can also play their part in disrupting production and everyday life. Globalisation has increased the importance of other (not necessarily nearby) parts of the world: China, for instance, accepts untreated garbage, including toxic waste, form other countries (for a fee, of course).

Like his other works, Collapse is wide-ranging and thought-provoking, containing much material that we can’t do justice to here. A useful chapter on the Rwanda massacres of the 1990s makes the point that it was not a simple matter of Hutu against Tutsi. Many other factors played a part, including population pressure and falling world coffee prices. The final chapter asks what all the facts and theories that have been marshalled before mean to us today, emphasising ‘the unsustainability of a world in which the Third World’s large population were to reach and maintain current First World living standards.’ Diamond’s conclusion is that we need ‘the political will to apply solutions already available’, as if it were merely a matter of convincing politicians to do the right thing.

In fact he is far too uncritical in his acceptance of capitalism as the framework within which present-day problems have to be solved. He is well aware that companies exist to make profits, not as charities concerned to protect the environment. Yet, he says, it is not enough to blame companies, for ‘ultimate responsibility’ lies with us, ‘the public’, since we supposedly have the power to make destructive environmental policies unprofitable, e.g. by means of consumer boycotts or pressurising politicians to pass laws that force businesses to clean up the mess they have created. Sadly, this ignores the fact that capitalism needs profits and, while companies will sometimes be keen to play the environmental card if it suits them, they have to put profits first. No amount of legislation or boycotting can change this.

So the c-word to ponder is not ‘collapse’ or ‘climate’ but ‘capitalism’. And the political will that matters is the will to replace capitalism with a sensibly-organised society, within which problems can be tackled in a way much more likely to yield effective solutions.

Paul Bennett

Pitiful Copenhagen (2010)

From the January 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Given the competitive nature of capitalism any agreement on trying to deal with climate change was bound to be feeble and inadequate.

If we were living in a rationally-organised world, and a problem such as the threat of a too rapid global warming arose, a co-ordinated global response would be organised as a matter of course. If it was generally agreed amongst scientists specialising in the field that the problem had been caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels, then steps would be taken to cut this back and to phase in alternative sources of energy. The problems encountered in doing this would only be technological, not political or economic, as there would be no vested interests manoeuvring and lobbying to prevent or delay what needed to be done from being done.

But of course we are not living in a rationally-organised world. We are living under capitalism where there are vested interests galore – of the states into which the world is artificially divided, of the capitalist corporations seeking to make a profit by supplying some market or other. Certainly, the United Nations exists but it is only the arena in which these vested interests jockey for position and advantage, as was too plainly evident at the UN conference in Copenhagen last month on climate change.

The media concentrated on the differences there between the developed capitalist countries (misleadingly called “the rich”, as if everybody there was rich) and the developing capitalist countries (cynically, but accurately, called “emerging markets”). The representatives of the newer capitalist countries argued that as the long-established capitalist countries had been responsible for the past emissions of CO2 that scientists say is causing global warming, they should pay the cost of putting this right.

This is what the arguments there were all about – who is to bear the burden of cutting back on CO2 emissions? It wasn’t just a North-South clash. Each capitalist state had its own interests (those of its capitalists) to defend, with those more dependent on or with more reserves of coal or oil dragging their feet. Because, if the use of fossil fuels is to be cut back or is to be made more expensive this would affect them proportionately more. Their production costs would go up more, putting them at a competitive disadvantage on world markets. Which is why President Bush notoriously declared about the Kyoto Treaty.

“I made the decision . . . that the Kyoto treaty didn’t suit our needs. In other words, the Kyoto treaty would have wrecked our economy, if I can be blunt . . . I walked away from Kyoto because it would damage America’s economy, you bet. It would have destroyed our economy. It was a lousy deal for the American economy.” (Interview with Trevor MacDonald, ITV, 4 July 2005).

He was right. The US would have suffered economically if it had signed. Obama is taking a less confrontational approach, but he still has to bat for US capitalist industry, arguing for the continued use of coal and oil but introducing new technology to try to stop so much of the CO2 getting out into the atmosphere.

Chris Harman in his book Zombie Capitalism quoted some relevant statistics which show why the EU has been more keen than the US to cut back on burning fossil fuels:

“The national structures within which accumulation takes place depend to very different degrees upon carbon energy. The US was self-sufficient in oil until the early 1970s, its structures of accumulation and consumption became very highly dependent on oil and that means that today it has 20.2 tons of carbon emission per person; the main West European states lacked domestic oil resources, developed rather different structures of accumulation and consumption (with petrol, for instance, about three times the cost it is in the US), and so have far only 8.8 tons of emissions per person; China's rapid industrialisation and urbanisation are based on massive amounts of coal and its total emissions are close to that of the US figure, even though its emissions per head in 2004 were only a little over a sixth of the US figure and 40 percent of the West European figure. These enormous differences mean that measures that seriously cut back on emissions would hit firms based in different countries very differently. It is this which explains why the European Union seemed more committed to action against climate change in the early 2000s than the US; its national states stood to gain from measures that would proportionately hit US-based industries more than their own” (pp. 316-7)

World Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2006 (Million Metric Tons CO2)
Source: Energy Emission Administration

The OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia (where they still really do believe that the Earth is flat), are, for obvious reasons, opposed to reducing oil consumption. In the manoeuvrings before the opening of the conference, their representative was reported as saying “if you cut your oil use we want compensation” (London Times, 2 December). So do they all.

It is the differing economic interests of the various capitalist countries that work to make any international action to deal with this world problem feeble and inadequate. It’s the same with other world problems, even purely capitalist ones. Baron (then simple Mr Peter) Mandelson, when he was the EU Commissioner in charge of trying to negotiate a reduction in tariffs on world trade, remarked (before the Doha Round ended in failure):

“If, after seven years, you cannot complete a trade round, what does that say for your prospects of reaching a deal on climate change?” (London Times, 21 July 2008)

What indeed?
Some are well aware of what the obstacles are. Thus pioneer global warming scientist James Hansen said just before the conference started:

“The fundamental problem is that fossil fuels are the cheapest form of energy. As long as they are, they are going to be used” (London Times, 3 December).

However, naively, he sees the solution as imposing a carbon tax to raise the price of fossil fuels, so making the price – and so the use – of alternative fuels such as renewables and nuclear proportionately more competitive. But that’s easier said than done as who is going to make the US and China pay this tax that would undermine their competitiveness? In fact, as Copenhagen showed, nobody can impose anything on these two powers, the Nº1 and Nº2 CO2 emitters.
Lord Oxburgh, then chairman of Shell UK, speaking at the Greenpeace Business Lecture in January 2005, pointed out:

“Whether you like it or not, we live in a capitalist society. If we at Shell ceased to find and extract and market fossil fuel products while there was a demand for them, we should fail as a company. Shell would disappear as any kind of economic force” (Independent, 26 January 2005).

These are the hard facts of current economic life which those campaigning against climate change are up against. As long as they are cheaper, coal and oil will be used. And no capitalist corporation in that line of business is going to commit economic suicide by not seeking to make profits from supplying this paying demand for coal and oil.

If those concerned about the threat of a too rapid climate change would think the matter through they should be campaigning not for capitalist governments and corporations to change their spots but for the end of capitalism.

Adam Buick