Cooking the Books: Imperialism? (2014)

The Cooking the Books column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capital is value that expands. As self-expanding value capital is naturally imperialistic. Expansion is the essential process of capitalism. Capital expands via concentration (expanded reproduction through successive investments of a portion of surplus value realized as profit over and above consumption by the capitalist class) and centralization (whereby one capital kills many). And it always looks out for low-cost sourcing – cheaper sources of productive resources and labour-power on the one hand, and for upbeat profitable markets on the other. This is how the empire of capital expands. Therefore, every region of the capitalist world, developed or underdeveloped, small or large, is potentially expansionist or imperialist. Every aliquot part of the global capital is intrinsically expansive – imperialistic. Capital is global from its inception. It is not a national or regional entity. It has to be understood as a dominantly global entity.

A contrary treatment of capitalism is utterly misleading. The problem of our world is not imperialism, it is capitalism.

Capital is not a thing at rest; it is a circuit describing process continuously passing through three distinctive forms – money capital → productive capital → commodity capital – constantly reproducing its exploitative, oppressive, wasteful and alienating relations of production and distribution. Capitalists as we see them (individual, joint-stock, state, etc.) are but capital personified. They are merely the functionaries of capital. Capital grows unevenly via a centre/periphery framework and relation – some regions being highly industrialized centres while others remaining mostly raw material providers. And capital is inherently anarchic and self-contradictory moving through perpetual cycles of boom and slump.

Nobody could ever accurately predict about, and effectively administer, the anarchic behaviour of the capitalist socio-economic system. As Marx pointed out, ‘The essence of bourgeois society consists precisely in this, that a priori there is no conscious social regulation of production. The rational and the naturally necessary asserts itself only as a blindly working average.’ (Marx’s letter to L. Kugelman, July, 1868)

Capital is an active social force. And we know as Engels knew, ‘Active social forces work exactly like natural forces, blindly, forcibly, destructively’ ; in spite of us, in opposition to us, they master us ‘so long as we do not understand and reckon with them.’ (Anti-Dühring, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1969, p. 331)

This is true for every region of the world. You cannot do away with this pattern of capitalist growth. 

You can, however, do away with capital itself with all its paraphernalia only by organizing world socialism only.

Binay Sarkar

Mixed Media: Burston Strike School Museum (2014)

The Mixed Media column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Burston Strike School Museum, Church Green, Burston, Norfolk (free admission, open all reasonable hours (key at adjacent bungalow)) website: Burston Strike School.

Pre-visit publicity gives a rather misleading impression of the Burston Strike School Museum and its setting in the village of Burston, near Diss, in Norfolk. This is not a charming rural community but a straggling suburban development of retirement bungalows and nouveau-rich villas, interspersed with a few ropey farmsteads, home to a particularly unpleasant agribusiness installation. As such, the museum and the annual rally on the pocket handkerchief village green are rather incongruous. The large-scale rural poverty once found in this area is no more because the formerly ubiquitous ragged farm labourer, whose existence the Museum recalls, is no longer required. They have been discretely bundled off to hidden estates in the market towns or to the mean streets of the run-down coastal resorts. 

The Museum competently tells the story of the events leading to the Burston School Strike in 1914 when the teachers at the local school, Annie and Tom Higdon, were sacked after a dispute with management. The petty powers had objected to their industrial and political activities, and, led by the local priest, enacted the dismissal of the Higdons from their posts on trumped up grounds. The teachers were supported by the local farm workers, whose cause the Higdons had valiantly espoused. Pupils were withdrawn from the school as a protest (thus the strike was not an ordinary industrial one). Although unthinkable today, there was a rash of so-called Schoolboy Strikes in the years immediately before the First World War (see, for example, Dave Marson’s excellent 1973 pamphlet Children’s Strikes in 1911), so this was not an entirely isolated outburst.

The Higdons set up their own alternative school in a tent on the village green. Later the school moved to local carpenter’s premises and then to a purpose-built school financed by donations from the labour movement, and it is this building which now houses the museum. The Burston Strike School carried on teaching local children until shortly after Tom Higdon’s death in 1939, becoming, therefore, the longest running ‘strike’ in British history.

The displays in the museum, recently renewed to commemorate the centenary of the start of the children’s strike, are well maintained and informative in the conventional narrative style. A recent acquisition is a charming and entirely relevant bronze casting of one of the original Strike School chairs by Norwich artist Louise Richardson. The exhibition is backed up by extensive literature, which is on sale at the museum or on-line, including reproductions of The Burston Strike School by Casey (originally published by the Independent Labour Party) and T.G. Higdon’s The Burston Rebellion, as well as A Striking Village, which provides interesting background material. The latter was written by members of the Potter family, whose ancestor, Violet, led the schoolchildren in 1914. There is also an excellent range of postcards as well as well-designed mugs and pencils.

There have been additional events during the centenary year, including the Burston Community Primary School six week project that culminated in a re-enactment of the original candlestick march round the village. On their arrival on the Green they were greeted by ‘Mr and Mrs Higdon’ from The Stuff of Dreams Theatre Company’s production of their new play The Bricks of Burston. The annual Burston Strike Rally will take place on 7th September 2014. This year it will be addressed by Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. There will also be music from the NASUWT Band, and Thee Faction, an R&B band.

Younger children especially will, doubtless, gain something from a visit to the museum. However, overall, the impression is of the quaintness of the past, of white pinafore dresses and tight lace up boots, of strange and antiquated hand tools and odd facial hair. To the discerning visitor, however, much is left wanting.

Leaving aside footnote enquiries, such as details about the donors commemorated by the foundation stones lining the front of the Burston Strike School Museum building, whose brief inscriptions hint at fascinating untold stories, there is vital historical information which one needs for a full understanding of the case. Particularly, one would like to know the nature of the alternative education provided in the ‘Free School’. Besides being ‘nice’, what was this? The cursory treatment of this phrase is particularly disappointing because it was the duration of the school, a whole quarter century, which makes the incident noteworthy. In the era of McDonaldisation of education, independent education for the working class ought to be a particularly relevant issue.

And it is the failure to create links between the past and the present which makes the Burston Strike School Museum, like the People’s History Museum in Manchester, a failure. History is never finished business, done and dusted. Only by analysing society, how it came to be and how it is, can we hope to advance to a better future.

KAZ

A Broken Reid (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

After twenty-five years Mr. Jimmy Reid, the doyen of Left Clydeside, has left the Communist Party where he was an Executive Committee member. His reasons for leaving the Party are obscure, as this institution of meddle and muddle has not altered either in its reformist leadership case, or in its slavish acquiescence to the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. (How could it, when the Morning Star, the Party organ, depends on Russian finance? Russia, and the Iron Curtain countries take nearly 14,000 copies of the Morning Star out of the daily number sold of 41,000 copies: Sunday Telegraph, 15th February 1976). According to the Sunday Telegraph, this amounts to a subsidy of 250,000 a year out of a total of 500,000 a year which is required to keep the paper alive.

This fact must have been known to Mr. Reid as a member of the Executive Committee. The British Road to Socialism, the Party statement upon which Mr. Reid bases his faith, has certainly made a large detour through Eastern Europe.

Unfortunately for the working class of Clydeside, Jimmy Reid did not leave his ideas, so we can expect the usual windy dialogues and mis-information about Socialism when his conscience has settled down, or his career has got the better of it. In an interview given to Ian Smith in the Daily Telegraph 13th February 1976, "Mr. Reid said that if a political party emerged which showed it supported Socialism and democracy he would consider joining it". Where has Mr. Reid been during his twenty-six years in politics if he does not know that such a Party has existed for over 70 years — the SPGB? Not that we are waiting on the doorstep to welcome Mr. Jimmy Reid into our ranks. Fortunately we have a choice over those who may decide to join us, and in his present state of muddle we could not permit an individual as ignorant on the fundamental aspects of Socialism to enter our organisation.

By Socialism Mr. Reid, in common with all left-wing parties, means freedom to worship reforms, State capitalism, a touch of Scots Nationalism, and anything else which will provide a peg for opportunist propaganda. It's all in the pamphlet The British Road to Socialism of which he was co-author.

In an interview given to Peter McHugh of the Daily Mail (13th February 1976) he expresses interest in the newly-founded Scottish Labour Party of Mr. Jim Sillars, MP, who apparently is a personal friend and who also is the same type of modern Labour fakir. Both men have in common their rejection of the organisations which brought them to political prominence. It is people like Reid and Sillars who hold back Socialist propaganda, and expect prestige for doing it, as does every professional left-wing politician.

It has taken twenty-six years in politics to convince Reid he backed the wrong horse in the Communist Party. Instead of making public confessions of his ignorance of politics he should gracefully retire to develop a few real Socialist principles. For his and others' information, Socialism means a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, and its achievement depends on understanding.

Jim D'Arcy

Communism Now (1973)

Book Review from the October 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Le Mouvemente Communiste. by Jean Barrot. Editions Champ Libre.

We in this country have consistently argued the need for Socialism as a classless, wageless, Stateless world community. On the continent of Europe some groups have claimed to hold the same idea, even if our and their ideas as to how to achieve Socialism are quite different. Jean Barrot has been influenced by one such continental group, which necessarily raises the question whether he really does see Socialism as we do.

For him the aim of the working class movement is the sort of society we call "socialism" or "communism". He sees this as an immediate possibility. The world as a whole, he says, is "communisable", that is, ready for the establishment of Communism. There is no longer any need, as there was in Marx's day, for a period during which the means of production are further developed to the stage where they can provide abundance for all. This stage has already been reached. The immediate task of the Communist (-Socialist) revolution is to re-organise production with a view to eliminating waste and creating interesting and pleasant jobs. To do this, insists Barrot, involves the immediate abolition of production for sale, money, wages, prices and all the other manifestations of the social relation of "value".

Barrot argues that Marxian economics is not simply an explanation of how capitalism works but a social critique of the whole system; that for Marx capital and value are not things but social relations: the relation between stored-up dead labour (and its controllers) and living working labour (and those who embody it, the producers). Barrot maintains that an accurate description of a capitalist, is not simply (or rather, not necessarily at all) a legal owner of the means of production but any group, whether legal owners or not, which "manages capital". Capital is here to be considered of course as a social relation not a thing, so Barrot is not talking about technical factory managers and the like but about whoever actually controls dead labour with a view to exploiting living labour. He points out that at different times and different places, a great variety of people have performed this fucntion from cigar-smoking Victorian capitalists to ascetic army officers. Barrot says that this at least has the advantage of making clear to the working class that what they must abolish is not just "the capitalists" but the whole capitalist system of wage-labour and production for profit.

When it comes to how to establish Socialism our disagreement with Barrot begins, though even here he expresses views worth considering. For instance, he argues that since about 1914 capital has no longer had any progressive role to play in developing the means of production so that Socialists need not support, as Marx did in his day, the spread of capitalism at the expense of pre-capitalist economic and political systems. Their task is to strive for Communism (-Socialism).

But how? Barrot is emphatic in denying that the establishment of Socialism is at all a question of consciousness. According to him, it will be the result of a spontaneous revolutionary outburst which could occur at any time and which will sweep the workers on, almost in spite of themselves, to suppress commodity-production and inaugurate instead production-for-use. It would be nice if it would be as simple as this. But in our view, Barrot seriously underestimates the extent to which workers must understand and want Socialism before it can be established. Of course this is not a question, as Lenin taught, of some outside group "bringing consciousness" to the workers. Socialists consciousness will be the outcome of the practical experiences of the working class under capitalism, including hearing the case for Socialism from Socialist fellow workers (whose Socialist consciousness in turn will have emerged from earlier working class experiences). It's a two-way process in which experiencing the problems of capitalism and hearing the Socialist case interact, eventually producing a mass Socialist consciousness amongst the working class. Until this stage has been reached Socialism just cannot be established. Any attempt to do so, even if successful in dislodging the sitting ruling class, would soon give rise to some other group to take their place as the "managers of capital".

Barrot's book is difficult reading as he makes no concessions to the reader's possible difficulty in immediately grasping the difficult concepts he employs. Nevertheless it is encouraging to see in others the apparent agreement about what Socialism is, even if they're still mistaken as to how to get it.

Adam Buick 

Pathfinders: What’s Going on With the Rainforest? (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the BBC broadcast a documentary called ‘I bought a rainforest’, in which a good-hearted but slightly buffoonish wildlife cameraman embarks on a one-man crusade to save a small corner of Peruvian rainforest by buying it and pitching camp. As might be expected, the cameraman’s schoolboy quest to ride to the Amazon’s rescue like the Great White Colonial Hope is foiled at every turn. His ‘rainforest’ turns out to be pre-logged scrubland. Nevertheless he puts up ‘Protected Area’ signs which are promptly ignored. He can’t patrol the land and neither can the scarce rangers. He has a logging squatter he can’t get rid of. He has armed cocaine-growing neighbours he is terrified of. He visits the local indigenous tribe and despairs that they are forced to log their own land. He visits a gold miner working 16 hour days in toxic conditions for mere pennies. He accompanies loggers who can’t get work any other way. He wails that ‘the west doesn’t need mahogany’ and that one tree supports more biodiversity than the whole of Western Europe. Finally he comes to the miserable conclusion that if he was one of these people, he’d be a logger too.

The overall environmental message of this generally insightful and sympathetic documentary is that the Amazon is doomed and so are we. Recent reports add to the gloom, with Brazil’s environment minister citing a 28 percent increase in deforestation last year (e.g. Al Jazeera, 15 November 2013).

What the reports often don’t say is that this is an anomalous ‘uptick’ after the lowest rate of deforestation on record. Deforestation has seen a 70 percent decline since 2004. Despite five decades of clearance over 80 percent of the Amazon is still intact. So is the rainforest doomed or not?

Unhelpfully, the media confuses matters with its preference for bad news over good, and its cavalier use of different metrics to make things look worse. For example, a report about gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon (http://tinyurl.com/ohnyumf) cites an annual clearance of 15,180 acres of forest since 2008, twice previous estimates. The reason it is twice previous estimates is that in 2008 there was a global credit crunch and the price of gold went through the roof, sparking a Peruvian gold rush which, as happened before in the 1980s, will peter out as the price of gold crashes.  But 15,180 acres is just over 61 square kilometres. At that rate of clearance and assuming no grow-back (which is impossible), it would take 13,000 years to clear the Peruvian Amazon, and 88,000 years to clear the whole rainforest. The only reason to use acreage as a metric is that it gives a big fat number.

Bucking the trend, the science press likes to emphasise good news over bad, promoting the image of science as a positive force in society. So we get ‘Deforestation Success Stories’ from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which cites a 50 percent increase in protected areas, good progress towards a halt to agricultural clearance by 2020 and towards net zero deforestation by means of compensating regrowth elsewhere (ucsusa.org and New Scientist, 14 June). UCS wants to motivate us, not demoralise us: ‘There are enough examples of success, some very rapid and far-reaching, to encourage continuing the global effort—and indeed, stepping it up’ (ucsusa.org).

As most people already know, the overwhelming cause of Amazon deforestation is beef ranching (65-70 percent – an area the size of France). 5 - 10 percent is ‘Big Ag’, mainly soya for biofuels and animal feed (including dog food), 20 – 25 percent is subsistence farming by locals. Logging is around 2 – 3 percent, while all others including mining, fires, roads, settlements and dams account for just 1 – 2 percent.

So what happened in 2004-5 to cause such a massive drop in clearance rates? First, studies estimating that deforestation caused 17 – 29 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions provoked a raft of control measures, which included punitive Forest Code laws by Brazil outlawing logging and imposing restrictions on beef and soya producers, who responded by making better use of existing cleared land. Second, the Brazilian real strengthened against the dollar, weakening Brazilian beef exports, and world soybean prices also fell by more than 25 percent. The 2008 financial crash further reduced profitability and consequent deforestation. As profits went down, more trees stayed up.

With last year’s 28 percent increase in clearance, the signs are that this has turned around. Soy is once again up and the real is down. Cattle and soya farming intensification is starting to hit a wall, while the Forest Code has been revised (i.e. revoked). This has outraged environmentalists, but the truth is that none of the control programmes were working. Most are voluntary, or rely on threats rather than incentives. The UN REDD+ scheme to compensate rainforest countries for preserving primary forest has been ‘gamed’ by dodgy companies and ‘carbon cowboys’ and none of the money has gone to the indigenous tribes it was aimed at. In short, the fate of the rainforest is inextricably bound up with the fortunes of international capitalism. As the world economy once again shifts into boom mode, the gears will once again start shifting on the Amazon tractors, trucks and bulldozers.

But statistics can only tell you so much. The BBC documentary instead focussed on the human drama, and it’s here that you see the real bind that capitalism puts people in.

Nothing brings home the reality of Amazonian poverty like seeing a child, brain-damaged from an industrial machine, smiling vacantly while her mother weeps and her father explains with admirable dignity why he’s obliged to continue defying the rich cameraman’s wishes.  Nothing brings home the human cost of gold mining like seeing a young boy standing for an hour in a bucket of mercury solution, as if he’s treading grapes. Nothing confounds the moral mind like the religious logger who loves the forest, and the plea ‘what will you pay me NOT to cut this tree down?’ And nothing so eloquently and poignantly captures the impotence of western liberal thinking like the cameraman agonising over how to choose between trees and people.

For socialists the problem is not trees versus people, but trees and people versus capitalism. The cameraman doesn’t understand this, not because it’s a hidden problem but because conversely it’s too enormous to comprehend. It’s the forest that he can’t see for the trees.

We never claim that socialism would have no problems. But by sharing the world democratically, without leaders and without buying and selling property, an entire class of ‘commodification’ problems would certainly vanish. The Amazon is the world’s greatest ‘tragedy of the commons’, where land of value to everyone is ruined by the exploitation of private ownership and trade relations. Take it into common ownership and custodianship, and our most important carbon sink and biodiversity hothouse laboratory can certainly be rescued, and indeed made to thrive.

Paddy Shannon

A Problematic Friend (1977)

Book Review from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jack London: The Man, the Writer, the Rebel by Robert Barltrop. Pluto Press, £4.50 hardback (illustrated).

Anyone undertaking a biography of Jack London is assuming a task that appears larger than life. More like a legend than a man and the image of the adventure stories that in part made him famous, London has an appeal that few stories can match.

Inevitably such a man is full of contradictions and to some extent these are left unexplained: London's desire to be accepted by the society members he despised; his racial hatred of the Japanese yet his ability to call Japanese revolutionaries his "brothers"; his extreme generosity and yet his overwhelming desire for money, and other inconsistencies. But Robert Barltrop does manage a reasonably rounded whole. Dealing with London's life in chronological order, he starts with a poor and rough beginning, wild adventures, his yearnings to write and his urge to consume literature, his early disappointments, and the almost fairy-tale rise to popular prominence. His political development until this stage is also carefully documented, and we see the conversion of the protester into an allegedly Socialist propagandist.

Alongside this are developed the personal characteristics which were to destroy him: above all the feelings that whatever he did had to be done better than anyone else, including drinking. The success years are catalogued with much sympathetic detail; in particular the visit to London and the writing of The People of the Abyss. This extraordinary description of the people living in slums at the turn of the century ("I am made sick by this human hellhole called the East End") is described as the only truly sincere book he wrote. His divorce and instant remarriage caused a scandal which affected his book sales as the press turned on him. With a truly remarkable strength of will London battled on, writing, indulging in extravagant schemes, madly building boats and houses and travelling with his second wife. The rather pathetic decline is then explained: the burning down of an engine that had been ready to take on the world, and the ultimate futile death, probably by suicide.

Writing poured out of London as drink poured into him, excessively. A great merit of this book is making the criticism of London's literary output readable in itself and illustrative of the intellectual progress of the man. Against such a vivid background there is little danger that the more "academic" parts of the book are going to turn boring. The writer gives telling criticisms of London's writings and politics. He gives a very full analysis of The Iron Heel, London's most successful (in terms of continuing sales) political story. Rejecting the usual viewpoint—including Trotsky's—that the book predicts the rise of fascism, he claims that by the time London wrote it he had virtually rejected Socialist ideas. Depressed at finding that the revolution was not coming as quickly as expected, he confirmed his ultimate fallacy, the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon race and the crude representation of the theories of Darwin.

Barltrop suggests that London never really got to grips with the essentials of Marxian economics, and describes The Iron Heel as London's argument why Socialism could not come about in the foreseeable future. Despite his lectures on Socialism, donations for the cause, etc., London was "without understanding of how society works; the virile combative imagery was the guise of smatterings". The writer concludes that The Iron Heel was not far from being an anti-Socialist work. One might make the same condemnation of London himself.

Despite praise for a most unusual literary figure, London's lack of understanding condemns him to the category of those who have chased the rainbow of illusion and helped others to indulge in the same fruitless escapade. London was a man with a passion against much of what was (and is) wrong in society. Yet his failures illustrate that it is not sufficient merely to be a very angry young man; knowledge of both cause and solution is required. Despite London's ability to study nineteen hours a day, he chose easy paths and skimped understanding. He always found studying "easy", but the techniques he had used for passing exams and beating the bourgeois whom he despised (hasty cramming and superficial answers) are totally inappropriate for comprehension of Capital and its conclusions.

The writer's summary of London life is: "Its various aspects are of a personality whose strengths and weaknesses alike were invited to over-expression by the hurly-burly of the time. It is possible to regard them all and still feel affection as for a problematic friend." When the Workers' Socialist Party (forerunner of our companion party the WSP of America) was formed and wrote to London just before his death with a copy of their manifesto, his reply (according to Barltrop his last political statement) was that he wished them well but could not involve himself. Therein lies the consummating summary of all those who spend their lives in the bitterness of opposition to capitalism but have failed to take the necessary steps to understand the cause of their fury. The political actions of such people, like those of Jack London, are doomed to impotence.

The biography — which makes several mentions of SPGB members — is an excellent illustration of that fundamental lesson. As Marx wrote of Proudhon (in a letter to P. V. Annenkov in 1846): "a man who has not understood the present state of society may be expected to understand still less the movement which is tending to overthrow it, and the literary expression of this revolutionary movement."

Ronnie Warrington

Stereotypes in print (1986)

From the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's role is no longer to be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Simpler, more effective birth control has meant that women are freed from the risks and hardships of frequent childbirth. Nevertheless most continue to play a role that is subservient to men, both at home and at work. The female sexual stereotype persists in defining women as the weaker sex - gentle, caring, emotional and unassertive. Traditionally women are admired for being pretty, caring and retiring. The traditional role of men, in contrast, is the authority figure in the family, responsible for providing food and shelter. Men are supposed to be physically strong, aggressive, unhampered by gentleness and emotion.

Biological differences are real enough - women are built to bear children, men to father children and these biological differences dominate relations between the sexes, confining women and men within sexual stereotypes. Women and men respond to their environment and to their biological role in life; therefore many women today "enjoy" a dual role as homemaker and worker resulting in them having to try to balance the responsibilities of work and home, fitting work in around shopping, cooking and cleaning.

In what little time is left over from these activities women may choose to relax by reading some of the bewildering array of homemaking magazines available to them but for which there is no equivalent for men. Men's magazines consist of periodicals on hobbies, sport and women as sex objects. Nothing on running a home, how to make the housekeeping go further, how to get a cleaner wash or how to make up to look attractive to the opposite sex. In magazines designed for the male interest women appear only as decoration, reinforcing their subservient position in society at large. Media images portray women simultaneously as sex objects, as independent (but still sexually attractive), as career women, as doting mothers obsessed with food and clean laundry.

The format of women's magazines can be explained by the fact that each is competing for sales, therefore each must appeal to the broadest section of the female population by including something for everyone. What does a typical women's weekly contain? A mixture of articles on homemaking, health, fashion, competitions, special features and possibly politics interspersed with a lot of advertisements and a horoscope column.

Competitions include an opportunity to "Win A Man" from a computer dating agency by listing his personal attributes in order of importance. Should he be tall, handsome, professional, educated? Another offers a prize of a cleaning person for six months if "you can tell us in no more than 35 witty words  . . . " For those women who have already found the man of their dreams and want to hold onto him a little longer there is a chance to win a set of pots and pans by answering four simple questions.

Lavishly illustrated recipe pages inform women that the way to a man's heart is through his stomach but in case they're too liberal with the cholestorol, the insurance companies reassure women that for a small payment they won't be left penniless in widowhood. "Romance" features highly - recipes for romance, romantic lighting for the home - but one can't be overweight and attractive to the opposite sex so articles on health include numerous fad diets and exercises to keep bums and other bumps in shape.

Fashion articles demonstrate how to dress and make up to look "sexy" and there is a proliferation of homemaking articles guaranteed to make readers perfect wives. Scattered throughout the magazines are adverts for food - some of them ambiguous - "What are you giving your old man tonight?" Not, not a dose of sexual subservience, but a packet of frozen hamburgers. For those who can't manage the housekeeping. there are plenty of ads for mail order catalogues, all of them offering a wide selection of goods to be paid for on the Never-Never.

Tampon manufacturers battle to sell their products using all sorts of technical diagrams and jargon - but disguise the possibility of toxic shock syndrome in very small print. 

The "Politics" column (if there is one) will most likely deal with some of the less attractive aspects of being female in capitalist society - for example one column bemoans the lack of screening facilities for early detection of breast and cervical cancer although, apart from criticising government underfunding of these health services, there is little political comment.

The ideas put across in these magazines occupy women's minds with trivia but at the same time subtly reinforce the dominant values of capitalist society, of privacy, family and home. Even those magazines which claim to appeal to the "liberated" woman concede only that she has an equal place in the job market - liberated in so far as she may not depend on a man to dole out the housekeeping. She is free to go out and obtain it for herself by selling her mental and physical energies to an employer for a wage or salary.

True liberation from traditional roles will only come through a partnership of men and women united in their desire for socialism. How might socialism change women's position? For a start, they will be on an equal footing with men. Neither will be obliged to sell their labour power to a capitalist class in order to survive. In addition women will be freed from their role in life. HUman beings will share all the tasks necessary to run society equally and in partnership with one another and we won't need glossy magazines to tell us how to do it.

Cathy Gillespie

Action Replay: Play the Game (2014)

The Action Replay column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Premier League, Formula One and Wimbledon are a tiny tip of a very large iceberg in terms of sporting participation. Most of those who play of an evening or a weekend are amateurs of varying degrees of ability, taking part for fun, for exercise, for bonding with their mates. Many kids play or run or jump or swim, not so that they can win but so they can enjoy themselves, usually as part of a team.

Back in April the MCC and the cricket charity Chance to Shine released the results of a survey they had commissioned, of 8-to-16-year-olds and their parents. The headline finding was that nearly two-thirds of the children said they would not be bothered if the competitive element was removed from school sport. At the same time, almost one parent in four said they would be less interested in their offspring’s sporting activity if there was no competition involved.

Wasim Khan, the head of the charity concerned, said, ‘It is worrying to see that so many children would be relieved to see competition removed from sport … We want to teach children the importance of playing sport competitively and fairly, and for them to see the benefits that it can bring to their lives.’

In another comment on these findings, Steve Bull, described as a performance psychologist, argued: ‘Competitive sport is a great way of preparing young people for the “real world” in which things will not always go their way. Learning how to deal with adversity, bounce back from disappointment and accept that luck isn’t always on your side are important lessons for children to absorb before they step out in to the world of work’ (Observer, 27 April).

So there you have it: school sport can prepare you for the knocks you are likely to meet later in life, as competitive capitalism throws its worst at you. Don’t complain or resist too much, just toughen up and realise that things won’t always go your way.

The Duke of Wellington famously said that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, though apparently he was referring to how he learned to survive in fistfights rather than his prowess at cricket. But your schooldays don’t just fill your heads with religious or patriotic nonsense, they also exploit sport to help you learn how to cope with losing.

Paul Bennett

A Stretch of Hard Labour (1964)

Editorial from the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

The noise and the ballyhoo are over for the time being, and another Labour government has scraped into power. The opinion pollsters can sit back with a sigh and claim vindication for their sampling methods, while Tory ex ministers can take the rest which, some of them have been unkindly hinting, their colleagues need so badly.

There is not much doubt that under Wilson's leadership the Labour Party has managed to paper over some of the cracks between its various factions and fight generally as a well planned and disciplined force. By comparison, the Conservative morale sank lower as the campaign went on and the foolish remarks of such political clowns as Quintin Hogg must have been like so many plums dropping right into the Labour leader's lap.

Just like their Tory and Liberal opponents, the Labour Party fought the election on a mass of promises; promises to solve the problems which they promised to solve when they last rose to power nearly twenty years ago. Housing and health, pensions and peace, education and unemployment, all those things which workers are so sensitive about, were given a merciless hammering by Labour spokesmen up and down the country. It was an astute campaign, and it just succeeded.

But now that the pendulum has swung a little, let us ask ourselves how much Wilson's promises are really worth. Does he really stand much chance of remedying the countless ills which so many politicians before him have failed to remedy? The Guardian of October 12th called him "a man with a heart full of indignation and humanity" but what will they call him when we get the multitude of excuses when his government fails to deliver the goods? We have had excuses from the Labour Party before. We had them in 1924 and again in 1931, when they blamed their failures on to the lack of a working majority. Will they try the same line this time, when their majority is so small? Let us prick that particular balloon before it leaves the ground. The Labour Party have taken power in the full knowledge of their standing in Parliament. They say that they intend to give "strong" government and to carry out their full programme. They are confident now. Let them remember this when the time comes for apologies and excuses.

In fact, the evils from which we suffer, and which political parties are always promising to cure, spring directly from the very social system of capitalism which statesmen seek to administer. In a world of minority ownership of the means of life and the production of goods for profit, it is inevitable that the non-owning majority will be the ones to suffer, in spite of all the politicians' promises.

The Labour Party does not want the abolition of this setup. However much Wilson may prattle about "government of the people, by the whole people, and for the whole people" the fact remains that his government will administer British capitalism in the only way open to them—in the interests of the British capitalist class. Take a look at the salient points in Labour's election programme. Up with production, increase exports, reduce imports, make British goods more competitive, work harder and keep wages in check. No capitalist would seriously quarrel with such a policy, and it does not differ in essentials from those of the other two parties.

Under the new Labour government, then, it will be very much business as usual for the ruling class—and for the man in the street as well. Workers will still have to struggle to make both ends meet amidst the increasing strains of a competitive world. They will have to put up with the inferior standards associated with working class existence, and when they come out on strike, they will be opposed just as much by Wilson as they have been by Home. That much we can gather from the Labour leader's words only two days before the poll, when he promised "much tougher action" from his government in dealing with such matters as the London Underground strike.

And just as surely the real issue—capitalism or Socialism—will still be as urgent as ever. The Socialist Party of Great Britain will continue to draw attention to it.

Proper Gander: Hunger For Anger (2014)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Angry customers! Angry motorists! Angry countryfolk! Angry couples!’, all set to an urgent techno soundtrack and growling narration. Watching Channel 5’s Angry Britain: Mean Streets is like getting a testosterone-and-adrenaline-fuelled smack in the mouth. The programme hits us with scenes of public violence filmed mostly on smartphones and camcorders. For example, to show that our roads are a ‘cesspit of hatred’, a vigilante cyclist records his various altercations with irate, bleeped-out drivers. The show is so eager to make the point that Britain is ‘a place where rage is all the rage’ that each piece of fury-footage is repeated five or six times. The programme tries to justify its voyeurism through its ‘Anger Expert’ talking heads. A disgruntled customer videoed trashing a mobile phone shop is said to be ‘taking on the faceless corporation’. Scaled up by several thousand is the wrath directed at another symbol of capitalism, the Tory HQ in Millbank, London. In 2010, protesting students stormed the building, and largely aimed their rage at private property rather than individuals, unlike the riot police.

There is also footage of hunt saboteurs in action, with most of the aggression coming from the huntsmen. This shows that political anger has a different target to anger directed at an individual, although the programme tends to conflate the two. All the anger is caused by the system, even when it’s not directed back at it. The woman shown chucking her shopping at a man is probably frustrated by being unable to live a fulfilled life, and road rage is surely caused by already stressed-out workers negotiating badly-planned streets. Even the way the scenes are recorded tells us something about how capitalism encourages people to relate to each other. The shopping-thrower is videoed through twitching curtains by an unseen giggler, much like the man in the phone shop is filmed by excited onlookers through a window. Ironically, watching Angry Britain is enough to make you fired-up about changing our alienating society.

Mike Foster

Feminist future (1979)

Book Review from the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every piece of art can't contain everything everybody would like to say . . . That's the slogan mentality at work, as if there were certain holy words that must always be named.

Thus one of the characters in Marge Piercy's science fiction novel Woman On The Edge Of Time* sums up the author's approach to writing a political story about present and future society without the usual incantation of political jargon. The future society which she so desirably depicts, though not named as such, is socialist in our terms: a moneyless society of common ownership based upon voluntary co-operation, with people contributing according to ability and taking according to need.

The story focuses on an inmate of a mental 'hospital', Connie Ramos. A Mexican-American woman, she is a victim of both poverty and colour prejudice and so is easy prey for the authorities. Having been committed to the institution once, she is sent back on the evidence of a pimp who Connie attacked with a bottle to protect her niece from a beating. She was committed the first time for hitting her daughter Angie although, as she says, "Most people hit kids. But if you were on welfare and on probation and the whole social pigeon-holing establishment had the right to trek regularly through your kitchen looking in the closets and under the bed, counting the bedbugs and your shoes, you had better not hit your kid once."

At a time when child battering is in the news, the author's fictional account shows how poverty can drive a loving parent to violence, and the palpable fact that they are as much victims of capitalist society as are the battered kids. Connie is living on welfare in a one-room flat following her husband's death in prison after a drug experiment. She wakes to Angie's screaming:

. . . She came staggering off the couch and saw that Angie, in kicking the table, in kicking the wall - every blow the blow of a hammer on her aching head - had kicked a hole in her lousy cheap shoes. Those were the only shoes Angie had, and where in hell was Connie going to get her another pair? Angie couldn't go out without shoes. There rose before Connie the long maze of conversations with her caseworker, of explanations, of pleas and forms in triplicate and quadruplicate and trips down to the welfare office to wait all day, first outside in the cold and then inside in line, for ever and ever for a lousy cheap pair of shoes to replace the lousy cheap pair Angie had just destroyed.
"You fucking kid!" she screamed, and hit her. Hit too hard. Knocked her across the room into the door. Angie's arm struck the heavy metal bolt of the police lock, and her wrist broke. The act was past in a moment. The consequences would go on as long as she breathed.

In the course of Connie's incarceration every protest is taken as 'a sign of sickness', and people in a so-called hospital are drugged into zombies. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that such institutions are used by the establishment against, in particular, underprivileged and inarticulate people as "just another way of getting busted', as a sort of warehouse fit only to 'store human machinery' broken by misuse. The story calls into question society's definition of madness.

Contrasted with today's sordid world is Mattapoisett, a village in a future time. Visions of the future often tend to depend almost totally on a 'back to nature' attitude. Unusually, this utopia encompasses both renewable, non-polluting energy sources of the 'small is beautiful' philosophy, and the application of advanced communications technology and machinery to carry out boring or repetitive work. Since unnecessary jobs like 'counting money and moving it about' have been abolished and necessary work is shared out, the workload is reduced to a minimum.

The most interesting aspect of this utopia is not the science fiction 'hardware' but the human relationships which are explored. Mattapoisett is a truly democratic society. Not only are the mechanics of decision-making democratic - local requirements are discussed with 'reps' chosen by lot each year who then meet, discuss and decide at planning councils - but social relationships are too. There are none of the hallmarks of authoritarianism or patriarchy here. No bosses, no leaders, no government. Gone too is that most pernicious institution, the nuclear family. School - that other fearsome institution - has also changed, with the artificial barriers between learning and doing in the real world removed. Children are treated as human beings, totally integrated and contributing to the community in their own right.

Since the characters are given unusual but charming names such as Morningstar, clues are rarely given to test sex role assumptions. Only Connie, the outsider, refers to the women and men as she or he, Mattapoisettians having no gender noun, using 'person' or 'per' for short. Assumptions about sexual and emotional relationships are also tested as the Mattapoisettians are no longer constrained by the concept of heterosexual monogamy.

There is little mention of how the author envisages change to a new society other than 'a thirty year war that culminated in a revolution'. A continuing war with the 'Richies' who have control of the 'space platforms, the moon, and Antarctica' supported by a population of androids, robots and cybernauts, is envisaged.

Utopian novels like Woman On The Edge Of Time are important for visualising a better future. By putting flesh on the theoretical bones of socialism they may inspire people to think about changing the world possibly as much a a library full of books on political science and economy. But there is another important reason. If socialism is to become more than a dream then all of us are going to be discussing how we each want to see the world shaped.

Finishing this book is like waking up thinking it's the weekend, only to find you've been dreaming and it's really Monday morning and WORK AGAIN! Capitalism is still with us, and the last thing to be complacent about is getting rid of it.

Those of your time who fought hard for change, often they had myths that a revolution was inevitable. But nothing is  . . . we are only one possible future. 

Paul Moody

*The Women's Press, paperback £1.95

Pathfinders: Plastic Waste – Is There a Solution? (2011)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Protecting the environment is in our hands’ –  a bold statement printed on a large supermarket chain’s plastic bags. The implication is that these bags are special, better than before or better than other ones. But are they really? The implication is also that it is consumers who are responsible for the state of the environment depending on the choices they make. Much money is spent on advertising and public relations to convince us of that responsibility; buy our product and know you’re supporting a worthwhile cause; use this product and do less damage to wildlife; for every one of these you consume 10p is donated to protecting dolphins/saving coral reefs/planting trees/rescuing donkeys etc, etc, ad infinitum. The poorly informed consumer, kept in the dark and fed mostly green bullshit is neatly handed the responsibility for consequences of decision making processes in which they played no part.

Plastics are polymers which do not, cannot, biodegrade. They cannot be decomposed by bacteria or other living organisms. What they do do is photodegrade, break down in light to smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming minute particles of polymer dust which stay around forever. Some of the latest technology claims that plastics with certain additives will degrade safely and more quickly given the correct conditions, i.e. carefully controlled landfills or industrial composters. The biggest challenge for composters is that they can only deal with discrete types of plastic and must not be contaminated with mixed lots – and they are few and far between because of the monetary cost. 

Landfill conditions vary widely and are recognised by environmentalists as being far from the ideal method of dealing with plastics. Current estimates for worldwide recycling of plastics is in the region of less than 5 percent, one reason being that there are so many different kinds of plastic. Recycling codes on packaging and containers trick consumers into believing such waste will be recycled after collection but there are at least seven different codes, all requiring different, separate methods of treatment, the outcome being that most of it is just dumped. 

As to how much is dumped it is probably impossible to say, however one recent estimate gives a figure of 65lbs of plastic waste per capita per annum in the USA. If we were to take a per capita figure for the whole of worldwide population of just 1lb per annum, 95 percent of which would be dumped, it works out at somewhere around 2.5 million tons. (At 10lbs 25 million tons, at 65lbs 160+million tons) – just plastic. 

For many decades a number of countries around the world had a policy of dumping household and industrial waste directly into the seas and although this policy has changed in certain areas the accumulated waste of plastic and its toxic chemical components are still there and are being added to daily. One estimate is that currently 80 percent of ocean rubbish is from the land and 20 percent from shipping. A single 3,000 passenger cruise ship accumulates about eight tons of waste weekly.

It was first predicted in 1988 that rubbish would be accumulating in the North Pacific gyre, a whirlpool created and moved around by the currents. Its existence was discovered to be true in 1997 when it was happened upon by Charles Moore returning from an ocean race when he sailed through a vast expanse of floating rubbish. The extent of the rubbish is difficult to measure as the particles are mostly broken down into tiny fragments and cannot be seen from the air, but they extend both outwards and downwards over an area variously claimed to be between the size of twice that of Texas to the overall size of the USA. 

Subsequent ongoing research has determined that the plastic concentration in this gyre is 6-7 times that of zooplankton, the basic foodstuff of oceans, and is continuously ingested by wildlife along with the absorbed organic pollutants which it attracts. Decomposition leaches toxic chemicals such as bisphenol A, PCBs etc., causing hormonal disruption right through the food chain from the tiniest organisms to birds, fish, reptiles and mammals, including humans. Moore’s team’s research recently estimated this particular ocean gyre to contain in the region of 100 million tons of rubbish. In the past decade it has been confirmed that this huge ocean rubbish tip in the North Pacific is not alone; there are now known to be another four – one each in the South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans. An informative website including a ten minute video can be accessed at www.algalita.org.

A trawl of the internet shows that there is little interest from big business in using less oil-based resources in general manufacturing and packaging; that landfill sites are full to overflowing with no solution in sight and scant reference from governments; that profit-based schemes win out over environmentally sound ones; that there are limited moves towards more recycling in only a minority of countries. China now both exports plastic goods and imports waste plastics for recycling and remanufacturing in order to export more plastic goods – at what cost to the environment? And the rest of the world is complicit because it’s cheaper that way.

As consumers we can separate and recycle our rubbish diligently and have a (baseless) expectation that ‘the authorities’ will take care of the next stage but protecting the environment will only really be in our hands when the system is in our hands. 

Janet Surman

Bruce and Bannockburn (2014)

From the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

The second part of our series exposing the myths of Scottish nationalism.

June 24th marked the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn which was just one of many battles between competing Anglo-Norman dynasties for the Scottish crown.

Separating myth from historical truth is no easy matter. Scottish nationalism starts from the assumption that Scotland was a nation from medieval times, if not earlier. Nationalists assert that Scotland achieved nationhood from the ‘War of Independence’ against the Edward the First, and William Wallace’s victory at Stirling Bridge (1297), the battle of Bannockburn (1314), and the Declaration of Arbroath (1320) are presented as expressions of Scotland’s national resistance against English colonialism.

The nationalist story of Scotland's past is that it has been a history of fighting to defend itself from England in a tale of freedom won, and freedom lost. Now with the Independence Referendum there is a chance of a separate state once more. It is, however, a fanciful notion that Scotland achieved national consciousness and nationhood in medieval times in the 'War of Independence' against proud Edward’s army.

Edward certainly sought to incorporate the territory of the kingdom of Scotland into his feudal empire. At first the means were peaceful. The Treaty of Birgham in 1290 set out terms of a future dynastic union through the marriage of Margaret, the 'Maid of Norway' to Edward's son. It recognised Scottish independence and the interests of the ruling nobility in Scotland would have been left unaffected. The merger was to be of crowns with no significant change for the commoners. However, Margaret died and this triggered a constitutional crisis in Scotland so with thirteen rival claims to the throne of Scotland, the barons turned to Edward to settle the dispute. He proclaimed himself lord paramount of Scotland, and decided that John Balliol had a better claim than Robert de Brus (Bruce the elder). John Balliol was accordingly crowned king and duly paid homage to Edward in 1292.

Conflicts within the feudal elite in Scotland, and harsh demands made by Edward on his vassals, drove John Balliol into revolt after Edward haughtily ordered Balliol into military service in France. The Scots instead ratified a treaty with Edward's enemy, Philip IV, and war was inevitable. Edward was free to roam through Scotland taking control of castles and humiliating Balliol until the forced abdication of Balliol in 1296, stripping him of the royal emblems that earned Balliol the insulting name ’Toom Tabard’ (Empty Tabard). He was sent to the Tower of London and thereafter spent the rest of his life in relatively comfortable exile. Edward's dominance over Scotland was total. He made over 2,000 freeholders swear allegiance to him, in a document which became known as the Ragman's Roll. Following several shifts of alliances, the feudal elite in Scotland began to turn the tables on Edward, beginning with William Wallace who never fought for an abstract ’people’ or even ’nation’, but always in the name of a legitimate power of which he was but the temporary protector or ’Guardian’ – King John Balliol.

‘Nationhood’

The kings and the nobility of Scotland  were feudal lords, who did not even understand, let alone entertain, modern-day ideas of nationhood, nor could they. They were possessed of a culture drawn from the Norman French, who married across the whole of the north-western part of Europe and were, in this sense, completely cosmopolitan. Their domains of exploitation, their rivalries and their commonalities invariably coincided. They were lords in Scotland who also held large tracts in England. For example, the Bruce family had ties both north and south of the border, the abbey of Guisborough in Northumberland was a Bruce foundation and they held 90,000 acres of land in Yorkshire, while John Balliol, held land in Normandy and England, as well as Scotland. Members of the nobility from the kingdom of Scotland, for example Bruce’s rival, John Comyn, fought on the side of Edward in the conquest of Wales. The armies of Edward were recruited from his feudal realms in France, Wales and Ireland. The internecine struggles between competing feudal dynasties were based on the belief systems of the then-prevailing notions of fief and vassalage, not on the present-day concepts of nationhood. The lords in Scotland were engaged in a desperate struggle to defend and safeguard their traditional monopoly to exploit their estate serfs against the centralising power of Edward.

Robert the Bruce’s conduct previous to Bannockburn was in no sense supporting the ‘patriotic cause’. The young Robert Bruce brought up at Edward's court had been a favourite of Edward. He probably shared a mixture of the Anglo-French culture of northern England and south-eastern Scotland, and the Gaelic culture of Ulster, French being his paternal-tongue and Gaelic his maternal-tongue, and Latin his written language. The facts speak for themselves. Both Bruce and his father supported Edward’s invasion of Scotland in 1296, hoping to gain the crown after Balliol's fall. They were understandably disappointed when Edward proceeded to install himself as king. In 1297, Bruce raised the standard of revolt. However, his rising failed whereupon Bruce declined to join Wallace at Stirling Bridge and was also absent at the Battle of Falkirk, in which Wallace's army was devastated.

He, along with most Scottish nobles, changed sides on more than one occasion, depending upon how the wind blew. In 1302, he resigned as a Guardian of Scotland to make peace with Edward in order to marry the daughter of the de Burgh family of the Earldom of Ulster. Bruce, like all his family, had a complete belief in his right to the throne. However his actions of supporting alternately the English and Scottish armies had led to a great deal of distrust towards Bruce. His struggle for the Scottish crown wasn't an enterprise born of patriotism. Bruce's motives were more self-serving than that. The ascension of his family to royalty seemed more central to his long-term plans than Scottish liberation from English rule. His ambition was further thwarted by his chief political rival, John Comyn, known simply as the Red Comyn, and another lord of Norman origin who Bruce murdered in 1306. This set off a chain of events which led to both his excommunication and his coronation as king. He was most certainly a usurper so long as there was a legitimate heir of the Balliol family.

To attribute to the Declaration of Arbroath modern connotations of nationhood is as false as to impart similar meanings to the Magna Carta. Both these documents should be seen for what they really were – an expression of the interests of barons from the respective kingdoms and their determination to hang on to their privileges against the monarch. The rhetoric of the Declaration of Arbroath – ’For as long as a hundred of us remain alive, we shall never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English’ – was never Bruce's rhetoric, for he had appealed to English lordship on more than one occasion.

A key passage in the Declaration runs thus:

‘Yet if he [Robert the Bruce] shall give up what he has begun, seeking to make us or our kingdom subject to the king of England or to the English, we would strive at once to drive him out as our enemy and a subverter of his own rights and ours, and we would make some other man who was able to defend us our king; for, as long as a hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English. For we fight not [for] glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up without his life’.

The above passage has been represented by some as the prototype for modern nationalism. In truth, this passage suggests the function of the noble estate ‘as the defender of the kingdom against the claims of the individual monarch in a way that was entirely typical of absolutist Europe’ according to the historian Neil Davidson.

Its message was two-fold. First, it was directed at Edward II, informing him that it was pointless for him to attempt to depose Robert with a more subservient king, since the remainder of the Scottish aristocracy would not cease its resistance. Second, it was addressed to Robert the Bruce, making it clear that, in consideration of his past record, they would not brook his jeopardising their interests – which lay in their god-given right to unhindered exploitation of the peasants – through making concessions to Edward.

Bruce at Bannockburn never fought for the people of Scotland – he fought to place a crown upon his head.

ALJO

Next month: concluding article, on the Covenanters.

Greasy Pole: Elections... or Earthquakes (2014)

The Greasy Pole column from the July 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Just listen' blurted the engineering geologist, in language he is more accustomed to use on some massive, remote construction site, 'I get right pissed off when I hear some jumped-up politician talking about an earthquake when what they mean is that they are scared about losing an election. Because it's a serious matter – an irresistible force which can kill tens of thousands of people and lay waste to a developed city'. He knew what he was talking about; over just the past ten years there has been a succession of such disasters each bringing about a horrific death toll. There was Kashmir in 2005 when 73,000 died; 1908 Sichuan Province in China 87,000; 2010 in Haiti when it was 210,000; 2011 in Japan with 200,000 plus. But our understanding of the cause is inadequate, other than seismic waves from the energy released through the rupture of geological faults or volcanic bursts or nuclear tests... Over time there has been a mass of work centred on constructing a reliable method of prediction from which an adequate defence might have been designed but without any appreciable success. By any standards it is a vastly serious problem for the human race so there must be some frustration when the likes of David Cameron or Ed Miliband drivel about an earthquake to express their anxiety about whether their party will survive against the onslaught of an equally futile bunch such as Nigel Farage and his UKIP. 

Bribes

This was how it happened during the by-election in June at Newark in Nottinghamshire. Early political tremors had already been felt by the time the parties had announced the names of their candidates and Farage had described UKIP's success in the recent local and Euro elections as an episode in his much-promised 'political earthquake'. The by-election came about after the resignation of the Tory MP Patrick Mercer, whose fall from the heights had been remarkably rapid. The son of a future Bishop of Exeter, he went to public school and Sandhurst which prepared him for a career in the Army, garnished by two decorations and the rank of Colonel when he left in 1999 and eventually became an MP. But things began to go seriously wrong. He had to resign from Shadow Minister for Home Security when he referred to ethnic minority soldiers as 'idle and useless', accustomed to using their race as a 'cover' for unmilitary behaviour. Another example of his lack of discretion was when he recalled thinking, on being introduced to a young female Israeli soldier, that 'You don't look like a soldier to me. You look like a bloody Jew'. His chances of surviving all this had almost disappeared when he described David Cameron as 'despicable' and an 'arse'. And finally he was exposed taking bribes from a couple of under-cover reporters for asking questions as an MP. It was inevitable that he should be at first suspended until he chose to resign – which gave UKIP some hope that they were in with a chance of winning the seat.

Newark

So the Newark Tories had to select a candidate for one of the safest seats in the country (Mercer's majority, even as he was under scrutiny, was some way above 16,000) and they would have been determined that whoever they settled on would be as different from Mercer as possible. Eventually emerging from the process was the smooth, prosperous 32 year old Robert Jenrick. But no sooner had he been chosen than a clutch of inconveniently undermining facts about him came to light. He had presented himself as 'a father, local man, son of a secretary and small businessman and state primary school educated'. But partnering these modest features there is a wife who is a high-flying commercial lawyer operating under a rather more colourful professional name. Between them they bring in some £500,000 a year. Jenrick' s claim to be a local man does not fit in with their joint ownership of a £2 million flat in Mayfair, a £2.5 million house in Westminster and a £1.1 million manor, originally owned by a slave owner, in Herefordshire. Somewhere in this lot there is a house in Newark which they recently began to rent – in fact just after Jenrick was adopted to fight the by-election. He works at Christies, the super-posh auction house but in this again there is some confusion for at first he described himself as the Managing Director of that firm when in fact he is at most a director – which would be lucrative enough for those others who are struggling to get by on the minimum wage or state benefit. So is Jenrick just another of Cameron's posh Tory boys? He defends himself with the assurance that owning three expensive homes '...doesn't mean I don't know about life on the bread-line', which seems to have been satisfactory to the voters of Newark, who elected him with a majority reduced enough to cause just a few bumps and trembles but not the earthquake Farage was hoping for.

Result

The UKIP candidate ('this brazen dandy' according to one observer) was Roger Helmer, who defected from the Tory Party in 2012 and has made himself notable with opinions, on a range of current issues, which could be moderately described as capricious. The Tories were anxious enough about UKIP to flood the constituency with big names; Cameron was there four times. It was to persuade – or frighten – the voters into supporting them because whatever the earthquakes may do capitalism cares for us.

Ivan

Between the Lines: Bore-o-vision (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the June 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bore-o-vision

I am only just recovering from the non-excitement of Norway winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Watching the show is like taking an overdose of valium - and then there was the frustration of going to the toilet and missing "our" song. All over Europe (and Israel - TV bosses aren't too hot on geography) workers were sitting in front of their tellys and waiting for "our" song. What seems like bland light entertainment is doing its bit to encourage the sick sense of nationalism which the masters require of the wage slaves. It's like watching international soccer - millions of workers are urged to think of "us" taking a penalty and "our" goal difference. All ideological preparation for "us" nuking Leningrad and "our" gains in central Russia. If you want to show us a football match or a boring song contest, let them tell us in advance that we're in for a nationalist political broadcast. As for "our" song in the contest - fourth to Norway. Palmerston would never have stood for it. If I were Maggie I'd send a Task Force to Scandinavia.

Hapless Hobsbawm

The Communist Party is beating itself up and, with every justification, the political pundits are having a good laugh. So, Channel Four's A Week in Politics did a special report on the split. Following the informative film report, Peter Jay (married to Jim Callaghan's daughter and suitably boring) interviewed Eurocommunist "intellectual" (historian by trade) Eric Hobsbawm. Our Eric is of the view that "Thatcherism" is a totally new phase of capitalism and that all anti-Thatcherites, from the CP majority to the SDP, should form an anti-Thatcher electoral pact. Jay asked Hobsbawm a number of very pertinent questions (more by luck than judgement, no doubt) which left the Professor stammering in confusion. For example, Jay asked why a "communist" should advocate the election of a labour government when the last seven have brought us no nearer to socialism. He also made the quite valid political point that if CPers wanted to do the Labour Party any favours they would go away and leave them alone, as CP support for Kinnock undermines Labour's credibility with voters. Hobsbawm admitted that Jay had a good point. Which says a lot about CPer Hobsbawm - and about the kind of votes Kinnock is after.

Selling

The series put out by ITV entitled Television was not half as bad as some critics suggested. The penultimate programme was about how TV is used to "sell" politicians, in the same way as it has sold soap powder. It showed how Nixon used a telly broadcast to save his career when some cad accused him of taking bribes - he had the viewers weeping into their hankies with a sub-Crossroads monologue about how he loved his puppy. Then, some years later, when JFK was opposing Nixon for the Presidency, the former's advisors manipulated the set so that Nixon would come off worst; they told him to wear a light blue suit which wouldn't show up against the white background and insisted that the candidates stood up to speak, so exposing Nixon to pain from his recently injured leg. Oh, the seriousness of capitalist politics. What was that about excluding frivolous candidates from elections?

Praise Marx

When you get as little TV exposure as the Socialist Party, any little bit is worth reporting. A few weeks ago C4 showed a late-night film called Praise Marx and Pass the Ammunition. It was quite a good send-up of trendy Leftists who think that their role is to lead the workers to the barricades, and included some pretty good information about British capitalism in the 1960s. But that is not why the film entered socialist history. In one scene the lefty protagonist enters a radical bookshop to deliver some pamphlets. And on what is there a close-up? The Socialist Standard and the Western Socialist. And it was a lengthy shot too. Proof, once again, that the capitalists are only too willing to give TV time to the Socialist Party.

Steve Coleman