Editorial: Coal and Cant. (1919)

Editorial from the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 9th October the Prime Minister met a deputation representing the Trades Unions Congress and the Miners' Federation, who presented a demand for the nationalisation of the coal mines on the lines laid down by the Sankey Report. Mr. Stuart-Bunning, representing the T.U.C., said the demand was made not on the views of the miners alone, but of the large number of organised workers affiliated to the T.U.C. The fact that the representatives of 5½ millions of workers should fancy that the nostrum of Nationalisation would be of use or benefit to their class is good reason for examining the proposition in detail.

According to the report of the interview given in the "Daily News" (11.10.19) Mr. Smillie, representing the miners, put forward two main reasons why the mines should be nationalised. The first was that "the mines are largely unsafe because they are working for private profit." In what way Nationalisation would make them safer we are left to guess. There is no evidence that the railways have become safer for the railway workers since they have been under government control, nor has it ever been put forward that the Admiralty Dockyards are safer than private ones. Until evidence of this character is forthcoming the hope that the mines would be safer if nationalised remains purely a hope. The Government's treatment of its broken tools—the disabled soldiers and sailors—shows how much the "hope" is worth.

Mr. Smillie's second point is given as follows:

"I want the mines nationalised in order that by the fullest possible development on intelligent lines, with the assistance of the engineering power we know we possess, we might hereby develop the mines and increase the output and so reduce the price of coal."

Coming at this moment, after a certain bitter experience by the miners, the last suggestion in this statement is simply staggering. Coal is under government control now, and a few months ago, without any economic reason, the price was raised by 6s a ton. Despite this swindle, perpetrated on his own members so recently, Mr. Smillie still calls for increased production. Yet increase of output by itself does not mean a reduction in price, and, as the above example showed, it may be accompanied by a rise in price. For the purpose of playing political tricks and misleading the workers the Government would be quite prepared to repeat and extend these swindles. An illustration from a branch of industry that is practically a trust will show the absurdity of this claim that increased output necessarily means reduced prices. The capitalists in this industry are urging the worker to "produce more," and the surplus above the requirements of the home market is exported. But note the situation. Prices are kept up or even raised at home while the exported articles are sold below cost—or to use a well known phrase, are "dumped"—to beat the foreigner in hie own market. (See Report of Committee on Trusts.)

Neither is it certain that Nationalisation would result in "the fullest possible development of the industry." While this is possible it is far from probable, as experience of the Government departments during the war— and since—have shown only too well. Corruption and incompetence have been rampant in those departments, and there is no reason to suppose there would be any improvement in the case of coal.

But these points are not the important ones. The ignorance of the organised workers and lack of knowledge—or lack of honesty—of their leaders is shown in this demand made upon a capitalist government to nationalise an industry. It should be clear to any worker that the control of an industry by such a Government means that the business will be run on capitalist lines—that is on profit-making lines. Though it may not be run for individual profit, it will be run for the collective profit of the capitalist class. Nationalised industries are expected to show as good a result as—or a better than—the private business, as, for instance, in the case of the Admiralty Dockyards. As a consequence of this fact the workers in Government departments are so badly paid as to have to struggle as hard to lift up their wages, or to improve their conditions, as the workers employed by private capitalists. The Post Office and Government dockyards are good examples of this truth. But there is one important difference. When an industry is nationalised there is only one employer—the Government. If for any reason a worker is discharged from such an industry he is compelled to seek a living in another calling, as there is no one else in his old business to give him a job. In this respect the worker is worse off under Nationalisation than under private employment.

The fundamental fallacy underlying the T.U.C and Miners' demands for Nationalisation of Coal Mines—and it applies with equal force to the nationalisation of any other industry—is their failure to recognise the slave character and position of the workers. Denied all access to the means of production, except by the permission of the master class, the workers are unable to produce the necessities of life for themselves. As their means of life are controlled by the master class, it necessarily follows that their life itself is under the same control. When one's life is under the control of another person, one is a slave to this person. The working class are therefore SLAVES to the master class.

This great fundamental fact remains whether the masters split up the control of the means of production among the individuals or groups of their class, or whether they decide to collectively control them, or any part of them, through their executive committee called the Government.

The workers will remain wage slaves while capitalism lasts, even though every industry were nationalised.

Not until the working class grasp this simple fact will they organise correctly for the overthrow of capitalism and the real control by the workers of their means of life. Nationalisation is one of the red-herrings the agents of the master class are always ready to trail across the path to divert the workers from the course their interests demands that they should follow. Its failure to fulfil expectations will help to disillusion many of those workers who are urging it forward now. When the workers realise this they will begin to examine and study the right course to follow—which is to fight for Socialism.

The Lord Didn't Provide. (1919)

From the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Press has been shedding the usual crocodile tears over a rather interesting case of poverty. The vicar of Hubberholme, Buckden, has, it seems, been suffering the evils of the vile system which he supports, in consequence of which he finds himself in the hands of the Official Receiver.

Debtor had been having what many a man of greater use to his fellows has had—a rough time. His missus has had to do what millions of equally good mothers have had to do—turn out and work in order to help to feed and educate her kids. The Socialist may not deny her a little sympathy. It is not her fault if there is a flaw in the old tag—"The Lord will provide."

But the unfortunate Holy Joe found a pal in the Official Receiver. "I stand beside this debtor," this officer said ("Daily Chronicle," 11.6.1919), "who has been faced with the alternative of the starvation of his wife and his children or of resorting to moneylenders. If the Church and other denominations don't see that their clergy are better paid, if Christianity does not compel them to do it then humanity ought, and we should not have people of education faced with such a horrible alternative."

Ah ! There you see the source of the Official Receiver's emotion. Parson is a man of "education"—and the O.R. is another. For such people financial embarassement should never, of course, exist. The little ironies and jokes of this mad system should not pucker the "educated" brow. Starvation really should, you know, be reserved for those who have not sufficient education to enable them to get into the moneylenders' ribs to the tune of several hundred pounds.

And somehow or other, it usually is.

Jacko.

Paisley. (1919)

From the November 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Housewives all over the country will learn with interest," says the "Daily Chronicle" (7.11.1919) "that Messrs. J. and P. Coats, the huge Paisley cotton and thread manufacturers, yesterday disclosed the fact that in their last year's trading they made a profit of close upon four millions sterling ! This profit was made after paying excess profits duty, which probably runs into hundreds of thousands of pounds."

And now does anybody doubt that higher wages means a 7½d. reel of cotton ?

Obituary: Gordon Docherty (2020)

Obituary from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

West London branch regret to have to report the death of Comrade Gordon Docherty in June at the age of 79. He hailed from Glasgow where he joined the local branch in 1964 after listening to Party speakers in George Square. He served an apprenticeship as a turner lathe operator at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Govan and was one of a number of Glasgow comrades who moved to London at the end of the 1960s.

As a skilled engineering worker he had no problem in finding a job, at the Lucas CAV factory in Acton where he was an active trade unionist and AEU shop steward. In 1974 he won a landmark court case – which the New Statesman called ‘the case of Mr Docherty’s furniture’ – which resulted in hundreds of thousands of furnished tenancies becoming unfurnished and so enjoying a greater security against eviction.

He was a regular attendee at branch meetings and other branch events till last year. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

Cooking the Books: Big Deal! (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Boris Johnson announced the bringing forward of a modest package of public works, he remarked that,  ‘it sounds positively Rooseveltian. It sounds like a New Deal. All I can say is that if so that is how it is meant to sound to be’ (Times, 30 June). He was referring to the policies pursued by the Roosevelt administration in America in the 1930s.

When Roosevelt assumed office as President in 1933 the US was confronted with an unprecedented economic crisis – a huge fall in output, mass unemployment, a frozen financial system. To try to deal with this, his administration adopted a programme of public works (for which he is remembered) and of restricting production until stocks cleared (which is not remembered, but which is essential before capitalism can recover from a slump).

Re-elected in 1936, he expanded the public works programme. Capitalist production recovered to some extent but in 1937-38 there was another recession. As for unemployment:

‘When Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1936, the unemployment rate was 16.9 per cent, almost twice what it had been in 1930. (…) When Roosevelt ran for the unprecedented third term [in 1940], unemployment was 14.6 per cent.’ (LINK).

No wonder a Times sub-editor, in a note explaining Roosevelt’s New Deal to readers who might not have been familiar with it, wrote:

 ‘The extent to which it helped the US economy to recover from a deflationary recession remains a matter of debate. Some argue that FDR, as the president was known, did not spend enough and that it was the Second World War that finally put the US economy back on track as government spending soared.’

The ‘some’ referred to who wanted FDR to spend more are left-wing reformists, and currency cranks, who do not understand how capitalism works. The Roosevelt administration could in theory have spent more on putting people to work on infrastructure projects but this would have had to have been at the expense of private capitalist investment, a fall in which would have had the opposite effect of more unemployment. But it is true that mass unemployment in the US only ended when the government mobilised resources to fight a war.

The New Deal was opposed by some sections of the capitalist class who regarded it, as Johnson’s hero Churchill put it in an appeal to Roosevelt in 1937, ‘this war on wealth and business, this war on private enterprise’ (quoted in the Guardian, 29 June). Most capitalists, however, were more level-headed. Roosevelt himself was reported as having said, in May 1935, that ‘I want to save our system, the capitalistic system.’

By capitalism he meant private capitalism as production for profit by private capitalist enterprises. This survived as the dominant form of capitalism in the US. It was never really in need of ‘saving’. Nor was capitalism in its more accurate sense of production for profit on the basis of wage-labour, since those Roosevelt wanted to save private capitalism from – the fascists who wanted America to emulate Hitler’s Germany and the ‘communists’ who wanted it to emulate Stalin’s Russia – were merely advocating alternative ways of operating this.

Cooking the Books: Consumption – not the driver (2020)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show on 14 June, the Chancellor Rishi Sunak stated that the economy was ‘driven by consumption’. It is understandable why he might think this since consumption (consumer spending) accounts for some two-thirds of GDP. But it does not follow that it is therefore this that drives the economy. In fact, it isn’t.

Apologists for the system claim that under capitalism ‘the consumer is king’; that, in other words, production is carried on – even initiated – in response to what consumers want as indicated by what they are prepared to pay for and do pay for. But this does not explain how consumers come to have money to spend in the first place.

Most consumers are wage and salary earners who get their spending money from the sale of their capacity to work at a particular job, their labour-power, to an employer. So, where do employers get the money to pay them from? It’s a part of the capital they must have to start up a business and keep it going. Marx divided the capital of a business into constant capital (plant, machinery, raw materials, power, etc) and variable capital (the money to pay the wages of the productive workers it employs).

Under capitalism production is initiated by capitalist firms seeking to expand their capital by making and accumulating profits. It goes like this. Capitalists invest in production, including hiring workers; workers exercise and use up their labour power to produce new value, including the value of their labour power; capitalists pay workers as wages the value of their labour power; workers spend their wages on buying what is needed (food, housing, clothes, entertainment, holidays, etc) to recreate their labour power to replace what they used when they worked; capitalists buy the renewed labour power; and so the circuit recommences.

Marx put it this way:

  ‘From the point of view of society, then, the working class, even when it stands outside the direct labour process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the lifeless instruments of labour are. Even its individual consumption is, within certain limits, a mere aspect of the process of capital’s reproduction … Individual consumption provides, on the one hand, the means for the workers’ maintenance and reproduction; on the other hand, by the constant annihilation of the means of subsistence, it provides for their continued re-appearance on the labour market’ (Capital, Volume 1, chapter 23. Penguin edition p. 719).

What this means is that what workers buy to consume is the reproduction of what variable capital is invested in. Capitalist apologists speak unashamedly of workers as ‘human capital’. Some Marxists describe workers’ consumption as variable capital. This is not strictly true (it’s only that both have the same value) but it gets over the point that workers’ consumption is a part, not the initiator, of the circuit capital goes through to increase its value.

What drives the economy is business investment for profit. This depends on the prospects for profit-making and goes up or down depending on whether these are good or bad. Less business investment means fewer workers employed and so less consumption; more business investment means more consumption. So, far from consumption driving the economy, it’s the other way round. Consumption is the tail not the dog.

Think about socialism (2020)

From the August 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In July, BBC Radio 4 ran a series of programmes on ‘rethinking’ things in the light of the experience of the coronavirus and lockdown. Here are contributions sent by two Socialist Party members.

If we want the world to change for the better, we have to change everything. Otherwise we’re just rearranging the deckchairs. And so far that’s what the ‘Rethink’ programmes have been about – slightly different ways of doing the same thing. By ‘the same thing’ I mean vast economic inequality with a tiny number of people wallowing in most of the wealth we all produce. I mean the market forcing its decisions on governments. I mean the whole buying and selling and working for wages system. What do I offer in its place? I offer using the world’s abundant resources to feed, clothe and house everyone to a decent level through a system of voluntary cooperation and democratic organisation with free access to all goods and services. People contribute their work and skills according to their ability and take according to need.It can be achieved by people in a majority getting together, deciding this is what they want and voting for it democratically on a world scale. What can be simpler? Give this system what name you like, it doesn’t matter – all it needs is an effort of the imagination.

HM

 There’s never been a better time to ‘rethink’, but the rethinking has got to be truly radical. It has taken a blip in capitalism for millions of people worldwide to be thrown on the scrapheap and be plunged into despair, for people who never thought it would be possible to have to resort to foodbanks in this country and to face starvation elsewhere. That’s how precarious capitalism is for nearly all of us with its imperative to sell, sell, sell, to consume, consume, consume. Once something happens to prevent that, all hell breaks loose. But, if we don’t do something significant now, the regime we live under will just carry on and all the well–meaning attempts to make things better – for example the green movement, the feminist movement, the BLM movement – will just be co-opted by the system, absorbed into it and there won’t be that fundamental change that’s necessary. By fundamental change I mean looking beyond producing things for profit and instead producing for need via a collective, voluntary effort by humanity as a whole. In that sense the Covid crisis has pointed the way. It’s shown that we can get together collectively and help one another in a constructive organised way. The lesson we need to take from this is that we can and have to organise society in just this way. It’s the need we all have to make money to survive that has caused Covid-19 and that, even without any virus crisis, causes wars and poverty. If we don’t move to a rational, resource-based organisation of society where we are all economically equal, we can ‘rethink’ till we’re blue in the face, but it will be the ‘same old same old’.

JB

Voice From The Back: Growing Old Disgracefully (2005)

The Voice From The Back column from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Growing Old Disgracefully

A feature often commented upon by historians, is that before private property societies existed the elderly of a kin, clan or tribal group were treated with great respect. Their knowledge of the terrain, animals and availability of food was invaluable to their society. How different today in modern capitalism. “The government is abandoning hundreds of thousands of elderly people to a care system that steals their dignity, denies them meaningful choice and risks endangering their health, according to a hard-hitting report out tomorrow. The report – by the country’s leading independent healthcare thinktank, the King’s Fund – concludes that funding and organisational problems are putting old people at a disadvantage compared with other recipients of care. It also says that untrained, unqualified and overstretched staff are putting them at risk.” The Observer (26 June) Let’s face it inside capitalism old-age sucks. Although all those social workers forced to make these decisions will themselves be old one day.

Moral Considerations

The growing practice of scientific journals to copyright and restrict access to scientific data without cash subscriptions has led Robert Smith, a former editor of the British Medical Journal, to raise a moral dilemma. “Making money out of restricting access to (medical) research is immoral.” The Times (2 July) In fact Mr Smith you are terribly wrong, inside capitalism it is not only moral but good business practice. Only inside a socialist society will we have unrestricted access to knowledge for every human being on earth. People dying because medical personnel couldn’t access the latest scientific knowledge would be unthinkable inside a socialist society. It is quite moral today.

The Grapes of Wrath

In any sane society an abundant harvest from the vineyards would be the cause of celebration and no doubt a little celebratory tipple. But we don’t live in a sane society, we live in capitalism where the whole purpose of production is to make a profit not satisfy a social need. “It may seem heinous to any enthusiastic bordeaux drinker, but the EU has pledged £100m under the common agricultural policy to turn 670m bottles of French and Spanish wine into industrial alcohol to help reduce a surplus caused by competition from the New World.” The Sunday Times (3 July) Inside a socialist society if we produce too much wine we’ll just have to drink it. Terrible prospect, aint it?

An Investment Opportunity

The callousness of capitalism and the cynicism of the capitalist press could hardly be summed up better than this report about the bomb carnage in London that left over 50 dead and scores wounded. “City Index, the financial spreadbetting firm, said that more than 8,000 retail investors had dived into the market on Thursday, correctly backing their hunch that share prices would quickly bounce back. Some will find profiting from horror distasteful. But many in the City applaud the resilience of capitalism.” The Sunday Times (10 July) The editors carried this story under the headline – “Investors made millions amid bombs chaos.” Could anything be more disgusting? We are talking about trauma, amputation, disfigurement and death here not an investment opportunity.

Dare To Think

“A penniless asylum seeker in London was vilified across two pages of the Daily Mail last week. No surprise there, perhaps – except that the villain in question has been dead since 1883. “Marx the Monster” was the Mail’s furious reaction to the news that thousands of Radio 4 listeners had chosen Karl Marx as their favourite thinker.” The Observer (17 July) Many people who read the works of Karl Marx realise that the popular concept that he has anything to do with Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin or Mao is nonsense, in fact that he was opposed to dictatorship and authority all his life. Start reading what Marx actually wrote and accept his challenge to think for yourself and bugger the Daily Mail.

Editorial: Bombings, Bombers and a Bomb (2005)

Editorial from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent traumatic events in London provide a poignant reminder of the depths of anger,  frustration and outrage simmering beneath the outward demeanour of many people who are leading apparently normal lives.

When such extreme acts of violence,with their tragic repercussions, happen so close to home, they understandably impinge more acutely on our consciousness  and touch us in a far more personal way. Straightaway our thoughts become crowded with the names and faces of any family or friends who might possibly have been travelling near the affected area and we anxiously seek assurance of their wellbeing.

Fortunately such barbarous occurrences remain comparatively rare in London or the other major cities of Western Europe but in some parts of the world, alas, they are an almost daily experience. Any half-decent, sensible human being quite properly deplores the invidious, misguided zeal – be it personal, political or religious – that spawns such a terrible, unreasoning thirst for bloody retribution in the name of whatever injustice or absolute truth. Political leaders, of course, waste no time in making a sanctimonious response by roundly condemning the “evil terrorists” and “brain-washed fanatics”.

Doubtless their perception of the public mood is accurate but the weasel words of politicians assuming the high moral ground are an unwelcome encroachment. They intrude upon the very real sympathy and feeling of support we reserve for the victims of such atrocities by inducing another kind of feeling altogether: one of profound nausea.

The breathtaking hypocrisy with which these serial perpetrators of ultimate, officially sanctioned, state violence, denounce those who, unofficially, pursue similar tactics – which, though horrendous, are on a far small scale – is truly stomachchurning.

They uniformly assert that only warped minds, with a callous disregard for human life, would deliberately choose to detonate bombs in an environment (such as a tube train) specifically selected to cause the most damaging effects and indiscriminately kill or injure the greatest possible number. And without giving any prior warning. And in the rush hour when the maximum number of people would be exposed.

State-approved violence has been responsible for tens of millions of deaths. The ethics of “legitimate” or “just” war have no bottom line. If there ever was such a bottom line, the saturation bombing of Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo, generating the new military tactic of fire-storms, certainly plummeted below it. These raids resulted in vast numbers of victims exceeding by far any previous tally.

Sixty years ago, this month, on the 6th August 1945, the Japanese city of Hiroshima was virtually flattened – unnecessarily – by a single atomic bomb carried by a single plane. Three days later, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The city of Hiroshima was specifically selected (though obviously not by warped minds with a callous disregard for human life) as a target with an environment likely to cause the most damaging effects and indiscriminately kill or injure the greatest possible number. Many of its buildings were composed of paper, wood and straw. Mock-up structures built from similar materials had earlier been erected in the Utah desert for testing incendiary potential. Also, Hiroshima had been spared any previous aerial bombardment so that the precise effects of the explosion could be determined. The bomb was dropped at 8.15 am, without prior warning. In the rush hour when the maximum number of people were exposed. The official recorded number of deaths from the bomb is 186, 940.

Pathfinders: Is Socialist Theory Scientific? (2005)

The Pathfinders Column from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is Socialist Theory Scientific?

“Nobody has yet proven that this experiment was safe,” says Marina Bay’s lawyer Alexander Molokhov, in the first day’s Moscow hearing of the amateur astrologist’s £170m lawsuit against Nasa, launched hours after the successful collision of the probe Deep Impact into the comet Tempel 1. Bay’s claim that such cosmological ‘vandalism’ has altered the world’s horoscope towards possible disaster can also not be proved false, and such lack of proof is clearly enough in the eyes of some lawyers to start proceedings these days, notwithstanding Nasa mission engineer Shadan Ardalan’s curt dismissal: “The analogy is a mosquito hitting the front of an airliner in flight. The effect is negligible.” (BBC News Online, 4 July).

The Moscow court is unlikely to be bamboozled by such chancers, but the attack on science is common enough: don’t do it unless you can prove it is safe.The problem is that science, with the usual exception of mathematics, can never actually prove anything, an apparent loophole exploited by everyone from 9/11 conspiracy theorists to neo-creationist Intelligent Design advocates. Now the law is being asked to test the assertion that astronomers can’t prove while astrologers don’t have to.

Socialists have every sympathy with scientists who find themselves under attack from unscientific prejudice and blatant opportunism, since this is not very dissimilar from our own experience. For a theory to be valid it should accord well with the facts, and offer one a way to disprove it. Thus religion and creationism are not valid scientific theories, whereas evolution and gravity are.

Socialist theory fits the first criterion, but what about the second? Is it possible to disprove it? Perhaps. If capitalism fed, clothed and looked after its people in peace and without coercion, socialism would not be disproved but it would be unnecessary. If genetic research uncovers an irreducible aggression or profit-seeking gene, socialism could be said to have been disproved. But nobody has yet found this gene, or shown any other evidence that would make socialism unviable.

 Meanwhile, like Marina Bay and her enterprising lawyer, our opponents expect us to prove everything we say while they are not obliged to provide any evidence in support of their argument, and indeed airily dismiss the very large volume of evidence against themselves.

The End of Mass Production?

A big question for socialist theorists is the matter of parts and supplies. While much of food production is likely to be localised, some highly specialised parts and accessories are not going to be generally available in the region. Global transportation would be a last and expensive resort, but what if many specialist machine components could simply be … emailed?

A new generation of 3D printers is making it possible to recreate perfect three dimensional objects from a software template which can be posted through an ordinary email server. At present the ‘ink’ is confined to wax and plaster powder so the finished models have limited durability, but work is already proceeding with fine grain steel using micro-heat welding instead of glue to hold the finished article together, and laser and water-jet cutters using emailed plans can work on heavy durable materials to make components as good as traditionally machined parts.In fact, with the rise of fabrication laboratories, or ‘fab labs’, individuals can have their own designs and specifications custommade on the spot (Scientific American, June 2005).

Once the labs have shrunk from roomsize to suitcases, we may be looking at the democratization – for a price – of the production process, or in fact, the reclaiming – within limits -of the means of production. The idea that mass production may be on its way out is not new:

“Mass production, the defining characteristic of the Second Wave economy, becomes increasingly obsolete, as firms install information intensive, often robotised manufacturing systems capable of endless, cheap variation, even customisation. The revolutionary result is, in effect, the de-massification of mass production.”  War and Anti-War – Alvin & Heidi Toffler (1993, Little, Brown and Co).

Being toffs who hang around with generals, politicians, think-tank drivers and other assorted toffs, the Tofflers are never overly concerned with how their capitalist utopia will impact on the lower orders, so they describe in perfect equanimity a Third Wave capitalism which even by today’s standards would be a catastrophe for workers, with widespread ‘oceans of poverty’ around ‘hi-tech  archipelagos’ such as California, Hong Kong or the Rhineland.

Capitalism’s development of customised production could hardly be expected to benefit the toiling masses for whom mass-production is both a treadmill and a treat factory. They would never be able to afford the luxury of individual consumer targetting. Nonetheless, the ability to micro-produce with minimal waste and distribution costs remains one of the most exciting innovations socialist society could possibly inherit, and one which it could put to very good use.

Paddy Shannon

The making of global poverty (2005)

From the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why is the Third World always third? Why are ‘developing countries’ still not developed, when the West is doing so well? Why are so many of them poor, and have they always been that way? Is it just their fault? A look at history reveals a different story, and one which explains the real origins of western prosperity.

It is sometimes called the Third World, though now expressions such as ‘the South’ or ‘the Majority World’ are felt to be more acceptable. Equally, ‘developing countries’ is seen as more accurate than ‘underdeveloped’. Yet whatever label is used, it cannot be denied that much of the Earth’s population endure lives of poverty and squalor, of undernourishment that often crosses into famine, of insecurity and lack of opportunity. Their lives are often brutally short, with life expectancy far below that in wealthier countries (just 37 years in Sierra Leone, for instance, against a global average of 67 years). Each year around 14 million children die in the Third World, mostly from entirely preventable diseases. But such conditions have not always existed, nor has there always been such a chasm between rich and poor parts of the world. For capitalism created, or at least exacerbated, these inequalities, by the way in which it exploited pre-capitalist societies as it was expanding across the globe in search of markets, raw materials and labour.

The slave trade, for instance, was perhaps the worst example — it can only euphemistically be called a ‘trade’. Labour supplies were needed in the new colonies, especially in the Caribbean, but the native inhabitants were not strong or healthy enough to provide this. The solution was to ship labour power from Africa, not as ‘voluntary’ immigrants but as slaves, captured in battle or purchased from local rulers, transported in appalling conditions and forced to work on plantations. British capitalism in particular benefited from the slave trade: its products and profits helped towns like Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol to develop industries such as shipbuilding, cotton processing and sugar refining, for colonies were forced to send their produce to England and forbidden to manufacture anything locally. Banks such as Barclays and Barings were set up with profits from slavery. ‘The West Indian islands’, says Eric Williams, writing of the late eighteenth century in Capitalism and Slavery, ‘became the hub of the British Empire, of immense importance to the grandeur and prosperity of England.’ And at the same time Africa was impoverished, as it was usually the youngest and fittest who were abducted, thus depopulating the land and leaving the old or infirm, who could not cultivate the farms adequately. Africa’s population scarcely grew between 1650 and 1900, while Europe’s increased fourfold.

In addition, the Third World was a source of raw materials which fed the ever-growing demands of European capitalism. Africa, for instance, supplied groundnuts, cotton and rubber (nowadays it’s diamonds, timber, oil and rare metals). Profits from all this were repatriated, leading to further development in Europe rather than in Africa. Cotton goods and soft furnishings manufactured in India were enormously popular in seventeenth-century Europe. But the cloth industries in India, Africa and elsewhere were deliberately destroyed, primarily by British capitalism, both to do away with potential rivals and to open up new markets. In one area of the Philippines, for instance, the British vice-consul deliberately forced the replacement of locally-produced textiles with machine-made British ones, and encouraged production of sugar for export. All in all, Third World industry was undermined or at least kept on a low level while western capitalism forged ahead, partly on the basis of its colonial profits. In 1830, China was responsible for 30 percent of world manufacturing output, and India for 17 percent; by 1900, these shares were down to 6 percent and under 2 percent, respectively, while over the same period Europe’s share rose from 34 percent to 63 percent.

The end of the nineteenth century saw widespread droughts and famines, the Late Victorian Holocausts of Mike Davis’ book. Though figures can only be estimates, perhaps fifty million died in China, India and Brazil alone, as food was exported to the West, and local agriculture was disrupted by a mixture of ignorance and intent. In North Africa in the 1870s, peasants were forced to sell their livestock cheap to French dealers in order to stave off starvation in the short term. In other cases new taxes that had to be paid in money were introduced, forcing peasants to become wage-labourers. While the British rulers of India were lavishly celebrating Victoria’s sixty years as queen in 1897, wheat was being exported to Britain or left to rot in railway sidings, and poorhouses were being set up to further punish the destitute. (The Socialist Party’s predecessor organisation, the Social Democratic Federation, was the only grouping that consistently protested against the suffering being inflicted on India’s peasants.)

One of the most notorious events of the Western creation of the Third World was the Scramble for Africa (which can be roughly dated 1876-1912). This took place partly for strategic reasons: Britain needed to control both the Cape of Good Hope and the Suez Canal in order to ensure access to its Indian Empire. In addition, tropical produce was being exported to Europe, and there were many raw materials available cheaply — Germany needed access to cotton, oil, cocoa and rubber, for instance. Revenue could be boosted by taking over the tax and rental income of local ‘chiefs’, and forced labour could only increase profits. King Leopold of Belgium’s exploitation of the Congo, supposedly carried out to do away with the remnants of slavery, was the most extreme example. Edmund Morel, the journalist who exposed the extent of Leopold’s scheming, described what was happening as ‘a secret society of murderers with a King for a croniman’. African rulers often gave their lands away in return for old rifles and strings of beads, or unknowingly signed a treaty in English or French that contained different provisions from that in the local language. Lord Salisbury, British Prime Minister during much of the Scramble, prided himself that Africa had been carved up with no European power firing a shot against another (and African troops employed by Europeans did much of the actual fighting against other Africans). Salisbury’s policies served the British ruling class well:

  ‘He had certainly made sure that the lion’s share of new colonies and protectorates — fifteen out of thirty — went to Britain. If his preoccupation had always been to give Britain the strategic advantage, it was fortunate for Britain that he also gave it most of Africa’s most profitable territory: the gold-mines of the Transvaal, the teeming markets of the Niger, the tea and coffee of Uganda, the cotton of Egypt and the Sudan.’ (Thomas Pakenham: The Scramble for Africa)

Thus British capitalism benefited at the same time as Africa was impoverished. All in all, it cannot be argued that underdevelopment is due to Third World countries not (yet) enjoying the benefits of capitalism, that they have missed out on development by missing out on capitalism. The truth is that their current condition is a result of the role they played in the development of capitalism. Africa and many parts of Asia and South America, were colonised, formally or informally, for the sake of the European powers, whose ruling classes grew rich on the profits of this exploitation, in addition to the surplus value they extracted from workers ‘at home’.

Paul Bennett

Wronging the Rights (2005)

Book Review from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Ruling Asses. By Stephen Robins. Prion Books. £6.99.

The Ruling Assess will certainly make you laugh but, on the other hand, the thoughtful reader might be disturbed by the identity of the people who have provided the utterly absurd quotations that make up the book’s 216 pages.

The clue is in the sub-title: “A little book of political stupidity” and the people who have unconsciously provided the stupidities are prominent politicians; the very ‘they’ in that ubiquitous opinion that ‘they will [have to] do something about it.’

Beneath the amusing picture on the front page is a quote from the redoubtable Mr John Prescott, The Minister for Transport and current Labour Deputy Prime Minister. ‘I want to wrong that right’, says Mr Prescott. The book’s editor, Stephen Robins, in giving Prescott pride of place, so to speak, sees the obvious humour in this particular piece of asininity but, on the other hand it could be a serious comment on the vicious authoritarianism of the present Labour government.

There can be no doubt about the mental state of the man whose absolute pearls of frightening ignorance wins him top spot in this collection: George W Bush, the President of the most powerful nation on Earth and the man with control of the nuclear button. George’s father, we learn from his generous representation in this collection of absurdities, was the equal of his son in the mouthing of verbal inanities. This reduces the present great man to a sort of second generation idiot and perhaps poses the question as to why the American establishment, which boasts a ‘smart’ bomb, should afflict itself with such stupid presidents.

The collection is well indexed and the fact that the index contains 8 pages of names at 2 columns to the page means that your favourite politician is likely to be included – though, in fairness to the unique stupidities of the Bushes, father and son, it should be pointed out that they share some 124 listings in a work where, for example, the home-based political nutter, Ian Paisley, can only achieve 7.

This is a very funny book and an easy read but it frighteningly exposes the cash nexus in what passes for democracy in capitalist society where the means of winning elections is a commodity.

Richard Montague

Borrowers and Lenders (2005)

Book Review from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Noreena Hertz: I.O.U.: The Debt Threat and Why We Must Defuse It. Harper Perennial £7.99.

Hertz is fairly well-known as a commentator on and critic of globalisation. But unlike some, she does not even make the pretence of being anti-capitalist. In her previous book The Silent Takeover, she made it clear that she was advocating another form of capitalism in contrast to a laissez-faire version that sidelined justice and democracy.

The book under review focusses on developing-country debt and its consequences, not just for the Third World but for ‘advanced’ capitalist countries too. For debt and possible defaults can lead to desperation and terrorism, environmental damage and general economic recession. During the ‘Cold War’, loans were often made for strategic reasons, to keep countries friendly, whether US loans to Latin America or Russian and Chinese lending to Africa. The collapse of Eastern European state capitalism brought a sudden end to this, with loans being called in and new lending being on much less favourable terms. Hertz gives a good account of many of the mechanisms by which lending occurs, such as the roles of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. Many Western countries have export credit agencies that underwrite sales by domestic companies and step in to pay them if anything goes wrong (so much for the risks of entrepreneurship). There are even traders who buy and sell developing-country debt as if it were pork or oil, usually making vast profits in the process.

In 2004, the world’s poorest countries owed $458 billion. The consequences of this seem pretty devastating:

  “Millions of children continue to die every single year because money that could be spent on preserving their health is still being spent on debt service. Millions of children are prevented from attending school because money that could be spent on their education is still being spent on repaying debt.”

Hence the demand to ‘Drop the Debt!’, and Hertz’s proposals for deciding when debt  is illegitimate and should be cancelled, plus her suggestions of ‘new principles for borrowers and lenders’.

The problem is that all such proposals effectively accept the status quo, i.e. global capitalism. They do not even begin to address the question of why people are poor in the first place. The passage quoted above assumes that money spent on repaying debts would otherwise be used for health care and education, but there is no guarantee of this at all: governments in developing countries, like all governments, run affairs in the interests of the ruling class. In a world rooted in ownership of resources by a tiny minority of the population, poverty, famine, and lack of access to decent health care and education are inevitable. Cancelling debt (which is anyway less costly to the lenders than might at first appear) relates to just one aspect of the way in which the basic inequality of capitalism reveals itself. It does not affect underlying causes — which is why, whatever the sincerity of those who support it, it will make no contribution to ending poverty.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Putting business first (2005)

The Cooking the Books column from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

President George Bush II is nothing if not frank, at least on the Kyoto Treaty. Interviewed by Sir Trevor McDonald on the eve of last month’s G8 summit (ITV, 4 July) he had this to say of this treaty which aims to timidly limit carbon emissions (one of the contributory causes of the current global warming):

  “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.”

As the head of US capitalism’s political executive, his remit is to protect and further the interests of the US capitalist class. The reason why he and his advisers decided that the Kyoto Treaty would have damaged the US economy was that America gets a higher proportion of energy from burning coal and oil than its rivals, so that any commitment to use other, more expensive sources of energy would have cost the US proportionately more than these rivals and so reduced its competitiveness vis-à-vis them.

That Kyoto would have advantaged their economies compared to America may even have been at the back of the minds of the European political leaders who promoted the treaty. If so, they miscalculated and may now find that it is their economies that are going to be disadvantaged.

In any event, while it is clear that a question which concerns the whole world such as the possible consequences of global warming can be effectively dealt with only by unified action at a world level, it is equally clear that this is not going to happen under capitalism. The different capitalist states into which the world is divided have different – and clashing – interests, such as have come to the surface over Kyoto, which they will always put first. At most, all that can happen under capitalism when a global problem arises is “much too little, much too late”.

That the leaders of the capitalist States of Europe are just as willing (if not just as frank about it) as Bush to put the interests of their capitalist class first when it comes to environmental problems was shown by a headline in the Times the following day: “Europe drops green agenda to put life back into industry”. The article reported that, under pressure from governments and from business lobbies, the European Commission has put off proposals to deal with the problem of air pollution:

“The shelving of the environment strategies marks a triumph for the British Government, which has called on the Commission to stop producing regulations that damage businesses. An impact assessment had suggested that the air-pollution strategy alone would cost between €5.9 billion and €14.9 billion a year from 2020”.

Enough said.

Letter: What about human nature? (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

What about human nature?

Dear Editors

Reading the article “Talk about Socialism” in July’s Socialist Standard I began to wonder in what, and how many, different ways socialists approach the argument of “human nature”.

“People are naturally lazy/greedy/aggressive”, etc. – how easily these phrases trip off the tongue, usually before the brain has been put into gear. Aren’t we all at some time, in certain circumstances, lazy, greedy, aggressive? I would suggest we are all a complex blend of “general psychological characteristics, feelings and behavioural traits” (Concise Oxford Dictionary re. Human nature).

These are some of my “human nature-an alternative view”–

• Cooperation – currently in the majority world subsistence farmers and the like already cooperate in family groups to provide basic needs, not buying and selling but simply producing.
• Cooperation/hospitality – many cultures in the world have a very strong family/community welfare ethos and base their daily lives on working together for the benefit of all. Most of these people live in the majority world and although they have little they share what they have (even with strangers).
• Generosity and Compassion – from the minority world where most people’s lives are generally less harsh a large number of people willingly donate (money) on a regular basis in the hope of easing other people’s difficulties, e.g. child sponsorship, AIDS programmes, clean water programmes.
• Compassion/Empathy – in areas/times of major/natural disasters volunteers are never lacking, nor slow to offer assistance, whether practical or monetary.
• Giving/Sharing – huge armies of regular volunteers at home and abroad are at work to help and improve people’s lives, e.g. lifts to hospitals; shopping for the old or disabled; youth workers in clubs and sports associations; parents’ associations linked to schools, playschools etc. for better education and facilities; organizers of charity events.

Yes, a lot of this is to raise money! Because that is the system now. But these are examples of people giving time freely to organize events, bake cakes, engage in sports and other promotional events for altruistic reasons.

• Sharing – cooperatives of consumers in local areas putting in time on a regular basis to benefit themselves and the community.
• Cooperation – bartering systems where people swap skills-a few hours ironing for the repair of a water leak.

An observation about retired, i.e. not-working-for-money people: many will say it’s the best time of their lives and that they don’t have enough time to fit everything in. And what are they doing? They are often involved in the kind of activities they actually enjoy, taking care of the grandchildren, helping out even older folk in the community, growing vegetables, involving themselves in ongoing educational projects, having an occasional holiday. In fact, generally playing a part in the community in ways which would admirably suit a socialist society.

So, as far as things are now, in this non-socialist, totally capitalist world, yes, of course there are those who are ‘lazy’, ‘greedy’, ‘aggressive’ and I believe volumes could be and have been written by anthropologists giving perfectly good reasons for such behaviours in our concrete jungles and human zoos.

I prefer to call attention to the industriousness, generosity, and compassionate aspects of human nature.

Working together for the common good?

Yes!

People can do it, people do do it – it’s all part of that wonderful diversity called Human Nature..

Janet Surman, 

Turkey