Obituary: Fred Allen (2020)

Obituary from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sadly we report the death on 11 September of comrade Fred Allen, aged 91 years. 

He joined the Socialist Party when aged 17 having decided ‘there was no god and the SPGB was the best thing he knew of’.

In later years he was a member of East London Branch and then for some years an active member of the East Anglian Regional Branch. He served a short time on the Executive Committee and was an assistant to the Treasurer, taking seriously the collection of dues.

Fred was an enthusiastic supporter of the annual Summer School held in Birmingham probably enjoying the social side as much as the meetings. He was ready to help out wherever he could. A member recalls how a couple of years ago he helped her with the catering for a conference carrying the heavy shopping and spending the day in the kitchen rather than at the delegate meeting saying he was ‘not interested in the chit chat, I prefer to get things done’.

Fred would have been at HO for the Conference in April – he rang to arrange that we travel by cab – but sadly the lockdown meant that it did not take place.

We extend our condolences to his wife Barbara and family.

Cooking the Books: Why capitalists are ‘greedy’ (2020)

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

‘Attenborough: Curb capitalism to save Earth’ was how the Times (8 October) reported a podcast interview with David Attenborough on Radio 5 Live in which he said:

  ‘The excesses the capitalist system has brought us have got to be curbed somehow. That doesn’t mean to say that capitalism is dead. I’m not an economist and I don’t know but I believe the nations of the world, the ordinary people worldwide, are beginning to realise that greed does not actually lead to joy.’

That’s a start. Capitalism has got something to do with it. It certainly encourages behaviour on the part of those in charge of capitalist production which comes across as ‘greed’ but is this an ‘excess’?

Marx devoted a section of chapter 24 of Capital to the question. Entitled ‘Separation of Surplus Value into Capital and Revenue: the Abstinence Theory’, it’s an amusing read as it mocks the theory that the capitalists are entitled to a profit on their capital because they abstain from consuming all their profits but re-invest most as new capital.

‘Except as personified capital,’ Marx wrote, ‘the capitalist has no historical value’ and went on:

  ‘But, so far as he is personified capital, it is not values in use and the enjoyment of them, but exchange-value and its augmentation, that spur him into action. Fanatically bent on making value expand itself, he ruthlessly forces the human race to produce for production’s sake; he thus forces the development of the productive powers of society, and creates those material conditions, which alone can form the real basis of a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle’.

Hence his conclusion that ‘so far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital — endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will — his own private consumption is a robbery perpetrated on accumulation.’

In other words, the capitalists’ ‘greed’ for accumulating profits is not a personal choice or a character defect but is performing an essential social role within the capitalist economic system.

In Marx’s day that role was filled by an individual person. Today it is filled by a fictitious legal person – mainly, the limited company or corporation – but which still has to carry out what being a personification of capital involves.

It should be clear, then, that ‘greed’ for making and accumulating profits as more capital – also called ‘growth’ – is built into capitalism. It is not an excess but rather the essence of capitalism. Those in charge of capitalist production cannot help being ‘greedy’.

This means that capitalism cannot be ‘curbed’ and, if attempted, would disrupt the system and cause mass unemployment (rather like the measures governments have taken to deal with the coronavirus pandemic). To save the Earth, capitalism will have to be culled not curbed.

Fortunately, the historical role of the capitalist has been completed as the material basis has long since been created for ‘a higher form of society, a society in which the full and free development of every individual forms the ruling principle.’ To save the Earth we need to move on to this next stage in the evolution of human society.

Happiness, Happiness? (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many aspects of a person’s life can be expressed in numbers: height, weight, income, savings. But what about how happy they are? Can this really be expressed by a score out of ten and compared with how others in the same country felt a year ago or how people living elsewhere feel? That is precisely what is done in the World Happiness Report for 2020, the eighth in the series (online at worldhappiness.report). The period covered is 2017–19, and the main source of data is the Gallup World Poll (www.gallup.com). Typically, a thousand people are asked a set of questions in each country each year, and this smallish number is claimed to give reliable estimates, though no evidence for this is provided.

Let’s look at some of the findings. Countries are ranked in terms of inhabitants’ happiness, from Finland and Denmark at the top to South Sudan and Afghanistan at the bottom; the UK is in thirteenth place. There have been changes in happiness scores since 2008–12: most positively in Benin and Togo, most negatively in Afghanistan and Venezuela. More generally, in connection with the 2008 financial turmoil, it is noted that ‘life evaluations fell sharply during the financial crisis, recovered almost completely by 2011, and then fell fairly steadily to a 2019 value about the same level as its post-crisis low’.

Cities were ranked as well, from Helsinki at the top to Kabul at the bottom, with cities in Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand receiving high scores. On average, urban populations are happier than rural ones, though this is not always the case in the developed Western world. And ‘the urban happiness advantage is considerably larger for higher educated people than for lower educated people’.

The variables used to explain scores include GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy. But perhaps more interesting are some of the other factors seen as leading to increasing happiness. What is termed ‘well-being inequality’ is of great importance: happiness scores are higher in countries and regions where well-being is more equal, suggesting that people do care about the well-being of others. Also important is the social environment, which involves having someone to count on, trust (as measured by the absence of corruption), a sense of freedom to make key life decisions, and generosity. Strong social environments help protect people against the consequences of adverse events, and reduce well-being inequality.

In general, people are aware of the importance of the natural environment and of the threat posed by climate change. In London, people greatly appreciate green spaces and also blue spaces such as rivers and ponds. Sustainable development has on the whole a positive relationship with measures of well-being. This relates to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (sdgs.un.org), such as eliminating poverty and hunger, achieving gender equality, providing clean water and ensuring clean and affordable energy. But two of the goals (climate action, and responsible consumption and production) were negatively correlated with well-being measures, suggesting that action here may not be so straightforward.

A final chapter asks why the Nordic countries are consistently among the happiest, in spite of the long cold winters. These countries have relatively low income inequality, but this is claimed to have in general no clear link with feelings of well-being. Here’s the conclusion: ‘The Nordic countries are characterized by a virtuous cycle in which various key institutional and cultural indicators of good society feed into each other including well-functioning democracy, generous and effective social welfare benefits, low levels of crime and corruption, and satisfied citizens who feel free and trust each other and governmental institutions’.

The report can make no claims about the coronavirus pandemic, but the site’s FAQs do note that in the past major disasters have sometimes led to increases in happiness: ‘The most frequent explanation seems to be that people are pleasantly surprised by the willingness of their neighbours and their institutions to work in harness to help each other.’

What should we make of all this? What does it show about the way the world is and the lives that people lead? For one thing, it is clear that how rich a country is has no simple relation with how happy its inhabitants are. It is true that countries ranked near the bottom are very poor, many of them in Africa, though this also includes India and Myanmar. But wealth does not explain everything, as the US is only eighteenth, just above the Czech Republic, while South Korea and Japan are 61st and 62nd respectively.

It is also interesting to compare this work with that of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in The Spirit Level and The Inner Level. They emphasised the crucial role of inequality: the higher the level of income inequality in a country, the more problems such as shorter life expectancy, higher rates of mental illness, more obese people and less social mobility. The level of trust was another aspect studied, based on how many people agreed with the statement ‘Most people can be trusted’; higher levels of inequality caused lower levels of trust.

Trust is also covered in the World Happiness Report, though perhaps measured in a rather different way. And, as noted above, it is part of the social environment, the strength of which can help protect against difficulties in people’s lives, make them feel more secure, reduce the extent of well-being inequality and so increase scores for happiness. The sense of community could be another way of expressing this.

So in plenty of countries the present social system does not deliver reasonable rates of happiness to many, many people. In others, folk fare rather better, but this is more in spite of the competitive and inequality-based system than because of it. Health matters, but also people’s relationships with others and their sense of freedom. Many factors combine to make an individual happy, and a person’s ability to choose how they live and their relations to other people play an important role, and capitalism reduces people’s freedom in this, as in so many other areas.

Paul Bennett

Not a LOTO Fun (2020)

Book Review from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Left Out by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire. (Bodley Head 2020. £18.99)

This is billed as the ‘inside story of Labour under Corbyn’, which says exactly what’s inside the proverbial tin. It is at times insightful, gossipy and scandalous – and as such is hugely entertaining. That the Corbyn project was something of a train wreck by well before the 2019 General Election is now received wisdom and this book shows why. Always an uneasy amalgam of leftist forces (from quasi-Stalinists like Seamus Milne to Bennites, Trotskyists and single-issue campaigners), the surprise was more that the unique circumstances of the 2017 election had enabled them to do so well against the odds. But as one commentator put it, the soufflé never rises twice.

Much of it centres on the machinations of the Leader Of The Opposition’s Office (referred to internally as LOTO) and the internal factionalism that developed there enveloping all else, and their parallel and persistently difficult relationship with the official Labour HQ at Southside, still jam-packed with Blairites and Brownites. To say that policy-making and strategic decisions were made on-the-hoof (when they were made at all) is an understatement. What strategy did emerge – including Labour’s eventual and painful drift towards Remain – was often at the behest of the ‘grandfather’ of the Corbyn project, namely former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, but this was frequently in the face of opposition from other faction-fighters, including Corbyn’s Chief of Staff Katie Murphy, Unite chief Len McCluskey, and Milne.

Over time, Corbyn himself cut an increasingly sad figure in many respects, exhausted and irritated by the job in almost equal measure, and especially unable to understand the furore over anti-semitism in the Party. A backbench campaigner at heart, this attitude never really left him. It was an irony that the backbenchers in the Parliamentary Labour Party, some of whom were to defect to Change UK and/or the Liberal Democrats, ended up being as much a thorn in his side as he had been to Blair and Brown under New Labour – if not more so.

The book also covers the plotting and dynamics behind the succession of Keir Starmer as leader over Rebecca Long-Bailey in the wake of Corbyn’s 2019 election defeat and is telling in its analysis:

‘… on no subject was [Corbyn] more stubborn that his own sense of identity. The painful compromises inherent in the unusual lives of holders of high office – the encroached privacy, the punishing schedules, the relentless demand for executive decision-making and swift judgement – never felt within his command… Unable to rewrite the rules of the game as he had promised, he preferred to ignore them… By 2019, Corbyn had created a vacuum for others to fill. Keir Starmer in particular has reason to be grateful for Corbyn’s squeamishness with power. The Project not only squandered its inheritance from the membership, but left its children without any meaningful bequest’ (p.357).

There is a fair chance Starmer will lead Labour to their next election victory, despite his Trotskyist origins, but clearly more as a latter-day Brown from the Party’s ‘soft left’ than as a Bennite like Corbyn. Plus la change…?

DAP

Labour’s Internal Conflicts (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The suspension from the Labour Party of its erstwhile leader Jeremy Corbyn initially appears to be of little note for socialists. There can be sympathy for the hounding of an apparently decent man, , but hey-ho that’s capitalist politics for you.

But actually, this is a little more serious. While Corbyn does not in any sense meet the criteria set out in our principles of what is required to be a socialist, he is identified throughout the media and in the popular consciousness as just that. Indeed he probably self-identifies as a socialist.

During the lead up to the 2019 general election, in a number of BBC Radio 4 vox pops he was frequently cited as the reason for Labour voters of many years standing insisting they would not vote for the Labour Party. Corbyn was too extreme, to the point of being denounced as a ‘communist’. As socialists who state that socialism and communism are synonyms, that the Labour Party never was, is not and never will be a socialist party, such prevalent sentiments as expressed in those vox pops are of concern.

Capitalism’s defenders are none too discerning when it comes to identifying perceived socialist threats. The faintest whiff of red smoke and any vaguely smouldering embers are to be stamped on. If possible the word socialist, never mind the concept, is to be anathema.

Socialist understanding of the Soviet Union from its inception is that it was state capitalist and not socialist/communist in any sense. Yet there can be little doubt that Lenin, who thought himself a socialist, found himself through circumstance as head of a ruling regime that had no way of pursuing socialism.

Thus the compromise of state capitalism proved to be no pre-emptor of socialism as perhaps Lenin hoped. However, it did allow for an ideological claim of communism in the making, an iron curtain indeed behind which the ruling nomenclature became the capitalist class spawning the oligarchs of Putin’s non-Soviet Russia.

By posing as communist for over 70 years, the Soviet regime has been responsible for considerable ideological damage that actual socialists have to deal with. Present-day inheritors of Lenin’s legacy continue to serve to obscure the ubiquity of capitalism throughout the world, be it ‘free market’ or state capitalism.

This serves ‘free market’ capitalism particularly well politically as those state capitalist countries who continue to don the communist mask tend to the brutally authoritarian, thereby confirming the popular conception.

There is, though, a risk in all this for capitalism in that the concept of socialism may be traduced, but it continues to exist and where that may lead is unpredictable. For example, while the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 could not of itself have led to socialism, had the idea inspired the working class around the world to seriously consider what was possible for it to achieve, then capitalism would have had a problem.

Therefore, any hint of socialism succeeding, however erroneous, must be pilloried and, where possible, crushed. Even politicians who are merely trying to ameliorate the worst effects of capitalism without challenging capitalism itself must be thwarted and shown to fail. All the better if those politicians self-identify, or failing that can be branded, as socialists/communists/Marxists.

Thus the case of Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension from the Labour Party takes on a significance of sorts for socialists. On his being elected leader a whole machinery of vilification was slipped into gear. It was his declared support for a beleaguered Arabic people, Palestinians, which ultimately led to his downfall, branded a denier of anti-Semitism.

As a case study in character assassination, it should serve as a warning as to the opprobrium that will be manufactured and freely distributed to the public should anyone appear to be gaining influence contrary to capitalism’s well-being. The synthetic outrage produced through blending anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism has proved to be powerful. It has placed a brand of aggressive ultra-nationalism beyond criticism and forged a potent political weapon to strike down opponents, leaving them apparently morally, as well politically, compromised.

The wider impact is to identify anti-Semitism with socialism. It doesn’t matter that Corbyn really isn’t a socialist, just another would-be reformer of capitalism. If this is indicative of action that can be so vigorously pursued against a reformer, what can people expect who do wish to replace capitalism with socialism through the agency of a self-aware working class acting on its own behalf?

Once the working class is so motivated, then such a political weapon will be blunted. But until then, those who have accepted the task of propagating socialist ideas need to take heed of what could be the personal consequences of becoming more influential.

There is the further, perhaps more important, point concerning democracy. Socialists do not advocate the suppression of ideas, rather they should be brought out into the open and subjected to scrutiny. Through debate erroneous notions can be exposed and correct ones clearly identified. This does not preclude individuals continuing to expound erroneous ideas, the safeguard being their dismissal by the majority. That is democracy.

This most definitely applies to socialists. If some, or even all, we advocate can be demonstrated objectively to be wrong, then so it must be. It would be utterly pointless finding some mechanism whereby such a demonstration could be suppressed. This applies to all bodies of ideas and ideologies. Any agency working to frustrate this for self-serving purposes is opposed to democracy.

The Socialist Party was vigorously opposed to Jeremy Corbyn when he was leader of the Labour Party. However well meaning, his ideas would not have brought the benefit of socialism to the working class. This for the very good reason that socialism is not something that can be conferred, it must be achieved by the working class itself.

This opposition was open and political, not personal. His subsequent vilification though the media, and by many of his own backbenchers, has most definitely served the interests of capitalism by casting guilt by association, however vague and erroneous that association may be, with socialism. The juicier story is proving to be the ongoing, and rather laboured (pun intended) anti-Semitism row. If there is a strand of anti-Semitism running through the Labour Party it would be one of the threads of racism sown into all societies based around national identities.

Zionism is but one manifestation of this and it is quite possible that those who take a specifically anti-Zionist stand slip into expressions of anti-Semitism without recognising they are doing so. While the world continues to be divided by national boundaries, so will the curse of casual, as well as intentional, racist comments and behaviour.

Suspending Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party not only won’t cure the problem, in a sense it deflects from the root cause. It would well serve those who are celebrating Corbyn’s predicament to examine their own attitudes as to whether they can honestly acquit themselves of ever having had a racist thought. To quote a statement attributed to a Jewish teacher, ‘Let he (or she) who is without sin cast the first stone’.

Perhaps Jeremy Corbyn will now take stock and come to realise that the best interests of society are to be served through pursuing actual socialism, not some reformist parody. In which case he may come to realise suspension, perhaps expulsion, from the Labour Party is a blessing, even if initiated by dark deeds.

Dave Alton

Cooking the Books: Capitalism with Chinese characteristics (2020)

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

Last month a pro-Beijing think-tank, Anbound, sent us (and others) an op-ed on ‘China’s state capitalism in the Eyes of the West’. Although the words ‘state capitalism’ were sometimes in inverted commas, sometimes they weren’t suggesting that they had no real objection to the term.

The article was in response to one that had appeared in the Economist on 15 August entitled ‘The new state capitalism: Xi Jinping is trying to remake the Chinese economy’. This argued that the head of the Chinese dictatorship, Chairman Xi, ‘is presiding over what he hopes will be the creation of a more muscular form of state capitalism. The idea is for state-owned companies to get more market discipline and private enterprises to get more party discipline, the better to achieve China’s great collective mission.’

The Chinese think-tank summarised the Economist article:

  ‘China is gradually establishing a commercial legal system, and its response to enterprises is more sensitive. The formulation of bankruptcy and patent regulations has increased fivefold since 2012. Predictable rules make the market run more smoothly as well as increase economic production. Finally, the last element is to blur the boundary between state and private firms. State-owned enterprises are forced to increase financial returns to attract private investors’.

This sounds like the sort of ‘mixed economy’ that exists in the West, so why is it called ‘state capitalism’ and not just ‘capitalism’? The answer seems to lie in the sentence that followed:

 ‘At the same time, the state has also strengthened the implementation of strategic control over private enterprises’.

Even this is not that different from what some governments of traditional capitalist states aspire to, though in China’s case it is being done more systematically and by a state controlled by a single dictatorial party.

In any event, it is not the same as the state capitalism that used to exist under Mao where most of the industrial means of production were owned by the state, itself monopolised by a bureaucracy whose top members effectively owned them collectively and benefited from this in terms of a privileged lifestyle. When referring to the USSR, which was the same, Maoists called the privileged ruling group a ‘red bourgeoisie’. A case of people in glasshouses throwing stones.

What exists today is more akin to the New Economic Policy that the Bolsheviks were forced to adopt in 1921 and which Lenin described as the development of capitalism under the control of ‘the proletarian state’, by which he meant a state controlled by a vanguard party (falsely) claiming to represent the working class. For Lenin this was to be a temporary expedient to help overcome Russia’s economic backwardness, and the capitalists it generated were small fry. In China it is seen as a permanent situation in which the one-party state controls and directs the activity of large shareholder-owned capitalist corporations, many export-oriented.

Is it a viable alternative way of running capitalism to the multi-party political system that exists in the capitalist countries of the West? It is certainly working at the moment. The new class of private capitalists seem content with the situation and are not campaigning for the end of one-party rule. They probably prefer the stability this brings, just as their counterparts in fascist Italy and Nazi Germany did.

In fact, like them, China is seeking to control and direct private capitalism to achieve the same ‘great collective mission’ of winning a place in the sun at the expense of the older, more established capitalist states that dominate the world.

Capitalism vs the Environment (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution, capitalism has had a relentless impact on the environment, causing devastating climate change. With production motivated by making money rather than safeguarding the environment or satisfying people’s, needs wasteful and polluting methods will be used if they minimise costs and maximise profits. Any legislation which aims to curb environmental damage still has to fit into this framework. We in the Socialist Party do not shout for minimum reforms or minor changes to current worldwide production methods in an attempt to mitigate or offset the damage already done. Instead we believe that the only real solution is an end to the root cause of the problem, that is capitalism itself – nothing more, nothing less

We believe that it is the workers of the world who do all the producing and wealth creation, yet we are the last to realise the benefits when profits are growing. And the first to experience the hardships of downturns, recession and austerity.

The Socialist Party, which is part of the World Socialist Movement, is like no other organisation, insofar as we are the only group calling for an end to capitalism, and for it to be replaced by global socialism. This would be a world based on a revolutionary change of the means of production, from being owned by a tiny minority to being held in common ownership with free access to goods and services according to individual and self-defined needs.

The Socialist Party has been advocating revolutionary change since its inception in 1904. If you would like to learn more, then please visit spgb.net where you will find all the information you need, including details of points of contact in your local area.

Covid and capitalism’s unnecessary dilemma (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The crisis provoked by the coronavirus pandemic has brought out clearly the nature of capitalism as a system where most people depend on the income they get as wages from employment. They are in this position because they are excluded from ownership and control of the places where they work and where wealth is produced. These are in the hands of a minority, generally through joint-stock companies, who use them, in fact only allow them to be used, to produce goods and services for sale with a view to profit.

To obtain the money to buy what they need, the excluded majority has to go out on to the labour market and successfully sell their ability to work in return for a money wage (sometimes called a salary). Some, who have a long-term job and so a regular income, are able to convince a bank or a building society to grant them a long-term loan to buy a house or flat, which will be theirs if they keep up repayments and interest for 25 years or so. Others work in precarious, low-paid jobs and have to rely between jobs on state hand-outs or the informal economy to survive. Those who are unemployable, through long-term sickness or disability, have to rely entirely on meagre hand-outs from the state.

When wages stop

One of the measures taken by the government to try to slow down and limit the spread of the virus has been to close down all but ‘essential’ businesses, defined mainly as those engaged in producing, transporting or selling food and other everyday household essentials. Over ten million workers – some 35 percent of the employed workforce – have been affected. If the government had not stepped in, all these would have been without resources within a few months, if not before. Such is the precarity in the end of all those dependent on working for a wage. They can’t stop working for much more than a month or so without having to beg for a handout from the state to survive.

A fall in living standards affecting so many people was something that the government could not let happen, if only to maintain public order and avoid widespread civil unrest. The scheme it came up with to avoid this was ‘furlough’ – enabling employers to keep workers on their books without them working but with the government paying 80 percent of their previous earnings. On 8 May, 8.9 million workers were furloughed. Some 1.6 million more were not so lucky. They lost their job and had to rely on means-tested Universal Credit, the number claiming this surging from 2.6 million in February to 4.2 million in May. Since Universal Credit only brings your income up to the official poverty line these suffered a drop in income of considerably more than 20 percent.

The government was prepared to fork out the money – obtained by borrowing it – but only on a temporary basis on the assumption that the business closures would only need to last a few months. Since a government has no resources of its own, it can get money to spend only by borrowing it from capitalists or from taxes that will ultimately fall on capitalists. No government can go on compensating workers for any lengthy period for being deprived of their usual source of income – the wages paid by their employers for the use of their working skills to produce some good or provide some service for profit. It’s just not sustainable.

The government has to aim to get the economy – production for profit – going again as soon as possible, with workers producing sufficient amounts of new value to provide a profit for their employer and to cover their own consumption. The government did try to do this after a few months but this proved to be too soon and the virus began to spread again, threatening once more to overwhelm the health service, though epidemiologists had been warning that this was likely to happen anyway.

Hence the government’s dilemma – which to give priority to: profit-making or public health? Hence, too, a particular problem for the present Tory government under pressure to prioritise the economy from the small businesses, which mainly cater for workers’ consumption and many of which risk going under, whose owners are an important support base for that party. In the end, as long as no effective vaccine is widely available and if the virus continues to spread, that is what the government will have to do.

They won’t have a choice. Despite the inevitable public outcry and political consequences, the government would be forced to sacrifice the health of the old who, in any event from a capitalist point of view, are a burden as they no longer work to produce the profits that capitalism is all about. It might not come to this –vaccination might become widespread or else the virus might peter out – but if neither of these happen within a year or so this is what would have to happen.

As it might be

In a socialist society a pandemic like the present one could be dealt with rationally without the complications that occur under capitalism due to its production for profit and working for wages. Where the means of wealth production are the common property of society these will be used to produce solely and directly to satisfy people’s needs and not for sale with a view to profit.

Even in such a society a pandemic of the kind we are currently experiencing could occur and the measures to be taken to contain it – basically, social distancing while a vaccine is developed – would be the same. However, these measures would be being implemented within a quite different framework. Everybody would already have access to what they need simply by virtue of being a member of society, without having to pay for it out of money wages obtained by working for an employer. Those able to contribute in terms of work would cooperate to produce what was needed, while everyone would have free access to what they required to meet their needs. In short, the principle of ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’ would apply.

This would be a much better framework within which to deal with any pandemic. To reduce contact between people, some production units and distribution centres might have to be closed and most people expected to stay at home except to collect food and other essentials as now. However, this would not be accompanied by the problems that result from doing this under capitalism. No production unit would ‘go out of business’ and not re-open; productive units would simply be temporarily closed. No-one would suffer a reduction in what they needed; free access for all, whether at work or not, to food and everyday essentials would continue. It would be inconceivable, indeed incomprehensible, that some children would have to go without a meal outside of term time.

If there was a longish delay in finding an effective vaccine or if the virus continued to spread for a couple of years or more, this would amount to a ‘natural disaster’ situation and some temporary rationing of non-essentials might have to be introduced. Once again, this would be done rationally, without the complications of maintaining production for profit and workers’ incomes, as the context would be a world of common ownership and production directly to satisfy everybody’s needs.

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: To workers from Ireland (2020)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many of you will be concerned about what is happening in places like Belfast and Derry. You will probably support the civil rights struggle in Northern Ireland,

We too are concerned about the conditions our fellow workers in other parts of the world have to live and work under. We know that the role of the police and army is everywhere to protect private property and the existing political set-up.

When Ireland got independence in 1921 the North East part for economic reasons, was kept under British rule though given a parliament and government of its own. The government there has since armed itself with various undemocratic powers to use against its opponents. It is against these powers, and against bad housing and unemployment, that the Civil Rights people are protesting.

Protest movements are nothing new and are not confined to Northern Ireland. They exist everywhere and show that everywhere workers are discontented with some aspect of their lot. It is by promising to do something about this that politicians obtain your votes — and it is their failures that lead people to protest on the streets.

The politicians fail not because they are dishonest or incompetent but because capitalism cannot be made to work for the good of all.

If you accept this, then you will see that direct action is in the end as futile as voting for parties that stand for capitalism. You will see too the uselessness of a United Ireland as a way of solving the problems of workers in the North. This would merely be a political re-shuffle — a change of masters, we would say — that would leave unchanged the class basis of society which is the real cause of these problems. As anyone who has lived in the Irish Republic can confirm, people there face the same problems of bad housing, unemployment and insecurity (indeed this may be why you are now living here in Britain).

The lasting solution to these problems in Northern Ireland, the Irish Republic, Britain and the rest of the world is Socialism.

(Socialist Standard, December 1970)

US politics: what to expect from Biden and Harris (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

What can we reasonably expect from the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?

An assessment of the likely policy orientation of the new administration would ideally take into account the record of the political careers of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the sources of finance for their campaign, the appointments that Biden makes to cabinet post, and – last but not least – the political and economic circumstances in which the Biden White House will have to operate.

We do not yet know about appointments. In accordance with customary practice, some key personnel will no doubt be recycled from the Obama administration. However, we do have information about campaign finance. And from the long political careers of Biden and Harris we can learn a great deal about their attitudes and their patterns of behavior. Biden has under his belt 38 years as a senator plus two terms as Obama’s vice president. Harris has had four years as a senator; before that she was District Attorney of San Francisco for seven years and Attorney General of California for six.

A useful account of Biden’s career is provided by Branko Marcetic, a staff writer for Jacobin magazine, in his book Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden (Verso and Maple Press, 2020). In the November 2020 issue of Jacobin the same writer analyses the financing of this year’s presidential election campaigns. Another exposé is that written and published by Chris Aclixia under the self-explanatory title The Biden/Harris Ticket Is The Ultimate in Plutocracy: Screw The Little Guy.

Biden the compromiser 

Two points bear special emphasis. First, Biden has always been a great believer in bipartisanship and consensus. The leitmotif of his recent victory speech, for which he received fulsome praise from the corporate media, was his commitment to national unity and ‘healing’ after the divisiveness of the Trump presidency. Unity presupposes compromise. Biden’s compromises, however, are always with the Republicans to his right. And as the latter are much less willing than he to make concessions, ‘compromise’ generally turns out to be a euphemism for surrender.

Marcetic sums up the sorry result as follows:

‘Biden has spent his career reflexively adopting his right-wing opponents’ position as his own… He has repeatedly worked with Republicans to advance [many of] their political goals, dismantling the legacy of the New Deal in the process… Biden has got swept up in every right-wing panic of the last few decades – crime, drugs, terrorism — often going even further than Republicans in his response’ (p. 6).

This brings us to the second point. Both Biden and Harris have made major contributions to the explosion over recent decades in the size of the prison population – a phenomenon that has led many observers to call the present-day United States a ‘carceral state.’ As district and state attorney in California, Harris was keen to get even non-violent petty offenders locked up and reluctant to agree to their early release, which she opposed on the grounds that they were an important source of cheap labor for the state. But when her subordinates urged her to prosecute a crooked businessman she refused. Later he made a generous donation to her campaign fund.

Who paid the piper?

Now let’s follow the money. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

Trump versus Biden was the most expensive election ever held. The combined spending of the candidates is estimated at $14 billion – over twice the amount spent in the 2016 presidential election.

Many companies gave money to both candidates. Especially firms in the military-industrial complex. They certainly had no reason to be displeased with Trump, but they wanted to hedge their bets.

Mining corporations and the fossil fuel industries (oil, gas, coal) supported Trump. The high-tech firms in Silicon Valley supported Biden.

The financial sector – ‘Wall Street’ – backed Biden, as it had backed Obama and Hillary Clinton. The medical industry gave to Biden, presumably because he has always firmly opposed national healthcare schemes like ‘Medicare for All.’ Show business supported Biden, as did lobbying and law firms.

Overall, more billionaires gave money to Biden (150) than to Trump (108). Most small business owners supported Trump.

Circumstances

In the American political system, the executive branch governs not alone but in collaboration and conflict with Congress and the judiciary. The Democrats are set to retain their control over the House of Representatives, but the Senate hangs in the balance. Which party controls the Senate always has a palpable impact on the effectiveness of a presidential administration.

Whatever happens to the Senate, the Biden administration will be burdened with a conservative Supreme Court that is likely to rule radical new legislation (if there is any) unconstitutional.

We must also take into consideration budgetary and other economic constraints – some flowing directly from the current situation, others imposed by the general requirements of the capitalist system.

Thus one change that does seem likely to occur as a result of this election is the adoption of serious measures at the federal level to bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control. However, similar measures already taken in states with Democratic governors have proven costly enough to jeopardize other state-funded services. The same problem will now arise in the federal government. Even if taxes on the wealthy are restored to pre-Trump levels, it is hard to imagine a fiscal situation less conducive to maintaining – let alone expanding — social provision.

Policy implications

What are the implications of all this for the policies the Biden administration is likely to pursue?

We can expect some reforms, if only for the sake of appearance, but hardly any with real substance. For example, the United States will probably rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, but there will be no Green New Deal (or at least nothing worthy of such a grand name). In the field of healthcare there may be an attempt to revive Obamacare – nothing more.

Those radicals who seek to ‘push Biden to the left’ under current circumstances have set themselves a truly Herculean task.

Stefan

A Lesson from Trump (2020)

From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The day after the outcome of the American presidential election became clear, someone wrote on our party’s Facebook page: ‘I can’t help but feel a lot happier this morning, knowing that the odious vile strange orange man has been sent packing’. There can be no doubt that, on a visceral level at least, many other workers worldwide felt a similar sense of relief that the unspeakable individual in charge of America had been dismissed from office. When I wrote to my sister-in-law the same day to wish her a happy birthday, she replied that ‘getting rid of the monster is the best possible present’. On a political level too many people were relieved, in view of the widely expressed claim that, if re-elected, Trump would have proceeded to establish some kind of dictatorship stamping on all dissent and in particular taking draconian measures, Mussolini or even Hitler style, against all ‘progressive’ forces.

Yet could this actually have happened? There is no doubt that Trump showed psychopathic traits similar to dictators like Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin – arrogant, narcissistic, bigoted, racist, authoritarian, demagogic, etc. But could he have gone ahead and taken control of the American state in the same way as former dictators have taken over their state and wreaked havoc on those who they opposed or who opposed them even to the point of genocide? Part of the answer to that lies in what actually happened in the American elections. What happened was that Trump, would-be dictator or not, was dismissed from office via that country’s democratic electoral process, in much the same way as many other leaders have often been dismissed from office in advanced capitalist democracies. The point is that the US has a well-entrenched mechanism for doing that regardless of whether the incumbent leaves quietly or, as Trump, kicking and screaming. It also has a mechanism (many mechanisms) for preventing an individual, whether deranged or loathsome or anything else, from exercising personal unrestrained power. This means that, even had the result gone the other way and Trump had strutted on as before, he could not have installed himself as the kind of ruthless dictator who rides roughshod over all opposition as Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin did and as others still do today in places where capitalist democracies have not yet – or not yet fully – emerged.

So, continuing the comparison with Mussolini and Hitler, why then were those dictators able to take over in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s? They were able to because Italy and Germany had not at that time reached the same relatively secure level of capitalist economic and political development of countries as the US (and others such as the UK, Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, etc.) has today. Italy and Germany in that era did not have the same well-rooted system of political administration that exists today both in those countries and elsewhere and so were always a possible prey to the nationalist demagoguery of a dictator promising to cure all ills while spreading division and crushing opposition.

That same kind of demagoguery has of course echoed favourably with the over 70 million Americans who voted for Trump. And that can only be dispiriting for socialists who see as a prerequisite for the kind of society we advocate – leaderless, moneyless, wageless, frontierless and entirely democratic – the active agreement and support for that society by the majority of the world’s workers. What has happened in the US seems aeons away from that, especially as even the half of the electorate that voted for Biden were only choosing at best a ‘lesser evil’. That ‘lesser evil’, the Democrat Party, will, by the very nature of the system it is in charge of, continue to run that system in a business-as-usual way, i.e. in the profit-seeking interests of the tiny minority who monopolise the majority of the wealth. And this will continue to be the case as long as most wage and salary workers continue to have a mindset that supports, or at least acquiesces in, capitalism and the profit-seeking force that drives it.

Yet, having said that, what the example of Trump’s fall from office has shown is that in the US, as in other advanced capitalist countries, there is a well-entrenched system of democratic voting in place which, when the time comes, can be used by a socialist majority to ‘vote in’ socialism when the necessary consciousness has spread sufficiently for that to happen. And when it does, no would-be demagogue or dictator will be able to do anything to prevent the majority from making it happen.

Howard Moss

Free Meals (2020)

 From the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why not free meals for all?

That free meals for children during school breaks was ever an issue is surely a brazen example of the iniquities of capitalism.

The story ran like some synopsis for an updated staging of the musical ‘Oliver’, only it isn’t fiction. Why is it that the sixth largest economy in the world, that has borrowed, and will continue to borrow, many billions of Covid pounds, jibs at a few relatively measly millions to feed children plunged into poverty through no agency of their own?

A more pertinent question is, why should a resource that’s as vital to life as air be rationed by the ability to pay? A society that is struggling with the present pandemic to keep people breathing would not tolerate a system denying oxygen to those without the requisite bank balance.

Yet that is the logic of capitalism. Children, many of key workers on pathetically low pay who daily put themselves at risk of infection, are at the mercy of a squabble between national and local governments as to who will provide a meal a day for them.

The logic of socialism is that food will be available to freely supply the needs of everyone, adult or child. As it will be for all necessities of life. People will take what they need because they won’t have to take or hoard more, just in case. After all no one deliberately tries to breath in more air than they need.

Such will be the outcome of socially organising production to satisfy self-determined needs, rather than the capitalist need to satisfy profit taking and the restrictions on access this necessarily entails. Surprise, surprise, this option is not being promulgated in any of the media coverage of children and their inconvenient urge to eat between term times.

Out of control (2020)

Book Review from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

The End of the Megamachine. A Brief History Of A Failing Civilization by Fabian Scheidler.  (Zero books. 440 pages.)

Whilst this book could be described as a potted history of control and dissent over millennia it is much more than that. It is filled with relevant historical examples which lead to discussion of current global events and the general state of the world. None of the horrific statistics of current deaths in former colonies or empires of the West are new incidents but are merely the long continuation of what began many years ago, have increased, and have become an integral part of the ‘system’, the ‘megamachine’.

Western Christian efforts through history to control and subjugate whole populations to their beliefs continues to the present with, perhaps, a slightly altered emphasis. Now businesses have ‘mission statements’, governments ‘space missions’, and ‘the market’s radical preachers push a universalist ideology’. Structural racism today, the author suggests, comes from colonialism and empire-building which needed justification in order to subject populations to disenfranchisement and exploitation. Hence the Christian religion, along with scientists and philosophers, to declare ‘white’ superiority and exceptionalism. The author’s point here is that the colonial ‘wars’ should more correctly be referred to as genocide.

The underlying theme of the megamachine is that of the cycles of gradual development, decay, and renewed development of the economy, the military and the power of authority – but always linking current practices to earlier, similar planned events. And reminding us in different ways that ‘modern states have arisen neither for the benefit of populations, nor with their consent, but as products of physical violence.’

There are far too many threads to mention in a brief review but all are relevant to the societies we are living in today where everything is compacted and concentrated and where we are living with the results of past decisions. The post-WW2 years began ‘the rapidly accelerating species extinctions that are now threatening to escalate into one of the greatest crises in the history of life on the planet’ but as constant economic growth is an integral part of the machine then that is exactly what should have been expected and was forecast by some more than half a century ago. There is a section devoted to the ills of the current system’s approach to the environment, ecology in general, agricultural and industrial methods, the need for constant growth and the warning of what’s to follow if the decision is to carry on regardless.

A thoroughly worthwhile read with a wealth of useful and relevant information for a book of this size, plus end notes with references and several timelines relevant to the various topics. What there isn’t is a socialist view of the one and only thing to be done to stop the progress of this megamachine. Instead there is a final chapter on ‘Possibilities’ which, depending on your disposition you could either ignore or write your own.

Janet Surman

Rear View: Rashford’s missed penalty (2020)

The Rear View Column from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

Rashford’s missed penalty

Oliver Twist asked for more in 1838. Many more did in 1904: ‘We are told that over 100,000 school children in London alone go breakfastless to school. For them there is little hope for a sturdy manhood. Arrest the progress of physical deterioration amongst the children through the provision of meals by the State to all school children and you will do much to strengthen the physique and stamina of the race’ (Socialist Standard, September 1904). Fast forward 116 years: ‘… UK lawmakers voted against a motion that would have extended free school meals to children over school vacations, helping to offset a growing hunger crisis in the country that has left as many as a fifth of children in households regularly beset by hunger. The vote was a disappointment for Marcus Rashford, one of England’s brightest young soccer stars…’ (time.com, 23 October). We have been used to reformists scoring own goals for two centuries. Any reforms we could win for ourselves on the basis of the capitalist system will always be circumscribed by the need to keep the capitalist system functioning. Mendacious parasites will tell you otherwise. Blair, for example, stated in 1999: ‘Our historic aim will be for ours to be the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a twenty-year mission, but I believe it can be done.’ Twenty years later, the Daily Mirror ran this headline: ‘DWP child poverty figures a ‘national scandal’ as 4.1 million kids are hit’ (mirror.co.uk, 28 March, 2019). ‘The Socialist objective is not a society where everything comes right in the end, because kind old gentlemen give away turkeys. What are we aiming at, if not a society in which ‘charity’ would be unnecessary? We want a world where Scrooge, with his dividends, and Tiny Tim, with his tuberculous leg, would both be unthinkable’ (George Orwell, Tribune, 20 December 1943, published under the name ‘John Freeman’).

Che? No way!

‘Twenty left publishers from around the world release a joint edition including two essential texts by Che Guevara on the fifty-third anniversary of his assassination by the CIA in Bolivia. These texts, with insight from Aijaz Ahmad and María del Carmen Ariet García, provide us with a clear and resolute summation of Che’s spirit of conviction, scientific insights, human compassion, and unrelenting will to achieve the victory of the oppressed over the oppressors’ (thetricobtinental.org, 8 October). Compassion? ‘These people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names … they would feel completely happy and fulfilled…. ’ (part of Che’s address to the First Latin American Youth Congress in July 1959, three years before the Cuban missile crisis). ‘What I wanted to stress is that the working class is not putting forth its full effort’ (televised speech, 1961). ‘By working on the proletariat’s sense of responsibility, we hope to greatly improve the quality as well as the presentation of industrial products’ (article in Cuba Socialista, 1962). ‘The perfect revolutionary, the member of the ruling party, must work every hour and every minute of his life, during these years of very hard struggle that lie ahead of us’ (speech to textile workers, 1963). In fact, for each of Guevara’s references to the future communist society, he made at least a dozen pleas urging the Cuban workers to increase production.

Leaders get lost!

‘Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel highlighted the imprint left on the Latin American progressive forces by the victory of the Popular Unity of Chile, which brought socialist Salvador Allende to power in 1970…. The revolutionary process of the 1970s remained in Latin American history with its painful but unavoidable lessons for future revolutionary processes in our region, he assured. He also said that during his visit to the Palacio de La Moneda during his stay in Santiago de Chile, in 2013, the historical leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, told him that there was a spirit in that place and invited him to find it. That invitation, coming from a Marxist like Fidel Castro, was totally devoid of mysticism. He was, without a doubt, calling us to review a history that still has much to teach us’ (cadenagramonte.cu, 16 October). Yes, we should learn the lessons of history. Regarding Chile, in her book Democracy and Revolution: Latin America and Socialism Today, D. L. Raby writes ‘with a president voted in by only 36 per cent of the electorate and a coalition which only briefly achieved a little more than 50 per cent (in April 1971), there was no real mandate for revolutionary change.’ And this is what Fidel said when urging Mexican businesspeople to invest in Cuba, in 1988:’We are capitalists, but state capitalists. We are not private capitalists’ (Walter Daum, 1990, The Life and Death of Stalinism). The job of revolutionary socialists, wherever they are, is to make the world socialist revolution and this boils down now to the immediate task everywhere of spreading socialist ideas among the working class.

Nuclear winter or a socialist summer?

‘The weapons, known as intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, are intended as part of a near-total replacement of the American nuclear force over the next few decades at a total cost of more than $1.2 trillion…. The nuclear modernization program was launched by the Obama administration and has been continued by President Donald Trump’ (apnews.com, 20 October).

Editorial: Back to capitalist normality (2020)

Editorial from the December 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this US Presidential election, the billionaire hustler who conned millions of working-class Americans into believing that he had their interests at heart has been given his cards. In the spirit of his rather dire TV show – the Apprentice – about 74 million Americans, mainly workers, declared ‘You’re Fired!’ Unlike his contestants who stoically picked up their bags and left the building, Donald Trump has been throwing his toys out of his pram and has chucked lawsuits around alleging electoral fraud. Some fear that this may be a prelude to an attempted coup or even a civil war. It is more likely that he is performing a last bit of theatre for his supporters, showing them that he is prepared to the fight the ‘Swamp’ to the bitter end, despite rewarding some of their members with top jobs in his government and handing them a huge juicy tax cat in 2017.

We can safely say that Joe Biden will be sworn in as the next US president. Should we be celebrating? The only ones who have any real reason to celebrate are the US capitalist class. They have tired of Trump’s erratic style of government, where policies are made on the hoof without any overall strategy, and dislike the disruption in global trade caused by his trade wars. Many of them are prepared to pay higher taxes in return for this capitalist normality. Unfortunately for them, there was no Biden landslide, as had been predicted. About 70 million Americans, again mostly workers, voted for the orange conman. Perhaps some believe, despite all the evidence, that he is working on their behalf; others like his patriotic posturing, while some are attracted by the religious and social conservatism that he supposedly professes. Some even see in him a saviour from ‘communism’.

There will also be a return, or more accurately a continuation, of capitalist normality for the American working class. They will be still be living in poverty, whether relative or absolute. Homelessness will still blight many workers’ lives and many will resort to food banks. That the Democrats are unlikely to secure a majority in the Senate and that the Supreme Court is packed with conservative judges, which some pundits suggest may limit the ability of the new administration to pursue progressive policies, is beside the point. The real inhibitor is the economic system itself which prioritises profits over human needs. For this reason Biden will not be able to do much about the economic devastation that capitalism has wreaked on the Rust Belt states that provided much of the fuel for Trump’s support, and even if he is more competent in handling the Covid-19 pandemic, the capitalist infrastructure again will provide limits to what he can achieve.

There is much talk about America being deeply divided. This is true, but the real division isn’t, as the media make out, between workers who support Biden against those who support Trump, but between the capitalist class, who own and control the means of production, and the propertyless working class. To overcome this division, we need a socialist revolution not a change in who occupies the White House.